My re-intro, and a question about Arabic maqamat before 24-tone

I joined here years ago, left, and just now came back. I play fretless bass in a rock/jazz/funk style. For compositions that don't involve 12-tone fretted instruments, I specialize in 53-tone, and have been studying Middle Eastern music a lot lately.

My question is about a quote from this article by A.J. Racy (http://www.turath.org/ProfilesMenu.htm):

"In Egypt and the Levant, theorists divide the octave scale into small microtones comparable to those discussed earlier by al-Farabi and Safi ad-Din. Several types of micro-intervals have been advocated, including the comma division (roughly one-ninth of a whole step), which is found in some Syrian theories. Yet, it is generally conceived that the maqamat are based on a referential octave scale consisting of twenty-four equal quarter-tones. Despite the essentially aural nature of Arab music, Western notation has become fully established, and extra symbols are widely used."

I'm wanting to know how each individual maqam is tuned in "some Syrian theories", as opposed to the modern 24-tone tuning established in Cairo. For instance: are the third and seventh in Rast and the second in Bayati one comma flat as in Turkish tuning, or are they two or three commas flat? I searched online for pages in both Arabic and English with little luck, but I do live close enough to the University of Texas library, so all I need are some bibliographical references; doesn't matter if they're in English, Arabic or another language. So far I only have the brief resource list at Maqam World (http://www.maqamworld.com/references.html).

The Maqam World website does give a few clues to precise tuning of notes in the different ajnas, but uses vague expressions such as "the 3rd note is tuned slightly lower than the major scale".

On a tangent, I gave up experimenting with tunings using irrational constants like e (Euler's constant) and pi, when I discovered that pi/e is just slightly sharp of 11 steps of 53-edo. It procudes 53-tone with an octave stretched by 7.3 cents.

An excellent question Danny! The answer to which is, unfortunately,
contemporary Maqam theorists have really no idea how the 3rd and 7th degrees
of Rast Maqam or the 2. Degree of the Bayyati Maqam or other `perdes` in a
myriad of maqams vary. In fact, biased conceptions for a static music theory
have clogged Maqam Music education in many countries in the Middle East.

One significant research on this problem was undertaken by Can Akko�, Ph. D.
in his article "Non-Deterministic Scales Used in Traditional Turkish Music"
published in JNMR, where he depicts graphically the pitch distributions on
the pitch-continuum of live performance records:
http://www.swets.nl/jnmr/vol31_4.html . I'm sure he will be pleased to
respond to you in the list should you inquire further.

The data reveals that pitches (perdes) are not as fixed as they were
presumed before! I have personally found it useful to denote pitch-clusters
(more deserving of the term `perde`) such as Araq, Segah and Evdj as
boundary ratios.

For example, the third degree (Segah) of Rast maqam can be anywhere from 5:4
to 99:80 (or even 27:22, a sesquitone above 9:8) depending on the seyir, or
melodic excursion, as compared to Buselik, which is obviously the
pythagorean major third with the ratio 81/64. It is interesting that Maqam
Music makes this distinction between the two major thirds.

Best regards,
Ozan Yarman

----- Original Message -----
From: "Danny" <dawiertx@sbcglobal.net>
To: <tuning@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: 02 Mart 2005 �ar�amba 0:47
Subject: [tuning] My re-intro, and a question about Arabic maqamat before
24-tone

