Looking for microtonal traditions of the world, particularly polyphonic ones

I have just discovered that maqam music is the most amazing music in
all the world.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3G7VW1RMks

This song is in the key of F "neutral." It's specifically in Rast
mode. Sometimes they actually play the F neutral triad all at once,
which is the most complex and beautiful sound I have ever heard, ever.
I guess microtonal music sounds really natural and intuitive when
you've been it for a thousand and a half years.

I have a few questions then:

1) What are some other required listening microtonal traditions of the
world? What's a laundry list of genres I should know inside and out?
Gamelan music is the only other one I really know.
2) Are there any microtonal traditions that are polyphonic? I've heard
that ancient Georgian music is polyphonic and very xenharmonic
sounding.
3) What are the origins of maqam theory? Carl mentioned on Facebook
that they use 24-tet - how did they just so happen to stumble on
24-equal? Was it western culture that influenced this choice of tuning
system?
4) They are obviously not really playing in 24-equal, as that 950 cent
interval is always played sharp enough to sound like 7/4. Has some
regular "maqam temperament" ever been proposed that would explain it?
Something in which a lot of the maqamat are MOS, and others are
near-MOS or MODMOS or whatever it's called?

At one point I thought that maqam music may be related somehow to
porcupine in that the two evoke similar feelings for me, but since
they clearly distinguish between the minor and neutral third, it can't
be that.

-Mike

Lastly, Munir Bashir is the only player in this style of music that I
know. The wikipedia article on him says that "Munir Bashir (Arabic:
منير بشير‎, Syriac: ܡܘܢܝܪ ܒܫܝܪ) (1930 – September 28, 1997) was an
Iraqi Assyrian musician and one of the most famous musicians in the
Middle East during the 20th century and was considered to be the
supreme master of the Arab maqamat scale system.[2]"

The supreme master, eh? Are there any other supreme masters I could listen to?

-Mike

On Fri, Mar 11, 2011 at 1:49 AM, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
> I have just discovered that maqam music is the most amazing music in
> all the world.
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3G7VW1RMks
>
> This song is in the key of F "neutral." It's specifically in Rast
> mode. Sometimes they actually play the F neutral triad all at once,
> which is the most complex and beautiful sound I have ever heard, ever.
> I guess microtonal music sounds really natural and intuitive when
> you've been it for a thousand and a half years.
>
> I have a few questions then:
>
> 1) What are some other required listening microtonal traditions of the
> world? What's a laundry list of genres I should know inside and out?
> Gamelan music is the only other one I really know.
> 2) Are there any microtonal traditions that are polyphonic? I've heard
> that ancient Georgian music is polyphonic and very xenharmonic
> sounding.
> 3) What are the origins of maqam theory? Carl mentioned on Facebook
> that they use 24-tet - how did they just so happen to stumble on
> 24-equal? Was it western culture that influenced this choice of tuning
> system?
> 4) They are obviously not really playing in 24-equal, as that 950 cent
> interval is always played sharp enough to sound like 7/4. Has some
> regular "maqam temperament" ever been proposed that would explain it?
> Something in which a lot of the maqamat are MOS, and others are
> near-MOS or MODMOS or whatever it's called?
>
> At one point I thought that maqam music may be related somehow to
> porcupine in that the two evoke similar feelings for me, but since
> they clearly distinguish between the minor and neutral third, it can't
> be that.
>
> -Mike
>

Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
> I have just discovered that maqam music is the most
> amazing music in all the world.
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3G7VW1RMks

I'm actually downloading some Munir Bashir now. He's one
of those musicians everyone says is good but I'm not
familiar with. Perhaps nobody should be making music without
having heard him.

Oh, you already posted about him. There you go.

> This song is in the key of F "neutral." It's specifically
> in Rast mode. Sometimes they actually play the F neutral
> triad all at once, which is the most complex and
> beautiful sound I have ever heard, ever. I guess
> microtonal music sounds really natural and intuitive when
> you've been it for a thousand and a half years.

Can you hear all that from listening? It's not a talent I
have.

Andy Kershaw went on a trip to Iraq once, and he played a
snatch of one of the old, respected classical virtuosi. He
compared it to the drunks coming home late and upsetting
the dustbins. Frankly, he had a point. Music in a
language you're not familiar with can sound harsh. It's
good you've hit it off with this one.

> I have a few questions then:
>
> 1) What are some other required listening microtonal
> traditions of the world? What's a laundry list of genres
> I should know inside and out? Gamelan music is the only
> other one I really know.

I've got an album of Gu Qin music recorded by Lo Ka Ping.
The original recordings were made for those well known
aesthetes of world music the US forces radio. What they
succeeded in doing was capturing a venerable tradition just
as it was going out of fashion. There was also a Chinese
government project to record Gu Qin performers as they were
literally dying out. I don't know what happened to these
recordings. Maybe they were destroyed in the Cultural
Revolution. A student gave me some anonymous recordings he
found on the Internet, and frankly they don't compare to Lo
Ka Ping. Neil Haverstick, I think, recently mentioned a
newer CD that I haven't heard and you could try that.

Naxi Ancient Music is really good, but I forget the
label. It's marketed at tourists but it is the real thing.
Searching for "Naxi Ancient Music" on Google doesn't bring
the CD up, but you do get some hits including YouTube.

Konono No. 9 are a stonking good traditional-modern band.

Thai classical music is worth checking out. Make sure you
get the traditional instruments and not western fusion.

I picked up some Hukwe Zawosa the other week. I haven't
assimilated it yet, but it sounds good, and it's supposedly
higher-limit JI.

When you say you don't know anything other than Gamelan,
does that include Indian classical music? It's easy to
find reputable CDs and a top performer is unmissable live.
All melody instruments bar the harmonium are microtunable.

> 2) Are there any microtonal
> traditions that are polyphonic? I've heard that ancient
> Georgian music is polyphonic and very xenharmonic
> sounding.

I'll leave the experts to argue this one out.

> 3) What are the origins of maqam theory? Carl
> mentioned on Facebook that they use 24-tet - how did they
> just so happen to stumble on 24-equal? Was it western
> culture that influenced this choice of tuning system?

Read Ozan Yarman's thesis for the history of the tuning.
The theory goes way back, and has its roots in Greek
theory. The early Arab/Persian theorists would include
translations of Greek writings. Farmer's good for the
history -- maybe there are better, more recent studies.

> 4) They are obviously not really playing in 24-equal, as
> that 950 cent interval is always played sharp enough to
> sound like 7/4. Has some regular "maqam temperament" ever
> been proposed that would explain it? Something in which a
> lot of the maqamat are MOS, and others are near-MOS or
> MODMOS or whatever it's called?

Again, see Ozan Yarman, and the controversies around him.
If there's a more precise pattern to tuning across the maqam
world, it's a subtle one that many cloth-eared theorists are
oblivious to.

> At one point I thought that maqam music may be related
> somehow to porcupine in that the two evoke similar
> feelings for me, but since they clearly distinguish
> between the minor and neutral third, it can't be that.

Nothing so simple, I'm afraid. But if it inspires you to
make music in Porcupine, go for it!

Graham

Oh yes, tembang sunda's a good complement to gamelan. The
tunings are the same but the former has vocals. Try to find
the Nimbus CD.

Graham

On Fri, Mar 11, 2011 at 2:25 AM, Graham Breed <gbreed@...> wrote:
>
> Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
> > I have just discovered that maqam music is the most
> > amazing music in all the world.
> >
> > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3G7VW1RMks
>
> I'm actually downloading some Munir Bashir now. He's one
> of those musicians everyone says is good but I'm not
> familiar with. Perhaps nobody should be making music without
> having heard him.

Everything he plays is just ridiculously awesome.

> > This song is in the key of F "neutral." It's specifically
> > in Rast mode. Sometimes they actually play the F neutral
> > triad all at once, which is the most complex and
> > beautiful sound I have ever heard, ever. I guess
> > microtonal music sounds really natural and intuitive when
> > you've been it for a thousand and a half years.
>
> Can you hear all that from listening? It's not a talent I
> have.

I heard the F neutral from listening, and I got the general gist that
the scale was F G Av Bb C D Ev F, where v is the HEWM notation for
flattening by a quartertone. I also got that he changes the scale
midway through the melody at the end so that the Ev becomes an Ebv,
which ends up being about 7/4. It looks like the actual maqam rast
would use a normal Eb on the way down, not an Ebv, so I can only
assume that he flattened it for stylistic reasons to get it closer to
7/4.

I'm a bit synesthetic, and F to me is generally yellow. This is some
kind of strange different shade of yellow, kind of the color of the
yolk of a hard-boiled egg if it's been boiled too long (turns a little
bit green in a sense).

I feel like this guy has augmented his brain in a way that I can't grasp.

> I've got an album of Gu Qin music recorded by Lo Ka Ping.
> The original recordings were made for those well known
> aesthetes of world music the US forces radio. What they
> succeeded in doing was capturing a venerable tradition just
> as it was going out of fashion. There was also a Chinese
> government project to record Gu Qin performers as they were
> literally dying out. I don't know what happened to these
> recordings. Maybe they were destroyed in the Cultural
> Revolution. A student gave me some anonymous recordings he
> found on the Internet, and frankly they don't compare to Lo
> Ka Ping. Neil Haverstick, I think, recently mentioned a
> newer CD that I haven't heard and you could try that.

Can you link me to any good stuff to check out? Or anything on youtube
that you think is a good representative of the style to check out?
Finding good maqam music on youtube has been hell.

> Naxi Ancient Music is really good, but I forget the
> label. It's marketed at tourists but it is the real thing.
> Searching for "Naxi Ancient Music" on Google doesn't bring
> the CD up, but you do get some hits including YouTube.
>
> Konono No. 9 are a stonking good traditional-modern band.
>
> Thai classical music is worth checking out. Make sure you
> get the traditional instruments and not western fusion.
>
> I picked up some Hukwe Zawosa the other week. I haven't
> assimilated it yet, but it sounds good, and it's supposedly
> higher-limit JI.

Thanks for pointing all of this out, I'll definitely check it out.

> When you say you don't know anything other than Gamelan,
> does that include Indian classical music? It's easy to
> find reputable CDs and a top performer is unmissable live.
> All melody instruments bar the harmonium are microtunable.

I haven't listened much to Indian classical music. Is there anyone you
could recommend that I check out so I can find some youtube videos of
them?

> > 3) What are the origins of maqam theory? Carl
> > mentioned on Facebook that they use 24-tet - how did they
> > just so happen to stumble on 24-equal? Was it western
> > culture that influenced this choice of tuning system?
>
> Read Ozan Yarman's thesis for the history of the tuning.
> The theory goes way back, and has its roots in Greek
> theory. The early Arab/Persian theorists would include
> translations of Greek writings. Farmer's good for the
> history -- maybe there are better, more recent studies.

OK, thanks, I'll check it out. I didn't know it was in English now.

> > 4) They are obviously not really playing in 24-equal, as
> > that 950 cent interval is always played sharp enough to
> > sound like 7/4. Has some regular "maqam temperament" ever
> > been proposed that would explain it? Something in which a
> > lot of the maqamat are MOS, and others are near-MOS or
> > MODMOS or whatever it's called?
>
> Again, see Ozan Yarman, and the controversies around him.
> If there's a more precise pattern to tuning across the maqam
> world, it's a subtle one that many cloth-eared theorists are
> oblivious to.

I have, uh, some obvious reservations that a 79-note MOS is really
what's going on at the heart of all of this.

But I'll try the obvious approach and let's see where it leads me.
From the limited supply of maqam music I have heard, it seems that
they often split the minor third into two equal 3/4 step intervals.
I'll take the liberty of mapping that to an approximate 10:11:12
trichord, meaning that 121/120 kicks the bucket. They often also split
the major third into two equal whole steps, which I'll assume makes
sense to map to 8:9:10, so 81/80 vanishes. Then you also have the fact
that two neutral thirds equals a perfect fifth, and if we assume the
neutral thirds are 11/9, that means that 243/242 disappears. This was
covered anyway by the first two commas. So now we're approaching
Mohajira temperament.

The melody for the Bashir piece I posted above is F Ev D C D Eb D C...
however, as I said before, the Eb is flattened a bit so that it sounds
like 7/4. So from a mapping standpoint, that would mean that 64/63
vanishes as well. So the intervals that have vanished here are
121/120, 81/80, and 64/63. This gives us the following
Mohajira-meets-Dominant temperament, what you call Vicentino++:

http://x31eq.com/cgi-bin/rt.cgi?ets=7_17&error=11.488&limit=11&invariant=2_8_-4_5_1_1_0_4_2

Or perhaps Bashir really did mean to play Ebv, such that F-Ebv maps to
7/4. There are two ways to temper here that seem obvious - eliminating
176/175, meaning that 9 generators down gets you to 7/4, or 56/55,
meaning that 15 generators up gets you to 7/4. Here's the 176/175
temperament, called "Semififths:"

http://x31eq.com/cgi-bin/rt.cgi?ets=31_7&error=8.480&limit=11&invariant=2_8_-11_5_1_1_0_6_2

Here's the 56/55 temperament, also called "Vicentino++".

http://x31eq.com/cgi-bin/rt.cgi?ets=7_17&error=16.495&limit=11&invariant=2_8_13_5_1_1_0_-1_2

Now, furthermore, let's assume that Oud players don't actually stick
to this as a regular temperament, but that they microtune things here
and there as they see fit, artistically, as do string players for
western music. Alright, so we have adaptive JI based off of this going
on then, same as western music.

Anyway, that's my initial half-assed analysis. What facets of maqam
performance contradict the above? The 7-limit is pretty sloppy the way
I did it, but it seems like 121/120 and 81/80 vanishing are pretty
fundamental features of this music.

> > At one point I thought that maqam music may be related
> > somehow to porcupine in that the two evoke similar
> > feelings for me, but since they clearly distinguish
> > between the minor and neutral third, it can't be that.
>
> Nothing so simple, I'm afraid. But if it inspires you to
> make music in Porcupine, go for it!

