A brief question regarding sight-singing

To make a long story short, I have a pretty good ability to sight-sing. The problem is, I sight-sing in French. Which means I say the appropriate note name as I sing (do - ré - mi - fa sol - la - si - do). That means a melody in F major would use the scale ''fa -sol -la - si -do - ré - mi -fa''. All the same when it comes to accidentals or atonal melodies - the printed note is the same as the note name I recite. Which is problematic, seeing as I wish to pursue my music education in English. That means I will have to start using the movable do system. Have any of you done something similar? Would that transition be particularly difficult? The system as I know it is pretty much hard-wired into my brain at this point.

I'd rather have learned fixed do. I'd have basically perfect pitch if I had.

I'd imagine you'd need to get proficient at moveable do, though. What I'd suggest is in your brain, assign some sort of added, subconscious indicator to distinguish between what you hear NATURALLY (fixed do note names) and what you need to spit out for your students/professors. Like, perhaps fixed do notes are 'blue' and moveable do notes are 'red.' Overemphasize the scale degree by also imagining 'do' also being '1.' Something like that.

It stinks, but those are some tips I think may help.

Movable do is easy, just always sight sing it as if the tonic was C. The hardest part will be the transposing I suppose. Might take some getting used to but it is better to be more agile anyway. I mean, how often will you be singing any kind of solfege outside of a classroom anyway?

In my experience movable do helps you appreciate the functions of each scale degree better because the same syllable is always used for the same function.

I guess I'll just have to put my mind to it.

Also, try singing the last melodies from the Berkowitz (the ones in octatonic mode) with moveable do... I got a used copy, so there are syllables marked everywhere, but that's just something I can't wrap my had around :toothygrin:

Movable do is easy, just always sight sing it as if the tonic was C. The hardest part will be the transposing I suppose. Might take some getting used to but it is better to be more agile anyway. I mean, how often will you be singing any kind of solfege outside of a classroom anyway?

In my experience movable do helps you appreciate the functions of each scale degree better because the same syllable is always used for the same function.

IMO I'd rather learn fixed and simply think numbers for scale degrees. That's what a lot of perfect pitch people I know do.

Problem with that is you would use the same number for altered scale degrees as well. With movable do not only is Fa always the subdominant, Fi is always the secondary leading tone for the dominant. Using numbers Fa and Fi would both be 4.

I agree though that moveable do is less useful the further away you get from traditional tonality. Solfege isn't really meant to be used for non traditional music anyway, and the instructor that makes you do extensive work in this area is probably either misguided or just a terrible instructor.

Agreed. Besides, there aren't any syllables assigned to an atonal melody. I think it will just have to be done the hard way, by re-learning it.

Or study in French. That would definitely be fun.