Still not bilingual!

[Ishtar]

One day it will happen. Someone will say "give me a Fa" and without having to think about it I'll play an F. Or they'll say "this song is in Soh" and I'll know intuitively that it has a Fah sharp in it.

 

So far I can only do that translation very slowly, but at normal speed I'm lost!

 

One day, one day, one day..........

[newgrange]

I can manage the letters to numbers translation, generally getting the push or pull right too - OK, probably more 'often' than 'generally', but the dots to the letters step eludes me still. I can do it when faced with a piece of paper, but put the 'tina in my paws and I make a bags of it.

[Chris Timson]

Just be grateful you're not stuck with the American shape note system, which goes fa sol la fa sol la mi fa!

 

Chris

[Ishtar]

Eek. Yes, that sounds tricky.

 

I'd stopped worrying about it, then last week someone lent me a diatonique accordion to play with for a few months. She put a teaching book in with it, and because it's in French, it's all in doh-ré-mi.

 

Taking on board the diatonique thing and the doh-ré-mi at the same time was too much, so I ditched the book, found CDEFGAB on the instrument, and started playing. I might go back to the book though, now that I've worked out how the instrument works, so that I don't pick up bad habits by learning my own way, like I've done on the EC.

 

I never had this problem with the subjunctive!

[Hereward]

I never had this problem with the subjunctive!

 

No-one should have trouble with the subjunctive in English or even German. Try Old Norse/Modern Icelandic - that hurts!

 

Ian

[Anglo-Irishman]

I never had this problem with the subjunctive!

 

No-one should have trouble with the subjunctive in English or even German. Try Old Norse/Modern Icelandic - that hurts!

 

Ian

 

Hereward,

I don't know how old you are, but times change! A while ago I used the subjunctive in a German short story for an internet writing workshop. Really gave the text poise, denseness and emotional depth. But one young peer-reviewer thought it was a typo

 

As to doh, re, mi ..., what gets me in the Romance languages is that they attempt to use it chromatically and with absolute pitch, whereas it is most useful as tonic sol-fa for diatonic, pitch-independent notation - which is why it's almost solely a singers' notation in English-speaking countries.

I could imagine tonic sol-fa being used for diatonic instruments like tin whistles and 20-button anglos, but calling the home note on the inner row "so" would throw me, too

 

And anyway, there's no need to mention "Anglo" and "notation" in one breath, is there?

 

Cheers,

John

[david fabre]

I was born in the doh-re-mi world.

Later I learned jazz, and jazz musicians almost universally use the ABC system

for noting chords, even in French methods. So I am now "fluent" with both systems.

 

David

[Fergus_fiddler]

Mmm... It's even worse in spanish: Do - Re - Mi - Fa - Sol - La - Si.

 

When I began to read english printed music, was difficult to translate the pitches, so I devised a mnemonic: Fa is the only one that begins with the letter of the english system, thus: Fa - Sol - La - Si - Do - Re - Mi equals F - G - A - B - C - D - E.

 

Nowadays, when I see the letter "G", I think instantly: this is in Sol. The problem is that most of times I think: Oh, wait... could be "La dórico" or " Re mixolidio". What a mess!

 

Cheers,

 

Fer

[david fabre]

Mmm... It's even worse in spanish: Do - Re - Mi - Fa - Sol - La - Si.

Just as in french, actually.

For subjunctive I cannot say.

[Fergus_fiddler]

For subjunctive I cannot say.

 

I really do split my sides. What a sparkling sense of humour!

 

Cheers,

 

Fer

[David Barnert]

My suspicion is that Sol was changed to So and Si to Ti by Rogers and Hammerstein for The Sound of Music. I may be wrong.

[Michael Leitch-Devlin]

I never had this problem with the subjunctive!

 

No-one should have trouble with the subjunctive in English or even German. Try Old Norse/Modern Icelandic - that hurts!

 

Ian

 

If only it were so.

[David Barnert]

I never had this problem with the subjunctive!

 

No-one should have trouble with the subjunctive in English or even German.

A silly old joke (I know it's old because my father told it, and he's been dead 30 years). A little off-color...

 

Woman gets into taxicab in Boston. Asks: Can you take me someplace where I can get scrod? Cabbie's answer: Sure, lady, there's lots of places. But why do you use the pluperfect subjunctive?

 

[Anglo-Irishman]

My suspicion is that Sol was changed to So and Si to Ti by Rogers and Hammerstein for The Sound of Music. I may be wrong.

 

I think you are. Wrong, I mean.

English-language tonic sol-fa, in spite of its name, has always been written doh, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, doh. That's how I learned it in primary school in the 1950s, anyway. And I have an old Scottish Psalter dated 1906 that uses the same notation.

Of course the tunes are always written with single letters: d, r, m, f, s, l, t, d, so you can't tell whether it's supposed to be "so" or "sol", but the leading note (the seventh of the scale) is "t", which is definitely short for "ti". (And "sol" would be a bit awkward when you're singing the scale, because it ends on the same consonant as "la" starts with.)

 

By the way, I read an interesting explanation of the Irish modes in a fiddlers' tune-book published in Ireland in 1919. Based on the doh, re, mi... major scale, mixolydian mode is the scale of so, and dorian mode is the scale of re. Simple!

 

Cheers,

John