On 12/19/06, lanas <lanas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Tue, 19 Dec 2006 10:10:32 +0100 Thorsten Wilms <t_w_@xxxxxxxxxx> écrivait: > The chinese touch could be emphasized by working > out the pentatonic character, I guess. I've been listening to some Chinese music recently and one characteristic that's found here and there is the sliding of many notes towards what they end up to be. Like when painting a wall and doing a faux finish: a base coloured coat is applied and then a paler coat is put using a rag or somesuch. The target note is known but the instrument works its way towards it. Surely this is due to the nature of some of the traditional Chinese instruments.
http://www.chrysalis-foundation.org/China's_Ch'in.htm One thing most people don't know is that occasionally the 8/7 frequency ratio came up on the Ch'in. If your finger is where the 8th harmonic would be, i.e. 1/8th of the string, and you press down to stop the string, the string length goes to 7/8 of full length, producing the 8/7 frequency, which goes against everything else in the system. This link has lots of info.
Apart from that, throwing a good amount of semitones would at least convey a cliché Middle Eastern mood. That'd be fun with the Alps background.
This book is one of the best resources on Islamic tunings I've found: http://eamusic.dartmouth.edu/~larry/published_articles/divisions_of_the_tetrachord/index.html Mostly focusing on Greek tunings, but also addressing the alterations the Islamic theorists made to the Greek systems. Also, http://www.chrysalis-foundation.org/Al-Farabi's_'Uds.htm (I skip down past all the writing to the tables usually) Al Farabi was the man to know. I know most people aren't interested in tuning, but for those who are curious, check it out. -Chuckk -- "Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing." -Theodore Roosevelt
