SolReSol

A 19th-century musical language built from just seven syllables — do re mi fa sol la si. Every word is a short melody.

French composer François Sudre began work on Solresol in 1827 and refined it for forty years as a candidate for an international auxiliary language. His dictionary catalogues roughly 2,660 words, each formed from one to five syllables. Because the syllables are musical notes, a word can be conveyed by any means capable of distinguishing the seven pitches — spoken, sung, played on an instrument, written as syllables or numerals, signed with the hand, or even painted in colour.

Many modalities The same word can be spoken, sung, played on any instrument, written as letters or numerals, signed with the hand, or shown in colour. The image to the right places several of these side by side.
Antonyms by reversal Reverse a word and you reverse its meaning. Misol (good) becomes solmi (evil); domisol (god) becomes solmido (satan). The opposition is baked into the phonology.
Semantic prefixes Words for related concepts share an initial syllable. Time-of-day words begin with doré-; words about people, with solla-. The vocabulary is a built-in taxonomy.
Tiny phonology, huge range Seven syllables × up to five per word yields tens of thousands of possible forms. Sudre demonstrated the system for nighttime signalling with bugle calls and for the deaf with signed forms.
A chart showing the seven Solresol syllables expressed across multiple representations: musical notation, written syllables, numerals, hand positions, and colour.
The seven syllables across multiple representations.
Image via Wikimedia Commons.

Settings

Text mode

① Text → Solresol → audio

do—
re—
mi—
fa—
sol—
la—
si—

Tip: click a key to preview that note. In Word dictionary mode, words not found in the dictionary fall back to the letter cipher.

Letter cipher legend

② Microphone → Solresol → text (v2)

Play or sing the syllables and they'll be transcribed. Works best with clean sine-like tones at moderate tempo. Background noise lowers accuracy.

Microphone off
Detected pitch:— Closest syllable:— Confidence:—

Heard syllables

Decoded text

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Pitch is matched against the seven targets in your current Mapping, octave-folded. Use Min note to filter glitches; raise Pitch tolerance if your singing drifts.