Solfa, strings on “Where Can I Turn for Peace?”

Here’s something to give the children a little vision of where learning to play Solfa on their D string can take them.

I sincerely welcome replacement recordings! I am neither a professional singer nor professional violinist. The notes are not perfectly in tune, and the breathing is poor. (I didn’t have time to do retakes.) PLEASE: if anyone would like to re-do these recordings and email them to me, I’d love it!

“Where Can I Turn for Peace” is a hymn in the key of D with no accidentals (no added sharps or flats), so it’s an easy transfer from learning to play a D major scale, beginning on open D, particularly for a child who knows the hymn already in their head.

The Solfa for the hymn goes like this:

s f m f f m
s t l s r
m f s l l l s
f l d r
s f m f f m
s t d’ d’ d
d’ t l s d l
f m r d

Usually, the note the song ends in is the key for that song. So in this song, the last note is do on D, and it is in the key of D.

Song Recommendations

I love recommending delicious music, because there is SO much of it! (“Delicious music” fits these standards.)

Here’s a pop song that is so cute: “All the Pennies” by Mindy Gledhill.

Religious music is a huge part of music history and includes some of the most beautiful classical music ever. Tonight a song came to mind that I heard when I was a child and haven’t thought of in years:

“How Lovely are the Messengers” by Felix Mendelssohn

And then I saw a video on the side bar by Kiri Te Kanawa, an world-famous soprano whose amazing voice my parents shared with me (The video is nothing to watch. But the listening is wonderful!):