Talking Like A Musician: Solfege and Chord Functions

This week we went over some terminology so you can sound overly smart when talking about music. Let's dive in!

1) For the melody below, first identify each pitch in fixed do. Then, once you have that, try it in movable do. Remember the key signature!

2) Let's talk about fixed and movable do. I know I biased the answers by giving my opinions first, but what do you think of them? Which seems like a better system? What are some situations where fixed do is more useful? How about movable do?

3) Finally, let's talk chord functions. As the video mentioned, we've talked about the primary functions (Tonic, Dominant, and Subdominant) before. In fact, the function groups take their name from these: To be a tonic function chord means that you're similar to the primary Tonic chord, the I. So just to make sure you understand, let's sort our new names into our old function groups. We mentioned 8 names: Tonic, Supertonic, Mediant, Subdominant, Dominant, Submediant, Subtonic, and Leading Tone. For each of those, just identify whether it's a Tonic function, Dominant function, or Subdominant function chord.

And that's it! We'll see you next week!