Gopichand

The Gopichand is a single stringed instrument that allows you to bend it's pitch by squeezing the sides of the neck supports. It's most often played by the cowherd maidens in India to alleviate boredom and entertain the cows. It is also known as Gobijen in Bali, Indonesia.

Precompositional Considerations

What is the secret that makes people keep reading 300 pages of a book. We've all seen letters, words and sentences before. We've all read stories. We should be bored with it by now. The fact of the matter is that we REALLY ARE BORED WITH IT BY NOW.

You have to be a borderline genius to get someone to read 300 pages of a novel. What keeps people turning pages? An interesting story isn't enough. It's your method of presenting the story in such a way that nothing jumps into the reader’s consciousness about the mechanics that makes the reader start thinking about anything else except the story which also better be good.

The same thing is true of songwriting. If only one thing in your song makes people start thinking it's strange or just bland that's when they'll stop listening. If only even one section doesn't transition well into the next thing then we start thinking about that instead of the good feeling the song is (was) producing.

In India they have a word for the feeling that music produces. The word they use is rasa which means taste. You never want to break rasa. But it's very easy to break.
If you don’t want to break rasa then the question isn’t so much what are you going to put into each section of music. The question becomes how are you going to put it in?

People have too many choices when faced with a blank page. To overcome the paralyzing nature of too many choices, composers learn to define the limits that their composition will fall within, such as how fast should it be, how many beats per measure will there be? What key will the piece of music be in? How long will it last? What chord should it start with? Surprisingly, composers sometimes even limit themselves to a few notes and a basic rhythm. I’ll now be talking about an important group of limitations.

Instrumentation
If you listen to a standard artist, the instrumentation they use is usually the same on almost every song. Keyboards, bass, drums, guitar, vocals. That doesn't change usually except they might add another instrumental player such as a harmonica but that occurs very rarely. There's usually a standard instrumentation for things.

Form
If you walk into a music store in America, it's clearly monocultural. About the only instruments to be found are guitars, basses, keyboards, and drum kits, with classical and jazz instruments thrown in for good measure. Walk into a music store in South Asia and you've got sitars, dutars, setars, esrajs, rebabs, shawms, etc... etc... etc... along with guitars and keyboards.

There seems to be some disparity between what many young songwriters from the west SAY they want and what they’ll actually put their money down for. They SAY they want to be totally unique and different and yet they buy the same instruments as everyone else and listen to the same music as all their friends. The next sentence may not apply to you but it probably applies to 99% of the people who might be interested in buying your music. It's VERY difficult to get a person to accept anything which is not what they expect, hence the difficulty of selling dutars in North America.

If you yourself or most of your neighbors at least, do not like anything out of the ordinary, how can you expect your listeners to go for what some aspiring composers are calling “writing from the heart?” This usually means a lack of knowledge of or lack of willingness to be constrained by accepted forms.
Don't let it escape your attention that it's possible to write from the heart within the form until you're established. On that day there will be people to buy your tunes that break the rules because enough people who matter, already know and trust you. Even then, it will only get sold if you broke the rules for a good reason, hence their trust.

When young songwriters hear someone talking about forms, they often say that the best music breaks the rules all the time. I don't believe the best music breaks the rules all the time. I consider experimental avant garde music to be nearly complete psychosis precisely because it doesn’t follow any traditional rules.

When the Beatles broke the rules, they had a very good reason for doing that. A phrase was shortened or lengthened because the lyrics demanded it not because of any animosity towards the normal sections built of eight or sixteen measures.

I often think about those people who don't want to constrain themselves to traditional forms. It's like saying I'll play football, basketball or soccer but I'm going to reach the goal by running outside of the boundaries, and then expect to be rewarded for that at the end and not be penalized. It's probably not in the realm of possibility.

Another metaphor is if you're painting, do you paint on the wall next to the canvas? It's about context. Only if you're an avant garde artist and the house owner knows you're going to do that and likes your work or you just want to piss him off and don’t really need the money.

Newbies, many of whom seem to like rock, heavy metal or punk listen to their favorite bands and hear them as icons of rebelliousness. Then they think to themselves, “How could my favorite icon of rebelliousness be following any rules, forms or formulas?” But naturally the newbies haven't analyzed their favorite bands and even if they had, they wouldn't know what to listen for.
Yes, in fact your favorite icon of rebelliousness, whether they play thrash metal, punk or rap, is using intros, verses, choruses, and bridges pretty much the same way everyone else is. They're not just doing their own thing as many newbies seem to think.

If they were doing that in the beginning, their manager or producer inserted the cold calculated reasoning that it takes to succeed in the biz. Then the guys in the band probably said, “Oh, is that all? We can still make music we like and have it mostly fit inside the basic guidelines.” It's not so difficult once getting past the emotional resistance to it.

Some might say that I'd be a good example of someone who writes only for themselves. I like World Music and am into stuff like microtonal tunings, 17/8 rhythms and all night songs played for the gods not for people on instruments like gopichands, seed pod and goat hoof rattles. My Garden of Contemplation CD has no chords per se from beginning to end. There's no guitar, bass, drum kit or keyboard. So, how did someone like me get my music forwarded and into music libraries waiting to be picked up by TV or film music buyers?

The people who might say I write only to please myself would be wrong. I don't inflict my interest in microtonal tunings on my listeners many of whom surely wouldn't like that. It's too far outside their expectations. Also the rhythms are kept to what people would expect, only breaking their expectations where they expect to have it be broken. SERIOUSLY. And I reign in world music's proclivities toward inordinate length and make my compositions conform to traditional popular song forms. Most of my stuff is instrumental but SONGwriting terminology is still useful. I write only 4 measure intros and get to the chorus fast which means no double verses before the first chorus.

All of this stuff helps people forgive the fact that my music has no chords and it's played on bamboo xylophones, three and four reed shawms, bowed spike fiddles and double headed hand drums no one has ever heard of. I love this stuff but I try to be realistic about what might go over well with the average person. In order to do that, it's important to at least try to really REALLY know what that is.
So, what is the popular song form and why is the popular song form so popular? The basic song forms goes: Intro Verse Chorus Verse Chorus Bridge Chorus Out. This doesn't tax people too much. They don’t have to work too hard to "get it".

A tune seven minutes long can go on the album but it will never make it to radio unless you're Pink Floyd etc... Radio format is about 3.5 minutes. Not much longer or shorter. Initially, shoot for around 100 measures of music at a moderate tempo and you'll be in the ball park for the airwaves. Of course not all popular songs need to be aimed at radio. There are lots of great tunes longer than 6 minutes.

If your pieces have choruses in the B section here's a list of possible forms to put them in which are in the pop format ballpark so that A's =Verses, B's =Choruses, C's =Bridges, D's=make C's another section proper and the D is the bridge, T's=Transitions and R's=a rise to the chorus.
ABABCAB. This is good if you've got sections longer than 8 bars or a slow tempo. It will prevent you from going over 3.5 minutes.

