How to Convert Staff Notation to Tonic Solfa in 5 Steps

You have a hymn in staff notation, a choir that reads solfa, and a rehearsal on Thursday. The organist can play from the dots, but your altos and tenors need doh, ray and me written out before they will sing with confidence. Copying it by hand feels slow, and one wrong doh throws the whole sheet out.

Here is how to convert staff notation to tonic solfa: read the key signature to find the key, make the keynote doh, name every note by its distance from doh, add octave marks (a comma below, an apostrophe above), then write the beats bar by bar. Check the result by singing or playing it back before the choir sees it.

I will work through the opening line of All People That on Earth Do Dwell, the tune known as the Old Hundredth, one step at a time. By the end you will have a method you can use on any hymn in your book, and a way to catch mistakes before Sunday.

How to convert staff notation to tonic solfa: the five steps

This is the order I work in, and the order matters. If you jump straight to naming notes before you have settled doh, every syllable after that is a guess.

1. Key signature. Count the sharps or flats at the start of the stave and name the major key.
2. Doh. Make that keynote doh, and check the tune agrees (it usually ends on doh in a major key).
3. Syllables. Name each note by how far it sits above or below doh.
4. Octave marks. Decide which doh is your reference and mark notes below it with a comma and notes above the octave with an apostrophe.
5. Beats. Set out the rhythm in bars so the solfa lines up with the words.

Then check it by ear. Let us take each step on the Old Hundredth.

Got a recording? Get it in solfa →

Step 1: Read the key signature

Open the staff copy of All People That on Earth Do Dwell and look at the very start of the treble stave, just after the clef. In most hymn books this tune is printed with one sharp, on the top line: F sharp. One sharp means G major.

If key signatures still feel like a code, my guide to key signatures explained for singers has the full table. The short rules are these:

• Sharps: the last sharp is te, so doh is the next note up. Here the only sharp is F sharp, so doh is G.
• Flats: the second-to-last flat is doh. With one flat (B flat), the key is F major.
• No sharps or flats: C major, or A minor if the tune is minor.

Do not skip the key signature because the first note "looks like" doh. Plenty of hymns start on soh or me. Amazing Grace starts below doh, on s, and so does All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name.

Step 2: How do you find doh from the staff?

You find doh by taking the key from the key signature and then locating that letter on the stave. In G major, doh is G, which sits on the second line up of the treble stave. That one line becomes your anchor for the whole hymn.

Then do the check that catches most mistakes: look at the last note of the melody. In a major key the tune nearly always ends on doh. The Old Hundredth ends on G, so G major is confirmed. If a one-sharp tune ended on E and sounded sad, it would be E minor, and you would read it la-based, with doh still on G and lah (E) as home. There is more on this in how to find the doh of a song.

Here is the G major scale with the letter names under each syllable. Keep it next to you while you work:

Doh is G4/4

dG-rA-mB-fC-

sD-lE-tF♯-d'G-

Notice the F sharp lands on te. That is why the sharp is there: it gives G major its leading note.

Step 3: Name each note as a syllable

Now go through the opening line note by note. I find it helps to say the letter name first, then the syllable, so you are not trying to do two jumps in your head at once.

Two things stand out. First, the tune steps down from doh to the soh underneath, then leaps straight back up to doh. That leap of a fourth, from s, to d, is the moment new singers wobble, so it is worth practising on its own. Second, every note in this line is in the key. No accidentals, so no raised or lowered syllables to worry about.

If you are used to going the other way, from solfa to dots, how to read staff notation if you know solfa covers the same ground in reverse, and it is a good companion to this article.

Step 4: Add the octave marks

Syllables alone do not tell a singer which doh you mean. The G on the second line and the G an octave higher are both doh, so you need octave marks.

Pick your reference doh first. For the Old Hundredth I use the G on the second line, because the melody sits around it. Then:

• Notes from that doh up to te take no mark.
• Notes below it take a comma underneath, written s, in plain text.
• Notes from the next doh upwards take an apostrophe, written d'.

In the opening line, the F sharp, E and D all sit below our reference G, so they take commas: t, then l, then s, as single notes. The G and A are in the unmarked octave.