There are times I swear I have heard players straighten out that Rast
tetrachord so that it sounds like 4 equal divisions of 4/3, which
would be porcupine. I also heard at one point in this clip it sound
like they were straightening out another line such that something like
Negri was produced. Carl thinks its closer to 24-et. He's probably
right, but I wouldn't be surprised if improvisational musicians on a
fretless instrument weren't tempted to do stuff like that once in a
while.

-Mike

Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 11, 2011 at 2:25 AM, Graham Breed
> <gbreed@...> wrote:

[Gu Qin]
> Can you link me to any good stuff to check out? Or
> anything on youtube that you think is a good
> representative of the style to check out? Finding good
> maqam music on youtube has been hell.

No, sorry. I still haven't worked out YouTube. I got Lo
Ka Ping from here:

http://www.emusic.com/album/Lo-Ka-Ping-China-Lost-Sounds-Of-the-Tao-Chinese-Masters-of-MP3-Download/10754140.html

You're expected to pay.

> > Konono No. 9 are a stonking good traditional-modern
> > band.

Should be No. 1.

> I haven't listened much to Indian classical music. Is
> there anyone you could recommend that I check out so I
> can find some youtube videos of them?

The best musician I've ever seen is Wajahat Khan. The
respectable musicians are all really good in my
experience. They generally come from musical families and
have spent their whole lives learning. It's harder to
appreciate at home but easy to find the recordings.

> > Again, see Ozan Yarman, and the controversies around
> > him. If there's a more precise pattern to tuning across
> > the maqam world, it's a subtle one that many
> > cloth-eared theorists are oblivious to.
>
> I have, uh, some obvious reservations that a 79-note MOS
> is really what's going on at the heart of all of this.

As do I, as you should know from the discussions. But that
doesn't stop it being a sincere attempt to solve a
difficult problem.

Try Shaahin Mohajeri as well:

http://www.96edo.com/

> But I'll try the obvious approach and let's see where it
> leads me. From the limited supply of maqam music I have
> heard, it seems that they often split the minor third
> into two equal 3/4 step intervals. I'll take the liberty
> of mapping that to an approximate 10:11:12 trichord,
> meaning that 121/120 kicks the bucket. They often also
> split the major third into two equal whole steps, which
> I'll assume makes sense to map to 8:9:10, so 81/80
> vanishes. Then you also have the fact that two neutral
> thirds equals a perfect fifth, and if we assume the
> neutral thirds are 11/9, that means that 243/242
> disappears. This was covered anyway by the first two
> commas. So now we're approaching Mohajira temperament.

Mohajira temperament is clearly related, although the 7
note MOS seems not to be important.

Graham

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
Here's the 176/175
> temperament, called "Semififths:"
>
> http://x31eq.com/cgi-bin/rt.cgi?ets=31_7&error=8.480&limit=11&invariant=2_8_-11_5_1_1_0_6_2

It's most commonly called "mohajira" these days.

>Here's the 176/175

> temperament, called "Semififths:"

>

> http://x31eq.com/cgi-bin/rt.cgi?ets=31_7&error=8.480&limit=11&invariant=2_8_-11_5_1_1_0_6_2

(in reply) >"It's most commonly called "mohajira" these days. "

    I won't go on too long here...but I think Mohajira ROCKS!  It's right up there with Minerva (http://tonalsoft.com/enc/m/minerva.aspx) in my book as a scale system with tons of chords available per note plus relatively equally-spaced, "strictly proper" interval, which makes it easy to play and, IMVHO, good for melodies as well.

   Mohajira is kind of a Middle-Eastern extension to meantone, and carries many of the usual strong 5-limit chords while adding some nifty 11-limit ones.  It rather begs the question...what are other strong "extensions to meantone"?

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "genewardsmith" <genewardsmith@...> wrote:

> > temperament, called "Semififths:"
>
> It's most commonly called "mohajira" these days.

Why is it called that? -Carl

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Michael <djtrancendance@...> wrote:

>     I won't go on too long here...but I think Mohajira ROCKS!  It's right up there with Minerva (http://tonalsoft.com/enc/m/minerva.aspx) in my book as a scale system with tons of chords available per note plus relatively equally-spaced, "strictly proper" interval, which makes it easy to play and, IMVHO, good for melodies as well.
>
>    Mohajira is kind of a Middle-Eastern extension to meantone, and carries many of the usual strong 5-limit chords while adding some nifty 11-limit ones.  It rather begs the question...what are other strong "extensions to meantone"?

There's this: http://xenharmonic.wikispaces.com/Meantone+family#Injera

And this: http://xenharmonic.wikispaces.com/Meantone+family#Godzilla

And this: http://xenharmonic.wikispaces.com/Meantone+family#Mothra

And even this: http://xenharmonic.wikispaces.com/Meantone+family#Liese

If that's not enough for you, you could consider this:
http://xenharmonic.wikispaces.com/Chromatic+pairs#Tutone

Or this: http://xenharmonic.wikispaces.com/Chromatic+pairs#Mohaha

And you might count this:
http://xenharmonic.wikispaces.com/Chromatic+pairs#Skwares

Not to mention this:
http://xenharmonic.wikispaces.com/Didymus+rank+three+family

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" <carl@...> wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "genewardsmith" <genewardsmith@> wrote:
>
> > > temperament, called "Semififths:"
> >
> > It's most commonly called "mohajira" these days.
>
> Why is it called that? -Carl

Why not? I guess it goes back to Jacques Dudon. What do you call it?

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" <carl@...> wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "genewardsmith" <genewardsmith@> wrote:
>
> > > temperament, called "Semififths:"
> >
> > It's most commonly called "mohajira" these days.
>
> Why is it called that? -Carl

It means "migratory" in Arabian and I named it that way because of the many circular modes of its sequence, that evoked for me a very particular diversity between different countries. It was during the first Gulf war when I composed a long piece with it inspired by Sumer, because it moved me a lot over to ancient Irak at these times.

You can download an excerpt of it if you wish from :
http://aeh.free.fr/
page Synthese photosonique / Lumières audibles / Extraits sonores / Sumer / "Je me souviens d'une source"
- - - -
Jacques

On Fri, Mar 11, 2011 at 4:03 PM, Jacques Dudon <fotosonix@...> wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" <carl@...> wrote:
> >
> > --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "genewardsmith" <genewardsmith@> wrote:
> >
> > > > temperament, called "Semififths:"
> > >
> > > It's most commonly called "mohajira" these days.
> >
> > Why is it called that? -Carl
>
> It means "migratory" in Arabian and I named it that way because of the many circular modes of its sequence, that evoked for me a very particular diversity between different countries. It was during the first Gulf war when I composed a long piece with it inspired by Sumer, because it moved me a lot over to ancient Irak at these times.
>
> You can download an excerpt of it if you wish from :
> http://aeh.free.fr/
> page Synthese photosonique / Lumières audibles / Extraits sonores / Sumer / "Je me souviens d'une source"

!!!

This sounds amazing! Where is the full version, on the Lumieres
audibles CD? Isn't that CD supposed to be in JI, not tempered at all?

-Mike

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:

> This sounds amazing! Where is the full version, on the Lumieres
> audibles CD?

Yes (I still have a few ones for sale left if some are interested...)

> Isn't that CD supposed to be in JI, not tempered at all?

Every photosonic disk is in perfect JI (extended up to primes 11, 13, and 59 mainly). But in some parts I play different disks together, tuned to different scales at different pitches tuned by ear...
These disks make also good use of many commas such as 118/117, 121/120, 144/143, 177/176, 209/208, 352/351, 768/767 etc.

One of the most common Mohajira sequences of Sumer goes :
(octave reduced)

13 1 39 3 59 9 11 27 33 81 99 121 ...
- - - -
jacques

Gene wrote:

> > > > temperament, called "Semififths:"
> > > It's most commonly called "mohajira" these days.
> > Why is it called that? -Carl
> Why not?

I don't care what you name a temperament, but if you're
re-naming it there had better be a good reason.

> I guess it goes back to Jacques Dudon.

He published it somewhere earlier? That would be a
good reason, like we did with hanson.

-Carl

"Jacques Dudon" <fotosonix@...> wrote:

> It means "migratory" in Arabian and I named it that way because
> of the many circular modes of its sequence, that evoked for me a
> very particular diversity between different countries. It was
> during the first Gulf war when I composed a long piece with it
> inspired by Sumer, because it moved me a lot over to ancient Irak
> at these times.
>
> You can download an excerpt of it if you wish from :
> http://aeh.free.fr/
> page Synthese photosonique / Lumières audibles /
> Extraits sonores / Sumer / "Je me souviens d'une source"

Wow, that sounds great! Mohajira it is. -C.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" <carl@...> wrote:

> I don't care what you name a temperament, but if you're
> re-naming it there had better be a good reason.

I didn't rename it. There was a big discussion, on this group, and now you are retroactively and unilaterally questioning the consensus decision.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "genewardsmith" <genewardsmith@...> wrote:

> > I don't care what you name a temperament, but if you're
> > re-naming it there had better be a good reason.
>
> I didn't rename it. There was a big discussion, on this group,
> and now you are retroactively and unilaterally questioning the
> consensus decision.

I take it you didn't read the rest of the post to which
you are replying? -Carl

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
> This song is in the key of F "neutral." It's specifically in Rast
> mode. Sometimes they actually play the F neutral triad all at once,
> which is the most complex and beautiful sound I have ever heard, ever.
> I guess microtonal music sounds really natural and intuitive when
> you've been it for a thousand and a half years.

Maqams and modes are not exactly interchangeable. They have more in common with ragas, as I understand it.

Sadly, the people who know the most about this sort of thing no longer post here.

> 4) They are obviously not really playing in 24-equal, as that 950 cent
> interval is always played sharp enough to sound like 7/4. Has some
> regular "maqam temperament" ever been proposed that would explain it?
> Something in which a lot of the maqamat are MOS, and others are
> near-MOS or MODMOS or whatever it's called?

Did you somehow ignore everything music-related that Ozan ever posted?

-Igs

On Fri, Mar 11, 2011 at 9:32 PM, cityoftheasleep
<igliashon@...> wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
> > This song is in the key of F "neutral." It's specifically in Rast
> > mode. Sometimes they actually play the F neutral triad all at once,
> > which is the most complex and beautiful sound I have ever heard, ever.
> > I guess microtonal music sounds really natural and intuitive when
> > you've been it for a thousand and a half years.
>
> Maqams and modes are not exactly interchangeable. They have more in common with ragas, as I understand it.
>
> Sadly, the people who know the most about this sort of thing no longer post here.

Can you elaborate a bit? I thought that ragas were also modes. Keep in
mind I'm new to this genre of music and, as far as I know, maqam is
Arabic for "mode."

> > 4) They are obviously not really playing in 24-equal, as that 950 cent
> > interval is always played sharp enough to sound like 7/4. Has some
> > regular "maqam temperament" ever been proposed that would explain it?
> > Something in which a lot of the maqamat are MOS, and others are
> > near-MOS or MODMOS or whatever it's called?
>
> Did you somehow ignore everything music-related that Ozan ever posted?

I have somehow ignored the 79-note MOS, if that's what you're getting
at, because I'm not looking for some grand universe set for all of
maqam music. I'm looking for a coarse regular temperament structure
that implies commas vanishing. So far mohajira tempering looks like a
magic bullet, as people seem to have previously realized, which means
31-tet might be useful. The 64/63 meets mohajira temperament might
also be useful.

-Mike

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "cityoftheasleep" <igliashon@...> wrote:

> Sadly, the people who know the most about this sort of thing
> no longer post here.
//
> Did you somehow ignore everything music-related that Ozan ever
> posted?

It sounds like you could have studied them better yourself.
Ozan and Margo's maqam intonation stuff is mostly RI fantasy,
I'm afraid.

-Carl

On Fri, Mar 11, 2011 at 5:03 PM, Jacques Dudon <fotosonix@...> wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
>
> > This sounds amazing! Where is the full version, on the Lumieres
> > audibles CD?
>
> Yes (I still have a few ones for sale left if some are interested...)

Yes please. Is it available for digital download?

-Mike

Carl>"It sounds like you could have studied them better yourself. Ozan and Margo's maqam intonation stuff is mostly RI fantasy, I'm afraid."

  The counterpoint, if I have you right here, is what value does RI have? 
  Personally I would say a lot, it can serve as a midpoint between JI and temperament because JI relationships can be drawn, yet so can the sort of two-in-one substitutions of intervals for each other from temperament.  Did I mention Jacky Ligon (an excellent artist in many people's opinions) uses RI? 

  I doubt RI is "fantasy" and think it has many applications but...what are your thoughts (the list's thoughts)?
 
  

--- On Fri, 3/11/11, Carl Lumma <carl@lumma.org> wrote:

From: Carl Lumma <carl@...>
Subject: [tuning] Re: Looking for microtonal traditions of the world, particularly polyphonic ones
To: tuning@yahoogroups.com
Date: Friday, March 11, 2011, 7:06 PM

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "cityoftheasleep" <igliashon@...> wrote:

> Sadly, the people who know the most about this sort of thing

> no longer post here.

//

> Did you somehow ignore everything music-related that Ozan ever

> posted?

It sounds like you could have studied them better yourself.

Ozan and Margo's maqam intonation stuff is mostly RI fantasy,

I'm afraid.

-Carl

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Michael <djtrancendance@...> wrote:
>
> Carl>"It sounds like you could have studied them better yourself. Ozan and Margo's maqam intonation stuff is mostly RI fantasy, I'm afraid."

>   I doubt RI is "fantasy" and think it has many applications but...what are your thoughts (the list's thoughts)?

Carl didn't say RI was a fantasy. I think his point was that analyzing maqam intonation in RI terms is a fantasy, but you'll need to ask him.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" <carl@...> wrote:
> It sounds like you could have studied them better yourself.
> Ozan and Margo's maqam intonation stuff is mostly RI fantasy,
> I'm afraid.