ABABTCAB. transition before the bridge. There may not even be any melody in the transition.

ABTABCAB. Another good one for a slow tempo or longer sections.

ABTABTCAB The transition is repeated before the Bridge.

AABAABCAAB Double verses are too long for unknowns to sell easily most likely.

ARBTARBCARB This could work. Sounds perfectly postmodern.

ABBABBCABB Double choruses to lengthen a short melody.

AABAABTCAAB. Not much point in putting a transition before the bridge except such as where the band drops out 4 bars early while the improviser solos before the start of the solo section as in jazz.

ARBARBTCARB. Rise to the chorus with Transition before the Bridge.

ABBTABBCABB. No transition the second time. Double chorus.

ARBTARBTCARB. Contemporary practice often has the rise to the chorus and a transition somewhere.

AABTAABCAAB. If repeating the transition every time makes the song too long leave it out the second time. There's a bridge anyway. Damn double verses again though. Bane of the unsigned!

ABBTABBTCABB. Double chorus. Transition after the chorus.

AABTAABTCAAB Double verses again.
ABCDABCDABCD It doesn't end on the chorus. Good for smooth jazz or real Latin music.

AARBAARBCAARB Rise to the chorus is very common in the postmodern era of popular songwriting. Those double verses plus the rise will kill you though. The exec's aren’t gonna wait that long. Next!
AARBAARBTCAARB. Double verse and rise. Do you want to sell this song or not?

ARBBARBBCARBB Rise to a double chorus.

AARBTAARBTCAARB. Double verse AND a rise before the chorus. Forget it unless you're the Beatles or Elvis.

AARBTAARBCAARB. Ditto

AABBAABBCAABB. Double verses and choruses. NEVER try more! Otherwise we'll stamp "Rank Amateur" on your forehead permanently.

AABBTAABBTCAABB Double trouble with transitions.

AARBBTAARBBTAARBB. Are you Marilyn Monroe or Princess Di reincarnated? If not, then don't try it.

Sections
Normally, sections are either eight or sixteen measures in length. For variety’s sake here is a theoretical chart of how the sections could all be different lengths on your album.

8 8 8
8 8 10
8 8 16
8 10 8
16 8 8
16 8 10
10 8 8
4 8 8
8 16 10
8 8 6
8 6 8
16 8 6
6 8 8
8 16 6
16 16 16
16 16 10
8 8 14
8 14 8
14 8 8
14 8 10
14 8 8
8 16 16
8 16 14
16 16 14
16 14 16
14 8 6
14 16 16
8 16 6
etc…

The three basic sections of a tune, the verse, chorus and bridge, can all be eight or all be sixteen measures but you can make them shorter or longer usually in groups of even numbers so sections ten measures long and six measures long also occur. Odd numbers are also possible but you have to have a good reason for doing that.

Most of the time, there are two phrases in each verse section and two phrases in each chorus section. And possibly in the bridge section as well. However, you CAN use more, less and even no phrases depending. The intro could just have accompaniment and no melody at all. The same is true of the bridge. The intro doesn’t need to be terribly melodic. In my case, I often create my intros from material in the bridge. For the bridge to be self sufficient, it doesn’t need to have a melody but then the accompaniment would have to be very interesting and you might have to shorten it so that it doesn’t get boring for the listener.

As far as lyrics are concerned, the verse basically keeps the same melody each time it comes around but with different words. The chorus basically keeps both the same words and the same melody each time it plays.

Phrase Lengths

If you give weight to favor the most common phrase lengths such as “four bars with four bars” and “eight bars with eight bars” occurring the most frequently. That way you wouldn’t constantly be getting music coming out of the system which is barely in the ball park of expectation.





You also need to know that the consequent phrase within a section often reaches a greater height, has a wider leap, and/or has a greater dynamic.

You can also contrast melodic rhythms between sections or phrases: long held notes on the chorus and shorter note values for the verse.

Expert and Real Music Based Systems

More recently, systems have been created which take input from actual music, even a live improvisation, and can create a meaningful response in real time. The computer takes the previous improvisation as input, performs transformations on it lightening fast and then gives a performance of its own nano seconds later. It’s these systems that are fooling experts, especially when they’re combined with a knowledge base such as a hundreds of licks which can also have transformations performed on those patterns as well.

The programmers don’t need to tell the computer to test for fitness before the computer puts out the music. If good music is used to initiate the system, then good music is coming out. Initiating an expert system with a fractal or a second order Markov chain just does not produce music as good as if it’s initiated with quality music. In that case, the computer is doing almost exactly the same thing that you’re favorite guitar god did to come up with all their albums. The computer listened to existing music and then changed it.

It’s not exactly the same though. A human’s musical cortex can be FAR more flexible and nuanced than a computer’s. And can process at a high level unconsciously and even while a person sleeps. But to get it that way takes tons of practice, intelligence and the capacity to memorize a lot of music. Yes, a computer can become an expert but it cannot do it at the same LEVEL of expertise that is possible by some very special humans and it cannot become an unconscious competent the way people can. If you ask some experts to teach you how to compose music the same way they do it, they can’t tell you. Or they say it’s all intuition. It’s not going too far to say that they actually consciously forgot how they learned what they do. They literally can’t remember. It was a lot of work and it has all been internalized. It’s proprioceptive now. Most of what they learned bypasses all of their conscious thought processes and takes a direct channel from the subconscious. It’s a huge benefit to them as a composer because everything has been streamlined. If you ask a computer how it’s composing music, there’s never a point in time when it can’t tell you exactly what it’s doing. That’s a huge benefit if you’re a student.

Experts are operating in the stratosphere and computers and beginning students are operating in the dust. If the computer was a beginning student, would the expert start at the level of the stratosphere in his lessons to it? A better approach might be to ask the question, “What parameters would an expert educator and musician give to a novice or intermediate student so that they can create a lot of good music quickly and easily but not get into too much trouble?”

It just needs to be good ENOUGH. If you demand the optimum, then yes, you need to study hard at Berklee for several years and pay the tuition. If you can double your investment after graduation it might be worth it. For some people it will work. For others it won’t. If you want to save time and test the market first with a smaller investment of time and money, yet still have your music take you and your listeners somewhere interesting then this course has what you need.
For the purpose of this course, what the real music initiated expert systems are doing is good enough for us at this point in time, until you can put in the practice to memorize a lot of music and acquire other compositional skills. Even then, there’s no guarantee that you’re musical cortex will create the desired output, although naturally it’s always fun to try.

The Evolutionary Approach
In the evolutionary approach the programmers say that being close to the style of songs that were put in is not good enough for high quality and creative new music. So, they extract sequences of notes that are conceived as melodic words within that style. Using them puts a limit on notes that can be adjacent to each other.

The “genes” of two different songs or two different styles can be mixed such as Bach and Jimi Hendrix and during the breeding process the computer introduces musically meaningful operations such as retrograde, inversion, transposition, augmentation, etc... This overcomes the truly horrible results with other methods that introduced "corruption" through random procedures. The genes in this case are the melodic and rhythmic series which are extracted from the music and not DNA.

