One Laptop Per Child and tunings of many places

I just acquired one of the One Laptop Per Child XO laptops as part of
the Give One Get One program. It contains an audio tool kit built around
CSound, so it's capable of generating almost any kind of sound in any
kind of tuning.

Is there some kind of "dictionary of currently used scales" from around
the world? I have lots of documentation on gamelans, of course, and
there's plenty of documentation on the classical Indian music, but is
there something for other "native" musical schemas?

P.S.: the machine runs a stripped down version of Fedora 7, so just
about anything that will fit in 256 MB of RAM and function on a 433 MHz
AMD Geode (K7) will run on it.

hi ed,

you could fish around in the scala scala archives, i would think.
these are very large and filled with all sorts of ethnic scales.

-akj

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "M. Edward (Ed) Borasky" <znmeb@...> wrote:
>
> I just acquired one of the One Laptop Per Child XO laptops as part of
> the Give One Get One program. It contains an audio tool kit built around
> CSound, so it's capable of generating almost any kind of sound in any
> kind of tuning.
>
> Is there some kind of "dictionary of currently used scales" from around
> the world? I have lots of documentation on gamelans, of course, and
> there's plenty of documentation on the classical Indian music, but is
> there something for other "native" musical schemas?
>
> P.S.: the machine runs a stripped down version of Fedora 7, so just
> about anything that will fit in 256 MB of RAM and function on a 433 MHz
> AMD Geode (K7) will run on it.
>

Indeed scala will provide the tuning info, yet if you are really looking for scales, (as opposed to tunings) you might also have a look at my collection of > 660 scales.

http://www.lucytune.com/scales/

On Jan 4, 2008, at 3:02 PM, Aaron Krister Johnson wrote:

> hi ed,
>
> you could fish around in the scala scala archives, i would think.
> these are very large and filled with all sorts of ethnic scales.
>
> -akj
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "M. Edward (Ed) Borasky" <znmeb@...> > wrote:
> >
> > I just acquired one of the One Laptop Per Child XO laptops as part > of
> > the Give One Get One program. It contains an audio tool kit built > around
> > CSound, so it's capable of generating almost any kind of sound in > any
> > kind of tuning.
> >
> > Is there some kind of "dictionary of currently used scales" from > around
> > the world? I have lots of documentation on gamelans, of course, and
> > there's plenty of documentation on the classical Indian music, but > is
> > there something for other "native" musical schemas?
> >
> > P.S.: the machine runs a stripped down version of Fedora 7, so just
> > about anything that will fit in 256 MB of RAM and function on a > 433 MHz
> > AMD Geode (K7) will run on it.
> >
>
>
>
Charles Lucy
lucy@lucytune.com

- Promoting global harmony through LucyTuning -

for information on LucyTuning go to:
http://www.lucytune.com

For LucyTuned Lullabies go to:
http://www.lullabies.co.uk

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Aaron Krister Johnson" <aaron@...> wrote:
>
> hi ed,
>
> you could fish around in the scala scala archives, i would think.
> these are very large and filled with all sorts of ethnic scales.
>
> -akj

I am a little wary of us telling people on the ground what
scales they use. The quality of ethnomusicology today is not
high, and of the average scale from the Scala archives claiming
ethnic origin even lower. I'd rather have them using the
OLPC to tell us!

-Carl

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" <carl@...> wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Aaron Krister Johnson" <aaron@> wrote:
> >
> > hi ed,
> >
> > you could fish around in the scala scala archives, i would think.
> > these are very large and filled with all sorts of ethnic scales.
> >
> > -akj
>
> I am a little wary of us telling people on the ground what
> scales they use. The quality of ethnomusicology today is not
> high, and of the average scale from the Scala archives claiming
> ethnic origin even lower. I'd rather have them using the
> OLPC to tell us!

I noticed some of the scala tunings indicate observed values, FWIW.

also, some ethnic peoples don't have a strong idea of what they are
doing, or don't understand tuning theory, so i wouldn't include their
idea of 'accuracy' in my estimation of whether a scale was 'accuractly
transcribed'....we need sound analysis software and good ears to do
the job..one example i can think of immediately is how ozan has shown
that for many many years the turks accepted 24-edo for maqamat, but as
he shows, it is far from the case, and only some musicians realized
this...of course, as he says, there are western influenced political
factors influencing this, too.

what's OLPC?

One Laptop Per Child

________________________________

From: tuning@yahoogroups.com [mailto:tuning@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf
Of Aaron Krister Johnson
Sent: Friday, January 04, 2008 1:56 PM
To: tuning@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [tuning] Re: One Laptop Per Child and tunings of many places

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com <mailto:tuning%40yahoogroups.com> , "Carl
Lumma" <carl@...> wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com <mailto:tuning%40yahoogroups.com> ,
"Aaron Krister Johnson" <aaron@> wrote:
> >
> > hi ed,
> >
> > you could fish around in the scala scala archives, i would think.
> > these are very large and filled with all sorts of ethnic scales.
> >
> > -akj
>
> I am a little wary of us telling people on the ground what
> scales they use. The quality of ethnomusicology today is not
> high, and of the average scale from the Scala archives claiming
> ethnic origin even lower. I'd rather have them using the
> OLPC to tell us!