I recall Ozan being interested in ET models more so than rational ones. And anyway when it comes to maqam I don't see how RI is any more of a fantasy than 24-ET. Neither are treated as any more than "landmarks".

-Igs

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "cityoftheasleep" <igliashon@...> wrote:

> > It sounds like you could have studied them better yourself.
> > Ozan and Margo's maqam intonation stuff is mostly RI fantasy,
> > I'm afraid.
>
> I recall Ozan being interested in ET models more so than rational
> ones. And anyway when it comes to maqam I don't see how RI is any
> more of a fantasy than 24-ET. Neither are treated as any more
> than "landmarks".

Actually 24-ET is treated as a landmark. They have a notation
based on it, and big companies make keyboards and tuners for it.
This list has serious retrograde amnesia. I'm not going to get
back into why the efforts of Margo et all to frame maqam
intonation with RI is a complete fantasy. You can read the
exchanges between Margo and myself, Ozan and myself, the whole
bit. -Carl

that IS a great video!

Thanks for sharing it.

Chris

On Fri, Mar 11, 2011 at 1:49 AM, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...>wrote:

>
>
> I have just discovered that maqam music is the most amazing music in
> all the world.
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3G7VW1RMks
>
> This song is in the key of F "neutral." It's specifically in Rast
> mode. Sometimes they actually play the F neutral triad all at once,
> which is the most complex and beautiful sound I have ever heard, ever.
> I guess microtonal music sounds really natural and intuitive when
> you've been it for a thousand and a half years.
>
>

On Sat, Mar 12, 2011 at 6:45 AM, Michael <djtrancendance@...> wrote:
>
> Carl>"It sounds like you could have studied them better yourself. Ozan and Margo's maqam intonation stuff is mostly RI fantasy, I'm afraid."
>
>   The counterpoint, if I have you right here, is what value does RI have?
>   Personally I would say a lot, it can serve as a midpoint between JI and temperament because JI relationships can be drawn, yet so can the sort of two-in-one substitutions of intervals for each other from temperament.  Did I mention Jacky Ligon (an excellent artist in many people's opinions) uses RI?
>
>   I doubt RI is "fantasy" and think it has many applications but...what are your thoughts (the list's thoughts)?

RI in general has a few uses. One is to set up omni-sync beating
chords, in which all of the partials in the chord as well as the notes
in the chord themselves all beating in some kind of harmonic ratio. On
the other hand, pretending that 8192/6561 is a distinct musical
interval from 5/4 and that it has a distinct musical function and that
all of the meaning of music lies somehow in "numbers" is a fantasy. I
don't think Margo and Oz were quite that far out with it, but that's
the general idea.

-Mike

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "cityoftheasleep" <igliashon@...> wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" <carl@> wrote:
> > It sounds like you could have studied them better yourself.
> > Ozan and Margo's maqam intonation stuff is mostly RI fantasy,
> > I'm afraid.
>
> I recall Ozan being interested in ET models more so than rational ones.

That's true. At least he never opposed temperaments and just intonation, which is a sensible attitude.

> And anyway when it comes to maqam I don't see how RI is any more of a fantasy than 24-ET.

I can't say better - unless you want to kill all the ancient fathers theoricians of arab, turkish and persian music all together, for the sake of one ultimate simplification - I let you figurate out which one.

> Neither are treated as any more than "landmarks".

Different cultures and different practices and different musicians will have their own different landmarks.
- - - -
Jacques

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Jacques Dudon" <fotosonix@...> wrote:

>
> > And anyway when it comes to maqam I don't see how RI is any
> > more of a fantasy than 24-ET.
>
> I can't say better

If you examine the available data, perhaps you will.

> unless you want to kill all the ancient fathers

You must be joking. I'll refer you to threads you should have
already read before making such comments.

-Carl

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" <carl@...> wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "cityoftheasleep" <igliashon@> wrote:
>
> > > It sounds like you could have studied them better yourself.
> > > Ozan and Margo's maqam intonation stuff is mostly RI fantasy,
> > > I'm afraid.
> >
> > I recall Ozan being interested in ET models more so than rational
> > ones. And anyway when it comes to maqam I don't see how RI is any
> > more of a fantasy than 24-ET. Neither are treated as any more
> > than "landmarks".
>
> Actually 24-ET is treated as a landmark. They have a notation
> based on it, and big companies make keyboards and tuners for it.

Right, that's what I said: it's a landmark, it's not an exhaustive or comprehensive model of the music. Perhaps analogous to the use of 12-TET in barbershop quartets. To say that maqam music is "in" 24-ET is no less of a fantasy than to say it's "in" some sort of RI. 24-ET is currently in vogue as a model of approximation, but historically RI was used in the same way, as Cris Forster has given ample documentation to show. The fact of the matter is that there is no evidence that maqam music performed on traditional instruments follows any tuning system rigidly, although I'm sure there are players now who have been taught to play 24-ET with great accuracy...just as there are string ensembles and choirs here in the West that have become adept at singing in 12-ET.

> This list has serious retrograde amnesia. I'm not going to get
> back into why the efforts of Margo et all to frame maqam
> intonation with RI is a complete fantasy.

And there's no need, because my only point is that the efforts to frame maqam intonation according to any discrete pitch set is a fantasy. Just because the 24-ET fantasy is currently the more popular one in the Arabic world does not make it not fantasy.

Furthermore, when you said (in the original facebook thread) "It sounds like 400 300 150 0 to me... ", I thought that it was impossible to "hear" in 24-ET that way? What happened to the "harmonic series detector" in the brain? I thought everything we hear was interpreted by the brain as either "noise" or the nearest simple ratios?

-Igs

-Igs

On Sat, Mar 12, 2011 at 5:51 PM, cityoftheasleep
<igliashon@...> wrote:
>
> Right, that's what I said: it's a landmark, it's not an exhaustive or comprehensive model of the music. Perhaps analogous to the use of 12-TET in barbershop quartets. To say that maqam music is "in" 24-ET is no less of a fantasy than to say it's "in" some sort of RI. 24-ET is currently in vogue as a model of approximation, but historically RI was used in the same way, as Cris Forster has given ample documentation to show. The fact of the matter is that there is no evidence that maqam music performed on traditional instruments follows any tuning system rigidly, although I'm sure there are players now who have been taught to play 24-ET with great accuracy...just as there are string ensembles and choirs here in the West that have become adept at singing in 12-ET.

I'm more interested, again, in figuring out what some linear
temperaments are that support maqam music. It looks like 81/80 and
121/120 vanishing are central "features" of this music, insofar as one
decides to map the neutral steps to 11-limit intervals.

I tend to hear something like 7/4 a lot in this music, and although I
thought that players were dynamically retuning C A^ -up- 29 cents to
get to 7/4, after looking more at the scales they use it now seems
like they're dynamically retuning C Bb -down-. Assuming that this
picture is right and I haven't made an error, there could be two ways
to think of this:

1) You could think of C-Bb approximating both 16/9 and 7/4, but with
some adaptive retuning going on.
2) Or, you could think of the difference between 16/9 and 7/4 as a
significant enough interval that it deserves to go into the coarse
structure and not the fine structure. This means that the players are
intentionally making use of a small diesic interval here, one that
they're aware of but that isn't notated.

Number 1 means that 64/63 vanishes, and hence 36/35 as well. This
would mean that the 81/80, 64/63, and 121/120 temperament is the maqam
linear temperament. It is currently unnamed as far as I know.

Number 2 leads to a few scenarios. It means that 36/35 doesn't vanish,
and that players consciously use this interval to hit 7-limit
intervals when they want. If you believe that they generally just
think in terms of a single diesis, such that 45/44 (the difference
between 11/9 and 5/4) and 36/35 get smushed together into a single
"diesis" sized interval, that means 176/175 vanishes. This is mohajira
temperament. This assumes that the temperament doesn't reflect the
notation, such that this diesis is notated in one case (between a
neutral third and a major third), and that it isn't in another case
(between the minor seventh and 7/4).

It also leads to the scenario that these two dieses are different, and
you get the 11-limit 81/80 and 121/120 planar temperament.

This is the line of inquiry that I was curious to explore, and this
massive 71-note MOS doesn't really have anything to do with that.

-Mike

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
> I'm more interested, again, in figuring out what some linear
> temperaments are that support maqam music. It looks like 81/80 and
> 121/120 vanishing are central "features" of this music, insofar as one
> decides to map the neutral steps to 11-limit intervals.

Have you read Ozan's thesis? Or Carl's objections to it?

What is the purpose of finding linear temperaments that support this music? What is important is the approximate melodic sizes of the intervals, not the ratios they approximate. Trying to bring linear temperaments into this seems nonsensical unless there's evidence that certain maqam melodies would in fact incur a comma pump in certain situations. However, as there's no evidence that any maqam intervals are meant to "approximate" anything, it seems like any ET with fine-enough step-sizes could approximate maqam music well enough. 24-ET seems to be the lower-limit of pitch resolution necessary, but I bet you could use 25-EDO just as well, or 26, or 27...etc.

Think of it this way: if you wanted to use the major scale in a purely-melodic way and not care about ratios, you could totally use EDOs not traditionally considered diatonic--14, 15, even 16-EDO, for instance--and still get across the same melodic "ideas". Temperaments only become important when ratios matter, but when you're playing predominantly monophonic music, what evidence is there that the ratios matter?

-Igs

Igs wrote:

> > > Neither are treated as any more
> > > than "landmarks".
> >
> > Actually 24-ET is treated as a landmark. They have a
> > notation based on it, and big companies make keyboards and
> > tuners for it.
>
> Right, that's what I said: it's a landmark, it's not an
> exhaustive or comprehensive model of the music.

Sorry, I misread.

I didn't say it was anything more than a landmark. I said
that any further explanation of the music is currently
lacking (and may not exist).

> To say that maqam music is "in" 24-ET is no less of a fantasy
> than to say it's "in" some sort of RI.

You know, Igs, I did more than say things. I posted data.
Have you looked at it? Read the threads of late last year?
Ever undertaken to analyze maqam music yourself?

> 24-ET is currently in vogue as a model of approximation, but
> historically RI was used in the same way, as Cris Forster has
> given ample documentation to show.

Um, no.

> > This list has serious retrograde amnesia. I'm not going to get
> > back into why the efforts of Margo et all to frame maqam
> > intonation with RI is a complete fantasy.
>
> And there's no need, because my only point is that the efforts
> to frame maqam intonation according to any discrete pitch set
> is a fantasy.

Nonsense! There are clearly scales in use. They clearly
employ quartertones. And lo and behold, they are actually
performed.

> Furthermore, when you said (in the original facebook thread)
> "It sounds like 400 300 150 0 to me... ", I thought that it
> was impossible to "hear" in 24-ET that way? What happened to
> the "harmonic series detector" in the brain? I thought
> everything we hear was interpreted by the brain as either
> "noise" or the nearest simple ratios?

??????????????????????????????????

-Carl

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:

> I'm more interested, again, in figuring out what some linear
> temperaments are that support maqam music. It looks like 81/80 and
> 121/120 vanishing are central "features" of this music, insofar
> as one decides to map the neutral steps to 11-limit intervals.

Sigh... I see you've decided to ignore Paul on this.

"11-limit intervals"... "temperament"... you haven't justified
the use of either of these terms.

-Carl

On Sat, Mar 12, 2011 at 7:34 PM, cityoftheasleep
<igliashon@...> wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
> > I'm more interested, again, in figuring out what some linear
> > temperaments are that support maqam music. It looks like 81/80 and
> > 121/120 vanishing are central "features" of this music, insofar as one
> > decides to map the neutral steps to 11-limit intervals.
>
> Have you read Ozan's thesis? Or Carl's objections to it?

I started reading it yesterday. Carl's objections to it I read before
I actually read the thesis.

> What is the purpose of finding linear temperaments that support this music?

LOL, here we go. You're right, Igs, there is no purpose. No purpose at all.

> What is important is the approximate melodic sizes of the intervals, not the ratios they approximate. Trying to bring linear temperaments into this seems nonsensical unless there's evidence that certain maqam melodies would in fact incur a comma pump in certain situations. However, as there's no evidence that any maqam intervals are meant to "approximate" anything, it seems like any ET with fine-enough step-sizes could approximate maqam music well enough. 24-ET seems to be the lower-limit of pitch resolution necessary, but I bet you could use 25-EDO just as well, or 26, or 27...etc.

You can do anything you want. I'm simply trying to fill in the
following analogy: meantone:12tet western music::xxxxxxxxxx:24tet
maqam music.

> Think of it this way: if you wanted to use the major scale in a purely-melodic way and not care about ratios, you could totally use EDOs not traditionally considered diatonic--14, 15, even 16-EDO, for instance--and still get across the same melodic "ideas". Temperaments only become important when ratios matter, but when you're playing predominantly monophonic music, what evidence is there that the ratios matter?

Because if you arpeggiate C E G, it sounds happy, and if you
arpeggiate C Eb G, it sounds sad.

-Mike

On Sat, Mar 12, 2011 at 8:18 PM, Carl Lumma <carl@...> wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
>
> > I'm more interested, again, in figuring out what some linear
> > temperaments are that support maqam music. It looks like 81/80 and
> > 121/120 vanishing are central "features" of this music, insofar
> > as one decides to map the neutral steps to 11-limit intervals.
>
> Sigh... I see you've decided to ignore Paul on this.

I don't see how this has anything at all to do with what Paul said. I
posted a clip in which I said that it sounded to me like it was Negri
tempered. I thought that I heard 5/4 split into 3 roughly equal parts.
I may have been wrong. What does that have to do with this?

> "11-limit intervals"... "temperament"... you haven't justified
> the use of either of these terms.

I mapped the neutral 7th to 11/6, and this is the resultant
temperament that emerges if you do so. What's the problem?