The fitness of the results are judged by their adherence to voice leading rules. Some of the other rules used for evaluating fitness are the desired level of syncopation, melodic density, beat repetitions, the number of new notes, maximum interval sizes, the number of changes of direction, and types of note transitions. They also use "musical grammars" to narrow down the number of results that humans are given to pass or fail. Then about 1/3 of the weakest carriers of the material are killed off so the music would theoretically get better and better over time.
I wanted to say that I've met some people who resist thinking about their music consciously like the plague. Some people believe that doing it without thinking is best. But for many people, while they're trying to do that, their career is floundering and wasting precious time just like a lot of us have done. Some people are unconscious competents (they consistently write good music without thinking about it too much), some are conscious competents (who are good at explaining what the unconscious competents are doing) and some are incompetent (and need no introduction).
The unconscious competents can't tell us what they're doing. Hopefully that's who you're listening to. The conscious competents can tell us what the unconscious competents are doing. Hopefully they were our teachers. The incompetents hopefully aren't recording or teaching and god help that they're not us.

A few people have difficulty becoming competent through the conscious method. But it doesn't hurt them as a musician to try. Their intuition hasn’t gone anywhere just because they switched their brains on. If the unconscious method isn’t working for them, ragging on the people who study it consciously isn’t helping them one bit.
If you want to be a brain surgeon, you don't just wing it. You study hard everything that there is to know about it. If you have the instincts from listening and playing a lot of great music that causes you to write good music all the time or that allows you to break the "rules" for a good reason yet still come up with excellent music, then analyzing too much might get in the way. Most people aren't the Beatles.

For you to use the transformational methods that I’m recommending, it implies being able to either get your hands on a song book; in guitar tablature, traditional notation or some other way of presenting it. Or being able to transcribe the sounds you hear into notes on a page in some kind of notation. What kind of notation you use is not important. Actually, for some people, it’s not even necessary to use notation.

There’s a story about the origins of Jazz Bebop music. My friend Leandro from Argentina who I met in Bali told me an anecdote that he heard from an American musician. The story goes that the players who used to perform Bop had played the tunes so much and knew them so well, they would play musical games from the tunes when hanging out with their friends after a gig. They would challenge each other to try and play a song they knew backwards and if that was too easy, then they would try to play it backwards three times faster. According to him, that became the origins of Bebop. Clearly, they didn’t use pencil and paper to do that.

These transformational methods are what allowed them to come up with a new style of music and allowed me to produce more music than I needed for my first album. But I didn’t use an expert computer system. I did it on paper by hand. It was fast, fun and easy. I recorded a CD of metal gongs and xylophone music called "Garden of Contemplation" with Aparna Panshikar, a vocalist who was world music artist of the year in both Korea and India. It was under my Traditional Independent Record Label: Gongchime.

My arrangement of the "Kang Ding Love Song" and my composition "Vietnamese Melody" were forwarded at the largest independent A&R Company in the world, Taxi, to a Fitness and Yoga Meditation listing. In 2006 my tunes Vietnamese Melody and Champa were in the top 10 on the website Broadjam in the Asian category for several months. In 2007 my tune "Visiting Shaman" was in the #1 position in the Asian chart. Later my tunes Vietnamese Melody and Champa were accepted into a music library available to TV and film producers.
So, I’m convinced these methods work because they already worked for me and worked for the creators of Bebop. They can work for you too. Have a look at the compositional chart I used to create the music that was both forwarded and accepted.

On the History of Ethnomusicology through Leading Ethnomusicologists

I seek to answer the question how is the history of ethnomusicology revealed through the progression of famous leading ethnomusicologists. The history of ethnomusicology is problematic because writers on the subject have come from many different places and studied a wide variety of musics and cultures.

The answer to the question of how the history of ethnomusicology is revealed through leading ethnomusicologists is found by looking at changes in the works published by them. This article will use texts published from the beginning of ethnomusicology up to the present.

It is the author of the book Theory and Method in Ethnomusicology, Nettl, on whose shoulders I build my case. The texts specifically to be cited are;

Verschmetzung, tonal fusion, and consonance: Carl Stumpf revisited by Schneider A et al, The Wellsprings of Music by Curt Sachs, Readings in Ethnomusicology, Theory and Method in Ethnomusicology by Bruno Nettl, John Blacking by Suzel Ana Reily et al, Folklorist Alan Lomax's Trove Goes to Library by Linton Weeks, Charles Seeger: a life in American music by Ann M. Pescatello, America's Popular Music Traditions as "Canon-Fodder by Sammie Ann Wicks, Scholarly Authority by Jacqueline Cogdell DjeDje, and Sound Archive Newsletter by Isobel Clouter.
Ethnomusicologists can be categorized as being early, middle or late.

Early:
A.J. Ellis promulgated the idea of cents and considered to be a founder of ethnomusicology. He looked at the relationship between pitch to speech and song.

Stumpf 1 created the idea of Verschmelzung which is related to but not identical with modern views of tonal fusion. Stumpf also created criteria for integral hearing. Stumpf also held the idea that roughness and dissonance can be conceptualized separately.

The most important early ethnomusicologist, Hornbostel, only wrote a series of publications never attempting to compile everything into one source. Many of his publications were co-authored, most often with Otto Abraham. He wrote studies on the music of Japan, Turkey, India, North America, New Guinea, Sumatra, Africa, Tierra del Fuego and more. He also coauthored a classification of musical instruments that is still used.

Curt Sachs created a few items giving overviews and were important because they were in English and understandable to the average reader as well. He expounds an evolutionary orientation early in his career but later that tendency is somewhat mitigated.

Also, early in his career he held the idea that people’s racial attributes are reflected in their music. He created an encyclopedic list of instruments and worked with Hornbostel on a classification of musical instruments in 1914. Concerning his evolutionary orientation even as late as 1962 he writes, 2 "The prehistorian works in a vertical way:
he excavates the tombs and fireplaces of ages long past-the deeper they lie the older they are. By and large they divide the older parts of pre-history into three Stone Ages. The Older Stone Age or Paleolithic and the Newer Stone Age or Neolithic Era, with a connecting Middle Stone Age or Mesolithic Era."

Concerning his idea of radial attributes, he had this to say in 1962 as well, "Most suspicious are we of the slippery and often criminally exploited concept of 'race,' in which biologically transmitted genes are all the time confused with environmental culture...

All these concepts will be rarely found in this book-not from want of daring on the author's part, but from a hard-won insight into the unbelievably complicated and treacherous web of ever-changing cultures, tribal nomadism, and unidentifiable mergers of patterns. Besides, musicologists, as spokesmen of a small, however significant component of culture, can at best be expert witnesses in this lingering lawsuit but hardly judges or jurors."

Bose's works deal with vocal technique, melody, scale and style. He theorizes about the difference between instrumental and vocal style and the connection between a culture's music theory, if it has one, with purely instrumental styles of music, the connection between music and language and what the determining factors are in establishing the existence of a unique style.

