Persian dastgah (and Turkish makam)

I've just written a relatively detailed post about Persian tuning (with some comparison to the related Turkish tradition), for those interested in such things:

http://miskatonal.blogspot.com/

Any friendly suggestions for improvement are welcome, of course. :-)

Excellent review, thanks! Permalink is

http://miskatonal.blogspot.com/2011/06/persian-dastgah-system.html

-Carl

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Jay Random" <cortaigne@...> wrote:
>
> I've just written a relatively detailed post about Persian tuning
> (with some comparison to the related Turkish tradition), for
> those interested in such things:
>
> http://miskatonal.blogspot.com/
>
> Any friendly suggestions for improvement are welcome, of course. :-)

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" <carl@...> wrote:
>
> Excellent review, thanks! Permalink is
>
> http://miskatonal.blogspot.com/2011/06/persian-dastgah-system.html
>
> -Carl
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Jay Random" <cortaigne@> wrote:
> >
> > I've just written a relatively detailed post about Persian tuning
> > (with some comparison to the related Turkish tradition), for
> > those interested in such things:
> >
> > http://miskatonal.blogspot.com/
> >
> > Any friendly suggestions for improvement are welcome, of course. :-)
>

Interesting stuff, good to see Karl Signell mentioned there and good luck in your explorations. This is fascinating stuff and may be lost
as the usage of 24EDO keyboards becomes more and more prevalent.

Regarding a prior article

HEPTATONIA SECUNDA

the modes of melodic minor are very common in "vertical modal" sorts
of jazz playing (compositions by Bill Evens, Wayne shorter but especially Pat Metheny, John Scofield and post-70's jazzers). It
is heavilly taught at Berklee and before that shows up in George Russels Lydian Chromatic concept.

HEPTATONIA TERTIA

For all practical purposes, this the "whole tone scale" with a
passing tone. Given the usual limitiations of whole tone scale,
the interesting thing about it is that it adds 'root' to the 'other'
whole tone scale (1 b2 b3 4 5 6 7), sort of a "melodic phrygian". I suppose others would be excited when it adds a fifth
(1 2 3 #4 5 b6 b7). I don't know whether it occurs often in
the wild.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "bobvalentine1" <bob.valentine@...> wrote:
> Interesting stuff, good to see Karl Signell mentioned there and good luck in your explorations. This is fascinating stuff and may be lost
> as the usage of 24EDO keyboards becomes more and more prevalent.

That's definitely disconcerting for Middle Eastern music across the board, but a more specific threat to the survival of traditional dastgah in practice (as I understand it anyway, having never been outside North America) are the impositions of the Iranian theocracy since 1979. I don't make any claim to have a deep understanding of the situation on the ground, and in no way could I hold up any sort of debate about it, but I have definitely come across the same sort of story from a few different sources.

> HEPTATONIA SECUNDA
> the modes of melodic minor are very common in "vertical modal" sorts
> of jazz playing (compositions by Bill Evens, Wayne shorter but especially Pat Metheny, John Scofield and post-70's jazzers). It
> is heavilly taught at Berklee and before that shows up in George Russels Lydian Chromatic concept.

I'm not familiar with "vertical modal" technique, but it sounds interesting! Are these modes used harmonically, or is it largely melodic?

> HEPTATONIA TERTIA
> For all practical purposes, this the "whole tone scale" with a
> passing tone. Given the usual limitiations of whole tone scale,
> the interesting thing about it is that it adds 'root' to the 'other'
> whole tone scale (1 b2 b3 4 5 6 7), sort of a "melodic phrygian". I suppose others would be excited when it adds a fifth
> (1 2 3 #4 5 b6 b7). I don't know whether it occurs often in
> the wild.

I knew about the "whole tone scale plus one" bit as a general concept, but hadn't really played around with it much. I've got to thank you for the tonic/fifth perspectives, though, because that has given me a few ideas I want to try out. ;-)

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Jay Random" <cortaigne@...> wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "bobvalentine1" <bob.valentine@> wrote:
> > HEPTATONIA SECUNDA
> > the modes of melodic minor are very common in "vertical modal"
sorts
> > of jazz playing (compositions by Bill Evens, Wayne shorter but especially Pat Metheny, John Scofield and post-70's jazzers). It
> > is heavilly taught at Berklee and before that shows up in George Russels Lydian Chromatic concept.
>
> I'm not familiar with "vertical modal" technique, but it sounds interesting! Are these modes used harmonically, or is it largely melodic?
>

Marc Sabatella may still have a nice online text on jazz harmony
and improvisation and its where I saw this term. At Berklee it
was referred to as 'chord scales' but the basic idea is to see each
chord on a 'lead sheet' as having its own scale. Sometimes, these
scales actually turn out to be related modes and you are just playing
"in the key of". But in the compositions of a lot of the post-fusion
guys (based on the theories established by Bill Evans, Wayne Shorter,
George Russel), you will sometimes have chords that result in new scales every measure. A lot of this music also ises modes of the
melodic minor. At Berklee they were common enough to have names

1 2 b3 4 5 6 7 melodic minor
1 b2 b3 4 5 6 b7 dorianb2
1 2 3 #4 #5 6 7 lydian #5
1 2 3 #4 5 6 b7 lydian b7
1 2 3 4 5 b6 b7 mixolydian b7
1 2 b3 4 b5 b6 b7 locrian natural 2
1 b2 #2 "3" #4 #5/b13 b7 altered dominant

Perhaps the names came from George Russel. Altered dominant is the
'tritone flip' of lydian b7, note the renaming of the diminshed
fourth to its functional/aural equivalent in 12ET. Cool stuff like
this doesn't work so well in most things other than 12, which is why
some on the list look at comman pumps etc, to find the new puns that
are out there.

Romantic classical music prototyped all this stuff under different
names. Post-70's jazzers have likely bled it dry!