>
>
> I joined here years ago, left, and just now came back. I play fretless
bass
> in a rock/jazz/funk style. For compositions that don't involve 12-tone
> fretted instruments, I specialize in 53-tone, and have been studying
Middle
> Eastern music a lot lately.
>
> My question is about a quote from this article by A.J. Racy
> (http://www.turath.org/ProfilesMenu.htm):
>
> "In Egypt and the Levant, theorists divide the octave scale into small
> microtones comparable to those discussed earlier by al-Farabi and Safi
> ad-Din. Several types of micro-intervals have been advocated, including
the
> comma division (roughly one-ninth of a whole step), which is found in some
> Syrian theories. Yet, it is generally conceived that the maqamat are based
> on a referential octave scale consisting of twenty-four equal
quarter-tones.
> Despite the essentially aural nature of Arab music, Western notation has
> become fully established, and extra symbols are widely used."
>
> I'm wanting to know how each individual maqam is tuned in "some Syrian
> theories", as opposed to the modern 24-tone tuning established in Cairo.
For
> instance: are the third and seventh in Rast and the second in Bayati one
> comma flat as in Turkish tuning, or are they two or three commas flat? I
> searched online for pages in both Arabic and English with little luck, but
I
> do live close enough to the University of Texas library, so all I need are
> some bibliographical references; doesn't matter if they're in English,
> Arabic or another language. So far I only have the brief resource list at
> Maqam World (http://www.maqamworld.com/references.html).
>
> The Maqam World website does give a few clues to precise tuning of notes
in
> the different ajnas, but uses vague expressions such as "the 3rd note is
> tuned slightly lower than the major scale".
>
> On a tangent, I gave up experimenting with tunings using irrational
> constants like e (Euler's constant) and pi, when I discovered that pi/e is
> just slightly sharp of 11 steps of 53-edo. It procudes 53-tone with an
> octave stretched by 7.3 cents.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> You can configure your subscription by sending an empty email to one
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Sorry I replied so late, but thanks for the info. I did find something I printed out a while ago, an attempt to "convert" 24-tone maqamat to 53-tone, using those descriptions of comma-differences given on Maqam World. But I need to compare the data to other descriptions; I've looked at David Parfitt's oud pages some and noticed differences. I have the Rast tetrachord described as [0 9 16 22].

I'm much more familiar with Arabic music than Turkish, but I've noticed different tunings for Turkish Rast myself. I can hear the difference between E-flat, E-half flat and E-natural and tell you what note it is, but I need to train my ear to detect comma differences. I've been immersed in 12-equal way too much.

And I needed a word for pitch-range... in linguistics, you have a term for an absolute consonant or vowel sound (phone) and a cluster of phones considered the same consonant or vowel in a particular language (phoneme). Is 'perdes' the singular or the plural?

Danny

----- Original Message ----- From: "Ozan Yarman" <ozanyarman@superonline.com>
To: "Tuning List" <tuning@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, March 01, 2005 7:22 PM
Subject: Re: [tuning] My re-intro, and a question about Arabic maqamat before 24-tone

> An excellent question Danny! The answer to which is, unfortunately,
> contemporary Maqam theorists have really no idea how the 3rd and 7th > degrees
> of Rast Maqam or the 2. Degree of the Bayyati Maqam or other `perdes` in a
> myriad of maqams vary. In fact, biased conceptions for a static music > theory
> have clogged Maqam Music education in many countries in the Middle East.
>
> One significant research on this problem was undertaken by Can Akko�, Ph. > D.
> in his article "Non-Deterministic Scales Used in Traditional Turkish > Music"
> published in JNMR, where he depicts graphically the pitch distributions on
> the pitch-continuum of live performance records:
> http://www.swets.nl/jnmr/vol31_4.html . I'm sure he will be pleased to
> respond to you in the list should you inquire further.
>
> The data reveals that pitches (perdes) are not as fixed as they were
> presumed before! I have personally found it useful to denote > pitch-clusters
> (more deserving of the term `perde`) such as Araq, Segah and Evdj as
> boundary ratios.
>
> For example, the third degree (Segah) of Rast maqam can be anywhere from > 5:4
> to 99:80 (or even 27:22, a sesquitone above 9:8) depending on the seyir, > or
> melodic excursion, as compared to Buselik, which is obviously the
> pythagorean major third with the ratio 81/64. It is interesting that Maqam
> Music makes this distinction between the two major thirds.
>
> Best regards,
> Ozan Yarman

Dear Danny,

Unfortunately, many Turkish Maqam Music resources are still in Turkish, but
you might want to read Karl Signell's publication with the title
`Maqam-Modal Practice in Turkish Art Music`. This might shed some light on
the issue at hand.