Robert Lachman studied the high cultures of the Orient through the observation that they all contained melodic skeletons.

Haydon wrote an introduction to musicology in 1941, a portion of which looks at methods, weaknesses and discrepancies between the different parts of musicology.

Marius Schneider views the creation of world music as a unitary development. He deals with both the function of music within a society's cultural expression and with a musics form.

Danckt of the German Kulturkreis school within anthropology compiled information on European folk songs based on national boundaries.

Herzog wrote an important short overview of European and American folk music. One can see his concern for the American Indian music when he writes, 3 "An inquiry into the relation and stability of musical form and function finds in the Ghost Dance songs of the Plains Indians an excellent example for study."

Middle:
Nettl initially engaged the field by writing about melody, rhythm and form and focused on North America and Africa but also delved in other geographical regions. For example, Nettle says about the scales and melodies of Persia, 4
"The music is organized in twelve modes, called dastgahs (conceptually similar to the Indian raga), each of which is subdivided into sections, or gushehs." He also states of Persian rhythm, “Thus, the increased importance of instrumental metric pieces results not only from the importance of meter in Western music, but also from the convenience of metric structure in the performance of music by ensembles.

" Finally he relates this sentence concerning aspects of form in Persian music, "Dynamics are fairly static, virtuoso technique is restricted, emotion is veiled."

Alan Merriam is known for pushing the study of music from the point of view of anthropology, specifically music within culture broken up into concepts about music, musical behaviors, and the sound of music itself. Later, he changed his idea to music "as" culture opposing the notions of Mantle Hood.

John Blacking 5 came up with the idea of the cultural analysis of music where he attempted to reveal that musical structures are reflected in the societal structures where they come from, as well as the innate musical abilities possessed by people.

Alan Lomax developed a theory that looked at a cultures style of work, the surrounding environment and the amount of sexual and social freedoms in attempting to show how different kinds of folk singing sprout in certain places. 6 Lomax came up with the theory of Canto metrics that attempted to compartmentalize qualities such as tones, beats, and phrases, a concept he also used on dance and storytelling.

Charles Seeger 7 was known for saying that an ethnomusicologist should consider the context of the music integrally with the music itself, regardless of what music it is but that this should be the definition of general musicology and why he considers himself a musicologist.

He is also known for anticipating the anthropological and folklorical approaches regarding music especially folk music and himself espousing functionalism over structuralism.
Late:

David McAllester is known for saying that 8 "Almost any line of human behavior is crossed at some point by music, [and] a discussion of music ... can move ... to almost any other area of cultural investigation" after which ethnomusicologists began to focus on the context of the music as much as its structure.

Leonard B. Meyer proposed that there was a relationship between Game theory and music composition.
Kwabena Nketia changed from duple meter to 6/8 when transcribing African music because the former was inaccurate. His concepts and assessment of tactus and rhythm are revolutionary. He also put forth 9 "The claim of superior scholarship or scholarly authority made in the early days by some of my colleagues and the assumption that greater objectivity resides in the outsider who studies the musical cultures of other people did not always impress me..."

Laurence Picken developed a theory that 10 "relates to Gagaku music in Japan, which he believed was a direct descendent of the music of the Tang court taught to Japanese musicians visiting the court during the Tang period.
This music was then performed to the Japanese court and over time it developed into a unique form now known as gagaku. "In the course of centuries, the real Tang tunes have become inaudible. In present Togaku they are played 8 to 16 times more slowly than in the original performances."

Willard Rhodes 8 "one of ethnomusicology's founding scholars, wrote in 1956 that ethnomusicology should focus on the 'music of the world's peoples ... whose language, music, and customs [are] different from those of our own.'"
Among the most important ethnomusicologists there are mainstream but opposed tendencies within the field of which 6 primary schools are assumed. The first is that enough understanding exists to justify making theorhetical generalizations. The second is that enough understanding does not exist.

The third is that ethnomusicology needs to be and can be defined. The fourth is that it can't be defined. The fifth is that analysis leads to understanding and the sixth is that music can only be understood on its own terms.

Embellishments

1) Appogiatura/slow grace note on the beat.
2) Nineteenth century appoggiatura/fast grace note before the beat.
3) Nachlag/as in 16th note passing tones filling what was an eighth note arpeggio.
4) Turn I/down the long side of a four note trough and up the short side. 3 down-1 up.
5) Turn II/Encirclement by step/CDCBC. (In jazz, one of the neighbor notes may be chromatic)
6) Vertical turn/ up the long side of a 4 note mountain then down the short side. Up 3 down 1.
7) On beat trill up
8) On beat trill down
9) Before the beat trill up
10) Before the beat trill down
11) Pralltriller/ starts on the beat and the higher note. It is a rapid four note trill that ends on the low note.
12) Upper grace note on the beat/upper crush/fast pull-off
13) Lower grace note on the beat/lower crush/fast hammer-on
14) Upper grace note before the beat.
15) Lower grace note before the beat.
16) Upper mordent on the beat/a single upper note then back down again.
17) Upper mordent before the beat.
18) Lower mordent on the beat/
19) Lower mordent before the beat.
20) Vibrato (in pop music usually four oscillations per beat but some people such as Stevie Nicks have machine gun vibrato which is faster.
21) Arpeggiation/often triplet grace notes forming a triadic chord.
22) Upwards glissando/portamento on the beat
23) Downwards glissando/portamento on the beat.
24) Upwards glissando before the beat. (May not fully reach the next pitch and so could be microtonal as in Blues bends.)
25) Downwards glissando before the beat. (May not fully reach the next pitch and so could be microtonal as in Blues bends.)
26) Other ornaments such as the slow waves that occur in Classical Indian music, and grace notes of other intervals besides a 2nd.
Combinations of these such as the trill and mordent etc…

Music's Relationship to Dance

African dance has often been viewed as obscene or liscentious because it usually involves hip motions which are interpreted as being overtly sexual. The music is usually designed for an actual purpose such as drinking and/or socializing unlike the modern "fine" arts which sees itself as beyond everything. Art for arts sake et al. In Africa onlookers usually participate in either the dance and/or the music and are encouraged to do so. The dance is seen as a lifestyle integral to everything African. To call it obscene is ignorant or purposefuly rude/racist.

The Greeks also based their music on the steps of dance. You may remember the terms from poetry class such as iambic pentameter etc… These describe the rhythms of dance steps. Different rhythms were thought to recreate different moods by the rhythms produced. This is similar to the melodic concept in India and Southeast Asia known as “rasa.” Classical motifs were also thought to possess this power to induce a feeling state. Each raga and rhythmic cycle is thought to have its own emotional flavor.

