Besides the fact that we hundreds of millions of Spanish speakers never call the notes by letters (A, B, C) but with syllables (Do, Re, Mi), another important use of Do, Re Mi names is in chord notation.
I have not found in Dorico a global option of “Use Do, Re, Mi syllables as chord roots” anywhere. Does this option exist?
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The options in the Chord Root section of the Chord Symbols page of Engraving Options should be what you’re looking for.
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Thanks, Daniel, I was looking in Library>Chord Symbols, and found nothing.
Now I see that we can use solfeo roots, thanks again!
I’d say “ut” is always used for the C clefs (ut 1, ut 2, ut 3…), for (non) transposing instruments half of the time (trompette en ut/trompette en do) and ALWAYS for the difficult high-C or the tenor (contre-ut).
I’d like to see solfège in Dorico to create easily the noteheads with the note names in it. Or better, not even to have to create those. I just tried and stumbled into that bug with noteheads…
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That’s right. You know it better than I do. I’ve been a bit out of my depth on this point for a few years now.
I’ve tried to change a few things myself (the names of the notes, on Daniel’s advice a year or so ago) and found myself lost among functions that didn’t seem to work, or hesitating over the sequence of operations to perform. I also remember how difficult it is to go back if you make a mistake. But it’s vague. I know I don’t have the reflex to go there anymore. Too hard.
If I may add support for @MarcLarcher 's request:
In Belgium, we have three official languages: Dutch (majority), French, (large minority), German (very small minority).
- In Dutch solfeggio classes (“notenleer”), we always learn do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-si (no capitals, no accents); but for keys, we do use both “do” and “ut” (for example: “ut-sleutel 4de lijn”, or “do-sleutel 3de lijn”)
- In French solfeggio classes (“solfège”), we learn do-ré-mi-fa-sol-la-si (no capitals, accent for the ré)
- In German solfeggio classes (“Notenlehr”): I don’t know if they follow the German tradition, or some Belgian system.
Please note that, although the Flemish Community is using Dutch as their official language, which is the same as the Dutch in The Netherlands, solfeggio classes and textbooks in The Netherlands are using the letters C-D-E etc., in the German tradition. The difference has historical roots: after Belgium’s independence in 1830, education in universities and conservatoria was only in French, as a counter-reaction to the Dutch occupation from 1815 to 1830. (Only in 1898, the Antwerp Conservatoire became the first institution for higher education where Dutch became the only official language).
So, we would welcome a capability in Dorico to use a specific name giving for notes that can be adapted to local specificities.
For those who are more interested, I upload a file containing names for notes and scales in six languages, in PDF format. If you wish it in Excel format, just let me know (I think I cannot upload a .xlsx file). Scales in different languages.pdf (95.5 KB)
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Thank you for that enlightening course in Belgian music pedagogics history, this is very interesting. And that note/key name glossary is awesome!
(It’s also interesting to see that in Dutch, B ist used for our German H and our B is called Bes, which is much more consistent with the rest of the nomenclature.)
I don’t know how it is handled by the German minority in Belgium either, but for Germany and especially the Scandinavian countries I can tell that, if there actually is absolute solfège being practised, it is done with the note letters and their alterations, while the syllables stemming from Guido are used almost exclusively for relative solfège. (Thus having ti as the 7th degree of a major scale, both to distinguish it from an augmented 5th degree (so > si) and to assign each scale degree their unique initial consonant.)
Personally, I am quite happy with this, because both the traditional solfège syllables and the note names including their simple (non-double) alterations in German (as well as Dutch, as I now know) are almost all (save for ais and eis) monosyllabic, so we can retain the notated rhythm when using them for singing. Singing two or more syllables on a single note in this context feels horribly awkward for me, and I would need to if I chose to sing numbers with occasional alterations for relative solfège (plus, I want to reserve singing numbers for chords). Of course, if one grew up with polysyllabic solfège elements, this might feel different.
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When I studied in NL, that blew my mind. Moving back to Germany years later, I still have a hard time adapting…
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I remember it with this:
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Other remarquable cultural difference: as far as I know, this difference is learned in NL, but not in BE. I never heard about it in music school (neither in 5 years’ solfeggio courses, nor in music history). I discovered it by hasard, a few years ago, on Wikipedia in Dutch. (Remarkable: the same page in English does not talk about absolute / relative solfeggio.)
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