Solfège gives every step of the scale a syllable you can sing: do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do. Singing a melody on these syllables trains you to hear where each note sits in the key, which is what ear training is for.
A hymn and a monk
In 11th-century Italy, the theorist Guido of Arezzo named the six notes of the hexachord after the first syllable of each line of the Latin hymn "Ut queant laxis", the hymn to St John the Baptist: ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la. His system had six notes only. "Si" was added later as the seventh. In English-speaking countries Sarah Glover changed "si" to "ti" in the 19th century, so that every syllable would begin with a different letter, and the tonic sol-fa method spread the seven syllables most English speakers use today: do (written doh), re, mi, fa, so(l), la, ti.
Fixed do and movable do
There are two ways to use the syllables, and they teach different things.
| Fixed do | Movable do | |
|---|---|---|
| What "do" means | Always C, in every key | The first degree of the major scale, whatever key you are in |
| What it trains | Note names and absolute pitch values | The role of each note against the tonic |
| Where you meet it | Fixed-do solfège teaching | The Kodály method, used mainly in Hungary and followed worldwide |
In movable do, "do re mi" in G major is G, A, B; in fixed do it is still C, D, E. Neither is wrong. In our view, a producer who writes in many keys tends to get more from movable do, because a melody sung on "mi re do" sounds and feels the same in every key.
Hand signs
Teachers often pair each syllable with a hand shape. The signs in common use today are named after John Curwen, a 19th-century English music educator, and as the notes go higher the hand generally moves higher too.
Sources
Every date, name, tempo and origin on this page comes from these pages, read on 2026-10-24.