Mythology and Music Theory

The different ways of dividing the octave are related to mythological stories. The tonic is viewed as the king or emperor in ancient Greek music, the classical music of India and China. The fourth and the fifth are sometimes related to as the Asvan twins in Indian mythology or to ministers in the government hierarchy. The other notes in the scale are the subjects of the king. Notes outside the scale are enemies especially the one built a tritone from the tonic that, in the western tradition is viewed as the diabolical in music. The chord built on the seventh scale degree is also considered an “untouchable.” All of these ideas are a misapplication of the concept of, “as above, so below.” The ancients wanted to base their societies or at least SEEM to be basing their MUSIC on the natural order of the universe/ heaven. But making God a king and the angels ministers is sheer! projection because of the difficulty we have conceiving of a deity. Suggesting that since there is a caste system in heaven, there should be one on earth is self-serving of the upper classes. Repressive cultural control is not related to morality and is not derived from the authority of a venerable tradition. The upper classes represent their program as fair and themselves and their music theory as moral and proper. They must rationalize their program as closer to immutable values and prevent outsiders from understanding it and of acquiring self-mastery. They use all of the above to propogate unfair classism.

There's a hero in mythology who cuts up the terrible dragon that goes around the octave. The dragon has the scales of a snake from the earth and the wings of a bird from the sky. It represents the unity of opposites and is represented as an urobourus. It’s the most important “God/hero” that cuts it up, releasing the waters of heaven that have been sucked up and distributes the snake’s body as food for the devoted. Its a terrible dragon because of the fifths. This is from a book called The Myth of Invariance. If you create a scale using perfect fifth intervals without tempering them, you arrive at pythagora's comma. The octaves don't line up and processes like the procession of the equinoxes going further and further out of tune. It’s definitely the SPIRAL of fifths and not the circle of fifths.

Southeast Asian Melody

Southeast Asia's melodic development is very similar to the Indian. But it gives a straight melody with an ornamented version and variations such as a rhythmically altered version all presented simultaneously. Voice crossing is integral to gamelan music. It’s used to maintain interest.

Sometimes the melody is played at different tempos simultaneously. Western melody is very goal oriented. Gamelan melody is not like this and is supposed to create a timeless feeling which it does quite effectively. Like the classical music of India and Korea, the introduction usually has a part where there is no rhythmic beat. The Kebyar form has a melody in unison during the intro with no beat or it occasionally plays interlocking rhythms alternated with melody played by different groupings of the instruments. It plays interlocking variations in subsequent sections. It also has a grand finale beginning slow and ending fast just like Indian and Korean music.

Before moving from the intro to the first section, the rhythm can completely break down while the musicians play fast but soft and making sure their part does NOT match rhythmically with anyone else’s as a transition. In the first section it has interlocking rhythms which is also found in the music of Africa, Cuba and Haiti though not as much in a melodic form but only in a rhythmic one.

Gamelan music is based on a cantus firmus similar to the occidental sacred music that was based on the ancient melodies of Gregorian chant. The scale is based on ten equal divisions and their first scale was slendro which is about equal to C,D,F,G and A. It’s a pentatonic scale. This scale is used in temple services which are a combination of Budhism, Hinduism in Bali and Buddhism and Islam in Java. It is considered more dignified and less passionate than the pelog scale which sounds angry or sad to the South East Asians.

Pelog was created after the Dutch invasion. The native people fought bravely for a long time but were cornered and about to be captured at which point the people who were still alive, of which there were a large number, committed mass suicide. The music created using Pelog is supposed to sound like the thunder of war and the clash of armies. It became popular very quickly and the forms that use it such as Kebyar, were never elitist music played in the courts of the king. It is a very recent development.

Pelog has three forms known as patet. The first is roughly equal to C, Db, Eb, G and Ab a kind of Phrygian pentatonic scale. Anything played in pelog immediately sounds exotic to westerners because of the flat second degree and the strange skipping of F and B(b). One instrument in the ensemble plays neighbor notes around the cantus in a tenor voice where the cantus note is the middle of three notes. There are several different kinds of interlock! ing rhythms in gamelan music. The first is just a repeated note. The second is in the range of a fifth and where the two rhythms coincide, they meet on the fifth. The lower voice of the interlocking rhythm is comosed after the cantus. The upper voice is composed after that.

The music has breaks and fill to add variety and to mark sections. Gamelan music has a colotomic structure where the largest gong marks the beginning and ending of large sections. Usually only the most experienced musicians play it, since its placement is so important. It plays every 32 or 64 beats, for example depending on the structure. Gongs for the colotomic structure are often gloriously out of tune with the rest of the ensemble. There are higher gongs which divide the structure further.

One set of gongs plays on the last beat of every measure. This is similar to Korean music which places the accent in the same place and very different from western musical practice which usually places the accent on the first beat of every measure. The rhythms usually coincide on the last beat of a measure and meet on the fifth as I said before. When the music gets fast the players divide the music between them in hockett so that each person takes a turn playing each note of the interlocking rhythm. This technique is applied to all instrumental ensembles even one made up only of flutes. The higher pitched and fastest instruments are played by the youngest members of the ensemble.

Playing in a gamelan orchestra is considered a community service. Songs are often named after the doings of animals. The cantus has definite methods for targeting destination notes. Just like classical and jazz. The most senior musician plays the drums and/or rebab, a bowed string instrument. Flutes play in unison with the rebab.

Southeast Asian/Gamelan Music

Indian, Persian and Southeast Asian music has a cyclic rhythmic concept and so the circular representation of it is the most appropriate. This is also the way they view time with reincarnation and past-lives etc. so the circular representation is a natural.

If we look at the rhythmic cycle in gamelan music on a circular grid, it often has two superimposed triangles representing 6 rhyhmic events divided into two kinds played in duple meter. They do not create polyrhythmic tuplets so are not symmetrical triangles. But the way the two overlap produces a symmetrical star of David/Jewish star, though usually the downbeat is not on the axis of symmetry.

Microtones:

Indonesian Gamelan has an octave divided into ten equal parts for the Slendro scale. Ten being a number of completion in Chinese theory which was carried to South-East Asia. Thai music is divided into seven equal parts where two are left out, usually the 4th and 6th so that there isn't just a scale of all equal intervals like the whole tone. This creates a pentatonic scale (5 notes). The notes that are left out are sometimes used as ornaments and passing tones. Burma leaves those degrees out too and also makes another scale in seven equal but leaves out the third and seventh instead.

Healing Music, Gamelan and Microtones:

The binaural beats of gamelan, created by the 2 identical instrument sets which are tuned about a 1/4 step apart, synchronizes with alpha or theta brainwave patterns depending on the exact distance of the interval. Gamelan musicians even say that their intent is to make the audience half-awake/half-asleep. I thought a 12-string type guitar retuned could also reproduce the shimmering quality of gamelan. The scraper used in Cuban music can also scrape out brain wave tuplets in 7, 9, 11, 13 or whatever.

World Music Tunings and Western Compatibility

Western Compatibility:

The microtonal inflections used in Persian and Indian music aren't necessarily incompatible with western harmony. Right now, the case is that many musicians in Persia improvise in 24 or 48 equal on microtone capable instruments over 12 equal harmonies played on western instruments like the guitar and piano.

