As a first-comer

Greetings respectable microtonalist collegues,

As a young Turkish composer and a first-comer in your group, allow me to proclaim that I'm a novice as compared to most of you in the science of tuning, but I dare venture into this perilous territory, hoping that some of you will be merciful enough to give me a hand if I stumble.

It has been my obsession for the past few years, to delve into the nooks and crannies of Maqam Music, try to resolve the historical/theoretical issues that have been blotting the intricate nature of this genre, and quell the jingoist sentiments from eroding its multi-national infra-structure. Though we of the third world lack many of the sublime concepts you westerners juggle each day, I presume that it will not prove too difficult to adopt your vocabulary given the time and oppurtunity. So please forgive me if I cease to make sense at this point.

It has been about 20 years since I began studying classical western music, and I have never felt the need to concern myself with the nature of sound and tonality until recently. But thanks to the programming genius of such commendable persons as de Coul and Walker, I have had a wonderful time experimenting with exotic temperaments I never knew of before.

Now, the problem I'm dealing with as I write my Ph.D. dissertation concerns a wholesome approach for the construction of a microtonal notation standard, meant to embody both the traditional Western, and Eastern Musics. In very crude terms, you might glean an insight from the figure on page 13 of my doctorate report which you can download at http://www.musiki.org/ (sorry that most of you cannot read Turkish)

According to this figure, barring the macrotonal accidentals dubbed 3/4 and 7/8 tones respectively, one can traverse the entire octave in 41 steps using only the accidentals with the values of 1/8, 1/4 and 1/2 tones. 12 of these are familiar to you, since you recognize them as western tones with proper western accidentals. The rest are my suggestions and corrections for the transcription of Maqam Music.

I hope to receive your comments on my crude approach, and apologize for my lack of proper terms.

Best regards,
Ozan Yarman

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Ozan Yarman" <ozanyarman@s...> wrote:
> Greetings respectable microtonalist collegues,
>
> As a young Turkish composer and a first-comer in your group, allow
me to proclaim that I'm a novice as compared to most of you in the
science of tuning, but I dare venture into this perilous territory,
hoping that some of you will be merciful enough to give me a hand if
I stumble.

Hi Ozan,

Welcome to our group.

> ... I presume that it will not prove too difficult to adopt your
vocabulary given the time and oppurtunity. So please forgive me if I
cease to make sense at this point.

Please be assured that you're doing just fine!

> It has been about 20 years since I began studying classical western
music, and I have never felt the need to concern myself with the
nature of sound and tonality until recently. But thanks to the
programming genius of such commendable persons as de Coul and Walker,
I have had a wonderful time experimenting with exotic temperaments I
never knew of before.
>
> Now, the problem I'm dealing with as I write my Ph.D. dissertation
concerns a wholesome approach for the construction of a microtonal
notation standard, meant to embody both the traditional Western, and
Eastern Musics.

You're a man after my own heart! I have been working on the problem
of microtonal notation for many, many years, and I also came here in
January 2002 with what I thought was a rather ambitious proposal for
microtonal notation. I quickly found out, not only that some found
my ideas a bit radical, but also that there were many tunings that
others wanted to use for which my notation was, unfortunately, very
inadequate.

For the past 3 years Dave Keenan and I have been working on a project
in which we have developed my modest proposals into a comprehensive
microtonal notation (called "Sagittal", after its employment of
numerous arrowlike symbols) that may be used for virtually any
tuning. Although you may already have seen this in Scala, you can
find more complete information on the Sagittal website:

http://dkeenan.com/sagittal/

Our formal documentation for the notation is in the "Xenharmonikon
article" (in pdf format), but a more gentle (and definitely more
entertaining) introduction may be found in the (not yet
completed) "mythical introduction" (Dave's label, although I must
insist that the account, though very entertaining, is completely
true!).

> In very crude terms, you might glean an insight from the figure on
page 13 of my doctorate report which you can download at
http://www.musiki.org/ (sorry that most of you cannot read Turkish)
>
> According to this figure, barring the macrotonal accidentals dubbed
3/4 and 7/8 tones respectively, one can traverse the entire octave in
41 steps using only the accidentals with the values of 1/8, 1/4 and
1/2 tones. 12 of these are familiar to you, since you recognize them
as western tones with proper western accidentals. The rest are my
suggestions and corrections for the transcription of Maqam Music.

