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 control sits above the notes, and on the score header as a SOLFA / JIANPU badge. Either flips the display.

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.

You can also type in either at any time: pressing 3 writes the third degree whether or not you’re looking at jianpu.

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 of … control in the score header). 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 — a piece that’s simply too low for your sopranos.

Transpose (AI tab → Enhance → Transpose). The sound stays where it is and the written notes move to match a new key. Use this when someone hands you music in E♭ and your group reads everything in F.

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

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.

A tempo change partway through works like a key change: select a bar, then Layout tab → Tempo here. It draws as ♩=N above the top staff and playback and MIDI export honour it from that bar on.

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. Everything else about the score is left alone, and switching back to Standard reverts all of it — nothing is rewritten, since these are ways of drawing the same stored music.

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.