Learning Solfége and Sight reading with the Tonal map

[Asuryan]

So I’ve been learning Solfége for about a year and I haven’t really seen much improvement, I was kind of thinking that it just wasn’t something that I was going to get good at unless I spent an insane amount of time into it and I felt really discouraged. I don’t intend to be a classical singer or be in a choir, I’m just doing it as an extra activity that my singing teacher gave me and thought it was cool to know (I mainly focus on playing guitar, so spending that much time on it isn’t really on my interest).

But today I was practicing this song/exercise:

and I was thinking how to make the process more enjoyable and easy for me, which gave me the idea of using the IFR Tonal map and apply it to this.

I ended up with this:

(The arrows pointing up mean that the note is in the higher octave and the notes after that stay like that until the next downward arrow)

And after “translating” this to the numbers, it started feeling a lot easier not only to sing and practice, but also to READ; which gave me the idea that if I can start translating more exercises like this I will eventually be able to think in numbers when I see a pentagram and I’ll be able to improve my ear AND learn to sight read at the same time, making the exercise easier, faster and more enjoyable.

[DavidW]

@Asuryan

And after “translating” this to the numbers, it started feeling a lot easier not only to sing and practice, but also to READ; which gave me the idea that if I can start translating more exercises like this I will eventually be able to think in numbers when I see a pentagram and I’ll be able to improve my ear AND learn to sight read at the same time, making the exercise easier, faster and more enjoyable.

@Asuryan That makes perfect sense to me.
I don’t have an aim of being able to sight read, but the first thing I do if I’m trying to learn a piece from a score is to ‘translate’ it to numbers.

I use a different approach for indicating octave, but that’s just personal preference. If there’s room I may place the numbers in a ‘wave’ to give an idea of the melodic contour, or if I’m writing in straight lines I use dots above or below the number to indicate one or more octaves above or below the starting point. I’m sure other schemes are possible too - whatever works fo you.

PS. If the source is ‘tab’ (either guitar or harminoca), I’m even more inclined to translate it to IFR numbers.

[mem]

I too find the IFR tonal map/numbers a much easier method for internalising pitch contours and ear training. I never got to grips with solfege, but the numbers are much mirw accessible.

Writing out melodies in numbers is also a great way to help embed them, but remember to keep playing them and singing them as well.