Simplified solfege

One simplification which JIMS could adopt, but has not (so far), is a simplification of the solfége naming rules for sharpened and flattened notes.

The most common current rules are these:
- The vowel 'e' indicates intervals that are "flattened from the diatonic." There's a conflict with "Re," so "Ra" is used to indicate the flattened form of Re. The 'a' in "Ra" the matches the 'a' in Fa and La, of course, which confuses the rule further.
- The vowel 'i' indicates intervals that are "sharpened from the diatonic." There are two conflicts, with Mi and Ti. Instead of providing unique names for the sharpened versions of these notes, Fa and Do — which are enharmonic (in 12-tet) with the missing note-names — are used.

This traditional solfége system is not well-thought-out in two ways:
- The use of the vowels 'e' for flattened intervals and 'i' for sharpened intervals conflicts with the occurrence of those vowels in the diatonic scale, leading to exceptions and loss of obvious meaning.
- The absence of names for the sharpened versions of Mi and Ti restricts its use to 12-tone equal temperament. All other temperaments have sharpened versions of Mi and Ti that are distinct from Fa and Do, respectively. (Besides, the difference between Mi and its sharpened version is an augmented unison, not a minor second — a difference which should be exposed, not hidden.)

They followning rules would be much simpler:
- The vowel 'u' (pronounced as in moo, coo, and new) would mean "flattened from the diatonic" (i.e., diminished, using the terminology proposed here).
- The vowel 'y' (pronounced as in tie, lie, and my) would mean "sharpened from the diatonic" (i.e., augmented).

With these proposed rules, the naming of chromatic variations of diatonic notes would be entirely consistent within JIMS, and would also be consistent with the naming of diminished and augmented intervals within JIMS. Diminished intervals end in 'u'; augmented intervals end in 'y', every time.

Another reason to like the above rules is that they make the 'i' endings of Mi and Ti stand out. The only notes ending in 'i' are at the lower ends of the only two minor seconds in the diatonic scale. Unfortunately, the rest of the diatonic scale's notes' letters do not convey similar structural meanings. I've played with a lot of alternatives to the standard Do Re Mi names, and none of them are significantly better than the standard names, especially given how familiar these names are, even to non-musicians.

As to the "singability" of these vowels...

Singing 'u' is no problem. When pronounced as indicated, it's a "pure vowel" (monophthong, meaning "one vowel").

(How is it that the Greek word "phthong," meaning "vowel," has six consonants, but only one vowels? I would expect the word for "vowel" to be an anagram of the vowels — something like "youwaei." This approach does not work terribly well for consonants, I'll admit. "Bcdfghjklmnpqrstvxz" is rather hard to pronounce.)

Singing 'y' could be a problem, because it is a diphthong (i.e., two vowel sounds smooshed together, as in "eye," "you," "boy," and "cow"). To pronounce a diphthong correctly, one must slide the tongue from one location to another while speaking it. If you're singing the vowel, it's not obvious exactly when to do this tongue-slide, which makes it harder to sing (and learn to sing) diphthongs than pure vowels.

However, the diatonic scale's traditional solfa names already include diphthongs (notably Do, So, and Re). This suggests that singing 'y' would not be a major problem.

So, why doesn't JIMS use the more-complex traditional solfa-naming rules, instead of these simpler rules?

Because one of the groups that is most under-served by traditional notation is the vocal music community. Singers can transpose their voices on the fly, but transposing their notation is much harder, making JIMS attractive. Internationally-popular vocal instruction methods such as Kodály are based on "movable Do with a La-based minor." These methods would be much better-served by JIMS than by traditional notation.

If JIMS uses the solfa note-names that Kodály users are familiar with, then JIMS can slide right into their established practices, and simply work better for them than traditional notation does today.

On the other hand, if JIMS uses different solfa note-names than the Kodály standard, however, then this would be a barrier to their use of it.

So far, the benefits of being compatible with the Kodály method have, in my opinion, outweighed the advantages of shifting to the simpler system. However, Kodály is used almost exclusively in schools, and I'm not targeting schools with JIMS, because they are so incredibly resistant to change.

We'll see.