Comparison With Other Systems
There is a continual debate about the merits of this system as compared to solfege: it holds the advantage that when dealing with abstract concepts such as interval distance a student may easily recognize that the distance between 1 to 5 is larger than the distance between 1 to 4 because of the numerical values assigned (as compared to Solfege, where comparing Do to Sol and Do to Fa remain completely abstract until sung or played). A drawback often pointed out is that numerical numbers are not always "singable," for example, scale degree 7 (ti, in solfege) contains vowels that are hard to tune.
Numerical sight singing is not the same as integer notation derived from musical set theory and used primarily for sight singing atonal music. Nor is it the same as "count-singing", a technique popularized by Robert Shaw in which the numbers sung represent the rhythms of a piece in accordance with the beat of a measure.
Read more about this topic: Numerical Sight-singing
Famous quotes containing the words comparison with, comparison and/or systems:
“He was a superior man. He did not value his bodily life in comparison with ideal things. He did not recognize unjust human laws, but resisted them as he was bid. For once we are lifted out of the trivialness and dust of politics into the region of truth and manhood.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Most parents aren’t even aware of how often they compare their children. . . . Comparisons carry the suggestion that specific conditions exist for parental love and acceptance. Thus, even when one child comes out on top in a comparison she is left feeling uneasy about the tenuousness of her position and the possibility of faring less well in the next comparison.”
—Marianne E. Neifert (20th century)
“I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built up on the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think.”
—Anne Sullivan (1866–1936)