-Mike

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:

> You can do anything you want. I'm simply trying to fill in the
> following analogy: meantone:12tet western music::xxxxxxxxxx:24tet
> maqam music.

Carl has argued that if you look at actual maqam performance practice, 24 fits pretty well. The more nearly this is true, the more nearly he's likely to be wrong about the irrelevancy of tempering, it seems to me. If 24edo really is more or less what people are using, then it would not be surprising to see 81/80, 121/120 and 128/125 pop out of the woodwork (those, in fact, form a comma basis for 2.3.5.11 24et.) It's true that any such temperings would be less relevant absent important harmonic considerations, but they could emerge in other ways.

Of course this ignores the 7s you hear all over the place, which brings me back to the point that to talk about this in a way which makes sense, we need actual data.

On Sat, Mar 12, 2011 at 9:31 PM, genewardsmith
<genewardsmith@...> wrote:
>
> Carl has argued that if you look at actual maqam performance practice, 24 fits pretty well. The more nearly this is true, the more nearly he's likely to be wrong about the irrelevancy of tempering, it seems to me.

Because I think the argument being made is that since the music is
monophonic, you can't talk about harmonic relationships at all. This
means we're back to the whole priming/HE controversy, which is an
argument I don't feel like rehashing every time I post about any
random thing at all.

> If 24edo really is more or less what people are using, then it would not be surprising to see 81/80, 121/120 and 128/125 pop out of the woodwork (those, in fact, form a comma basis for 2.3.5.11 24et.)

Tempering out 81/80 is something that's present in the notation
system. Tempering out 121/120 is not, as C Dv Eb could also be written
C Db^ Eb. Is there any evidence to suggest that maqam musicians would
play these two lines differently? Is it taught that Db^ and Dv are
"different notes" in the same way that western musicians will say that
C# and Db are different notes? If so, then 121/120 isn't really being
tempered out.

> It's true that any such temperings would be less relevant absent important harmonic considerations, but they could emerge in other ways.

I agree. Not once have I heard this acknowledged from the other people
weighing in on the issue. And furthermore, there are brief moments of
duophony and the like even in the Bashir improvisation I posted, and
one of those is a minor seventh (not sure if it's actually 7/4 in the
moment I'm remembering though).

> Of course this ignores the 7s you hear all over the place, which brings me back to the point that to talk about this in a way which makes sense, we need actual data.

I'll wait for Carl to do the SPEAR analysis of the clip I posted.
Until then, I'll continue reading Oz's thesis and see where that gets
me.

-Mike

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
> > What is the purpose of finding linear temperaments that support this music?
>
> LOL, here we go. You're right, Igs, there is no purpose. No purpose at all.

God damn it, Mike. That wasn't a rhetorical question! I really want to know *why* you're asking these questions!

> You can do anything you want. I'm simply trying to fill in the
> following analogy: meantone:12tet western music::xxxxxxxxxx:24tet
> maqam music.

What makes that a valid analogy to fill in? 12-TET in the west came out of meantone, and meantone evolved out of specific ratio-based harmonic goals. How did the arabic world come to rely on 24-TET?

> Because if you arpeggiate C E G, it sounds happy, and if you
> arpeggiate C Eb G, it sounds sad.

Yes, sure, fine...but C E G sounds just as happy as 0-400-700 as it does 0-387-702 as it does 0-415-702 as it does 0-380-686 when you arpeggiate it. Tell me how ratios matter here.

-Igs

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "genewardsmith" <genewardsmith@...> wrote:

> Of course this ignores the 7s you hear all over the place, which brings me back to the point that to talk about this in a way which makes sense, we need actual data.
>

One interesting question is how well could Arabic maqam music be made in the 24-note hobbit of urania temperament, which tempers out 81/80 and 121/120:

http://xenharmonic.wikispaces.com/Didymus+rank+three+family#Urania

If Igs is right and you can make maqam music in any edo 24 and above, the answer to this might be "meh--OK, I guess". But if it seemed like it was working especially well, that might be a clue. Or we could give mohajira or this subgroup temperament:

http://xenharmonic.wikispaces.com/Chromatic+pairs#Mohaha

a shot. Are mohajira and/or related temperaments especially friendly to Arabic maqam practice, or this that idea baloney? I don't know. Who does, and how do they know it?

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" <carl@...> wrote:
> I didn't say it was anything more than a landmark. I said
> that any further explanation of the music is currently
> lacking (and may not exist).

I know you didn't. But a partial explanation is not the same as a full explanation.

> > To say that maqam music is "in" 24-ET is no less of a fantasy
> > than to say it's "in" some sort of RI.
>
> You know, Igs, I did more than say things. I posted data.
> Have you looked at it? Read the threads of late last year?
> Ever undertaken to analyze maqam music yourself?

I don't recall any of your data showing solid increments of 50 cents. And anyway to my knowledge you haven't analyzed more than a few pieces of maqam music, so I'd hardly call you an expert. The few people who have spent a good deal of time analyzing maqam music have evidently found 24-EDO lacking as a framework. If 24-EDO *was* sufficient to explain maqam music, why on Earth would people who study it professionally ignore this and insist on other more "fantastical" explanations? Shouldn't deeper study only reinforce more strongly your conclusion that 24-EDO explains maqam intonation?

For my part, I tend to give more credence to people who have done more research, especially in areas where I am largely ignorant. To that end, I hope you'll forgive me for trusting Cris Forster's, Ozan Yarman's, and Margo Schulter's conclusions over yours.

> Nonsense! There are clearly scales in use. They clearly
> employ quartertones. And lo and behold, they are actually
> performed.

Clearly? Really? If it's so clear, why is there so much debate?

> > Furthermore, when you said (in the original facebook thread)
> > "It sounds like 400 300 150 0 to me... ", I thought that it
> > was impossible to "hear" in 24-ET that way? What happened to
> > the "harmonic series detector" in the brain? I thought
> > everything we hear was interpreted by the brain as either
> > "noise" or the nearest simple ratios?
>
> ??????????????????????????????????

Don't give me that! How can an interval "sound like" 400 cents when 400 cents is heard as an approximation to 5/4? I have been under the impression from many things you yourself have said that we cannot perceptually identify intervals except as approximations to simple integer ratios. Are you now telling me that you can hear a melodic passage as steps of 24-ET, rather than as mistuned simple ratios?

-Igs

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "cityoftheasleep" <igliashon@...> wrote:

> I don't recall any of your data showing solid increments of 50 cents. And anyway to my knowledge you haven't analyzed more than a few pieces of maqam music, so I'd hardly call you an expert. The few people who have spent a good deal of time analyzing maqam music have evidently found 24-EDO lacking as a framework.

Ozan's focus is on Turkish maqam music, and I thought we were talking about Arabic. Chris Forster, whom you cite, I don't know about, but Margo seems to be using Medieval Islamic theory as a source of inspiration and ideas, which hardly seems relevant to the question. And since the 24edo framework was originally decided on by people with some qualifications to be considered experts and has been widely used since, I don't think your conclusion holds. Evidently, some people did and do like it.

> > Nonsense! There are clearly scales in use. They clearly
> > employ quartertones. And lo and behold, they are actually
> > performed.
>
> Clearly? Really? If it's so clear, why is there so much debate?

Where is your evidence there is very much debate about Arabic maqam music tuning?

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "genewardsmith" <genewardsmith@...> wrote:

> Carl has argued that if you look at actual maqam performance
> practice, 24 fits pretty well. The more nearly this is true,
> the more nearly he's likely to be wrong about the irrelevancy
> of tempering,

Do you actually listen to any of this stuff, or are you
just seeing nails? It is a *very* simple style at the level
of stuff that might bring in regular temperament.

> Of course this ignores the 7s you hear all over the place,
> which brings me back to the point that to talk about this in
> a way which makes sense, we need actual data.

I've heard very little just intonation. Ozan's data shows
some support for 7/4 and 7/6 but is far from conclusive.

It's a predominantly 3-limit regime, where scales are
constructed from tetrachords including quartertone alterations.
There are things going on at the performance level too, but
they seem to vary according to the instrument and stylist.
It is far from clear if there are any universals at this level
but I would certainly love to read serious proposals. Can Akkoc
took the right approach but he didn't uncover deep organizing
principles. I take that as mild evidence they don't exist.
What is certain is that continued refusal to abandon
inappropriate models like extended JI and regular temperament
practically guarantees we will never learn anything deeper
about this artform.

-Carl

On Sat, Mar 12, 2011 at 9:49 PM, cityoftheasleep
<igliashon@...> wrote:
>
> > LOL, here we go. You're right, Igs, there is no purpose. No purpose at all.
>
> God damn it, Mike. That wasn't a rhetorical question! I really want to know *why* you're asking these questions!

Because I'm a fan of the regular mapping paradigm, and because this is
one of the oldest "microtonal" traditions in the world, and because I
wanted to see if the theory could handle it.

> > You can do anything you want. I'm simply trying to fill in the
> > following analogy: meantone:12tet western music::xxxxxxxxxx:24tet
> > maqam music.
>
> What makes that a valid analogy to fill in? 12-TET in the west came out of meantone, and meantone evolved out of specific ratio-based harmonic goals. How did the arabic world come to rely on 24-TET?

What are you getting at? Can you just put it out there in plain English?

> > Because if you arpeggiate C E G, it sounds happy, and if you
> > arpeggiate C Eb G, it sounds sad.
>
> Yes, sure, fine...but C E G sounds just as happy as 0-400-700 as it does 0-387-702 as it does 0-415-702 as it does 0-380-686 when you arpeggiate it. Tell me how ratios matter here.

The same reason that 0-400-700 sounds similar to 0-415-702 and
0-380-686 when you play it all at once. They all approximate 4:5:6.
When you arpeggiate it, you don't have to deal with roughness and
beating, since the notes aren't played at the same time. Those don't
have anything to do with periodicity at all and never did.

-Mike

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" <carl@...> wrote:

> What is certain is that continued refusal to abandon
> inappropriate models like extended JI and regular temperament
> practically guarantees we will never learn anything deeper
> about this artform.

You seem to be saying 24edo works well, but the regular temperament paradigm would be a disaster. That doesn't make a lot of sense.

Igs wrote:

> I don't recall any of your data showing solid increments of
> 50 cents.

I've posted three examples so far showing solid intervals
of 150 cents, one of them within the past 48 hours.

> And anyway to my knowledge you haven't analyzed more than a
> few pieces of maqam music, so I'd hardly call you an expert.

Around here I'm a damn Nobel laureate on maqam intonation,
which unfortunately isn't saying anything.

> If 24-EDO *was* sufficient to explain maqam music, why on
> Earth would people who study it professionally ignore this
> and insist on other more "fantastical" explanations?

I'm sure I don't have to point out the fallacy you're
implying here.

> For my part, I tend to give more credence to people who have
> done more research, especially in areas where I am largely
> ignorant. To that end, I hope you'll forgive me for trusting
> Cris Forster's, Ozan Yarman's, and Margo Schulter's conclusions
> over yours.

If you have something to add to my detailed response to their
stuff, posted here last year, let 'er rip.

> Clearly? Really? If it's so clear, why is there so
> much debate?

There isn't any debate. I hope there will be, but frankly I'm
not holding my breath.

> > > Furthermore, when you said (in the original facebook thread)
> > > "It sounds like 400 300 150 0 to me... ", I thought that it
> > > was impossible to "hear" in 24-ET that way? What happened to
> > > the "harmonic series detector" in the brain? I thought
> > > everything we hear was interpreted by the brain as either
> > > "noise" or the nearest simple ratios?
> >
> > ??????????????????????????????????
>
> Don't give me that! How can an interval "sound like" 400 cents
> when 400 cents is heard as an approximation to 5/4?

You're conflating harmonic and melodic listening. Trained
recognition of quantitative values with naive perception
of qualia. Just for starters.

-Carl

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "genewardsmith" <genewardsmith@...> wrote:

> You seem to be saying 24edo works well, but the regular temperament paradigm would be a disaster. That doesn't make a lot of sense.

I should add to that, you also indicate 2 and 3 are in heavy use. So we have the primes 2 and 3, we have 24edo, but attempting to explore if the music could be understood via the regular temperament paradigm would cause the Sun to explode. Well, what do I care? Since the beginning of time man has yearned to destroy the Sun.

On Sat, Mar 12, 2011 at 9:55 PM, genewardsmith
<genewardsmith@...> wrote:
>
> One interesting question is how well could Arabic maqam music be made in the 24-note hobbit of urania temperament, which tempers out 81/80 and 121/120:
>
> http://xenharmonic.wikispaces.com/Didymus+rank+three+family#Urania

Can you post that hobbit please?

What were your thoughts on the 81/80, 121/120, and 64/63 temperament?

> If Igs is right and you can make maqam music in any edo 24 and above, the answer to this might be "meh--OK, I guess". But if it seemed like it was working especially well, that might be a clue. Or we could give mohajira or this subgroup temperament:
>
> http://xenharmonic.wikispaces.com/Chromatic+pairs#Mohaha
>
> a shot. Are mohajira and/or related temperaments especially friendly to Arabic maqam practice, or this that idea baloney? I don't know. Who does, and how do they know it?

One thing I'm interested in is - all of the maqams used are generally
near-MOS's of mohajira, or mohaha, or whatever. At one point you
called them MODMOS's. (Is there a difference between near-MOS's and
MODMOS's?)

Anyway, is there any way we can study these scales to find a way to
index the near-MOS's of a temperament, and in so doing come to a
better understanding of the scales that a temperament produces?

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "genewardsmith" <genewardsmith@...> wrote:
> You seem to be saying 24edo works well, but the regular
> temperament paradigm would be a disaster. That doesn't make
> a lot of sense.

?

Again, it's a melodic style based on tetrachordal scales.
Melodic symmetry at 2/1 and 3/1 are potentially organizing
principles. The intervals used in the tetrachords are
doubtless of lesser importance. Nowhere does 24-ET occur;
it is a short way to say that these tetrachords tend to be
built of roughly quartertone steps.

