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[RoadHazard]

Yes. The former, for example, in Russian would be фа (Fa) минорный (minor) септаккорд (7)... not any more complicated than the A B C system really.

@ RoadHazard: I learned C, D, E as well. I grew up in a Russian-speaking household in the US, so luckily I was exposed to both systems! Just not movable do.

Ok, so you had two names for every note. Didn't that seem redundant? But I understand that you're a special case. In my mind I just imagined everyone who knows about music to know about the letter names of notes. Guess not!

 

[hachi]

Hah, I always think of this.

 

[The Albatross]

As an American, I have never heard an A B C musical scale song...?

*edit*

wait, the actual musical notes? These are two different things.

 

[RoadHazard]

As an American, I have never heard A B C ...?

That really surprises me. I'm not American, but I'm pretty sure that's the standard there. Naming chords C, Am, G7, etc.

EDIT: Ok, you edited.

 

[phillipgessert]

This is amazing, I had no idea DO RE MI was used differently all over the world, or that it could be used as 'fixed'. Pretty awesome. I guess I always assumed it was universal.

 

[dvolovets]

Ok, so you had two names for every note. Didn't that seem redundant? But I understand that you're a special case. In my mind I just imagined everyone who knows about music to know about the letter names of notes. Guess not!

No, the two names were for the respective languages (English and Russian). There is no A B C system in Russia. It's redundant only because I'm bilingual!

 

[Natetan]

Right. Natetan, you're conflating two different systems.

Fixed doh is used in China, France, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Romania, Russia, South America and parts of North America, Japan, and Vietnam.

In fixed-doh, Doh is always equivalent to C; Re is always equivalent to D; and so on.

Movable Doh is used in Britain, Germany, Indian classical music, and the United States.

In movable-doh, you can pick a different pitch to start on, and sing Do-re-me-... starting at that note. What you are doing when you do that is singing the major scale in different keys.

If you are singing in C major, d,r,m,f,s,l,t,d is C,D,E,F,G,A,B,C

If you are singing in D major, d,r,m,f,s,l,t,d is D,E,F♯,G,A,B,C♯,D

... and so on.

In both forms, there are other phonetic names for sharp and flat names. The complete list is on Wikipedia.


3
Interesting to note: in some languages (french, italian, spanish), the do-ré-mi are actually note names. Do is C, ré is D, mi is E, and so on. –

 

[lenovox1]

3
Interesting to note: in some languages (french, italian, spanish), the do-ré-mi are actually note names. Do is C, ré is D, mi is E, and so on. –

As we all learned in this thread, but that scenario doesn't apply to you as an American. We use both, but in different contexts as you also should have learned in this thread. In your case, you were conflating two different systems from what you posted in your OP.

Not that I'd anyone to immediately know that unless they were a vocalist, sight singer or they paid really close attention in grade school music class.

 

[Killua]

I'm used to ABC, but when I play with a lot of latino musicians from Puerto Rico or South America, they tend to be mostly familiar with do re mi.

 

[CarpeDeezNutz]

Me may mah May, me may mah mo

 

[zeemumu]

1 2 3, baby, you and me, girl.

 

[dvolovets]

Interesting to note: in some languages (french, italian, spanish), the do-ré-mi are actually note names. Do is C, ré is D, mi is E, and so on. –

Yep! Russian is one of those languages.

 

[Tex117]

You cant sing them as well, but I wish we taught ABC...makes the transition to instruments easier.

 

[agrajag]

LOL, some Americans in this thread were all "nah, you're confusing concepts," when the OP was right all along. In some countries, DO RE MI is used in the same way as C D E.

 

[RoadHazard]

Fixed doh is used in China, France, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Romania, Russia, South America and parts of North America, Japan, and Vietnam.

In fixed-doh, Doh is always equivalent to C; Re is always equivalent to D; and so on.

Movable Doh is used in Britain, Germany, Indian classical music, and the United States.

In movable-doh, you can pick a different pitch to start on, and sing Do-re-me-... starting at that note. What you are doing when you do that is singing the major scale in different keys.

If you are singing in C major, d,r,m,f,s,l,t,d is C,D,E,F,G,A,B,C

If you are singing in D major, d,r,m,f,s,l,t,d is D,E,F♯,G,A,B,C♯,D

... and so on.

In both forms, there are other phonetic names for sharp and flat names. The complete list is on Wikipedia.


3
Interesting to note: in some languages (french, italian, spanish), the do-ré-mi are actually note names. Do is C, ré is D, mi is E, and so on. –

Do-re-mi could never be A-B-C though, as your OP suggested. It would be A-B-C# (in a movable do-re-mi scenario). But I guess you weren't being too meticulous there.

 

[nomster]

Fixed doh is used in China, France, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Romania, Russia, South America and parts of North America, Japan, and Vietnam.

In fixed-doh, Doh is always equivalent to C; Re is always equivalent to D; and so on.

Movable Doh is used in Britain, Germany, Indian classical music, and the United States.