My personal opinion is that Maqam Music is much MORE intricate than
expressed by `commatic differences`. If you want to map a certain maqam to
53-tET, I surmise it will only be a crude approximation of the real
phenomenon. Yet, due to the `pyhtagorean air` and level of detail one can
achieve with 53tET, the Middle East finds this temperament tolerable for the
transcription of maqams.

If the Rast tetrachord were to be mapped to 53tET, the third note, or E
quarter-flat on the staff, could be anywhere between (and around) 16th and
17th degrees depending on the "seyir", or "melodic excursion". Let's see if
your ears are in concord with me as to how these degrees should be applied
to the Rast tetrachord.

In comparison with "phoneme", "perdes" signify the entire set of pitches and
pitch-clusters within about two and a half octaves according to historical
treatises. The singular form is "perde", which generally means "pitch".
Nevertheless, there are instances where a single "perde" can vary in
pitch according to maqam and seyir.

Below is a list of perdes (and their solmization with ratios prepared by
myself) given by Sheik Abdulbaki Nasr Dede of the early 19th century,
Istanbul:

1. Octave

YEGAH (-4.) YE 3/4
Pes Bayati Pa
Pes Hisar Pi
A��RAN (-3.) SHA 27/32
Acem A�iran Nem
ARAK (-2.) QA 15/16
Geva�t Ge 243/256
RAST (1.) RA 1/1
�uri Shu
Zirgule Le
D�GAH (2.) D� 9/8
K�rdi (Nihavend) K�r / Nih
SEGAH (3.) SE 5/4
Buselik Bu 81/64
�ARGAH (4.) CHA 4/3
Saba Sa
Hicaz (Uzzal) �z / Uz

2. Octave

NEVA (5.) NE 3/2
Bayati Ba
Hisar Hih
H�SEYN� (6.) H� 27/16 (sometimes 5/3)
Acem Djem
EVC (7.) VE 15/8
Mahur Ma 243/128
GERDAN�YE (8.) DA 2/1
*** Sheh
�ehnaz Sheh
MUHAYYER M� 9/4
S�nb�le S�n
T�Z SEGAH TE 5/2
Tiz Buselik Tu 81/32
T�Z �ARGAH TA 8/3
Tiz Saba T�b
Tiz Hicaz (Uzzal) Tiz/ Tuz

3. Octave

T�Z NEVA ZE 3/1
Tiz Bayati Za
Tiz Hisar Zi
T�Z H�SEYN� Z� 27/8

Notice that there is no standard diapason or concept of sharp and flat for
the transcription of perdes when the Ebjed system of Arabic numerology is
applied.

Cordially,
Ozan

----- Original Message -----
From: "Daniel A. Wier" <dawiertx@sbcglobal.net>
To: <tuning@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: 03 Mart 2005 Per�embe 22:16
Subject: Re: [tuning] My re-intro, and a question about Arabic maqamat
before 24-tone

>
> Sorry I replied so late, but thanks for the info. I did find something I
> printed out a while ago, an attempt to "convert" 24-tone maqamat to
53-tone,
> using those descriptions of comma-differences given on Maqam World. But I
> need to compare the data to other descriptions; I've looked at David
> Parfitt's oud pages some and noticed differences. I have the Rast
tetrachord
> described as [0 9 16 22].
>
> I'm much more familiar with Arabic music than Turkish, but I've noticed
> different tunings for Turkish Rast myself. I can hear the difference
between
> E-flat, E-half flat and E-natural and tell you what note it is, but I need
> to train my ear to detect comma differences. I've been immersed in
12-equal
> way too much.
>
> And I needed a word for pitch-range... in linguistics, you have a term for
> an absolute consonant or vowel sound (phone) and a cluster of phones
> considered the same consonant or vowel in a particular language (phoneme).
> Is 'perdes' the singular or the plural?
>
> Danny
>