Re: Music notation software for music with quarter-tones, esp. Persian music?

>
>
> Dear Mr. Annis,
>
> In my humble judgement, per my research based on direct measurements made
> on performances by master musicians, the so called 'scales' in Turkish music
> are NOT deterministic/fixed sequences, as in western music.

Boomliter and Creel showed that this was not true of western music either. If
you measured some cello concertos I heard, you will see the pitch is all over
the place. The west has the sloppiest intonation.

> Instead, they
> are distributions or 'smears' along the pitch axis, where a certain 'note'
> on the scale associated with the underlying maqam may present itself in a
> multitude of pitches depending upon where the music is 'coming from' within
> the past few sounds.

Possibly this could be the results of extended reference as investigated by
Boomsliter and Creel. In might be worth investigating.

> Therefore, I do not believe a fixed tuning, no matter
> how intricate, is the answer for Turkish music and possibly other musics.

There is no final answer because the human ear seems to be at home with small
shifts in tuning. The question becomes what are you going to do with
instruments where a singular pitch has to be chosen in the midst of this smear.
By the accurate articulation in intonation, the "modulation" via the extended
reference, will cause a consistency in meaning in these variations.

> The concept of 'tuning' has to be viewed in a revolutionary manner with a
> fluid and dynamic structure.

In almost an organic fashion, with the ability to grow over periods of time.
As a growing thing, it does not discard it s roots. As a mandala, to point
toward an eternity, via its endless cycle.

-- Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria Island
http://www.anaphoria.com

William!
Could you be so kind as to explain "seyir" to us. I think others mouths are
watering also!

"William S. Annis" wrote:

>
>
> Does your research involve investigations into seyir? I've
> always found that a fascinating approach to structuring melody and
> improvisation, but there's so little material about it in English.
>
> Hmm... it just occured to me: an investigation the seyir
> phenomenon wrt to Sethares's research might be interesting, too, but I
> need to think about that some more...
>
>
>

-- Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria Island
http://www.anaphoria.com

>From: Kraig Grady <kraiggrady@anaphoria.com>
>
>William!
> Could you be so kind as to explain "seyir" to us. I think others
>mouths are watering also!

I will venture an explanation based on my feeble understanding
attained so far.

First, a maqam (pl maqamat; turkish makam, pl makamlar) is
basically a mode. Now, as we all know from reading 16th century
counterpoint textbooks, those church modes were not just *scales*, but
patterns of use within those scales, with certain characterist melodic
phrases and prefered cadences. (Yes, I know there are arguments
against the phrases bit, but I don't care to deal with that now.)

A maqam, like a mode, has a prefered cadence sequence, and a
range of notes, a scale. Note that some maqamat do *not* repeat the
scale at the octave. Anyway, I've never heard anything about defining
phrases for maqamat, but one major way to distinguish two maqamat with
the same pitch material is to pay attention to what tones are
emphasized in a piece. [Given that the Persian dasgah system does use
melodic phrases as part of the identity of a mode, I'd be very
surprised if there were no element of this in Arabic and Turkish
music, too.]

During an improvisation (taqsim, pl taqaasim) -- most of this
music is improvised -- the performer will over the course of the piece
focus on certain regions of the scale of the maqam, with certain notes
anchoring the whole thing. So, simply using A minor for an example,
we might have a maqam that emphasizes, over the course of a taqsim, A
c e a e c A. This is pretty western, since it's just the outline of
the A-minor triad, then the octave, then back down. The performer
will hit each region surrounding those notes, coming back to those
notes several times, then moving on to the next region. A different
maqam might emphasize A d e a e d A. My current understanding is that
5ths are a popular part of these region sequences.

Anyway, seyir (derived from Arabic sayr), means something like
"path," so, the path a melody follows. Thus, just as in common
practice music where for any piece in a major mode you were expected
to dally about in the key of the dominant for a while, when playing a
piece in maqam rast, you have to play about in certain note regions.

This all gets hopelessly muddled because over the course of a
taqsim a good player is also going run (modulate?) through various
maqamat, each with their own seyir, of course.

My biggest frustration is that no one has bothered to publish
seyir collections on the web. I've heard of Turkish books of these,
but I've never seen one.

So, I think the seyir represents a very interesting way to
organize not only improvised music, but any music where you have long,
non-metrical melodies. [Note: a taqsim is very free rhythmically.]

So, back to the Sethares question for me: 1) how are the tones
of a seyir related to the cadence note of a maqam? and 2) are certain
maqam -- and their particular seyir more popular on certain
instruments?

If you can find the dissertation, "Makam : modal practice in
Turkish art music" by Karl Signell (Seattle : Asian Music
Publications, 1977.) it will give more detail about tuning issues, and
a few examples of a model seyir... though not enough of them to suit
me.

--
William S. Annis wsannis@execpc.com
Mi parolas Esperanton - La Internacia Lingvo www.esperanto.org