About Our Name and Logo

Sol, in addition to a name for our sun, is also the fifth note of the diatonic Major scale using solfege syllables which first appeared in the 11th century and are still used today. The syllables were taken from the ancient Latin hymn Ut queant laxis.

Ut is an ancient name (the French still use it) for the note "Do," the tonic, or "home base" of a piece of music.

The musical interval of Sol to Do (Ut) establishes the tonal center for most Western music. In our logo, the sun is Sol, and the Earth--our home base--is Ut. The curvy lines represent staff lines and the interval shown between the Sun and the Earth is Sol-Ut (ascending).

And a couple years ago, we learned that in Norwegian, Sol Ut means "sun out." Who doesn't like that combination of words?

Why Sol Ut Press Exists

Music is a birthright, and whether you believe it or not, we're all musical beings. If you don't agree, read John Blacking's How Musical is Man? and (if you can overlook the sexist title) you'll probably change your mind. Music is one of the most joyous and cathartic things we can do, whether it's listening or playing. One of the missions of Sol-Ut Press is to help people experience music more deeply by understanding it better.

In pursuit of this goal Sol-Ut Press frequently makes our books available in their entirety for free as eBooks, both in PDF and Kindle formats. We have given away over 1.5 million PDFs since 2001. In our last big giveaway we gave 11,162 Kindle editions of two of our most popular titles, Basic Music Theory, and The Practice of Practice.

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