The Curwen hand signs each correspond with a specific solfege syllable: Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La and Ti. To form the sign for the note Do, make a fist and hold it in front of your belly button, with the index finger side of your hand toward your body. To form Re, hold your right hand with your fingers pointing upward at a 45-degree angle from your wrist. To form Mi, straighten your hand so that your fingers and hand are held horizontally. To form Fa, give the "thumbs-down" sign.
To form Sol, hold your hand with your fingers together and straight in front of your face, with your palm facing you. To form La, place your hand in an upside-down U-shape. To form Ti, point upward at a 45-degree angle with your index finger. Finally, to form "high" Do -- to complete the scale -- make a fist exactly as the "low" Do, but with your hand elevated above where your formation of Ti was.
Traditionally, the Curwen hand signs are moved up and down according to how high or low the note is. "Low" Do begins around the belly button, and "high" Do traditionally ends in front of the forehead, with the rest of the hand signs distributed evenly through the space between these symbols.
Using the Curwen hand signs is not limited from low Do to high Do. Instead, the symbols run in a loop, so you can begin on low Do and proceed past high Do to Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La and Ti. Likewise, you can go lower than low Do with Ti, La, Sol and back down the scale. Because of this, the educator or music-maker is not limited to simple single-octave songs, and can instead perform the hand signs to virtually any piece of diatonic music.