I guess I should wait for something more concrete before
trying to debunk it, since that will make it easier for me.
Neither Paul nor I can see the justification for regular
temperament. At the outside you might find the
Pythagorean limma.

-Carl

On Sun, Mar 13, 2011 at 1:14 AM, Carl Lumma <carl@...> wrote:
>
>
> Again, it's a melodic style based on tetrachordal scales.
> Melodic symmetry at 2/1 and 3/1 are potentially organizing
> principles. The intervals used in the tetrachords are
> doubtless of lesser importance. Nowhere does 24-ET occur;
> it is a short way to say that these tetrachords tend to be
> built of roughly quartertone steps.

You're claiming now that not even 5 is involved? Like the period being
1200 cents you're OK with mapping to 2/1, and the width of each
tetrachord you're okay with mapping to 4/3 and 3/2, but you can't map
major thirds to 5/4 and minor thirds to 6/5? You can't map the Ajam
trichord to 8:9:10? How do you justify this?

-Mike

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" <carl@...> wrote:

> Neither Paul nor I can see the justification for regular
> temperament. At the outside you might find the
> Pythagorean limma.

One question I would ask is if there is any justification for dragging 11 in along with 2 and 3. 24edo suggests it, and the use of neutral thirds suggests 243/242 tempering. It might simply come down to a matter of a language you could use if so inclined.

Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:

> because this is one of the oldest "microtonal" traditions in
> the world, and because I wanted to see if the theory could
> handle it.

This also needs some debunking. Maqam music is old, yes.
It has its origins in the music of ancient Greece. But it did
not stand still since then, and understanding its evolution is
made difficult by the fact that it was passed down only by oral
tradition until, basically, the 20th century. With the collapse
of the Ottoman empire, a great deal about the form was probably
lost forever. In fact it was poorly documented even with
recordings until the 1990s or so. In short, the maqam music we
hear today is already something like listening to Horowitz play
William Byrd, cubed. Is it "authentic"? Yes. Does it
represent a 1,000-year science of microtonal intonation? No.

-Carl

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:

> > Again, it's a melodic style based on tetrachordal scales.
> > Melodic symmetry at 2/1 and 3/1 are potentially organizing
> > principles. The intervals used in the tetrachords are
> > doubtless of lesser importance. Nowhere does 24-ET occur;
> > it is a short way to say that these tetrachords tend to be
> > built of roughly quartertone steps.
>
> You're claiming now that not even 5 is involved?

I've heard some 5/4s but no reliable tendency to hit them.
Have you? And even if there were, they could hit them in
any one of 100 ways and make ditty in the process.
There's no need for temperament. -Carl

On Sun, Mar 13, 2011 at 1:32 AM, Carl Lumma <carl@...> wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
>
> > > Again, it's a melodic style based on tetrachordal scales.
> > > Melodic symmetry at 2/1 and 3/1 are potentially organizing
> > > principles. The intervals used in the tetrachords are
> > > doubtless of lesser importance. Nowhere does 24-ET occur;
> > > it is a short way to say that these tetrachords tend to be
> > > built of roughly quartertone steps.
> >
> > You're claiming now that not even 5 is involved?
>
> I've heard some 5/4s but no reliable tendency to hit them.
> Have you? And even if there were, they could hit them in
> any one of 100 ways and make ditty in the process.
> There's no need for temperament. -Carl

400 cents is an approximate 5/4. From what you wrote above, I assume
that you think that 400 cents doesn't count as a 5/4 when it's being
played melodically. This is equivalent to saying that the field of
attraction for 5/4 is much smaller for a melodic interval than a
harmonic interval. If this is actually what you're saying, I'd like
some evidence to back this up.

You also have no problem in mapping 700 cents to 3/2, but you do have
a problem in mapping 400 cents to 5/4. I'd like to know why 3 gets
special treatment.

Lastly, even in the Bashir piece I posted, there are brief moments
where Bashir plays two notes at once, or where Omar plays a
counterline to Munir. I haven't noticed a radical shift in my
perception of the music when this happens. There are even times when
they play the full neutral triad all at once, although it's brief.

-Mike

"genewardsmith" <genewardsmith@...> wrote:

> > Neither Paul nor I can see the justification for regular
> > temperament. At the outside you might find the
> > Pythagorean limma.
>
> One question I would ask is if there is any justification for
> dragging 11 in along with 2 and 3.

I can't see any. There's absolutely no reason to prefer
11/9 in a monophonic context when any interval of about that
size will do. The strongest argument for it is that 11/9 is
not a concordance, but in fact near to a unique discordance
which might be identified. Maybe, but I don't think it makes
sense to call that 11/9 either. Moreover, a cursory
examination of the pitches actually performed shows they don't
hit the same ones with regularity, when you start peering above
quartertone resolution. Read Akkoc if you don't believe me,
or simply look at the plots I've posted. The point of it is
to improvise simple figures around a scale structure and make
a nice game out of the intonation as you do. Variety seems to
be of higher value than hitting specific targets. Margo
said so. (She also said she used RI intervals strictly as
measuring devices, following ancients who had no alternative,
but then lapsed into ratio romanticism when she thought
I wasn't looking.)

-Carl

Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:

> 400 cents is an approximate 5/4.

Not necessarily, no.

> From what you wrote above, I assume that you think that
> 400 cents doesn't count as a 5/4 when it's being played
> melodically.

It may, it may not.

> This is equivalent to saying that the field of
> attraction for 5/4 is much smaller for a melodic interval
> than a harmonic interval.

It's equivalent to saying fields of attraction aren't the
One True Force Governing All Music.

> I'd like some evidence to back this up.

Would you now! I'd like some evidence to back up anything
you're suggesting, or even a plausible argument.

> You also have no problem in mapping 700 cents to 3/2,
> but you do have a problem in mapping 400 cents to 5/4.
> I'd like to know why 3 gets special treatment.

Where did I "map" 700 cents to 3/2?

I assume they tune, for instance, the open strings as nearly
to 3/2 as they care to, and no more nearly to anything else.
The scales are tetrachordal, which certainly suggests a role
for 3:2. I don't know of any 5:4-period scales among the
maqamat - do you?

> Lastly, even in the Bashir piece I posted, there are brief
> moments where Bashir plays two notes at once, or where Omar
> plays a counterline to Munir.

Yes. Are they functional? No.

-Carl

I'll add that I've read a lot about the neutral 3rd but
haven't heard many examples of it. I'd dearly like to, so
I can run them through Melodyne, so please provide pointers
if you have them. What I see a lot of are neutral 2nds
(150 cents). -C.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" <carl@...> wrote:
>
> "genewardsmith" <genewardsmith@> wrote:
>
> > > Neither Paul nor I can see the justification for regular
> > > temperament. At the outside you might find the
> > > Pythagorean limma.
> >
> > One question I would ask is if there is any justification for
> > dragging 11 in along with 2 and 3.
>
> I can't see any. There's absolutely no reason to prefer
> 11/9 in a monophonic context when any interval of about that
> size will do. The strongest argument for it is that 11/9 is
> not a concordance, but in fact near to a unique discordance
> which might be identified. Maybe, but I don't think it makes
> sense to call that 11/9 either. Moreover, a cursory
> examination of the pitches actually performed shows they don't
> hit the same ones with regularity, when you start peering above
> quartertone resolution. Read Akkoc if you don't believe me,
> or simply look at the plots I've posted. The point of it is
> to improvise simple figures around a scale structure and make
> a nice game out of the intonation as you do. Variety seems to
> be of higher value than hitting specific targets. Margo
> said so. (She also said she used RI intervals strictly as
> measuring devices, following ancients who had no alternative,
> but then lapsed into ratio romanticism when she thought
> I wasn't looking.)
>
> -Carl
>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" <carl@...> wrote:
> I've posted three examples so far showing solid intervals
> of 150 cents, one of them within the past 48 hours.

150 cents, yes, but among other intervals. But that's not the issue, because you yourself have stated that 24-ET accounts only for the coarse structure, and that there is a fine structure which remains unaccounted for. I don't understand why you're so hot for 24-ET, really.

> Around here I'm a damn Nobel laureate on maqam intonation,
> which unfortunately isn't saying anything.

Exactly.

> > If 24-EDO *was* sufficient to explain maqam music, why on
> > Earth would people who study it professionally ignore this
> > and insist on other more "fantastical" explanations?
>
> I'm sure I don't have to point out the fallacy you're
> implying here.

Yeah, I know it's a fallacy. But I'd still like to know why you think the few people who have researched maqam music who've posted here would reject 24-ET for any reason other than because it fails to fit the data.

> If you have something to add to my detailed response to their
> stuff, posted here last year, let 'er rip.

As I recall, your "detailed response" was mostly concerned with disproving their RI thinking, not proving that 24-ET is a better model. It is a pity that they seemed too insulted by your criticism to attempt to refute your claims with the data they'd gathered. You've analyzed a few pieces and found that they loosely conform to a 24-ET skeleton. I don't know what data sources they've had access to, but you seem to be saying either their data is wrong or they are mentally deficient and cannot recognize a clear 24-ET basis in all the data they've examined.

> There isn't any debate. I hope there will be, but frankly I'm
> not holding my breath.

There's no one left to debate!

> > > > Furthermore, when you said (in the original facebook thread)
> > > > "It sounds like 400 300 150 0 to me... ", I thought that it
> > > > was impossible to "hear" in 24-ET that way? What happened to
> > > > the "harmonic series detector" in the brain? I thought
> > > > everything we hear was interpreted by the brain as either
> > > > "noise" or the nearest simple ratios?
> > >
> > > ??????????????????????????????????
> >
> > Don't give me that! How can an interval "sound like" 400 cents
> > when 400 cents is heard as an approximation to 5/4?
>
> You're conflating harmonic and melodic listening. Trained
> recognition of quantitative values with naive perception
> of qualia. Just for starters.

Qualia? QUALIA? Oh god. I'm ending my part in this discussion if you're going to start talking about qualia.

-Igs

On Sun, Mar 13, 2011 at 1:51 AM, Carl Lumma <carl@...> wrote:
>
> > From what you wrote above, I assume that you think that
> > 400 cents doesn't count as a 5/4 when it's being played
> > melodically.
>
> It may, it may not.

Big deal. 435 cents "may or may not" count as 9/7 in different musical
contexts as well. This doesn't stop anyone from applying a superpyth
mapping to the 27-tet diatonic scale.

> > This is equivalent to saying that the field of
> > attraction for 5/4 is much smaller for a melodic interval
> > than a harmonic interval.
>
> It's equivalent to saying fields of attraction aren't the
> One True Force Governing All Music.

Can you please say whatever point it is you're trying to make in
clear, concise English? The blind man describing an elephant approach
isn't working here.

> > I'd like some evidence to back this up.
>
> Would you now! I'd like some evidence to back up anything
> you're suggesting, or even a plausible argument.

Sure. First off, you'd normally be right to suggest that the burden of
proof is on me when I claim that previously sounded notes can bias the
periodicity processing of currently sounded ones. However, in this
case, there are only two options: that they do, and that they don't.
This means that in this case, to play devil's advocate for science
against one model actually implies certain things from the other
model, and these are probably testable by experiment. To assume that
no periodicity processing takes place for melodic intervals isn't just
skepticism about the hypothesis that it does; it's actually a new
hypothesis that implies tangible predictions, and I find those
outlandish. Until one of us devises an experiment to test these, both
models are on equally shaky footing.

I'd be happy enough to leave it at that and didn't even think to bring
up the issue at all. However, you are now asserting your model as a
reason for why I can't say that 1050 cents can be mapped to 11/6. Your
main point is that 11/6 doesn't produce a clear fundamental. To which
I'd say that 9/7 doesn't produce the proper fundamental in 27-tet's
diatonic scale either. In this case, 11/6 is a simple interval around
the size of 1050 cents, so I chose to map it to that. You could also
map any interval of around the same size to 1050 and any of those
would be a decent mapping. 11/6 is the simplest one and so I'd assume
it takes precedence.

Furthermore about your actual model - you think that psychoacoustics
determines the quality of a chord when the notes are played in unison,
as per our infamous debate a half a year ago about mavila. However,
you think that when these notes aren't played in unison, the same
psychoacoustic factors no longer play a role. This means that a
separate mechanism would have to be responsible for C-Eb-G sounding
sad when arpeggiated vs when it's played together.

The following are the things that you have to believe if you're not
willing to believe that the same mechanism is responsible for both:

- There are two mechanisms at play here, but the two mechanisms yield
pretty much identical results, since C-Eb-G sounds sad both if it's
arpeggiated or if played simultaneously. But they're apparently still
two separate mechanisms.
- It's impossible to play on an organ with only drawbars 1 and 3, and
slowly drop the 1 out such that the lone drawbar remaining still
sounds like 3/1, so all of the organ players who have noticed this
don't exist. This is because previously sounded notes don't influence
the periodicity analysis of the current note.
- No periodicity processing isn't occurring in this video,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngoE1hreStc, except for with each
individual note taken in isolation.

These are all of the things that you're forced to believe when you
don't go with the simpler, more obvious model, which is that the two
mechanisms are actually just one mechanism. This means that
arpeggiated minor chords sound sad for the same reason that minor
chords played together sound sad.

Furthermore, you are now attempting to place restrictions on me from
your model, which seems in my view less likely than the alternative.
Why should I believe any of this just because you're unconvinced that
previously sounded notes bias the auditory processing of currently
sounded notes? Just "being unconvinced" doesn't mean anything if there
are only two options.

> > You also have no problem in mapping 700 cents to 3/2,
> > but you do have a problem in mapping 400 cents to 5/4.
> > I'd like to know why 3 gets special treatment.
>
> Where did I "map" 700 cents to 3/2?