I noticed some of the scala tunings indicate observed values, FWIW.

also, some ethnic peoples don't have a strong idea of what they are
doing, or don't understand tuning theory, so i wouldn't include their
idea of 'accuracy' in my estimation of whether a scale was 'accuractly
transcribed'....we need sound analysis software and good ears to do
the job..one example i can think of immediately is how ozan has shown
that for many many years the turks accepted 24-edo for maqamat, but as
he shows, it is far from the case, and only some musicians realized
this...of course, as he says, there are western influenced political
factors influencing this, too.

what's OLPC?

> > I am a little wary of us telling people on the ground what
> > scales they use. The quality of ethnomusicology today is not
> > high, and of the average scale from the Scala archives claiming
> > ethnic origin even lower. I'd rather have them using the
> > OLPC to tell us!
>
> I noticed some of the scala tunings indicate observed values, FWIW.

Yes, but that's a very tricky business and I don't tend to
trust it. A lot of that stuff was done in the '60s with sets
of tuning forks, published, and then translated into Scala
format. Even if the original investigators managed to
communicate with the subjects well enough to get the real
scoop (which is often highly variable from instrument to
instrument, town to town, day to day, etc.), it can still
be fudged up by people not knowing how to use Scala, etc.

> also, some ethnic peoples don't have a strong idea of what
> they are doing, or don't understand tuning theory, so i
> wouldn't include their idea of 'accuracy' in my estimation
> of whether a scale was 'accuractly transcribed'....

The same goes for Western music. In fact, the tuning
movement can be viewed as ethnomusicology for European
music. And we often find less precision than we're
asking for in European practice, too.

> we need sound analysis software and good ears to do
> the job..one example i can think of immediately is how ozan
> has shown that for many many years the turks accepted
> 24-edo for maqamat, but as he shows, it is far from the case,
> and only some musicians realized this...of course, as he says,
> there are western influenced political factors influencing
> this, too.

Yes, that's a perfect example.

> what's OLPC?

The organization producing the "$100 laptop", officially
known as the XO.

-Carl

Carl Lumma wrote:
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Aaron Krister Johnson" <aaron@...> wrote:
>> hi ed,
>>
>> you could fish around in the scala scala archives, i would think.
>> these are very large and filled with all sorts of ethnic scales.
>>
>> -akj
>
> I am a little wary of us telling people on the ground what
> scales they use. The quality of ethnomusicology today is not
> high, and of the average scale from the Scala archives claiming
> ethnic origin even lower. I'd rather have them using the
> OLPC to tell us!

Exactly!! That's my grand scheme!! I don't know how good the microphone
is on them, or how much digital signal processing you can pull off with
a 433 MHz chip, but the software is there, or can be loaded. Think
Vaughn Williams/Kodaly/Bartok meets the Internet! :)
>
> -Carl
>
>

Carl Lumma wrote:
>>> I am a little wary of us telling people on the ground what
>>> scales they use. The quality of ethnomusicology today is not
>>> high, and of the average scale from the Scala archives claiming
>>> ethnic origin even lower. I'd rather have them using the
>>> OLPC to tell us!
>> I noticed some of the scala tunings indicate observed values, FWIW.
>
> Yes, but that's a very tricky business and I don't tend to
> trust it. A lot of that stuff was done in the '60s with sets
> of tuning forks, published, and then translated into Scala
> format. Even if the original investigators managed to
> communicate with the subjects well enough to get the real
> scoop (which is often highly variable from instrument to
> instrument, town to town, day to day, etc.), it can still
> be fudged up by people not knowing how to use Scala, etc.
>
>> also, some ethnic peoples don't have a strong idea of what
>> they are doing, or don't understand tuning theory, so i
>> wouldn't include their idea of 'accuracy' in my estimation
>> of whether a scale was 'accuractly transcribed'....
>
> The same goes for Western music. In fact, the tuning
> movement can be viewed as ethnomusicology for European
> music. And we often find less precision than we're
> asking for in European practice, too.
>
>> we need sound analysis software and good ears to do
>> the job..one example i can think of immediately is how ozan
>> has shown that for many many years the turks accepted
>> 24-edo for maqamat, but as he shows, it is far from the case,
>> and only some musicians realized this...of course, as he says,
>> there are western influenced political factors influencing
>> this, too.
>
> Yes, that's a perfect example.
>
>> what's OLPC?
>
> The organization producing the "$100 laptop", officially
> known as the XO.
>
> -Carl
>
>

Here's a link to the synthesizer (CSound based):

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Tam_tam

and the "rich media" recorder

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Record

> > I am a little wary of us telling people on the ground what
> > scales they use. The quality of ethnomusicology today is not
> > high, and of the average scale from the Scala archives claiming
> > ethnic origin even lower. I'd rather have them using the
> > OLPC to tell us!
>
> Exactly!! That's my grand scheme!! I don't know how good the
> microphone is on them,

Plenty good enough.

> or how much digital signal processing you can pull off with
> a 433 MHz chip,

Not much.

> but the software is there, or can be loaded. Think
> Vaughn Williams/Kodaly/Bartok meets the Internet! :)

More power to you.

-Carl