Solfa, jianpu and the key

DomiSol stores degrees, not pitches. A note is “the third degree of the key”, and solfa and jianpu are two ways of drawing that. Everything else in this page follows from that one fact.

The toggle

The d r m / 1 2 3 switch sits at the top of the Note tab, and the score header carries a SOLFA / JIANPU badge. Either one flips the display. In the DomiSol phone app, it’s the d r m / 1 2 3 switch in the row of buttons above the score.

solfa    | d  r  m | f  s  l |
jianpu   | 1  2  3 | 4  5  6 |

Nothing is converted. There is no lossy step, no “export to jianpu”, and no way to end up with two diverging copies — it’s one score, drawn two ways. Write in whichever you think in, and hand your singers the other if that’s what they read.

The pitch keys follow the display. While the score shows solfa, d r m f s l t write notes. While it shows jianpu, 1–7 do. The other set does nothing. If your hands know the numbers but your singers read solfa, switch to jianpu, write, then switch back. The music is the same either way. 0 writes a rest in both.

Movable do

d (or 1) is the tonic — the home note of whatever key you’re in. This is the part that surprises people coming from a piano:

Key	d sounds	s sounds
C	C	G
G	G	D
E♭	E♭	B♭

So the same written phrase is singable in any key, which is exactly why choirs use it: the shape on the page is the relationship between the notes, and the key decides where that shape sits.

Changing key — two different things

This trips people up, so it’s worth being exact. There are two operations and they do opposite things.

Change the key — the key in the score header (Key of C in solfa, 1 = C in jianpu). The written notes stay as they are; what they sound as moves. Your d was a C, now it’s a G. Use this when the notation is right and the pitch is wrong, like a piece that’s simply too low for your sopranos.

Keep the sound — AI tab → Enhance → Transpose, then choose Keep the sound. The pitches stay where they are, and every note is renumbered for the new key: the C written d in the key of C is written f in the key of G. Use this for an instrument whose fingering follows the key, when the sound has to stay put and the page has to change.

One keeps the page and moves the sound; the other keeps the sound and moves the page.

The Transpose dialog has two more choices. Change the key does what the header does. Its Smart voice-leading box starts ticked, and moves notes by an octave where a part would otherwise leave its singable range. That box is the only part of the dialog that uses AI credits; untick it and the change is free. Shift the numbers moves every note along the scale toward the new key, drops their sharps and flats, and leaves the key itself unchanged. See Transposing solfa for the theory.

Mid-score key changes

A key change partway through a piece is a Layout tab → Key here mark on the selected bar. Because of movable do it rewrites nothing — the same digits after a 1 = G mark simply sound in G. It renders in the bar-number row, and playback, the singing voice and MIDI export all follow it.

Bar 1 is refused, since the key of bar 1 is the score’s own key and already sits in the header.

Time signature and tempo

Both live in the score header next to the key, and both are click-to-edit. Tempo commits when you click away or press Enter. Changing the time signature there re-bars the whole score, because the meter decides where the bar lines fall.

Changing them partway through

Three marks change something from a bar onward. They all work the same way: click a note in the bar where the change starts, then set the mark on the Layout tab. Clear next to a mark removes it.

Mark	What it changes, from that bar on	Do the bar lines move?
Key here	What the notes sound as. It prints as 1 = G or Key of G	No
Tempo here	The speed. It prints as ♩=N above the top staff	No
Time here	The time signature. It prints as 3/4 above the bar	Yes. Every bar after it is re-barred

Time here lasts until the next Time here mark or the end of the piece. So to put one bar in a different meter, you set two marks: the new meter on that bar, and the original meter on the bar after it. For one bar of 2/4 in a 4/4 hymn:

1. Click a note in the bar, then Layout → Time here → 2/4. That bar now holds two beats, and for the moment so does every bar after it.
2. Click the first note of the next bar, then Time here → 4/4.

Do them in that order, because the first mark moves the bar lines the second one sits on. If you typed that short bar into a 4/4 score, DomiSol filled it out to four beats with the start of the next bar. The 2/4 mark puts the bar line back where it belongs.

Time here is refused on bar 1, like Key here, because the score’s own meter is already in the header. Change it there instead. It also clears the practice loop, since bar numbers after the change no longer point at the same music. Playback, the metronome click and MIDI export follow the new meter.

In the DomiSol phone app, Key here, Tempo here and Time here are on the Layout sheet, with the same rule: tap a note first.

Free meter (散板)

Many folk songs, Chinese folk songs above all, have no meter. Their bar lines mark phrases, so one bar holds eight beats and the next seven, and the page prints サ (short for 散板) where a time signature would go.

To write one, open the time signature in the score header and pick サ free (Free in solfa, whose readers would not know the Chinese mark). Then:

• The header prints サ, and so do the PDF and the Word export. The staff PDF prints no time signature at all.
• No bar prints a meter. Each bar still has a length, which is what decides where its bar line falls. Set it with Layout → Time here as usual; on a free-meter score that mark changes the length and prints nothing.
• Playback and MIDI are unchanged: they follow the bar lengths.

Picking a meter in the header turns free meter off, and one undo brings it back. A photo of a jianpu page that prints サ, or prints no time signature over bars of different lengths, comes in marked free meter already, as long as the photo import is told the page is jianpu or guzheng.

Regional conventions

Numbered notation is not written the same way everywhere, so the Score tab → Template row carries the differences as one choice rather than four.

Standard is plain jianpu with the general set of marks.

中文 Chinese is the guzheng convention — beams below the number, plus the fingering and technique marks. See Guzheng marks.

Solmisasi is Indonesian not angka (also written notasi angka), and it changes four things at once:

	Chinese jianpu	Solmisasi / not angka
Duration beams	below the number	above it
Key statement	1 = C	Do = C
Sharp (kres)	♯ before the number	a / struck through the digit
Flat (mol)	♭ before the number	a \ struck through the digit
Seventh degree	ti	si

Picking Solmisasi switches the score to jianpu and sets beams above, because those go together. Nothing is rewritten, since these are ways of drawing the same stored music. Switching back to Standard restores the 1 = C key statement, the ♯ and ♭ signs and ti. It leaves the score in jianpu with the beams above, though. To undo those too, use the d r m switch and Jianpu beams → Below.

If you only want the beam side and none of the rest, set it on its own under Score tab → Jianpu beams.

A photographed angka page usually needs none of this: the importer reads the beam position off the page, and when it also finds a Do= key statement it sets the Solmisasi template for you.

Where to go next

• Notes, rhythm and rests — the entry mechanics.
• Movable do vs fixed do — the theory, at length.