Re: Tangled up in Lilypond syntax

[Lukas-Fabian Moser]

> I'm not trained in tonic solfa and don't find any advantage in singing
> by using it. That said, I'm as likely to write "fah" over an entrance
> that's difficult to pitch as writing "IV', but my "fah" relates to
> the key that the music *feels* like it's in at the time. (I have a
> good memory for pitch, but it's almost completely relative; I don't
> have perfect pitch.)
>
> So my question is, when you're singing along with typing a piece
> that's in Aflat major, how do you cope with the fact that your "do"
> is now "III" in the scale (IOW, you seem to be transposing the
> whole time)?

It seems to me that your question is based on the assumption that the 
syllable "do" should have some inherent meaning of "tonic". But this is 
simply not the case in French practice (and, for that matter, Italien, 
Spanish, Russian etc.) - it's just the name of an (absolute) note. That 
the same, or rather, quite similar syllables are being used in other 
countries (and pedagogical contexts like tonic solfa) to have a 
_relative_ meaning is really unfortunate; their basic incompatibility 
leads to headaches all over the place when you want to accomodate mixed 
groups from both cultures. (This is something I have to cope with every 
day, teaching in a quite international environment at schools in Germany 
and Austria.)

Lukas