Expanded Tonal Palette:

Some people who are more heavily involved in the modern avant-garde microtonal movement are saying that 24 and 48 equal just highlight the limitations of 12 equal and many are calling for an expanded palette such as that based on 31 equal which more or less includes the usually preferred “just” intonations of western and Persian scales without overburdening the performer or composer with divisions that are too large and unweildy like 104 divisions of the octave for example! However, instruments with moveable frets, no frets, sliding mechanisms or easily inflected wind instruments like bassoon have many advantages in that they're not locked into anything really and can be asked to play whatever the composer wants or made to actualize whatever the player wants.

Minor keys and chords handle dissonances well, so scale options like Afshari/Esfahan which go C D Eb F G A1/2b Bb will easily work in C aeolian or C dorian with careful attention to the chords whose fifths and roots have the sixth "A" in them

It's other mode starting on the Bb results in a dominant scale that has a 1/2 tone flat 7th. The dominant chord handles dissonances better than anything, even allowing for sharp and flat fifths so this is very doable with consciousness given to chords that have the b7th as their root or fifth.

Suznak C D E1/2b F G Ab B is basically a "harmonic" minor scale with a slightly raised minor third. This is probably a very useful scale over classical western harmonies in a non-modal minor "key" while watching out for the b3rd in the chords.

Rast is basically the same scale as Afshari except it also has a 1/2 flat second. Not really a problem in a minor key. Attention being payed to the chords as stated previously.

Another scale is Hijaz which is the same as the dominant mode of Afshari except with an added nonmicrotonally flat second.

A possibility allowing for "weird" scales is to limit the accompaniment to the notes from the scale that are not microtonal. This would not be a chordal accompaniment per se but provide harmonious elements. This is an aspect of the kind of modified harmonic theory we are in need of today.

The dominant scale of Afshari that goes C D E F G A B1/2b would work well over an accompaniment built on the Chinese form of the pentatonic scale C D F G A since it doesn't have any kind of "B", microtonal or otherwise.

We could also adopt the Chinese concept of using notes outside of the pentatonic scale, which occur in the melody, as passing tones or neighbor tones.

The regular form of Afshari that goes C D Eb F G A1/2b Bb would work well over the more American form of the pentatonic scale C Eb F G Bb.

Hijaz would work over a pentatonic made of C E F G Bb, Suznak over C D F G Ab or C D F G B, Afshari/ Esfahan would also work over C D F G B among others.

There is an important connection between timbre and tuning. An instrument that has the prominent overtones that correspond to the microtonally flat intervals of a "weird" tuning doesn't sound particularly out of tune anymore. This has important implications for composers, synthesists and instrument builders. For practicality, tunings up to 41 equal divisions of the octave are about as many divisions that can be made, heard and played reasonably.

It has been suggested that tactile frets be added to the fingerboards of violins and cellos so performers unfamiliar with the tunings could approximate them on western style instruments. Another suggestion is to have a wavy fingerboard that will approximate different tunings by high and low crests on the fingerboard.

Some "weird" tunings are more consonant than others by western standards. The less consonant ones can be made more consonant by choosing the correct instrumental timbre to play it. The sitar has the jiwari bridge that creates the buzzing which brings out more prominently many of the upper partials. I suspect this allows them to play 1/8 or 1/2 flat intervals which don't sound so weird to us in that context. Maybe a classical flute might be particularly inappropriate for unconventional tunings because of its almost pure sine wave.

Lately I've been thinking about why the gamelans have instrument pairs tuned about a 1/4 step apart and how the Setar is tuned to C and C1/4 sharp.

In Persian music, it's often the case that the scales have tones which are only 1/4 flat instead of real quarter tones/1/2 flat intervals except in Turkey. This does not produce the visual symmetry as I said before. They must be sacrificing the perfect visual symmetry because some other element of the music is affecting it or is more important. I was pondering this when I came to the insight that if there is a B1/2 #, its tone might easily be confused with C or C1/2b. The same with F1/2b and E or E1/2 sharp. Diatonic scales probably favor less flattedness or sharpedness to maintain the distinctions between notes. Gamelan music is pentatonic without half-steps so the paired notes can be seriously sharp or flat even when played simultaneously without losing their identity to another scale degree.

Another related phenomenon is the binaural beats of gamelan and Persian music. Why do two systems of music in non-western tunings use simultaneously sounding 1/4 steps? Is there a connection to the tuning? Probably.

African Music

African Music:



The African bell pattern.

The diatonic major scale can be assigned a rhythm to each scale degree so that the interval between C-D, for example, is related to a quarter note. The interval between E-F relates to an eighth note since there is only a half-step between them. The result of the entire scale related to in this way is the bell pattern found all over Africa in either its "Ionian, Lydian or Mixolydian rhythmic mode" form.

African rhythms are frequently interlocking and not conceived of having a downbeat or being grouped into measures. Like the music of India and much other music from around the world, the parts are additive such as 3+3+2 if we're in an 8 or16 beat cycle in a western conceived measure of 4/4. Western music seems to favor dividing the measure exactly in half. African, Indian, and Persian music rarely does this. African music has 3 basic kinds.. The first is a 12 beat rhythmic cycle in which in a western conceived measure would generally be in 12/8, which is reserved for funerals and royalty. A 16 beat rhythmic cycle in 4/4 is for light music. The last kind is a combination for ritual and worship where either triplets are occasionally superimposed over 4 16ths in 4/4 or 4 16th notes are occasionally superimposed over groups of 3 eighth notes in 12/8. Sometimes the beginnings and/or endings of triplets tie over into the next beat.

Interlocking African Rhythms:

To create an interlocking rhythm with what might be called the Ionian rhythmic mode, we can use the dorian rhythmic mode or the mixolydian mode played underneath it, either started an eighth note late in 12/8. Either of these will fill up all the holes in the Ionian rhythmic mode.

Tension/Stress/Anxiety and Healing Music:

The bell rhythmic pattern found all over Africa that is based on the C Major scales Ionian, Lydian or Mixolydian modes has “on the beat” events on at least the first three quarter notes in 12/8. The second half of the measure has most events that occur off the beats. This produces a "masculine" on the beat first part and a "feminine" syncopated second part.

Since there are 7 notes in a major scale, a rhythm based on it can never be divided exactly in half. One side either has 4 and the other has 3 events or visa versa. This may be where the preference for asymmetrical rhythms comes from around the world. This is possibly why the clave in Salsa music has two parts. One is on the beat, the other is syncopated. One has three events and the other has two.

The alternation of them produces the tension relaxation that we're used to as westerners. However, we need to be careful because the increase of tension so valued by westerners often has the result of producing anxiety in the listener. Not a goal of healing music but a little "interest" is good especially in dance music. African melodic cells would repeat ad nauseum except for the fact that they never play them the exact same way twice. I suspect this reduces the anxiety while simultaneously relieves the potential boredom.

