source file: mills2.txt Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 14:05:25 -0800 Subject: 5- (and higher) limit monophony in real life From: Daniel Wolf Pythagorean monophony and equidistant scale steps are by no means as ubiquitous as PAULE claims. Some European and Euro-American counter-examples: Irish folk music - especially unaccompanied Sean Nos singing - consistantly demonstrates that leaps of major thirds are sung smaller than ditones and that once a third has been established by the singer, an unequal infill (i.e. 9:8, 10:9) is virtually inevitable. (The entire Schenker project rest on an analogous insight - and Schenker's analyses of vii and ii chords deserves another posting). Alpine unaccompanied singing shares a tendency towards higher limit intervals, including 7:6 minor third - possibly imported from yodeling and alphorn playing. Scandinavian folk music shares the five limit preference, with frequent comma shifts - while avoiding comma sinking. American shape-note singers - with a more conservative harmonic vocabulary than Barbershoppers - use a rich vowel sound to get asist in maintaining the pitch in unison passages also do 5 limit thirds. Outside of Europe: A recent concert of Laotian music (Khaen and vocal) at Hessischer Rundfunk gave ample demonstration that vocalists ''corrected'' the 7tet scale to a scale with unequal steps. While slendro has some structural affinities for 5tet - and with pythaagorean pentatonics - it is decidedly unequal when realised by vocalists, rebab and suling players. (A three-limit realisation of pelog is impossible, I reckon.) The ''harmonic'' traditions of the Asian steppe include a huge body of solo songs with consistant intervals clearly outside of a three limit framework. Chinese monophony will often include comma shifts - both syntonic and septimal. Central African choral music.... Need I go on any further? Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Wed, 26 Feb 1997 00:24 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA21402; Wed, 26 Feb 1997 00:24:14 +0100 Received: from ella.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA21413 Received: from by ella.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) id PAA10255; Tue, 25 Feb 1997 15:22:27 -0800 Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 15:22:27 -0800 Message-Id: <199702252319.HAA00519@csnt1.cs.ust.hk> Errors-To: madole@mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@ella.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@ella.mills.edu