The mistake I see most often is choosing a different reference doh halfway through the hymn. If you start with the second-line G, keep it for every verse and every line. Otherwise a note in line three ends up an octave out and nobody can tell why it sounds wrong.

Step 5: Write the beats

The Old Hundredth is in 4/4, four crotchet beats to the bar. In the staff copy, the first note on "All" is a minim, worth two beats, and the rest of the opening line moves in crotchets, one beat each.

In the solfa grid each beat has room for two half-beats. A dash means the note before it carries on. So a minim on doh shows as the syllable followed by dashes filling two beats, and a crotchet shows as the syllable plus one dash. Put that together with the syllables from Step 3 and the octave marks from Step 4, and the first two bars come out like this:

Doh is G4/4

dAll---dpeo--t,ple-

l,that-s,on-dearth-rdo-

Read it against the staff. Bar one: the held doh on "All", then doh and te-comma on "people". Bar two: lah-comma, soh-comma, doh, ray, one beat each, on "that on earth do". Seven notes, seven syllables, and the bar lines fall in the same places as on the staff.

This tune starts on the first beat of the bar, so there is no pickup to deal with. Many hymns do start with an upbeat, and the rhythm grid handles those too. If dashes, half-beats and rests still confuse you, read how to read rhythm in Tonic Solfa before you tackle a hymn with dotted rhythms.

You can see the whole tune set out on the All People That on Earth Do Dwell solfa page. Once you have done this line yourself, compare the rest of your work against it. The same melody also carries the Doxology (Praise God, from Whom All Blessings Flow), so a choir that learns this line has learned that one too.

What about minor keys and accidentals?

The five steps do not change for minor tunes or chromatic notes, but two extra decisions come in.

Minor keys. Find the major key from the key signature as usual; that note is still doh. Then, if the tune centres on the note a third below (it ends there and feels sad), read it la-based with lah as home. One flat with a tune ending on D is D minor: doh is F, lah is D.

Accidentals. A sharp, flat or natural that is not in the key signature changes the syllable. Work out the note's normal syllable first, then adjust it:

• Raised fah becomes fe.
• Raised soh becomes se (common in minor keys, as the raised seventh).
• Lowered te becomes ta.

If a whole passage keeps the same new sharp or flat, the music has probably changed key. In that case, find the new doh and carry on from there, rather than writing an accidental on every note.

How do you check your staff notation to solfa conversion?

You check it by hearing it. A conversion can look neat on paper and still have a wrong octave or a misread line, and the quickest way to find out is to make it sound before the choir does.

Here is the routine I use:

1. Sing it from your own solfa, not from the staff. Use the syllables. If the leap from s, to d feels wrong, look again at Step 4.
2. Play the line on a keyboard with doh on G, reading only your solfa. Anything that clashes with the tune you know is a mistake.
3. Hum it into NoteFusion and compare. Sing or hum the line, or paste a recording link, and NoteFusion writes the melody in movable-doh Tonic Solfa with staff notation alongside. Lay it next to your hand-written version. If the tune could sit in two keys, the app asks "Which doh is it?", which is a useful nudge to check you chose the right one. You can play it back on a piano, slower or looped, and listen to just the bar you are unsure of.

When your version matches what you hear, you can trust it for the rest of the verses.

The same solfa in any key

One reason to change staff notation to doh ray me is what happens when the hymn is too high or low for your choir. On the staff, every note moves to a new line or space. In solfa, nothing moves except doh. Here is the same opening, set in F major:

Doh is F4/4

dAll---dpeo--t,ple-

l,that-s,on-dearth-rdo-

The syllables are identical. Only the starting pitch changes, which is why a choir that has learned the Old Hundredth in G can sing it in F with no new sheet. If you are not sure which key suits your basses and sopranos, the "Transpose for my choir" option in NoteFusion moves the doh and shows whether each part sits comfortably.

Tonight, take one hymn your choir is learning, write out its first line using the five steps, and sing it back from your own solfa. If you would like a second pair of ears, open NoteFusion in your browser or on Android, hum the line, and compare its solfa with yours before you print the sheet.