You have made very effective use of new symbols, particularly with
the fractional sharps. However, you may be unaware that some of your
symbols (specifically, the ones you are using for 1/8-tone up and
down, and 7/8-tone up) are already well established symbols for 1/4-
and 3/4-tone, respectively, and you may want to consider revising
your system of notation in light of this. (Alas, we find that many
of our good ideas were discovered long ago.) Please see Figure 1 of
our Xenharmonikon article, which shows the Tartini/Couper notation:

http://dkeenan.com/sagittal/Sagittal.pdf

This figure also appears in Episode 1 of the mythology (about 3/7 of
the way through):

http://dkeenan.com/sagittal/gift/Episode1.htm

You correctly identify the apotome (the amount of alteration
represented by a sharp or flat symbol alteration) as 4 degrees in the
41-division of the octave, but then the double-sharp and double-flat
symbols must correspond to 8 degrees, not 7.

The Sagittal symbols used for the 41 division are shown in Figure 8
of our XH article (about halfway down the page), and an even better
(more complete) illustration is given in the mythology (in Episode 2,
about 2/3 of the way through:

http://dkeenan.com/sagittal/gift/Episode2.htm

These are shown in "pure Sagittal" form; however, the notation also
has a mixed-symbol option that retains conventional sharp and flat
symbols, as explained in both the article and especially the
mythology (which explains the background and philosophy of the
notation in greater detail).

To see this in Scala, enter the following commands:

equal 41 (sets tuning to 41-equal division)
set notation sa41
set sagittal mixed (to see the mixed-symbol option)
set sagittal pure (to return to the pure-symbol option, the default)

Since the 1/4-apotome degrees in your diagram are clearly not equal
in size, you will probably want to load a .scl file with your
preferred tuning.

I hope that this information will be both helpful and enlightening.

Best,

--George Secor

Ozan,

First of all, welcome to the tuning list! Secondly, I
am amazed at your remarkable fluency in english - your
vocabulary in the language is truly impressive. As a
mediocre speaker of several foreign languages, I
appreciate the learning that it takes to compose
sentences as complicated and as grammatically complex
as the sentences in your message. Bravo!

As a westerner I am, of course, familiar with the 1/2
tone. Being somewhat familiar with Maqam, I am also
familiar with the 1/4 tone and the 3/4 tone, but I
have never before seen reference to a 1/8 tone, nor to
a 7/8 tone. They appear to be like 25 cent "tempered
commas" used above and below the whole tone, and
approximating both the circa 22 cent Syntonic Comma of
Didymus and the circa 24 cent Comma of Pythagoras.
I'll have a look at page 13 of your dissertation.

I am an amateur linguist who has recently been
interested in world wide four letter words and names
which are formed following the pattern: Vowel,
Consonant, Vowel, Consonant (abbreviated as VCVC).
Since your first name follows this pattern, I wonder
if you would be so kind as to tell me what the name
Ozan means. Is there an english equivalent?

Finally, it may amuse you to learn that in the year
1969 of the western calendar, I happen to have hitch-
hiked all of the 1500 kilometers across the breadth of
Turkey from the border with Iran to the border with
Bulgaria.

Allah u Akbar!

--Mark Rankin

--- Ozan Yarman <ozanyarman@superonline.com> wrote:

