So why should you use tonic solfa?

• tonic solfa gives you a language to use to “spell” music you see or hear
• it helps you to hear music internally (in your head with NO external stimulation) and understand what you hear
• it allows you to interpret and name each note’s function in a given key and in relation to one another. (This is REGARDLESS of key, clef or instrument. In other words, do is ALWAYS the tonic of a Major key, so is ALWAYS the dominant in a Major key, la is ALWAYS the tonic of a minor key etc.)
• it allows you to experience music – not just know it at a practical, intellectual or academic level
• it gives something concrete to hear when inner hearing
• it allows for the integration of the aural, theoretical, spatial and kinaesthetic learning styles in an approach to learning the musical language (the use of handsigns)
• it improves recognition of intervals and strengthens the understanding of music theory
• solfa syllables were designed to be sung and to help with staying in tune
• using tonic solfa – as opposed to lyrics of songs for instance – means patterns, intervals and phrases become more clear

He created these new techniques to allow musicians to more quickly learn Gregorian Chant (the unaccompanied single line chant used in the church at the time). Originally he used the syllables: ut re mi fa so la taken from the syllables at the start the first six phrases of a hymn that was well known at the time: “Ut queant laxis”.

What we now know as tonic solfa or movable do solfa was turned into a more useful and accessible teaching technique by Sarah Ann Glover in the 18th century and was then further developed by John Curwen a century later. It was at this time the handsigns came into common use to support the learning of music notes. In the 20th century, Zoltan Kodály embedded these teaching techniques into a teaching method sometimes known as the Kodály Method.