On Thu, 2007-04-05 at 14:19 -0400, Charles Linart wrote: > When I jammed with traditional musicians in Thailand, Korea, and > Japan, they literally cringed if I squeezed out a "fa" or a "ti" in > their do-re-mi-so-la constructions. > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentatonic_scale > > Would be interested to learn of more "notes" in subcontinent music. what we consider to be microtonal variations around a note are not thought of that way in indian classical music. they have up to 15 subdivisions to a whole note step, and although its true that many of those are too subtle to be considered actual distinct notes, many of them are. if you sit down and listen+watch during a carnatic concert, the audience will be swooning and wildly enthusiastic at the most subtle melodic "intonation" because in that music, such "microtones" really conveny immense meaning. and its not like cheering on a yodeller or applauding the vibrato of Kiri Te Kanawa. it is true that there is some debate about the real significance of "microtones". if you look at the most common ragas, most of them are totally grounded in tones that a western musician would recognize. this has led some to claim that microtones are just a performance aspect, not a core musical element. my own feeling is that this is wrong. > Any references? The Indian and Pakistani melodies I've heard sound > pretty confined to scales and notes -- exotic to be sure, but still > the same basic sonic building blocks. > > There are a lot of different tunings and a lot of (approaching > infinite) different resonances, but it's still the same 12 notes in at > least 99 percent of cases. Maybe Australian aboriginal music falls > outside of the normal notes/scales, but I've never heard anything else > that does, including Tibetan singing bowls. the book to read is "Music of the Whole Earth" by David & Carol Reck. its wonderful on many different levels, despite being a bit superficial about everything. the way in which it simultaneously links together musical traditions from around the world and also shows how they differ is something i haven't seen elsewhere. _______________________________________________ Linux-audio-user mailing list Linux-audio-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://lists.linuxaudio.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/linux-audio-user