Voudou Drumming:

Bata drums from Haiti (think voudou), use THREE drums/instruments to create the interlocking rhythm. I think the reason why so many people like interlocking rhythms such as Africa, Bali etc...is because they create a smooth rhythmic surface. The same things we find beautiful in art and in people we also like in music. We all love a symmetrical face with smooth clear skin.

In the Bata drumming of Haiti there are seven standard rhythms Bayuba, Yakota Ebipkumi, Biobayare, Idilantilanti, Bembe and Yanvalou. Each one is addressed to the Gods or a certain God and is in either a 6 or 12 beat rhythmic cycle and intended to induce trance. But unlike other trance traditions where the shaman travels to the spirit world, in Haiti the Gods are thought to descend and are said to "ride" worshipers. As Andy Narell’s lyrics say, “dress up in the beat and wait for the spirits to move.” When a person is posessed, people ask them questions about money, love and important information. The usualy stuff.

African Melody:

Amadinda xylophone music of Uganda
Africa has a scale in 5-tone equal that uses interlocking parts similar to gamelan music. So, western music is in 12 tone equal, gamelan music is in 10 tone equal, Thai is in 7 tone equal, Ugandan music is in 5 tone equal. I wonder if there are any cultures that use 11 or 9 tone equal. Maybe not.

Kora tuning:

The double harp from Africa known as the kora has a tuning in the more traditional inland regions having notes closer to the ones in 5 tone equal. These regions were less influenced by westerners and more influenced by Persian people.

Aesthetics

Nature:

Some aestheticians say the reason we are all so concerned with beauty in art and music is because we don't live close enough to nature. We yearn for it and try to create it. I tentatively add that we may be trying to create it in our own image.

Math and Music:

Pi is a property often associated with beauty. The spiral in sea shells, like that of the chambered Nautilus, have the property of Pi in their construction and are considered beautiful. It seems that math is intrinsic to nature. Often sacred geometry around the world utilizes Pi and goes into the construction of temples and palaces. There are many other ratios that occur in nature and all are fair game for the composer.

e=2.7182818284590452353602874713526624877572470

9369995957

Pi=3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693

9937510582097494

Copeland/ Erdo=.023571113171923293137414347535961677173798

38997101103107109113127

Froda=6.5808599017920970851452403886486491573077

438348074005121512

Omega=0.567143290409783872999686622103555497538

15787186512508135131

Omega Inverse= 1.7632228343518967102252017769517070804360179866

674736345704569

Ramanujan’s#=262537412640768743.9999999999925007

25971981856888793538563373

Phi=1 1 2 2 4 2 6 4 6 4 10 12 6 8 8 16 6 18 8 12 10 22 8 20 12 16 12 28 8

Niven=1233456789 10 12 18 20 21 24 27 30 36 42

Golden String=1.6180339887498948482045863436563811772030

917980576

Tau=122334243426244526264428344628

Ugliness:

Protestantisms belief that the deity should not be represented and that art and music are not to be trusted since they take one away from God, created an architecture by modernists that is bereft of ornament. That’s why modern cities are so ugly. !

Finery:

Yes, we should avoid excessive finery but no ornaments? That’s going too far. Indian sitar music is often too heavily ornamented. For my taste, its use of ornaments should be more sober.

Aniconic Architecture of Persia and Music:

The aesthetic of Persian architecture is such that Allah is never to be represented using any kind of icon. But where the Protestants don’t use any ornaments, the Persians represented the deity in beautiful geometrical patterns, lattice-work and symmetry of which the Allhambra in Moorish Spain and the Taj Mahal in India and wonderful examples.

Southern Issan

The Jakae is a plucked zither and plays in the Mahori Khamen ensemble. It probably descended from the Indian Vina. It is played while it rests flat on the ground like the Japanese Koto but has frets like the Korean Komungo. The left hand frets while the right hand plucks.

The Krachappi is a Thailandized word taken from Japan which was originally taken from Indian Pali/Sanskrit which means turtle. It is a plucked lute. The body is a large circle like a big banjo. It is made of wood and has frets.

The Saw-Kantrum is a fiddle
with a body made of wood and a snakeskin soundboard. It has two metal strings. A loop is attached between the bridge and the nut to take up the slack on the string. It comes in three sizes.

Thai Music, Rhythmic Structure

Rhythmic Structure
Thai music is in duple meter and progresses from slow, to medium to fast, similar to Indian and Korean music. Accents fall on the last beat in a group of four, the same as Korean and gamelan music of Java and Bali. The accents are played by open and closed cymbal patterns. These can be further subdivided. This relates to the rhythmic structure of gamelan music but which is played by gongs instead.

Thai Music: External Influences

Actually, India and Persia were already having an influence on music in China by 126 B.C. China had a book on Indian music within 5 years prior to 642. Indian music also was having an impact in Java at least by the thirteenth century, so any instruments or music borrowed from there at that time may also have been affected by India. Not much is known about Malaysian history prior to the 15th century since little was recorded except that Hinduism was having a strong presence there obviously coming from India. China records contact with Malaysia at this time and up until 1824 it was predominantly under Thai control.

Thai Music: Instruments

The Thais had instruments of their own and some were from China such as the khim dulcimer,

malaw cymbal and klawng jin drum. The music of India had penetrated into the Mon (southern Burma) and Khmer (Cambodia) cultures previously. Later, the Thais also came in contact with Indian music. They successfully copied many of the Indian instruments. The Thai's also created their own instruments from this interaction, namely the phin, sang, pichanai, krachappi, chakhe and thon. These are mentioned in one of the oldest books to come out of Thailand called the Tribhunikuthai and also on a stone inscription called the sila-ja rerk created during the reign of king Ramkhamhaeng who was considered the father of the nation during the Sukhothai period 1283 A.D. (Sukhothai translates as Dawn of Happiness since they overthrew the Khmer rulers).
At this time they adopted some instruments such as the glawng khaek from java, the klawng malayu from Malaysia, the perng mang from the Mon people and the glawng yao from Burma.

Indian Ragas

Indian Ragas:

Styles of Traditional Indian Music are based on the raga which is a composed scale that traditional says may have different ascending and descending forms similar to the western melodic minor scale. However, ragam are not scales or modes. Ragam have characteristic phrases called pakad if there is only one or swarup if there are several. Indians choose contrasting ragas for the next piece in a performance unlike Turkish musicians who usually say the next mode should be a direct development or Arabian music where frequent modulations should go unnoticed.

The introduction in Indian music is a long, long improvisation without a set meter. The composed section is in a particular rhythmic cycle. It has improvisational elements similar to jazz. The final movement uses speed picking. The first part of the fixed composition is confined to the lower and middle octaves. The second part extends from the middle to the upper octaves. A good musician should be able to play for more than one hour and not repeat the same phrase twice. Indian music does not allow multi-layered compositions. They say it would be rude to speak while someone else is speaking.