In movable-doh, you can pick a different pitch to start on, and sing Do-re-me-... starting at that note. What you are doing when you do that is singing the major scale in different keys.

If you are singing in C major, d,r,m,f,s,l,t,d is C,D,E,F,G,A,B,C

If you are singing in D major, d,r,m,f,s,l,t,d is D,E,F♯,G,A,B,C♯,D

... and so on.

In both forms, there are other phonetic names for sharp and flat names. The complete list is on Wikipedia.


3
Interesting to note: in some languages (french, italian, spanish), the do-ré-mi are actually note names. Do is C, ré is D, mi is E, and so on. –

Why not start your OP with this info rather than trap residents of most English speaking countries with your trick question.

 

[Natetan]

As we all learned in this thread, but that scenario doesn't apply to you as an American. We use both, but in different contexts as you also should have learned in this thread. In your case, you were conflating two different systems from what you posted in your OP.

Not that I'd anyone to immediately know that unless they were a vocalist, sight singer or they paid really close attention in grade school music class.

No I wasn't. I learned before I posted that some countries use do re mi as the actual note names and I wanted to see what other countries did. I only knew France Spain and Italy. It was a poll to see what other countries use it.

 

[Guamu]

Ok, so you had two names for every note. Didn't that seem redundant? But I understand that you're a special case. In my mind I just imagined everyone who knows about music to know about the letter names of notes. Guess not!

Here in mexico you learn about the Do-Re-Mi notes and chord names, and if you go fishing for guitar chords online (for example) you learn that those notes have also another "name" in the US

 

[Meatfist]

Lol this thread

Some countries use fixed do (France), some use moveable do (Germany/US). The countries who use moveable do use letter names instead of solfege syllables when referring to pitches. I play the E flat alto sax in America, but in France it would be referred to as saxophone alto en mi bemol (mi flat).

OP seems to get this, and is interested in which countries use what system

 

[Natetan]

Why not start your OP with this info rather than trap residents of most English speaking countries with your trick question.

I don't understand how it was a trick, I posted that link in the OP...

 

[Rarity]

Do, a deer, a female deer
Re, a drop of golden sun
Mi, a name I call myself
Fa, a long, long way to run
So, a needle pulling thread
La, a note to follow So
Ti, a drink with jam and bread
That will bring us back to Do

I always found the La line so lazy.

 

[Natetan]

I think i found the answer to my question:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Note#History_of_note_names

In traditional music theory within the English-speaking and Dutch-speaking world, pitch classes are typically represented by the first seven letters of the Latin alphabet (A, B, C, D, E, F and G). A few European countries, including Germany, adopt an almost identical notation, in which H is substituted for B (see below for details). However, most other countries in the world use the naming convention Do-Re-Mi-Fa-Sol-La-Si, including for instance Italy, Spain, France, Romania, most Latin American countries, Greece, Bulgaria, Turkey, Russia, and all the Arabic-speaking or Persian-speaking countries .

In Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, French, Romanian, Greek, Russian, Mongolian, Flemish, Persian, Arabic, Hebrew, Bulgarian and Turkish notation the notes of scales are given in terms of Do-Re-Mi-Fa-Sol-La-Si rather than C-D-E-F-G-A-B. These names follow the original names reputedly given by Guido d'Arezzo, who had taken them from the first syllables of the first six musical phrases of a Gregorian Chant melody Ut queant laxis, which began on the appropriate scale degrees. These became the basis of the solfege system. "Do" later replaced the original "Ut" for ease of singing (most likely from the beginning of Dominus, Lord), though "Ut" is still used in some places. "Si" or "Ti" was added as the seventh degree (from Sancte Johannes, St. John, to whom the hymn is dedicated). The use of 'Si' versus 'Ti' varies regionally.

The two notation systems most commonly used nowadays are the Helmholtz pitch notation system and the Scientific pitch notation system. As shown in the table above, they both include several octaves, each starting from C rather than A. The reason is that the most commonly used scale in Western music is the major scale, and the sequence C-D-E-F-G-A-B (the C-major scale) is the simplest example of a major scale. Indeed, it is the only major scale which can be obtained using natural notes (the white keys on the piano keyboard), and typically the first musical scale taught in music schools.

In a newly developed system, primarily in use in the United States, notes of scales become independent to the music notation. In this system the natural symbols C-D-E-F-G-A-B refer to the absolute notes, while the names Do-Re-Mi-Fa-So-La-Ti are relativized and show only the relationship between pitches, where Do is the name of the base pitch of the scale, Re is the name of the second pitch, etc. The idea of so-called movable-do, originally suggested by John Curwen in the 19th century, was fully developed and involved into a whole educational system by Zoltán Kodály in the middle of the 20th century, which system is known as the Kodály Method or Kodály Concept.

 

[terrisus]

I always found the La line so lazy.

Agreed.

"A note to follow So."
Hard to believe they couldn't have come up with something better than that.