source file: mills2.txt Date: Thu, 1 Feb 1996 14:37:39 -0800 Subject: Arabic modes From: "John H. Chalmers" I've recently been lurking on the USENET newsgroup rec.music.arabic hoping somebody would say something interesting about scales and tuning instead of mostly inquiring about CD's of popular performers, etc. Anyway, the FAQ was distributed this AM and I extracted the following information on scales: Mode: Tone spacing ----- ------------ rast: 1 3/4 3/4 1 1 3/4 3/4 sikah: 3/4 1 1 3/4 3/4 1 3/4 @ajam (Major): 1 1 1/2 1 1 1 1/2 @ajam (Minor): 1 1/2 1 1 1/2 1 1 alkird: 1/2 1 1 1 1/2 1 1 alhijaz: 1/2 1 1/2 1/2 1 1/2 1 1 bayati: 3/4 3/4 1 1 1/2 1 1 Saba: 3/4 3/4 1/2 1 1/2 1/2 1 1 One can see how tetrachordal these modal scales are. Rast is clearly two tetrachords of the form 200 + 150 +150 cents and would appear to be related to Ptolemy's Equal Diatonic. One could also analyse this scale as a mode of a scale composed of two 150 + 150 + 200 cent tetrachords, but I think the first form is more likely true as it preserves the neutral third. Sikah is a mode of this scale. The next two, @ajam, are the major and minor modes of the diatonic while Alkird is the Dorian. Alhijaz is a mixture of Neochromatic and Diatonic tetrachords, Bayati of Equal Diatonic and Diatonic, while Saba is a mixture of Equal Diatonic and Neochromatic. The quantization to 24-tet obscures the exact tuning somewhat, but it probably captures the general impression actual performed versions make. --John Received: from eartha.mills.edu [144.91.3.20] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Fri, 2 Feb 1996 00:57 +0100 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id PAA15223; Thu, 1 Feb 1996 15:56:58 -0800 Date: Thu, 1 Feb 1996 15:56:58 -0800 Message-Id: <9602011555.aa01831@cyber.cyber.net> Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu