Some Mysterious Scales

Hello everyone. I was just wondering if anyone could shed some light on some strange scales I stumbled on awhile ago, but have yet to find information on.

9 equal divisions of the perfect fourth is listed on the xenharmonic wiki as the Noleta Scale. There is no page for this tuning, and I can not find information about it elsewhere online.

The next strange scale (or tuning, to be more correct) is used in the folk music of Georgia. (the country) It has more documented information, and is described on Wikipedia:

"Scales used in traditional Georgian music have, like most European scales, octaves divided into seven tones (eight including the octave), but the spacing of the tones is different. As with most traditional systems of tuning, traditional Georgian folk music uses a just perfect fifth. Between the unison and the fifth, however, come three evenly-spaced notes, producing a compressed (compared to most European music) major second, a neutral third, and a stretched perfect fourth. Likewise, between the fifth and the octave come two evenly-spaced notes, producing a compressed major sixth and a stretched minor seventh. This system of tuning renders thirds as the most consonant interval after fifths, which resulted in the third being treated as a stable interval in Georgia long before it acquired that status in Western music.[4]

Some consider the Georgian scale a "quintave system" (as opposed to the octave-repeating "octave system"). Due to the neutral tuning within the quintave system, the eighth degree or octave is slightly widened, which often results in a rise in pitch from the beginning of a song to the end."

I have not heard much discussion of this scale in the microtonal community, but I believe it deserves much more, so I would love to start a discussion, especially because it repeats at the perfect fifth. (or does it?) I would like to find some scholarly articles on this tuning as to make a decision on if this scale is actually intonated as 4-EDF in practice, and if it is, if there are octaves added in to the system.

(Exceprt from a site cited by wikipedia;) "In general, in music with true three-part polyphonic independence and a small melodic range, fifths will be more important than octaves. The fifth will replace the octave as the unit of structural stability and pitch equivalence, and the scale will repeat at the fifth instead of the octave."

"Gotta Love Septimal Minor Thirds" wrote:

> The next strange scale (or tuning, to be more correct) is used
> in the folk music of Georgia. (the country) It has more
> documented information, and is described on Wikipedia:

The source you quoted from is apparently
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_of_Georgia_%28country%29

and the source they give is the venerable Kavkasia
page
http://www.argosoft.org/kavkasia/album2notes.htm#TUNING

-Carl

Am 24.06.2011 05:16, schrieb Gotta Love Septimal Minor Thirds:
>
> 9 equal divisions of the perfect fourth is listed on the xenharmonic wiki as the Noleta Scale. There is no page for this tuning, and I can not find information about it elsewhere online.

I started a stub in the xenwiki, please add your research results.

Noletta: http://xenharmonic.wikispaces.com/Noleta

Best regards,
Wolf

http://www.nonoctave.com/forum/messages/9197.html?n=12

The only reference to the noleta scale I could find. Did Ron Sword coin the term "Noleta scale", or is his information from an earlier source?

Ok, some more mysterious scales that I would like some info about;

In Curt Sach's book "The History of Musical Instruments", he mentions that the Chinese formed a "Pythagorean" scale of 14 lü instead of 12 to fill up the octave due to the inaccuracy of stopped pipes. (they made the pipes in ratios of 3/2 or 4/3 with each other)

I don't believe this scale is used today in China, and I haven't found any information on this scale anywhere online, but interestingly enough, my piano teacher mentioned something about a 14 note Chinese scale a while back; maybe he read the same book.

The next scale I would like some info on would be the 17 tone scale of Safi al-Din Urmawi. Is this the same scale that Joe Monzo mentions in this article? (http://sonic-arts.org/monzo/arablute/arablute.htm) Or is Safi al-Din Urmawi's scale 17-tone equal, as opposed to the Pythagorean scale mentioned by monzo?

On Thu, Jun 23, 2011 at 11:16 PM, Gotta Love Septimal Minor Thirds
<microtonal76@...> wrote:
>
> "Scales used in traditional Georgian music have, like most European scales, octaves divided into seven tones (eight including the octave), but the spacing of the tones is different. As with most traditional systems of tuning, traditional Georgian folk music uses a just perfect fifth. Between the unison and the fifth, however, come three evenly-spaced notes, producing a compressed (compared to most European music) major second, a neutral third, and a stretched perfect fourth.

That sounds kind of like tetracot.

> This system of tuning renders thirds as the most consonant interval after fifths, which resulted in the third being treated as a stable interval in Georgia long before it acquired that status in Western music.[4]

That sounds kind of like porcupine.

> I have not heard much discussion of this scale in the microtonal community, but I believe it deserves much more, so I would love to start a discussion, especially because it repeats at the perfect fifth. (or does it?) I would like to find some scholarly articles on this tuning as to make a decision on if this scale is actually intonated as 4-EDF in practice, and if it is, if there are octaves added in to the system.

Do you have any good examples of Georgian music that uses this tuning?

-Mike

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Jun 23, 2011 at 11:16 PM, Gotta Love Septimal Minor Thirds
> <microtonal76@...> wrote:
> >
> > "Scales used in traditional Georgian music have, like most European scales, octaves divided into seven tones (eight including the octave), but the spacing of the tones is different. As with most traditional systems of tuning, traditional Georgian folk music uses a just perfect fifth. Between the unison and the fifth, however, come three evenly-spaced notes, producing a compressed (compared to most European music) major second, a neutral third, and a stretched perfect fourth.
>
> That sounds kind of like tetracot.
>
> > This system of tuning renders thirds as the most consonant interval after fifths, which resulted in the third being treated as a stable interval in Georgia long before it acquired that status in Western music.[4]
>
> That sounds kind of like porcupine.
>
> > I have not heard much discussion of this scale in the microtonal community, but I believe it deserves much more, so I would love to start a discussion, especially because it repeats at the perfect fifth. (or does it?) I would like to find some scholarly articles on this tuning as to make a decision on if this scale is actually intonated as 4-EDF in practice, and if it is, if there are octaves added in to the system.
>
> Do you have any good examples of Georgian music that uses this tuning?
>
> -Mike
>
The second section of this seems to my ears to be in the tuning described as traditional for Georgian music; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rg8xrdbnH8E (starting at about 1:50 into the video) and possibly parts of the music in this video as well; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AY7DFAriXwk

Another question is; is there traditional Georgian music in standard just intonation as well? (like in the first part of the first video) or is that music simply in a westernized tuning?

"Gotta Love Septimal Minor Thirds" <microtonal76@...>
wrote:

> The next scale I would like some info on would be the 17
> tone scale of Safi al-Din Urmawi. Is this the same scale
> that Joe Monzo mentions in this article?
> (http://sonic-arts.org/monzo/arablute/arablute.htm) Or is
> Safi al-Din Urmawi's scale 17-tone equal, as opposed to
> the Pythagorean scale mentioned by monzo?

It's the Pythagorean scale. But the way he described
scales using it suggests the tuning wasn't always fixed,
and sometimes would have been more like equal temperament.
For those of us who can't study it in the original
language, it's really impossible to say, beyond that
there's a Pythagorean and also a just intonation (60 equal
divisions of a string) theory.

Graham