You "mapped" 700 cents to 3/2 and 500 cents to 4/3 when you said that
maqam music was in 24-tet and also that 3/2 and 4/3 are involved
because of tetrachordal symmetry.

> I assume they tune, for instance, the open strings as nearly
> to 3/2 as they care to, and no more nearly to anything else.
> The scales are tetrachordal, which certainly suggests a role
> for 3:2. I don't know of any 5:4-period scales among the
> maqamat - do you?

I don't know of any 3:2 period scales either. I also don't know why
only "periods" are allowed to be mapped today. I do know that there
are plenty of trichords that I see thrown around all over the place,
and a few are listed here, with outer interval 5/4:
http://www.maqamworld.com/ajnas.html

> > Lastly, even in the Bashir piece I posted, there are brief
> > moments where Bashir plays two notes at once, or where Omar
> > plays a counterline to Munir.
>
> Yes. Are they functional? No.

So now we can't apply a regular map to harmony unless it's
"functional" harmony too? I hope by "functional" here you don't mean
what I know functional to mean, which is tonal harmony.

-Mike

On Sun, Mar 13, 2011 at 1:57 AM, Carl Lumma <carl@...> wrote:
>
> I'll add that I've read a lot about the neutral 3rd but
> haven't heard many examples of it. I'd dearly like to, so
> I can run them through Melodyne, so please provide pointers
> if you have them. What I see a lot of are neutral 2nds
> (150 cents). -C.

Here in the same Munir Bashir piece:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3G7VW1RMks&t=4m16s

He plays the descending line and ends it with the arpeggiated F' C' Av F.

-Mike

On Sun, Mar 13, 2011 at 3:48 AM, cityoftheasleep
<igliashon@...> wrote:
>
> 150 cents, yes, but among other intervals. But that's not the issue, because you yourself have stated that 24-ET accounts only for the coarse structure, and that there is a fine structure which remains unaccounted for. I don't understand why you're so hot for 24-ET, really.
//snip
> Yeah, I know it's a fallacy. But I'd still like to know why you think the few people who have researched maqam music who've posted here would reject 24-ET for any reason other than because it fails to fit the data.

What I'd like to know is why you are assuming opposite positions in
your responses to me and your responses to Carl.

To Carl, you admit that 24-ET and RI are both nothing more than
"landmarks." You then say that 24-ET is a bad landmark because you
don't believe it fits the data. Well, great! I don't either, and so
I'm trying to find a better "landmark."

You claim that trying to frame maqam music as being confined to any
discrete pitch set is a "fantasy," and I agree. So is trying to frame
the playing of a string quartet to 12-tet.

You also claim that 24-ET is a bit too rough of a fantasy to be really
accurate, and I also agree. I also think that the 79 note MOS, as a
fantasy, is more accurate, but a bit too complex to serve as a simple
conceptual framework.

So it sounds like we're on the same page! Sweet. So, I set out to find
a middle of the road fantasy that is both simple and accurate.
Something ideally between rank-whatever RI and rank-1 24-ET would be
great. And so far I've thrown out a few simple rank-3 and rank-2 ideas
just to get feedback on them.

Why, by your discussions with Carl, I'd expect you to be positively
enthralled! Except this is your response.

> What is the purpose of finding linear temperaments that support this music? What is important is the approximate melodic sizes of the intervals, not the ratios they approximate. Trying to bring linear temperaments into this seems nonsensical unless there's evidence that certain maqam melodies would in fact incur a comma pump in certain situations.

And so on and so on and so on. Does that apply to 24-ET too? Is 24-ET
only a valid fantasy if there's evidence that certain maqam melodies
would incur some 24-ET based comma pump? I sure hope not. How about
the 79-note MOS? Do we need to see some comma pump need to get thrown
in there too?

So what the frig? Are you basically just playing devil's advocate
here? Why would you take two opposite positions right in the middle of
the same public thread? And then there's also this:

> However, as there's no evidence that any maqam intervals are meant to "approximate" anything, it seems like any ET with fine-enough step-sizes could approximate maqam music well enough. 24-ET seems to be the lower-limit of pitch resolution necessary, but I bet you could use 25-EDO just as well, or 26, or 27...etc.

You think that 26-tet is applicable for maqam music? There's no
neutral third in 26-tet at all. There's also no neutral second.
There's no neutral second in 27-tet either.

-Mike

"cityoftheasleep" <igliashon@...> wrote:

> > I've posted three examples so far showing solid intervals
> > of 150 cents, one of them within the past 48 hours.
>
> 150 cents, yes, but among other intervals.

?

> I don't understand why you're so hot for 24-ET, really.

I'll stop saying 24 if you will, since no maqam piece I've
ever heard has a course structure that comes close to using
24 tones. The reason I'm hot for it is because it crops up
with alarming frequency and accuracy when I run recordings
through the grinder. Oh yeah, and that's what the musicians
say they're using.

> Yeah, I know it's a fallacy. But I'd still like to know why
> you think the few people who have researched maqam music
> who've posted here would reject 24-ET for any reason other
> than because it fails to fit the data.

I'm not sure who you're talking about but at the moment I'm
the only one here with anything resembling data.

> > If you have something to add to my detailed response to
> > their stuff, posted here last year, let 'er rip.
>
> As I recall, your "detailed response" was mostly concerned
> with disproving their RI thinking, not proving that 24-ET is
> a better model. It is a pity that they seemed too insulted
> by your criticism to attempt to refute your claims with the
> data they'd gathered.

Among them, only Ozan had anything resembling data, and his
coauthors gathered it. I posted detailed analysis of that
paper, his thesis, Cris Forster's translation of Al-Farabi
and some - oh, right - data. I also posted links to maqam
music theory sites that say they use quartertones.. and write
the scales with quartertone accidentals.

> you seem to be saying either their data is wrong

What data, exactly, are you referring to?

> > There isn't any debate. I hope there will be, but frankly
> > I'm not holding my breath.
>
> There's no one left to debate!

Nobody interested in a debate is gone, and nobody interested
is barred.

>>>>> Furthermore, when you said (in the original facebook
>>>>> thread) "It sounds like 400 300 150 0 to me... ", I
>>>>> thought that it was impossible to "hear" in 24-ET that
>>>>> way? What happened to the "harmonic series detector"
>>>>> in the brain? I thought everything we hear was
>>>>> interpreted by the brain as either "noise" or the
>>>>> nearest simple ratios?
[snip]
>> You're conflating harmonic and melodic listening. Trained
>> recognition of quantitative values with naive perception
>> of qualia. Just for starters.
>
> Qualia? QUALIA? Oh god. I'm ending my part in this discussion
> if you're going to start talking about qualia.

You shouldn't end it before you identify the categorical
misunderstandings suggested by your comment. How can I help?

-Carl

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "cityoftheasleep" <igliashon@...> wrote:

> Yeah, I know it's a fallacy. But I'd still like to know why you think the few people who have researched maqam music who've posted here would reject 24-ET for any reason other than because it fails to fit the data.

I would be thrilled- absolutely bouncing off the walls ecstatic- if the "maqam musics" that turn me on could be well approximated in 24 equal divisions of the octave. I so, so, so wish it to be true. Notating in 24 is easy as pie, and read by gobs of people, how nice that would be!

Sadly, even the most obvious intervals to be heard in various maqam musics which tickle my fancy, such as 7:6 (or close enough for me to identify it as such) are profoundly NOT approximated in 24. Nor is the "Turkish third" which came fretted on the saz I bought in Istanbul (at 270 cents, with finger pressure a bit higher, giving an interval described by Ozan many times, what a suprise). About 275 cents? Maximally NOT 24-tET.

Now, with 34, 36, 41, 53 and 72 I can get tons of sastifying intervals that have the "lilt" I hear in the maqam musics that grease my axle. And waddaya know, these are tunings acknowledged by Ozan as good and functional.

There are maqam pieces that are squarely 24-tET. Haven't heard any that spark my leaf-pile but it could happen.

On Sun, Mar 13, 2011 at 7:16 AM, lobawad <lobawad@...> wrote:
>
> Now, with 34, 36, 41, 53 and 72 I can get tons of sastifying intervals that have the "lilt" I hear in the maqam musics that grease my axle. And waddaya know, these are tunings acknowledged by Ozan as good and functional.

Not a fan of 31-tet? I think it might have some use as it contains
neutral thirds that perfectly subdivide the fifth, neutral seconds
that perfectly subdivide the minor third, and also 7-limit intervals.

But how on earth are you using 36-tet, if there's no neutral third nor
a neutral second...?

-Mike

None of these tunings cover "all" tetrachords or approximations thereof. Each has a variety of different flavors to offer.

I'm a fan of 31 equal divisions of the octave. There is a huge Pythagorean element to "maqam music" though, so the tunings with near-pure fourths and fifths take precedence.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
>
> On Sun, Mar 13, 2011 at 7:16 AM, lobawad <lobawad@...> wrote:
> >
> > Now, with 34, 36, 41, 53 and 72 I can get tons of sastifying intervals that have the "lilt" I hear in the maqam musics that grease my axle. And waddaya know, these are tunings acknowledged by Ozan as good and functional.
>
> Not a fan of 31-tet? I think it might have some use as it contains
> neutral thirds that perfectly subdivide the fifth, neutral seconds
> that perfectly subdivide the minor third, and also 7-limit intervals.
>
> But how on earth are you using 36-tet, if there's no neutral third nor
> a neutral second...?
>
> -Mike
>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
>
> Can you post that hobbit please?

Sure; first I will need to compute it.

> What were your thoughts on the 81/80, 121/120, and 64/63 temperament?

I have no idea. If someone knew how to test the suitability of these proposals it would be great.

> One thing I'm interested in is - all of the maqams used are generally
> near-MOS's of mohajira, or mohaha, or whatever. At one point you
> called them MODMOS's. (Is there a difference between near-MOS's and
> MODMOS's?)

As far as I know they are the same.

> Anyway, is there any way we can study these scales to find a way to
> index the near-MOS's of a temperament, and in so doing come to a
> better understanding of the scales that a temperament produces?

Just generate all of them within a certain span?

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "cityoftheasleep" <igliashon@...> wrote:

> Qualia? QUALIA? Oh god. I'm ending my part in this discussion if you're going to start talking about qualia.

I thought your thesis was in the philosophy of science? Which means you can relax about qualia. What was your topic, anyway?

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
> What I'd like to know is why you are assuming opposite positions in
> your responses to me and your responses to Carl.

I'm not. My position is that none of us have the remotest understanding of what's really going on with maqam music, and that the whole idea of trying to apply these Western temperament-based models of pitch organization to it is inappropriate. OTOH, CARL seems to be taking two simultaneous opposing viewpoints, one which asserts 24-EDO is sufficient to describe maqam music, and the other that asserts there is something going on with the "fine structure" that we're not grasping, and that we are using the wrong tools (JI, temperament, etc.) in order to attempt to grasp it.

> To Carl, you admit that 24-ET and RI are both nothing more than
> "landmarks." You then say that 24-ET is a bad landmark because you
> don't believe it fits the data. Well, great! I don't either, and so
> I'm trying to find a better "landmark."

All I can say to this is that the landmarks seem to work well enough for actual maqam musicians, so what need is there for you to find a better one?

> You claim that trying to frame maqam music as being confined to any
> discrete pitch set is a "fantasy," and I agree. So is trying to frame
> the playing of a string quartet to 12-tet.
>
> You also claim that 24-ET is a bit too rough of a fantasy to be really
> accurate, and I also agree. I also think that the 79 note MOS, as a
> fantasy, is more accurate, but a bit too complex to serve as a simple
> conceptual framework.

"Too rough of a fantasy to be accurate"...Mike, that is not my claim. My claim is that it IS a fantasy BECAUSE it is inaccurate. I don't think a better fantasy is needed, I just think it should be acknowledge that maqam music does not adhere perfectly to a 50-cent grid, that there are significant deviations from that.

> So it sounds like we're on the same page! Sweet. So, I set out to find
> a middle of the road fantasy that is both simple and accurate.
> Something ideally between rank-whatever RI and rank-1 24-ET would be
> great. And so far I've thrown out a few simple rank-3 and rank-2 ideas
> just to get feedback on them.

I'm not saying you're not going to find some temperaments that will "work" for maqam music. But I mean...what's in it for you to find them? If you want to learn to play maqam music, you should get yourself an oud or a saz and find a teacher or some good instructional videos. There's a whole musical logic to maqam music and I think understanding *that* would be a better starting place than trying to figure out a temperament that approximates the intonation used by a given oud player. If you're not interested in learning to play maqam music, what on earth are you going to do with a temperament that approximates a maqam intonation?

> And so on and so on and so on. Does that apply to 24-ET too? Is 24-ET
> only a valid fantasy if there's evidence that certain maqam melodies
> would incur some 24-ET based comma pump?

24-ET is not, of necessity, a temperament. It contains many temperaments within it but it does not have to be treated as any of them. It's just a tuning.

> You think that 26-tet is applicable for maqam music? There's no
> neutral third in 26-tet at all.

369 cents is a type of neutral 3rd.

> There's also no neutral second.

138 cents is a type of neutral 2nd.

> There's no neutral second in 27-tet either.

Either 133 cents or 177 cents could be plausibly used as a neutral 2nd in some contexts. Neutral 2nds are devilishly tricky to hear. When I play in 16-EDO, I often hear them as semitones, even when I watch my fingers spanning two frets.

Think you could tell the difference? How about I post some melodic passages in a few different EDOs and you can tell me which one is which based on the presence or absence of these intervals? How about...one in 26, one in 24, and one in 36? They won't be the same phrases, because that would be easy enough to tell simply via comparative listening. What do you say?

-Igs

> -Mike
>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "genewardsmith" <genewardsmith@...> wrote:
> I thought your thesis was in the philosophy of science? Which means you can relax about
> qualia. What was your topic, anyway?

At UC Santa Cruz, philosophy majors do a senior seminar rather than a senior thesis, which amounts to roughly the same amount of reading/writing but produces a series of weekly topical papers rather than a single cohesive work. My senior seminar topic was "The Emotions", so more "philosophy of mind" than anything else. But I studied philosophy of science, advanced symbolic logic, existentialism, aesthetics, modern philosophy (the rationalists and imperialists), a bit of ancient Greek philosophy, some postmodernism, and also a seminar on Nietzsche (among other things). I had a pretty well-rounded undergrad education. If I had gone on to get a graduate degree, I'm not sure what I would have focused on...probably philosophy of mind. I'm a big fan of Daniel C. Dennett and Douglas Hofstadter. Hence my apoplexy at the mention of the word "qualia".

-Igs

"cityoftheasleep" <igliashon@...> wrote:

> I'm a big fan of Daniel C. Dennett and Douglas Hofstadter. Hence
> my apoplexy at the mention of the word "qualia".
> -Igs

I just meant a gestalt, or sensation. They're no trouble
because subjects report them with some uniformity. Here's
something old I wrote about the so-called qualia *problem*,
which is different
http://lumma.org/microwave/#2003.05.02
and actually just a repackaging of the 'solipsism problem'
http://lumma.org/microwave/#2003.05.07

-Carl

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" <carl@...> wrote:
>
> "cityoftheasleep" <igliashon@> wrote:
>
> > I'm a big fan of Daniel C. Dennett and Douglas Hofstadter. Hence
> > my apoplexy at the mention of the word "qualia".
> > -Igs
>
> I just meant a gestalt, or sensation. They're no trouble
> because subjects report them with some uniformity. Here's
> something old I wrote about the so-called qualia *problem*,
> which is different
> http://lumma.org/microwave/#2003.05.02
> and actually just a repackaging of the 'solipsism problem'
> http://lumma.org/microwave/#2003.05.07
>

Okay, I am mollified.

Now back to my question: this is the first I've heard of being able to hear melodies quantitatively in terms of something like cents. I am not objecting to this possibility, I am merely stating that I've never heard you speak about this model of musical perception. I have only heard you talk about the "harmonic series detector" in the brain and presumed that this model extended to melodic perception, such that melodies would be perceptually reduced to the nearest partial of some fundamental (or something along those lines). I'm not educated enough in the field to have an opinion on how melodic perception works, but I'm curious to know what you think. How is it that you can identify a melodic step of 400 cents, but not a harmonic interval of 400 cents?

-Igs

On Sun, Mar 13, 2011 at 1:45 PM, cityoftheasleep
<igliashon@...> wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
> > What I'd like to know is why you are assuming opposite positions in
> > your responses to me and your responses to Carl.
>
> I'm not. My position is that none of us have the remotest understanding of what's really going on with maqam music, and that the whole idea of trying to apply these Western temperament-based models of pitch organization to it is inappropriate.

How on earth is regular mapping "Western"-based? Just because we're
western people?

> > To Carl, you admit that 24-ET and RI are both nothing more than
> > "landmarks." You then say that 24-ET is a bad landmark because you
> > don't believe it fits the data. Well, great! I don't either, and so
> > I'm trying to find a better "landmark."
>
> All I can say to this is that the landmarks seem to work well enough for actual maqam musicians, so what need is there for you to find a better one?

This is another one of those fallacies that I assume doesn't need to
be pointed out.

> > You claim that trying to frame maqam music as being confined to any
> > discrete pitch set is a "fantasy," and I agree. So is trying to frame
> > the playing of a string quartet to 12-tet.
> >
> > You also claim that 24-ET is a bit too rough of a fantasy to be really
> > accurate, and I also agree. I also think that the 79 note MOS, as a
> > fantasy, is more accurate, but a bit too complex to serve as a simple
> > conceptual framework.
>
> "Too rough of a fantasy to be accurate"...Mike, that is not my claim. My claim is that it IS a fantasy BECAUSE it is inaccurate. I don't think a better fantasy is needed, I just think it should be acknowledge that maqam music does not adhere perfectly to a 50-cent grid, that there are significant deviations from that.

Who is it that isn't acknowledging this?

> > So it sounds like we're on the same page! Sweet. So, I set out to find
> > a middle of the road fantasy that is both simple and accurate.
> > Something ideally between rank-whatever RI and rank-1 24-ET would be
> > great. And so far I've thrown out a few simple rank-3 and rank-2 ideas
> > just to get feedback on them.
>
> I'm not saying you're not going to find some temperaments that will "work" for maqam music. But I mean...what's in it for you to find them? If you want to learn to play maqam music, you should get yourself an oud or a saz and find a teacher or some good instructional videos. There's a whole musical logic to maqam music and I think understanding *that* would be a better starting place than trying to figure out a temperament that approximates the intonation used by a given oud player. If you're not interested in learning to play maqam music, what on earth are you going to do with a temperament that approximates a maqam intonation?

This is another one of those fallacies that I assume doesn't need to
be pointed out.

> > And so on and so on and so on. Does that apply to 24-ET too? Is 24-ET
> > only a valid fantasy if there's evidence that certain maqam melodies
> > would incur some 24-ET based comma pump?
>
> 24-ET is not, of necessity, a temperament. It contains many temperaments within it but it does not have to be treated as any of them. It's just a tuning.

24-ET is a rank 1 temperament.

> > You think that 26-tet is applicable for maqam music? There's no
> > neutral third in 26-tet at all.
>
> 369 cents is a type of neutral 3rd.

Then there's no major third.

> > There's also no neutral second.
>
> 138 cents is a type of neutral 2nd.

Then there's no minor second.

> > There's no neutral second in 27-tet either.
>
> Either 133 cents or 177 cents could be plausibly used as a neutral 2nd in some contexts. Neutral 2nds are devilishly tricky to hear. When I play in 16-EDO, I often hear them as semitones, even when I watch my fingers spanning two frets.
>
> Think you could tell the difference? How about I post some melodic passages in a few different EDOs and you can tell me which one is which based on the presence or absence of these intervals? How about...one in 26, one in 24, and one in 36? They won't be the same phrases, because that would be easy enough to tell simply via comparative listening. What do you say?

Sure, do it!

-Mike

"cityoftheasleep" <igliashon@...> wrote:

> Now back to my question: this is the first I've heard of being
> able to hear melodies quantitatively in terms of something like
> cents.

Kidding? I mean, really?

> I am not objecting to this possibility, I am merely stating
> that I've never heard you speak about this model of musical
> perception.

Model?? It's just like, you know, people. Can you tell
how far a golf ball will go by watching the swing? I can't,
but some people can.

> I have only heard you talk about the "harmonic series detector"
> in the brain and presume that this model extended to melodic
> perception,

It may, but it is only one of the 1,000 ways in which your
brain slices and dices what you hear.

> such that melodies would be perceptually reduced to the
> nearest partial of some fundamental (or something along
> those lines).

Melodies are generally made out of pitches, which usually
correspond to the fundamental frequency of a complex timbre
(but not always). Some functional brain imaging studies
seem to show specialized areas of the auditory cortex that
process diatonic melodies, but they're very speculative at
this point AFAIK. Melodic listening is different from
harmonic listening and no one really has the slightest idea
how it works.

> How is it that you can identify a melodic step of 400 cents,
> but not a harmonic interval of 400 cents?

With training you might be able to identify both. The
thing is, we're practically born with the ability to
identify harmonic just intonation. Much of this may be
learned but it's learned very early on (much of it in
the womb) based on exposure to speech sounds. This kind
of learning that takes place while neurons are still
differentiating in the fetal brain is different from the
kind of learning you get by training as an adult. In the
rare cases of anatomical deafness, huge parts of the brain
never develop properly, and such individuals are far more
disabled than those who are born anatomically blind.

-Carl

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:

> How on earth is regular mapping "Western"-based? Just because we're
> western people?

Regular mapping is a generalization of the idea of temperament, and temperament is based on the Western idea of harmonic music that approximates simple-integer frequency ratios. Ergo, it's a Western concept.

> > All I can say to this is that the landmarks seem to work well enough for actual maqam
> > musicians, so what need is there for you to find a better one?
>
> This is another one of those fallacies that I assume doesn't need to
> be pointed out.

It would be a fallacy if it was a rhetorical question that I was using as an argument, but in fact it's not a rhetorical question. Why do you keep assuming that every question I ask you is rhetorical? You haven't said a word yet on why this has suddenly become so interesting to you--in other words, what you want to do with it. Is this a purely academic exercise for you? What does it have to do with actually making maqam music? These are serious legitimate questions, not rhetorical ones.

> > "Too rough of a fantasy to be accurate"...Mike, that is not my claim. My claim is that it
> > IS a fantasy BECAUSE it is inaccurate. I don't think a better fantasy is needed, I just
> > think it should be acknowledge that maqam music does not adhere perfectly to a 50-
> > cent grid, that there are significant deviations from that.
>
> Who is it that isn't acknowledging this?

Carl, evidently.

> > I'm not saying you're not going to find some temperaments that will "work" for maqam
> > music. But I mean...what's in it for you to find them? If you want to learn to play
> > maqam music, you should get yourself an oud or a saz and find a teacher or some
> > good instructional videos. There's a whole musical logic to maqam music and I think
> > understanding *that* would be a better starting place than trying to figure out a
> > temperament that approximates the intonation used by a given oud player. If you're
> > not interested in learning to play maqam music, what on earth are you going to do
> > with a temperament that approximates a maqam intonation?
>
> This is another one of those fallacies that I assume doesn't need to
> be pointed out.

What fallacy? I ask you a question, and you call it a fallacy, as if I'm arguing something instead of trying to figure out why you're doing what you're doing.

> > 24-ET is not, of necessity, a temperament. It contains many temperaments within it
> > but it does not have to be treated as any of them. It's just a tuning.
>
> 24-ET is a rank 1 temperament.

That is NOT what 24-ET "is". 24-ET is a set of pitch relationships, and it only becomes a temperament if you're using it to approximate JI. Just because it has the potential to be used as a temperament does not mean that everything done in it implies some kind of temperament.

> > > You think that 26-tet is applicable for maqam music? There's no
> > > neutral third in 26-tet at all.
> >
> > 369 cents is a type of neutral 3rd.
>
> Then there's no major third.

415 cents is a type of major third.

> > > There's also no neutral second.
> >
> > 138 cents is a type of neutral 2nd.
>
> Then there's no minor second.

92 cents is a type of minor second.

> > Think you could tell the difference? How about I post some melodic passages in a few different EDOs and you can tell me which one is which based on the presence or absence of these intervals? How about...one in 26, one in 24, and one in 36? They won't be the same phrases, because that would be easy enough to tell simply via comparative listening. What do you say?
> >

Okay, I just finished four short examples, in 24, 26, 27, and 36-EDO. I'll post them in random order along with the scales used, and you can tell me which is which.

-Igs

On Sun, Mar 13, 2011 at 6:34 PM, cityoftheasleep
<igliashon@...> wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
>
> > How on earth is regular mapping "Western"-based? Just because we're
> > western people?
>
> Regular mapping is a generalization of the idea of temperament, and temperament is based on the Western idea of harmonic music that approximates simple-integer frequency ratios. Ergo, it's a Western concept.

The whole point of your initial claim, which was that "none of us have
the remotest understanding of what's really going on with maqam
music," is that since we've grown up in a Western culture we don't
intuitively understand Arabic maqam music. OK, but then you also
claimed that it's inappropriate to apply "Western music theory" to
maqam music, and now you're saying that regular mapping is an example
of "Western" music theory and hence it doesn't apply, since it's
"Western."

To that I'd say from the getgo that the point of regular mapping is a
-reaction- to previous forms of Western music theory, not a
continuation of it. A bunch of Westerners are trying to learn to
explore and categorize a wider range of music; this could include
world music as well as music that hasn't been created yet. The
east/west divide has nothing to do with any of this.

> > This is another one of those fallacies that I assume doesn't need to
> > be pointed out.
>
> It would be a fallacy if it was a rhetorical question that I was using as an argument, but in fact it's not a rhetorical question. Why do you keep assuming that every question I ask you is rhetorical? You haven't said a word yet on why this has suddenly become so interesting to you--in other words, what you want to do with it. Is this a purely academic exercise for you? What does it have to do with actually making maqam music? These are serious legitimate questions, not rhetorical ones.

1) It is, in fact, very much an academic exercise. Feel free to not
follow this up with "what is the point of academic exercises?"
2) I'm doing it because as part of my continuing education in music
theory, I wanted to see if I could apply the latest and greatest
theory to come out of the world to better understand the structure of
one of the few "popular" microtonal traditions in the world.
3) It has to do with actually making maqam music in that all of the
scales used are near-MOS's of the 7-note 3L4s MOS, and I thought that
starting here would be a good way to understand near-MOS's and how
they work.
4) We have largely limited our exploration of scales to MOS's, and I
use near-MOS's all the time in 12-tet music, and I thought they'd be
useful.
5) Go check out the near-MOS's of porcupine I just posted on
tuning-math and prepare to have your brain explode.
6) I also wanted to do it because I didn't think that the 24-tet
"coarse" structure was accurate enough, but that the 79-note MOS was
too accurate to count as a coarse structure to begin with.
7) It is often the case in these situations that rank 2 hits the sweet
spot in balancing simplicity and accuracy for just such a structure.
8) An example of an "unmapped" rank-2 system that fits the structure
well is 3L4s and its near-MOS's.
9) If you want to map this system, a few options are mohajira and the
unnamed mohajira/dominant temperament I posted before.
10) If you don't want to map this system because you think that
periodicity doesn't count here, please provide evidence.

> > This is another one of those fallacies that I assume doesn't need to
> > be pointed out.
>
> What fallacy? I ask you a question, and you call it a fallacy, as if I'm arguing something instead of trying to figure out why you're doing what you're doing.

