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Tibetan tunings, etc.

🔗Will Grant <wgrant@...>

6/1/1997 10:31:34 PM
The Chinese year cycle named as "dog," "pig," "rabbit,"
etc. is neither more nor less rigid than our own American
convention inherited from the English. Other Europeans
(e.g., Italian "trecento" for thirteen hundreds) are more
sensible, but the nineteen hundreds _do_ comprise
the twentieth century after Jesus's teaching.

I am not a magical fundamental "Christian," but still it
seems true to me that Jesus's teachings are amongst the
best wisdom the West has produced, and I see no objection
to gauging a calendar from the approximate time that he taught.

It's all relative, and it's all arbitrary.

Buddha was perhaps more adroit with that particular
problem than Jesus was.

It might seem absurd to put a Tibetan scale on a Kurzweil,
because no one can play a Kurzweil the way one plays a bell,
and no one is expected to -- they are different instruments
generically. Nevertheless, I think there is no harm
in adapting Tibetan ideas to a rather fixed instrument.

It's important to remember that we are producing a new music,
_not_ Tibetan music.


Will

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🔗mr88cet@texas.net (Gary Morrison)

6/5/1997 2:03:08 AM
>Can anyone explain following stuff in brief:
>7 tone modes:
>1 1 2 1 2 Thai mode 1
>1 2 1 2 1 ,, ,, 2
>2 1 1 2 1 ,, ,, 6
>I cannot find out meanings of 2 or 1 ?

I don't know for certain, but I'd almost bet money that those describe
pentatonic scales pulled from the Thai-traditional tuning of (very close
to) 7-tone-per-octave equal-temperament.

The 2s mean a skip of two (1/7-octave) steps and the 1s mean a skip of 1
step.

This would be in analogy to the Western, 7-toned major scale drawn from
12TET chromatic scale, following the pattern 2 2 1 2 2 2 1.

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