Recently, I have switched (yet again) from playing my ever loving bass guitar to guitar which means - some more work and better working knowledge of notes. Well, not so bad, almost the same is required of playing the bass guitar.
Since what I am required these days is to do more of solo work than regular rhythm, this has posed a challenge to my sometimes, tone-challenged ear. And to make matters a little more a bit complex, I have to play absolutely from ear - no sight reading whatsoever (and by the way who has patience for those boring and tedious notations).
As many would have guessed too, I’m not apt at reading musical notation or very good at reading tablatures, so, I thought of a cheat to work-around this problem - convert those standard notations tonic-sol-fa so even the musically challenged or those just trying to get a handle on understanding the major scale can play music. 
Quick, into Google to search “tonic sol-fa” to my shock (and maybe surprise), I couldn’t find such a site that at least gave an hint into solving my problem! Well, that’s where I come in, I have decided that once a while, I will transcribe some common songs into tonic-sol-fa. For the musical-guru, this might sound amateurish but I have found that playing the sol-fa of most songs can in a lot of ways sharpen your ear.
Tonic Sol-fa?
The best way to explain tonic sol-fa is to borrow from the popular film Sound of Music: “When you read you begin with A, B, C and when you sing you begin with do, re, mi”
Most music is arranged in patterns of tonal variance, with some on the low tone and some on the high tone. It’s just like when speaking saying “I-go” sounds different when said in a lower tone. So does music apply, just in the case of music, to each of this tonal variation, sounds are attached that sounds similar to the tone at which each note is sounded.
It usually runs from doh re, mi, fah, soh, lah, ti, doh [higher] represented in writing as (d, r, m, f, s, l, t, d’). And some may wonder why doh is repeated twice and we have specifically eight variations and in that order. This is so because music is generally arranged consisting of eight alphabets - A, B, C, D, E, F, G which is often referred to as the music alphabets. So, every scale (the range of variations) consists of these eight alphabets and so is musical instruments arranged.
For example, the most common and simplest scale, C Major, goes like this - C{d}, D{r}, E{m}, F{f}, G{s}, A{l}, B{t}, C{d’}. In this case, mention now has to be made of octaves.
An octave is a complete scale, that is, from d -d’. Relative to this, we can have upper octave, which I might indicate by d’ - d” or lower octave d” - d.
This cleared, I will be posting – the standard notation version, the tonic-sol-fa (for instruments like – guitar solo, voice, saxophone, etc.) and when possible, the song itself.
So, let’s start with my all time favorite:
Amazing Grace ( Key: F#)
Listen
A-maz-ing Grace
s” d m:d:m
How Sweet the sound
r d l s
That saved a wreck like me
s” d m:d:m r s
I once was lost
m s m:d:m
But now I’m found
r d l” s”
Was blind but now I see
s” d m:d:m r d