> Greetings respectable microtonalist collegues,
>
> As a young Turkish composer and a first-comer in
> your group, allow me to proclaim that I'm a novice
> as compared to most of you in the science of tuning,
> but I dare venture into this perilous territory,
> hoping that some of you will be merciful enough to
> give me a hand if I stumble.
>
> It has been my obsession for the past few years, to
> delve into the nooks and crannies of Maqam Music,
> try to resolve the historical/theoretical issues
> that have been blotting the intricate nature of this
> genre, and quell the jingoist sentiments from
> eroding its multi-national infra-structure. Though
> we of the third world lack many of the sublime
> concepts you westerners juggle each day, I presume
> that it will not prove too difficult to adopt your
> vocabulary given the time and oppurtunity. So please
> forgive me if I cease to make sense at this point.
>
> It has been about 20 years since I began studying
> classical western music, and I have never felt the
> need to concern myself with the nature of sound and
> tonality until recently. But thanks to the
> programming genius of such commendable persons as de
> Coul and Walker, I have had a wonderful time
> experimenting with exotic temperaments I never knew
> of before.
>
> Now, the problem I'm dealing with as I write my
> Ph.D. dissertation concerns a wholesome approach for
> the construction of a microtonal notation standard,
> meant to embody both the traditional Western, and
> Eastern Musics. In very crude terms, you might glean
> an insight from the figure on page 13 of my
> doctorate report which you can download at
> http://www.musiki.org/ (sorry that most of you
> cannot read Turkish)
>
> According to this figure, barring the macrotonal
> accidentals dubbed 3/4 and 7/8 tones respectively,
> one can traverse the entire octave in 41 steps using
> only the accidentals with the values of 1/8, 1/4 and
> 1/2 tones. 12 of these are familiar to you, since
> you recognize them as western tones with proper
> western accidentals. The rest are my suggestions and
> corrections for the transcription of Maqam Music.
>
> I hope to receive your comments on my crude
> approach, and apologize for my lack of proper terms.
>
> Best regards,
> Ozan Yarman

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Dear Mark,

Thank you for the most hearty welcome. You really flatter me with your refreshing compliments. That is all the more gratifying since they come from a man of letters such as yourself. It is thanks to my life-long Anglophonic disposition that I can master the English language rather well. Like most things though, my colloquial acquisition is autodidactic. However, I'm still an amateur speaker compared to most of you, especially with tuning jargons that I have been missing for the past decade.

Nevertheless, I feel pretty much at home here among all the microtonalist enthusiasts and professionals, which brings us to our mutual discourse:

I do not think that the concept of 1/8 (or its mirror image 7/8) tone is a unique proposition of mine. I believe I have seen it somewhere else before, but I cannot quite recall. In any case, you are right about these being crude denominations which stand for the intervallic difference signifying an average of all known commas. 1/8 tone is indeed a `tempered comma` as far as tempered goes. I believe this to be a feasible way of teaching regular musicians such as myself just how to sound the right pitch prior to knowing what a comma is.

As to my name, the english equivalent for Ozan would be minstrel, meistersinger or bard. I prefer that you consider me as an anachronistic travelling shaman musician from inland Asia. That's pretty wild for a four letter name, is it not? Truly, I think I have attributes that justify my being referred to that way.

All in all, I am appreciative of the fact that you have witnessed the rural situation of Turkey by 1969. As far as I remember, that was the date when domestic strife reached critical proportions and the blathering politicians who ruined the nation's agricultural economy caused the hapless peasants to migrate to urban areas in search for higher incomes. A great many classical Turkish comedy films and the birth of Arabesque music is linked to the mayhem that resulted. I sure hope your journey was devoid of political mischief. ;)

Yes, Allah is Sublime, and I do believe you have read the Quran, have you not?

Cordially,
Ozan Yarman

--------------------------------

Ozan,

First of all, welcome to the tuning list! Secondly, I
am amazed at your remarkable fluency in english - your
vocabulary in the language is truly impressive. As a
mediocre speaker of several foreign languages, I
appreciate the learning that it takes to compose
sentences as complicated and as grammatically complex
as the sentences in your message. Bravo!

As a westerner I am, of course, familiar with the 1/2
tone. Being somewhat familiar with Maqam, I am also
familiar with the 1/4 tone and the 3/4 tone, but I
have never before seen reference to a 1/8 tone, nor to
a 7/8 tone. They appear to be like 25 cent "tempered
commas" used above and below the whole tone, and
approximating both the circa 22 cent Syntonic Comma of
Didymus and the circa 24 cent Comma of Pythagoras.
I'll have a look at page 13 of your dissertation.

I am an amateur linguist who has recently been
interested in world wide four letter words and names
which are formed following the pattern: Vowel,
Consonant, Vowel, Consonant (abbreviated as VCVC).
Since your first name follows this pattern, I wonder
if you would be so kind as to tell me what the name
Ozan means. Is there an english equivalent?

Finally, it may amuse you to learn that in the year
1969 of the western calendar, I happen to have hitch-
hiked all of the 1500 kilometers across the breadth of
Turkey from the border with Iran to the border with
Bulgaria.

Allah u Akbar!

--Mark Rankin