Sheet music to tonic solfa, in your browser.

Why convert staff to solfa?

Most of the world's choral music is written in staff notation, but a huge fraction of choirs read in tonic solfa: African church choirs (Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa), British primary-school music programs, hymnody traditions in the Caribbean and Pacific, and ear-training classes across the US. If you're a choir director with sheet music in MuseScore and singers who read solfa, you need a translator, not a retraining program.

Tonic solfa also has practical advantages over staff for vocal work: transposition is free. The solfa syllables stay the same in any key, only the printed key signature changes. A hymn in C major and the same hymn in F major both read d r m f s l t. That's why solfa has dominated vocal pedagogy for 200 years.

How the conversion works

Staff notation uses fixed pitches: every note on the staff has an absolute pitch determined by the clef. Tonic solfa is movable-do: do is always the tonic of the current key, regardless of the actual pitch. The mapping is a one-step relabel:

• In C major: do=C, re=D, mi=E, fa=F, sol=G, la=A, ti=B
• In G major: do=G, re=A, mi=B, fa=C, sol=D, la=E, ti=F♯
• In F major: do=F, re=G, mi=A, fa=B♭, sol=C, la=D, ti=E
• In E♭ major: do=E♭, re=F, mi=G, fa=A♭, sol=B♭, la=C, ti=D

Notes outside the major scale (chromatic alterations) get prefix or suffix marks: a sharp on the tonic becomes de, a flat seventh becomes ta, and so on. DomiSol handles all of this automatically when you import.

Step 1, export your sheet music

Most notation apps export MusicXML out of the box. The format is the music industry's lingua franca for score interchange, it preserves pitch, duration, key signature, time signature, lyrics, and articulations.

• MuseScore (free): File → Export → MusicXML. Either the compressed .mxl or the uncompressed .musicxml works.
• Finale: File → Export → MusicXML.
• Sibelius: File → Export → MusicXML (Sibelius 7+).
• Dorico: File → Export → MusicXML.
• Logic Pro / Cubase / any DAW: Export as MIDI, DomiSol parses MIDI directly. Works for files where you don't have notation software.
• Hymnal PDF or photo: Use DomiSol's built-in image-to-score recognition (OMR) instead, drop the photo or PDF in and skip MusicXML entirely.

Step 2, open the DomiSol editor

Go to https://dash.domisol.app and sign in. The free plan needs no credit card and no installation. Works in any modern browser, Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge.

Step 3, drop the file

In the editor, click Create in the bar along the top, then Import MusicXML / MIDI. Drag your MusicXML or MIDI file into the modal (or click to browse). DomiSol parses it locally, your file never leaves your browser.

The parser:

• Reads the key signature (or detects it if missing)
• Converts every note to its solfa degree relative to the tonic
• Keeps each note at the length the file gives it (one too long for a single note comes in as tied notes)
• Keeps the time signature, and the tempo the piece starts at
• Reads a MusicXML hymn written two voices to a staff as separate parts, and keeps the top note of other chords

Step 4, edit, play, share, export

Your score now appears in solfa (or jianpu, toggle in the toolbar). You can:

• Edit any note by clicking and typing the new pitch
• Play back with audio, Tone.js renders the score live
• Add lyrics aligned to each note
• Use AI to harmonize a melody to SATB, transpose to a different key, or generate a counter-melody
• Export to PDF, print-ready solfa or jianpu for your choir
• Share via URL, anyone can view the score in a browser, no account required

Worked example: "Amazing Grace" from staff to solfa

Take the opening line of Amazing Grace in G major. The staff notation reads:

D | G B G | B A | G E | D |

With G as the tonic (do=G), the same notes in solfa are:

s, | d m d | m r | d l, | s, |

Same melody. Same intervals. Same singing. Different labels, and the solfa version is now transposable to any key just by changing what "do" means.

What DomiSol doesn't (yet) translate

Honest limits as of October 2026:

• Chords within one voice usually keep only their highest note. A MusicXML hymn written two voices to a staff comes in as its four parts, but a file cannot always say whether two notes on a stem are two singers or one player, so check the parts after import.
• Tuplets other than triplets in a MIDI file, and lengths neither notation can write, are rounded to the nearest thirty-second.
• Mid-piece key changes in a MusicXML file are flattened to the first key (the later notes keep their pitch, with accidentals); a MIDI file's key changes are kept. Re-import each section separately for modulating pieces.
• Slurs, ties, dynamics in the source are read as best-effort; the data model supports all three but the importer doesn't extract them all yet.

Try it now

DomiSol is the only web-based editor where solfa and jianpu are the editing model, not an export format. The MusicXML and MIDI importers route staff music straight into that model. No installation. Free to start.

Open the editor and import your first file →

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Related guides

• Tonic solfa: read & write d r m f s l t
• Jianpu notation: read & write 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
• DomiSol for church choirs
• DomiSol for music educators

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