Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup tuning-math RE: [tuning-math] Digest Number 1219

To answer Dave's question -
I chose HI as a political compromise which favoured neither SI nor
TI, hence would not to lead to the potential divisiveness of "THEY
can get used to it" ... Music history is littered with examples of
regional and national differences in convention which merely hinder
internatinoal musical conversation - so why create or perpetuate
another one?

As an unused, singable consonant, it would also give us the potential
to write some nice songs incorporating HA HA, HI HI or HO HO ! :-)

On the sequence of vowels, I agree that we need six or seven distinct
vowels - or diphthongs - if we are to have a change of consonant on
change of compound nominals. But the choice of the diphthongs /aj/
and /oj/ [using the IPA forms] suffer from the problems of being spelt
quite differently in many languages - for example, /oj/ is "oy" or "oi" in
English, "eu" in German and "oe" in Latin. Further, that sound does not
occur in Spanish or Malay, which I think is another strike against wide-
spread acceptance.

I would rather bend the "change of compound nominal" rule slightly in
the one case of ^E, and go with calling it FO rather than MY, that is,
/maj/, giving -

vC du
C DO
^C da ru
#C de ro
vD di ra
D mu RE
^D mo ri
bE ma
vE me
E fu MI
^E fo
F FA
^F fe
#F fi
vG su
G SO
^G sa
O se lu
vA si lo
A tu LA
^A to le
bB ta li
vB te
B TI
vC du
C DO

Or, move /u/ from the bottom of the list to the top, giving -

vC tu *
C DO
^C da
#C de ro
vD di ra
D du * RE
^D mo ri
bE ma ru *
vE me
E MI
^E fo mu *
F FA
^F fe
#F fi
vG fu *
G SO
^G sa
O se
vA si lo
A su * LA
^A to le
bB ta li
vB te lu *
B TI
vC tu *
C DO

- which is the sequence I prefer. In this list, notes marked
with * have changed in meaning from the earlier proposals.

Regards,
Yahya

______________________________________________________________________

-----Original Message-----
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2005 01:57:58 -0000
From: "Dave Keenan" <d.keenan@bigpond.net.au>
Subject: Re: Suggestion for a linear temperament notation system

--- In tuning-math@yahoogroups.com, Herman Miller <hmiller@I...> wrote:
> I've tried something similar with variations on the familiar "do re mi"
> scale, using all 5 vowels. For instance, "du" would be a quarter tone
> below "do", and "da" would be a quarter tone above. The full set (with
> alternatives for some pitches) turns out as:
>
> DO(=ut) da/ru de/ro di/ra RE/mu ri/mo ma me MI/fu fo FA fe fi su SO(L)
> sa se/li si*/lo LA/tu le/to li/ta te TI(=si) du DO
>
> *one problem is that "ti" can be "si" in some languages, so the "sol"
> series might be better as "sul sol sal sel sil" to avoid confusion, or
> just avoid "si" and use "lo".

A 24 tone solfa is a cute idea. I can follow your proposal better like
this:

vC du
C DO(ut)
^C da ru
#C de ro
vD di ra
D mu RE
^D mo ri
bE ma
vE me
E fu MI
^E fo m ?
F FA
^F fe
#F fi
vG su
G SO
^G sa
O se lu
vA si lo
A tu(su) LA
^A to(so) le
bB ta(sa) li
vB te(se)
B TI(SI)
vC du
C DO

I agree with Yahya that for those used to singing si instead of ti, it
would be a bad idea to expect them to distinguish SOL and sil from so
and SI, when they are sung. But I don't understand the point of
suggesting they use HI instead of SI. If you can get them to change
from SI to HI then why can't you get them to change from SI to TI? Is
it because they don't recognise much of a distinction between the
sounds of S and T?

I suggest we should not allow all the possible alternatives above. I
suggest the initial consonant should change whenever the letter
changes in our standard list of compond nominals. The only exception
might be for "O" (#G bA) which might sometimes be better as lu instead
of se. [Herman, you had a typo where you gave this as another "li"]

I expect Herman had this in mind, because (assuming we are limited to
5 vowels) his vowel ordering is an optimum ordering for this purpose
(one of 2 out of 120).

It ends up looking like this:

vC du
C DO(ut)
^C da
#C de
vD ra
D RE
^D ri
bE ma
vE me
E MI
^E my ?
F FA
^F fe
#F fi
vG su
G SO
^G sa
O se lu
vA lo
A LA
^A le
bB ta(sa)
vB te(se)
B TI(SI)
vC du
C DO

Herman's ordering of the 5 vowels is already optimal for this, but
still misses out on a name for one note. The order of e and i could be
swapped, but that would just mean that we wouldn't have a RE-derived
name for ^D instead of not having a MI-derived name for ^E. Any other
re-ordering gives us more unnamed notes. So we need a 6th singable
vowel to come after e and i.

This led me off on a Google odyssey to learn about vowel sounds, and
in particular singable ones.

The most useful single thing I found was the section "The Vowel
Systems of Four English Dialects" on this page.
http://www.ling.mq.edu.au/units/ling210-901/phonetics/ausenglish/auseng_vowe
ls.html

The singable vowel that is most distinct from the 5 already used is
probably the diphthong "oy" as in "boy". Incidentally, DO SO RE use
diphthongs, while MI TI FA LA use monophthongs. But in the end I
thought it was probably important that it be representable by a single
letter, like the others, which only leaves "y". So ^E could be "my".

Unfortunately we still have two possible meanings for sa and se. It is
possible to order vowels in such a way that there are no such clashes,
but only if we have 7 vowels! And they must be arranged with the four
existing vowels in one of two ways.

- -
e -
i i
a or a
o o
- e
- -

Unused singable monophthongs are those in
"who" which you already represented with "u"
"haw"
"her"
"hair"

Trouble is, the diphthong in DO and SO ("ho") passes fairly close to
"hair" depending on your accent, and the diphthong in RE passes close
to either "her" or "haw" depending on your accent. So I'll fall back
on the diphthong "oy", which would be better spelled "oi" in this
context, given how it's starting and ending monphthongs are spelled.
If you really had to use a single letter for it I suppose you could
use "j".

So, for the least number of changes from Herman's 5 vowel scheme I'll use

y (high)
u (who)
i (hee)
a (ha)
o (hoe)
e (hay)
j(oi) (hoy) (I didn't put "y" "high" here because it's too similar to
"e" "hay").

So we end up with:

vC da
C DO(ut)
^C de
#C doi
vD ro
D RE
^D roi
bE my
vE mu
E MI
^E ma
F FA
^F fo
#F fe
vG sa
G SO
^G se
O soi lu
vA li
A LA
^A lo
bB ty(sy)
vB tu(su)
B TI(SI)
vC da
C DO

So we've eliminated the SO SI problem that way. But is it worth the
cost of 7 vowels. I doubt it.

What a pity there was no rhyme or reason to the original allocation of
vowels to the diatonic. OK, there _is_ a rhyme (or three), but I can't
see any reason for those rhymes. It would have made sense to me if the
two tetrachords rhymed.

-- Dave Keenan

______________________________________________________________________

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RE: [tuning-math] Digest Number 1219

🔗Yahya Abdal-Aziz <yahya@melbpc.org.au>

🔗Paul Erlich <perlich@aya.yale.edu>