Using Solfege in Practica Musica activities
Solfege is the system of syllables traditionally used to help students learn the notes of the major and minor scales: Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Ti . There are two approaches to solfege, the Fixed-Do system in which Do is always the note C, and Moveable-Do, in which Do is always the first note of the major scale - whatever scale that happens to be.
Practica Musica uses the Moveable Do system, so that you will always sing the tonic note of a major scale as Do. The fifth, or dominant tone, is always Sol, and so on. This makes it easy for students to understand how to sing a given melody in any key: once they know the sound of Do-Re-Mi-Fa-Sol-La-Ti they know by heart which steps are half steps (Mi-Fa and Ti-Do) and which are whole steps (all the others).
The minor scale
The natural minor scale is the same Do, Re, Mi pattern, but it begins on La instead of Do:
In Practica Musica's activity editor you can open the Template for the activity window and then use the "Details" button for any staff to set that staff to display solfege syllables as appropriate for the key. One can also have them hidden initially for use in an exercise. The Keyboard Tools window in the activity editor lets you also configure the piano keyboard to display the solfege syllables for the current key. The activity "Solfege.act," provided in the folder of Scales and Key Signature activities, is a good example of what you can do to incorporate solfege into a Practica Musica activity.
Chromatic Tones in Solfege
What about the "in-between" notes? There are various traditions of altering the standard syllables to name the notes that fall between Do and Re, etc. Practica Musica currently uses this system:
Raised tones: The sharped Do becomes Di, the sharped Re is Ri, Fa becomes Fi, Sol rises to Si, La to Li.
Lowered tones: The flatted Re is Ra, flatted Mi is Me, flatted Sol is Se, La becomes Le, Ti becomes Te.
In the key of C therefore, C would be Do, C# Di, Db would be Ra and D natural would be Re, and so on.
You would use the sharped tones when singing the ascending melodic minor, like this:
