source file: mills3.txt Date: Sat, 31 Jan 1998 00:45:49 +0100 Subject: Tuning in West African music From: Alex I mentioned something about this in a previous post about electronic tuner but it might deserve a bit of explanation. As a graduate student in anthropology and ethnomusicology, I study Mande music. For background information, we could say that the Mande is a large West African cultural area from which comes such interesting instruments as the kora, the djembe, armpit drums, balas, etc. According to at least one scholar, some balas are tuned very close to an equiheptatonic scale (7-TET) +/- 1.7 cents. I'd be interested to hear/see how much this differs from just major (and other related tunings). An interesting aspect of this is that every pattern is directly transposable, which seems to be what bala players are looking for. But precise tuning is "obscured" by the presence of "timbres" on the calabashes that are put under keys. I don't know if this is of any interest to you, but it shows that, maybe, Ellis' work is still valuable in an ethnomusicological perspective. As I said in a previous post, apart from academic interests I play sax in an ensemble lead by a Malian "donsojeli" (artist-hunter) who plays the donsongoni ("hunter's guitar", a 6-strings member of the kora family). His tuning is close to the second mode of a major pentatonic scale with some altered notes (especially the equivalent of the 7th). The members of the ensemble try to tune themselves to his instrument but it's still a tricky business. I don't know if there's a "physical" model that might relate to his tuning (for instance, using 5 successive simple ratios) but I'm quite sure his tuning is non-arbitrary. Any idea about that? Anyway, sorry for the long posts. TIA for any help or comment. SMTPOriginator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu From: "jloffink" Subject: Re: Neil's Tuning CD Project PostedDate: 31-01-98 02:02:21 SendTo: CN=coul1358/OU=AT/O=EZH ReplyTo: tuning@eartha.mills.edu $MessageStorage: 0 $UpdatedBy: CN=notesrv2/OU=Server/O=EZH,CN=coul1358/OU=AT/O=EZH,CN=Manuel op de Coul/OU=AT/O=EZH RouteServers: CN=notesrv2/OU=Server/O=EZH,CN=notesrv1/OU=Server/O=EZH RouteTimes: 31-01-98 02:01:30-31-01-98 02:01:31,31-01-98 02:00:14-31-01-98 02:00:14 DeliveredDate: 31-01-98 02:00:14 Categories: $Revisions: Received: from ns.ezh.nl ([137.174.112.59]) by notesrv2.ezh.nl (Lotus SMTP MTA SMTP v4.6 (462.2 9-3-1997)) with SMTP id C125659D.000789AA; Sat, 31 Jan 1998 02:01:19 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA03070; Sat, 31 Jan 1998 02:02:21 +0100 Date: Sat, 31 Jan 1998 02:02:21 +0100 Message-Id: <9801310102.AA03070@ns.ezh.nl> Received: from ella.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA03068 Received: (qmail 19352 invoked from network); 30 Jan 1998 17:01:34 -0800 Received: from localhost (HELO ella.mills.edu) (127.0.0.1) by localhost with SMTP; 30 Jan 1998 17:01:34 -0800 Errors-To: madole@mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu