La-based Minor

We'll start with a relatively non-controversial statement:

I think this is pretty self-explanatory—it assumes solfege is being used to help students audiate (hear in their minds) the music, and that standard letter names are being used to name the notes (C, D, E). It also assumes that it is being used to demonstrate how, for example, 'fa' has a particular quality no matter what key you are in—in the case of our example, the quality of being the subdominant. Obviously in atonal music, this entire system falls apart, and we must fall back on the Fixed Do system. (Or, to be less confusing, singing the letter names; although this presents the problem of accidentals, they can be accounted for using inflected letter names: fis, des, ice, etc.) Moveable Do is the most effective method of teaching students audiation, and it's no wonder—it makes the most sense, aurally. Having a specified tonic, subdominant, dominant, and so on makes the most sense to the ear. Not many people have perfect pitch, but with training, almost anyone can identify the tonic of any piece.

I bring up the tonic because (obviously) it's important—we've all heard in our early music education about the "home note" of a key, and we all know that in Moveable Do, that "home note" is Do (as is immortalized in The Sound of Music). Right? Listen to a piece—any tonal piece—I guarantee if you've had musical training you can identify Do. In fact, Moveable Do is a name applied after the actual system was invented, to contrast it with Fixed Do. The original name was "Tonic Sol-fa." Well, of course it was—the entire idea is that the position of a note relative to the tonic of the key—the Do—was more important than what absolute pitch was being played ('Gb'). And as mentioned before, it's the most effective system of encouraging audiation. So it's no wonder that most teachers use a Moveable Do system of solfege.

And yet they use what's called "La-based Minor."

The idea behind La-based Minor is simple: make it easier for students to learn solfege for minor keys by 'shifting' the entire scale, changing the pattern of the intervals between diatonic notes from whole, whole, half, whole, whole, whole, half to whole, half, whole, whole, half, whole, whole by starting on La. It makes perfect sense—the students no longer have to identify the tonic of the piece. If they can memorize a cute saying for the sharps and flats, they can sing in solfege—sort of. It saves hours of class time—No longer do they need to be taught how to identify whether a piece is in major or minor; no longer do they need to be taught chromatic solfege syllables; no longer do they need to be taught modulation to and from the relative minor—It's geniu... wait just a minute. Are we currently praising the fact that students no longer need to know what the tonic of a key is? Or, for that matter, what major and minor are? The fact that a modulation can occur without a key change? Aren't these things that every music student should know?

At first glance, La-based minor seems like a time-saving gift from the Great Gods of Music, if you will, but upon closer inspection, it's impeding students' understanding of tonal music. La is not the same as Do. It happens to work nicely that you can achieve the same pitches as any particular mode by singing starting on scale degrees other than Do, yes. But that's not what's actually happening in a mode. A minor scale is not a major scale starting on La. It's a minor scale. (Go figure, right?) And furthermore, it starts on the tonic, of course. The entire point of Moveable Do is to keep Do as the tonic of the current key. La-based Minor (and its associated modal friends) do not place Do as the tonic of the key. In fact, they place it in a different location in every single mode (and, consequently, every other syllable is changed as well). That's right, depending on what mode you're in, every single scale degree could be every single syllable. Where has the helpfulness in establishing a feel for tonal music gone? Do isn't the home note of the key anymore? Furthermore, you'll get students completely unable to tell whether pieces are in minor or major—Why? Because it doesn't make a difference to them. They just sing the syllables fixed to whichever notes the key signature says to.

I'd like to draw your attention to the word 'fixed'. Because that's what La-based Minor is doing—"un-moving" Do, if you will. The point of Moveable Do is to make Do the tonic no matter what key you are in—it provides a familiarity and a similarity between all the modes—for example, the "final" feeling of a Sol to Do pattern in any of the modes except Locrian, or the resolution tendency of Fa to Mi (or Fi to Sol). These are parts of music that remain the same between modes; shouldn't their names remain the same also? Without La-based Minor, Moveable Do also allows students to tell the difference between various modes simply by noticing what syllables are different. What's Mixolydian? Well, it's major with a lowered 7th. Try to figure that out using Sol-based Mixolydian. It makes me shudder just to think about it. In fact, I doubt the students would be able to at all. Without accidental solfege syllables, will they even know what a half-step is? How will they know the difference between Fa-Sol and Ti-Do? They can hear a difference, sure, but not a definite "That's not Ti, it's Te." Without a name for something, it is incredibly difficult to identify and recognize it.

So La-based Minor isn't really Moveable Do, by definition. Why? Because Do isn't completely moveable. It doesn't match the tonic of every key—only the major keys. If you're in Dorian, suddenly La is the dominant, and Do becomes the subtonic. Where does La-based Minor place Do, if not on the tonic? Well, the answer is quite simple (*cough* sarcasm): it places Do on the tonic of whatever major scale exists that uses the key signature of the key that the piece is in. In a way, it's Fixed Do—it's just that Do is fixed to a specific note relative to the key signature, rather than relative to a frequency.

As further evidence, I present the concept of modulation (which La-based minor students would have to be taught separately, if at all, as they would use the exact same syllables no matter what relative mode the piece may modulate to). What is a modulation? It's a point in a piece where the tonic moves. We've all heard one—in fact, it's uncommon not to have one in most styles of music. Interestingly enough, according to traditional theory, a move to the parallel minor (Cmaj --> Cmin) is not considered a modulation. Why not? Well, the tonic doesn't change—it's still C. However, a move to the relative minor (Cmaj --> Amin) is considered a modulation, for the opposite reason—the tonic moves from C to A. Why, then, are the syllables of La-based minor changing when a piece *cough* "modulates" to the parallel minor, and yet, they remain the same when a piece actually modulates (to the relative minor)? No matter how you answer the question, the point remains that students begin to think of a move between modes as a modulation (whether or not they know the word for it) and can barely even tell the difference, if at all, between a major key and its relative minor.

So, in essence, what I'm saying is that La-based minor should not be taught. If you are using solfege to help students audiate a piece, or be able to sightread, or even just to help them understand the basics of tonality, you have probably chosen Moveable Do. Why? Because every syllable's function remains the same, and therefore it makes sense to the human ear and provides a familiarity no matter what actual pitch you start on. For that same exact reason, you should choose Do-based Minor—otherwise, the entire point of solfege is lost; every syllable can be every function, depending entirely upon the mode.