I told you that I wanted to see if I could apply regular mapping
theory to understand maqam music, and you told me that the whole
endeavour is fruitless unless I buy an oud, find an oud teacher, and
learn to play maqam music. And then you told me that there's no point
in trying to find a maqam regular temperament unless I do all of the
above. WTF?

> > > 24-ET is not, of necessity, a temperament. It contains many temperaments within it
> > > but it does not have to be treated as any of them. It's just a tuning.
> >
> > 24-ET is a rank 1 temperament.
>
> That is NOT what 24-ET "is". 24-ET is a set of pitch relationships, and it only becomes a temperament if you're using it to approximate JI. Just because it has the potential to be used as a temperament does not mean that everything done in it implies some kind of temperament.

Then we can say that maqam scales are near-MOS's of 3L4s, which is
also "not a temperament." Since today is a special day, we'll say that
you're not allowed to apply a map to this structure today.

> > > 369 cents is a type of neutral 3rd.
> >
> > Then there's no major third.
>
> 415 cents is a type of major third.

What's the size of the major second then? How would you put Rast in 26-tet?

> > > 138 cents is a type of neutral 2nd.
> >
> > Then there's no minor second.
>
> 92 cents is a type of minor second.

I think this would work out to you needing two different sizes of
minor second then.

-Mike

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:

> The whole point of your initial claim, which was that "none of us have
> the remotest understanding of what's really going on with maqam
> music," is that since we've grown up in a Western culture we don't
> intuitively understand Arabic maqam music. OK, but then you also
> claimed that it's inappropriate to apply "Western music theory" to
> maqam music, and now you're saying that regular mapping is an example
> of "Western" music theory and hence it doesn't apply, since it's
> "Western."
>
> To that I'd say from the getgo that the point of regular mapping is a
> -reaction- to previous forms of Western music theory, not a
> continuation of it. A bunch of Westerners are trying to learn to
> explore and categorize a wider range of music; this could include
> world music as well as music that hasn't been created yet. The
> east/west divide has nothing to do with any of this.

Doesn't it? The exploration and categorization undertaken by the proponents of regular mapping only makes sense based on an assumption of a rational basis of musical intervals, and there is no evidence that assumption is valid for non-Western music. There's also no evidence that attempting to apply regular mapping to maqam music would be of any benefit beyond an academic exercise...but it sounds like that's cool with you, so go ahead and proceed.

> 1) It is, in fact, very much an academic exercise. Feel free to not
> follow this up with "what is the point of academic exercises?"

I'm all for academic exercises, but I'm much more interested in things that have practical musical value. But hey, to each his own.

> 2) I'm doing it because as part of my continuing education in music
> theory, I wanted to see if I could apply the latest and greatest
> theory to come out of the world to better understand the structure of
> one of the few "popular" microtonal traditions in the world.

Wouldn't a more sensible approach be to start with understanding the structure as it is traditionally described, and then figure out where the deficits in the traditional understandings are? I'm just saying...if you want to build a better bike, it makes sense to first learn to ride one. What you're practicing right now is textbook "orientalism", just barging in on a cultural tradition of which you have only a cursory knowledge, and then seeking to superimpose upon it your own categorical ideology. If you really are serious about a translation of this ancient music into our modern paradigms, at *least* have the decency to open a dialog with someone, anyone, who is a "native speaker" of maqam.

> 3) It has to do with actually making maqam music in that all of the
> scales used are near-MOS's of the 7-note 3L4s MOS, and I thought that
> starting here would be a good way to understand near-MOS's and how
> they work.

First you said you want to use regular mapping to understand maqam music. Now you say you want to use maqam music to understand near-MOS's. Which is it?

> 4) We have largely limited our exploration of scales to MOS's, and I
> use near-MOS's all the time in 12-tet music, and I thought they'd be
> useful.

How does the regular mapping paradigm produce near-MOS's?

> 5) Go check out the near-MOS's of porcupine I just posted on
> tuning-math and prepare to have your brain explode.

Huh?

> 6) I also wanted to do it because I didn't think that the 24-tet
> "coarse" structure was accurate enough, but that the 79-note MOS was
> too accurate to count as a coarse structure to begin with.

Accurate enough for whom?

> 10) If you don't want to map this system because you think that
> periodicity doesn't count here, please provide evidence.

Currently there is no evidence in favor of either side. We are dealing with unknowns here and playing "hot potato" with the burden of proof is ridiculous.

> I told you that I wanted to see if I could apply regular mapping
> theory to understand maqam music, and you told me that the whole
> endeavour is fruitless unless I buy an oud, find an oud teacher, and
> learn to play maqam music. And then you told me that there's no point
> in trying to find a maqam regular temperament unless I do all of the
> above. WTF?

I told you that if you want to learn to play and understand maqam music, you'll get better results by actually learning to play maqam music, and the best way to do this is through a teacher. Currently, you know jack s*** about maqam music, and yet you are boldly trying to explain and categorize it according to regular mapping. How can you explain and describe something that is still largely outside of your experience and understanding?

> > > > 369 cents is a type of neutral 3rd.
> > >
> > > Then there's no major third.
> >
> > 415 cents is a type of major third.
>
> What's the size of the major second then? How would you put Rast in 26-tet?

0-230-369-507-693-923-1062-1200.

> > > > 138 cents is a type of neutral 2nd.
> > >
> > > Then there's no minor second.
> >
> > 92 cents is a type of minor second.
>
> I think this would work out to you needing two different sizes of
> minor second then.

How so? And either way, what's the problem?

-Igs

> -Mike
>

On Sun, Mar 13, 2011 at 7:58 PM, cityoftheasleep
<igliashon@...> wrote:
>
> > To that I'd say from the getgo that the point of regular mapping is a
> > -reaction- to previous forms of Western music theory, not a
> > continuation of it. A bunch of Westerners are trying to learn to
> > explore and categorize a wider range of music; this could include
> > world music as well as music that hasn't been created yet. The
> > east/west divide has nothing to do with any of this.
>
> Doesn't it? The exploration and categorization undertaken by the proponents of regular mapping only makes sense based on an assumption of a rational basis of musical intervals, and there is no evidence that assumption is valid for non-Western music.

Any evidence suggesting, psychoacoustically, that periodicity
processing is biased by previously sounded notes would be sufficient
here.

> > 2) I'm doing it because as part of my continuing education in music
> > theory, I wanted to see if I could apply the latest and greatest
> > theory to come out of the world to better understand the structure of
> > one of the few "popular" microtonal traditions in the world.
>
> Wouldn't a more sensible approach be to start with understanding the structure as it is traditionally described, and then figure out where the deficits in the traditional understandings are? I'm just saying...if you want to build a better bike, it makes sense to first learn to ride one. What you're practicing right now is textbook "orientalism", just barging in on a cultural tradition of which you have only a cursory knowledge, and then seeking to superimpose upon it your own categorical ideology. If you really are serious about a translation of this ancient music into our modern paradigms, at *least* have the decency to open a dialog with someone, anyone, who is a "native speaker" of maqam.

Sure, I'll just go to MMM and ask Oz about it! LOL

I presented myself as a student here and came up with a cursory and
naive analysis of what I was hearing. I admitted at the time that it
was just a half-assed first guess that I threw out to open up a
dialogue with the people on here whom I know have been studying it for
a long time and get some feedback. I assumed that there would be
additional complexities that would confound my initial exposition, and
threw it out there to get some feedback on what those complexities
might be. So first off, for you to tell me that any of that is
"arrogant" is absurd. I couldn't have been more humble in my language
and I'm not going to try. This is like Cameron comparing me to Hitler
for saying that 9/7 is sometimes perceived as a mistuned 5/4.

The kind of feedback I was looking for was something like "yes, but
this interval you tempered out isn't really tempered in practice" or
"yes, but as you can see here in this piece they tend to vary from
that structure" or something like that. And if those were the types of
claims being made, I'd have no problem shutting the hell up and
soaking it all in, especially if data's being provided to back that
up. But instead, the claim was made that regular temperament is an
invalid procedure to apply at all here, because periodicity processing
in the usual sense doesn't apply to monophonic music. This lifts the
discussion out of the realm of cultural aesthetic and places it
squarely within the physical realm of psychoacoustics, which I have no
problem discussing for hours on end.

Carl has said that he's the only one who's got data on this so far
and, despite my arguments over psychoacoustics with him, he is
correct. If the Tartini data shows no evidence of negri retempering in
that phrase, I'll drop it, because I don't care - I just want to learn
the truth. To say that all of this is invalid because I'm a Western
listener who hasn't been trained in maqam music is absurd. When people
on here make sweeping generalizations about jazz I don't claim that
they're arrogant racist orientalists for not having been formally
trained in jazz theory for four years. I just correct them when
possible and move on, because I aim to be respectful. You should try
that sometime.

> > 3) It has to do with actually making maqam music in that all of the
> > scales used are near-MOS's of the 7-note 3L4s MOS, and I thought that
> > starting here would be a good way to understand near-MOS's and how
> > they work.
>
> First you said you want to use regular mapping to understand maqam music. Now you say you want to use maqam music to understand near-MOS's. Which is it?

All of it. The entire overlapping line of research is what I want to
explore. The claim has been made that most scales used in the world
are MOS's, and in this case most scales used in maqam music are
near-MOS's of 3L4s.

> > 4) We have largely limited our exploration of scales to MOS's, and I
> > use near-MOS's all the time in 12-tet music, and I thought they'd be
> > useful.
>
> How does the regular mapping paradigm produce near-MOS's?

The regular mapping paradigm produces Fokker periodicity blocks, which
are related to MOS's, which can be altered to produce near-MOS's.

> > 6) I also wanted to do it because I didn't think that the 24-tet
> > "coarse" structure was accurate enough, but that the 79-note MOS was
> > too accurate to count as a coarse structure to begin with.
>
> Accurate enough for whom?

Accurate enough for my ears, which are telling me that 7/4 and 7/6 are
getting used all over the place, meaning that maqam practitioners are
dynamically retuning notes on the fly. I hope you're not going to
dispute that now.

> > 10) If you don't want to map this system because you think that
> > periodicity doesn't count here, please provide evidence.
>
> Currently there is no evidence in favor of either side. We are dealing with unknowns here and playing "hot potato" with the burden of proof is ridiculous.

I have done my best to provide some preliminary evidence for my
paradigm with a few simple listening tests that you can do yourself,
some anecdotal evidence, and most recently proposed a more rigorous
mTurk listening test to settle the matter. I don't have any scientific
studies to show you because I doubt it's ever been tested.

The indirect support that I have for this hypothesis is that there is
very clear evidence showing that psychoacoustic factors cause
different chords to sound "happy" or "sad," e.g. chord quality is
somewhat related to periodicity processing (reference my previous
conversation with Carl on "tonalness" for more about that, or check
out the "Semitonal JI Chords" thread I posted for listening examples).
This evidence is again not shown in an N=1000 size study, but is the
best we have. It applies to chords that have all notes played
simultaneously. In other words, minor sounds "sad" because of
psychoacoustic factors, and I think that the evidence for this is
pretty promising, although maybe you aren't sold. Carl at least agrees
with this so far, so if you disagree with even this then we're now at
a third, separate discussion.

Assuming you buy the whole low tonalness low roughness bit, then go
and try a simple listening test: go arpeggiate C minor, and then go
arpeggiate C major. Which sounds "happy?" Which sounds "sad?" Now
arpeggiate C diminished. Would you trust people to rate the
discordance of an arpeggiated C diminished as being more discordant
than an arpeggiated C major? Because I don't think that it makes a god
damned difference if you arpeggiate it or not.

Furthermore, anyone who's ever played organ has probably noticed that
if you play something with drawbars containing only partials 1 and 3,
and slowly drop the 1 out while continue to focus on the phantom 1,
that your brain can sometimes still hear the lone partial remaining as
still being the 3 of a 1 that's not even being played anymore. That
is, the previous timbre is now biasing the perception of the current
timbre. This is more evidence to show that periodicity processing can
be biased by previously heard stimuli, and you can test this yourself,
although it takes a bit of mental fortitude to actually snap your
perception into that mode.

This is the best evidence that I have, but I think that it's just as
valid as the listening tests about tonalness when the notes are played
together. Furthermore, if you now want to raise the goalpost such that
anything we talk about has to be proven in an overarching study with
statistical measures taken into account and such, then none of this
has ever been proven at all, and not even HE has been subjected to
that kind of rigor. But it is my attempt to explain why I think this.

Another piece of evidence is that if periodicity processing has
nothing to do with melodic contours, then it's more likely that two
separate mechanisms cause minor chords to sound sad when played
together vs played separately, despite that these "two mechanisms"
yield identical results in every case I've ever found. So Occam's
razor would suggest not just inventing a separate mechanism producing
identical results when one will do.

Anyway, that's the best "proof" I can offer, and that should be enough
to get a discussion started. The response I've gotten for why there
should be two mechanisms involved is either that minor chords actually
don't sound sad when arpeggiated (which is a claim I'm sure my
proposed listening test will destroy), or that it's "just unlikely"
that auditory processing is influenced by the memory of previous
stimuli with no explanation of why it should be unlikely. Actually, it
seems rather "likely" to me. Having given at least an initial outline
of my reasoning, I think that I deserve an explanation of why my logic
is "just unlikely" at this point.

> > > 415 cents is a type of major third.
> >
> > What's the size of the major second then? How would you put Rast in 26-tet?
>
> 0-230-369-507-693-923-1062-1200.

So now the fifth between D and A is huge. And this doesn't sound like
Rast at all to me. But we can conclusively prove this in the listening
test. But furthermore:

> > I think this would work out to you needing two different sizes of
> > minor second then.
>
> How so? And either way, what's the problem?

How the hell is this any better than what I'm doing? You're just
making up your own structure here, but saying that things don't matter
that I believe do matter. How is this more pure than my approach? You
also currently know jack s*** about maqam music, and yet you are
boldly trying to explain and categorize it according to regular
mapping. How can you explain and describe something that is still
largely outside of your experience and understanding?

-Mike