Success Music Studio

Shape Notes and Solfege

 

chorus, stage, music

 

The Shape Notes and Solfege Blog Category

 

The blog category is expanding to include “General Sight Singing” and “Song-Along Song” posts.

 

Shape Notes

What are shape notes? They are a special vocal notation that works with solfege to make sight singing easier. Specifically, we will use the seven-note shape note system. We will also explore Kodaly rhythmic syllables in the Shape Notes and Solfege posts.

 

Solfege remains one of the oldest and most reliable strategies that singing teachers have. Shape notes are newer, but still have been around since the 18th century. However, solfege is at the core of the shape note system, and the two work together for effective, statistically proven sight singing success.

 

Ear Training

This category includes posts on melodic intonation. Like the Singing in Tune Blog Category, the Shape Notes and Solfege Blog Category has sing-along songs.

 

In both cases, the sing-along sound tracks create sound models to train the ear. Singing in Tune deals with harmonic intonation while this blog category deals with melodic intonation.

 

The sing-along songs use synthetic voices rather than actual voices. Research has shown that this will help with the ability to identify and produce absolute pitch information. For more information, read Why Use a Synth Voice Instead of Real Voices.

 

Harmonic and melodic intonation tune in essentially different ways. Harmonic tuning focuses on the tone color of the harmonies. Conversely, melodic tuning focuses on the distance between melody notes.

 

The Cornerstone Category article:

 

More Shape Note Posts:

 

Sight Singing with Rhythmic Syllables:

 

Sight Reading Posts:

 

Sing-Along Song Posts:

 

The previous topic lists will be updated periodically. See the post grid below for the full list and full descriptions with featured images.

 

– Geoffrey Keith

 

© 2022 Geoffrey Keith

 

Back to the Successful Music Student blogs page

 

Singing Shape Note Solfege Dorian Melodies - Chant Manuscript - Singing Shape Note Solfege Aeolian Melodies - Discover Early Music Via Beautiful Medieval Gregorian Chants

Singing Shape Note Solfege Dorian Melodies

Have you ever wanted to sing exotic music from long ago or far away? Do you have trouble performing modal music? Modes can create the feel of mysterious sounding mediaeval chants, some old timey folk and roots music, and exotic types of ethic and world music. Every other month we will explore a new mode. “Singing Shape Note Solfege Dorian Melodies” will start you down your path of discovery.
Estimated reading time 3 minutes.