source file: mills2.txt Date: Thu, 2 Jan 1997 11:20:33 -0800 Subject: RE: Indian music From: PAULE Kami wrote, >My question is : When playing a note in a given raga, which note, of the >two shrutis separated by a comma, is the "right" one? There are many >raga listings, but they dont seem to take this subtlety into >consideration. A good reference for ancient shruti and raga stuff is Rowell, Lewis. 1992. Music and Musical Thought in Early India. University of Chicago Press. The modes and alterations thereof described here lead to various scales with steps of 4, 3, and 2 shruti. The "just" interpretation of the shruti scale makes these intervals unequivocally 9/8, 10/9, and 16/15, respectively. The 22 shruti have often been interpreted as 22-tet. Using 12-tet works better than 22-tet for these modes, though, since the difference between the 4- and 3- shruti steps is large enough to disturb the melodic beauty of the scales in 22-tet (as Rowell points out). However, interpolating chromatic notes into these modes so that the three 4-shruti intervals become 2+2 in 22-tet leads to melodically satisfying 10-note scales that can form the basis for 7-limit harmony and tonality. (See my upcoming paper in Xenharmonikon 17). Two of these three interpolations indeed correspond to the two recognized altered notes of ancient Indian music theory. Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Thu, 2 Jan 1997 22:29 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA00871; Thu, 2 Jan 1997 22:32:11 +0100 Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA00869 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id NAA11996; Thu, 2 Jan 1997 13:32:08 -0800 Date: Thu, 2 Jan 1997 13:32:08 -0800 Message-Id: <199701022229.WAA32033@teaser.teaser.fr> Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu