Eric Forgeot wrote: > In fact Persian music can be simplified by using quarter-tones, > but in practice quarter-tones are not used, and the pitch > difference between 2 notes are dependent of the "modes" : for > example seekers made experiences and noticed the traditional > musicians in practice used for a "mode" 33 "savars" between B and > c, and for an other 26.5 savars between B and c (here the savar > is 1/50 of the occidental tone, so 26.5 would be very close to our > B, but 33 would be for 2/3 tone)
This is the same approach as is used in Indian and Turkish music, though the measurement systems are different - Indian music uses shrutis (22 to the octave, probably *not* equally tempered) and Turkish music uses Pythagorean commas. Modes are built on top of those in the same way that they are chosen from the 12 equally- tempered semitones in modern Western music. Any ABC representation that is in any way true to the insider's view of these musics has to adopt the same two-layer system: define units of measurement first and provide a way of naming selections of sets of pitches in those units on top of that. (Eric's specific suggestion would work for creating a graphical representation of tiny examples from a comparative musicology text, but would be utterly useless for someone wanting to work with that music in any real way). Now we have a couple of tools under development for interconverting between XML and ABC. Is XML in its present state any better than ABC at handling microtonal modality? If so, does its approach put any constraints on what ABC's syntax and semantics for this ought to be? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jack Campin * 11 Third Street, Newtongrange, Midlothian EH22 4PU, Scotland tel 0131 660 4760 * fax 0870 055 4975 * http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack/ food intolerance data & recipes, freeware Mac logic fonts, and Scottish music To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