The most popular Indian Thaats/scales are;

Bilawal C D E F G A B1/4sharp. Its basically a major scale with a very sharp leading tone. ,

Bhairav C Db E F G A B1/8sharp. It has only a slightly raised leading tone.

Khamaj C D E F G A1/8sharp Bb1/8sharp. This is India's mixolydian.

Todi C Db Eb F# G Ab B1/8sharp.

Kalyan C D E F# G A1/4# B1/4#. This is India's Lydian mode.

Kafi CDEbF# G A1/4b B1/4#.

The indications for sharpedness and flatedness are only approximate.

Ragas often have two notes that are emphasized, usually a fifth apart, each appearing in a separate tetrachord. Both Persian and Indian music may have changing tones like the two versions of the melodic minor scale but Indian music never modulates. (There may be some recent exceptions).

Ornaments of Classical Indian Music:

The primary ornaments in Indian music which are some of the more beautiful available to the modern composer are portamento, a short grace not of low intensity, encirclement by microtones sometimes played in a series, fast oscillation but slight pitch variation and a lesser frequency oscillation but greater amplitude of vibration, three repeated notes and Andola and Murahan which have no western equivalent.

Indian Improvisation:

Classical Indian improvisation involves using the common motifs for a particular raga and standard ornaments. Motifs are turned into variations by rhythmic augmentation, diminution, retrograde, inversion and an unusual technique of adding notes such as playing the first not of a motif then playing the first and second, then playing the first, second and third etc…until the whole thing is revealed. This is also done in reverse order and backwards. Motifs are also sequenced through rhythmic displacement and note order permutations such as 1234, 1243, 1324 etc…

The moods created by music are carefully controlled. Indian musicians say that some sentiments are appropriate for music and others aren’t. Sadness and joy are proper but humor is not. Humor is o.k. in the theater however.

Thats the end of this discussion on Styles of Traditional Indian Music.

My Bio IV

I have written more music than I can count, as well as published articles on music composition, aesthetics and ethnomusicology (http://www.paradisemoon.com/thai_main/Huahin/thai_instruments_intro.htm). My music combines melodic motives from jazz, rhythmic motives from the Middle East, India, Africa, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Bali,

Music That Accelerates From 0-60 p.7

Where do we expect to find symmetry in music. Actually, it seems that the primary place it is located is in the scale and often its tuning. There really aren't that many examples of reversible rhythms except at large levels of the rhythmic structure or melodies except with Bach and such, whose music is definitely for the mathematically inclined and not really the general fare even among Classical or Baroque composers.

Arabic scales known as Maqams and the gamalen's colotomic structure produce very symmetrical scales and rhythms. Two very beautiful musical traditions.

It becomes very obvious that every scale you can play also has a rhythm associated with it when you look at it constructed on a circle with the unison and the octave at the top in the same location. It’s manifestly apparent that some of the Arabic scales have notes which are half-flat or quarter tones for reasons of visual symmetry. It seemed to me unusual that the starting note for many maqams was not the one on the axis of symmetry.

Usually, it places the 1/4 flat on the 6th and/or 7th. That was interesting to me because the seventh degree is the one played microtonally flat or “blue” in Blues, Jazz, Rock and African as well, since that’s where Blues and Jazz comes from primarily. The seventh is often microtonally inflected in the Classical music of India also.


The form of a piece of music is another place where we often find a little symmetry. Beethoven and others were of the opinion that if you are writing a long piece then the beginning goes nowhere fast so you are alerted to the fact it's going to be a longer composition and likewise the ending needed to match the beginning in size somewhat and also relate to the scope of the entire piece.


Jazz tunes play the head, improvise and then return to the head. If the head is short, they play the head twice and the ending twice. This is a kind of symmetry without going to the extent of playing the theme backwards at the end which we don't expect in our tradition.

Symmetry is actually rare in nature except in the faces and bodies of animals. Trees, lakes, rivers, mountains etc. are not symmetrical. Music which does not have the symmetrical elements previously presented has the aesthetic of the nomad not seeing many faces or symmetrical buildings who often lives alone closer to nature and derives his aesthetic from that.

Contemporary composers could write more inter locking rhythms because it creates a smooth rhythmic surface without leaving any holes, just like a beautiful face

Some aestheticians say the reason we are all so concerned with beauty in art and music is because we don't live close enough to nature. We yearn for it and try to create it. I tentatively add that we may be trying to create it in our own image.

Perhaps a reason to use self retrograding rhythmic structures similar to palinromes in literature such as "A man, a plan, a canal. Panama." is not because of a need for symmetry. It's because the retrograde implies a desire to go backwad in time perhaps to a golden age. This is a little regressive however.

Another interpretation is that its a bit revolutionary. Anagrams/permutations imply an even more revolutionary philosophical standpoint.

Then there are philosophical considerations. In the Heterotopia where we actually live, we have to honor the interests and aptitudes of the composer, the performer and the audience. We cannot mirror a utopia in which we do not believe.

One based on elitism, ageism, classism, sexism and all. In my case, I'm a composer whose interests and aptitudes cluster around symbols. As such, when made aware of the fact the very notes themselves have symbollic meaning, these symbols are of interest to me.

Music That Accelerates From 0-60 p.2

The latest events in contemporary music history the way I see it are atonality (innovation away from traditional harmony), serialism (innovation away from traditional melody and tonality.), minimalism (innovation away from preconceptions about instrumentation and form, ambient (innovations away from the traditional purpose of music) and the postmodernism of John Scoffield, Pat Methany etc (innovations away from traditional voicings, progressions and rhythmic approaches).

The serialists thought they were composing the music of the future. Bach knew he was composing the music of his present which is what I believe we need to be doing.

Postmodern art and literature leans decidedly toward an ugliness which I would not want to replicate in music. Its based on a false assumption that in rightfully reacting to the suffocating constraints of traditional forms etc that we should swing toward complete formlessness.

The cut up technique in literature, more often than not, leads to gobbledygook. Nailing a toilet on the wall and calling it art is also nonsense. The postmodern dilemma is how to publish the denial of publishing and mean the absence of meaning. John Cage summed it up well, "I have nothing to say and I'm saying it." The performance of his piece for piano in which the pianist never plays is the height of this wrongheaded philosophy.

My idea is that we don't want ugly formlessness. We want a flexible form. We want enough flexibility for artistic freedom and enough form to have a place to exist.

There is room in the music for a place where, like in abstract art, the motif only has meaning to the composer and whatever meaning the audience derives from it is O.K. and not wrong also, but it can't be the whole thing because art really isn't self expression in a vacuum. Its a dialogue with an audience and other musicians.

Also, when art doesn't have a frame, this can lead to non-art but it can also lead to an art that is not complete without audience participation which can be a good thing. This is one direction which I think music can profitably go now and in the future.

Another idea is using non-traditional media. The expanded definition of what constitutes a musical instrument or music lets a cool breeze into a stuffy room but we still need the room. We shouldn't say that anything is music.

We can use techniques like cut up to suggest new directions without being a robotic slave to the technique, allowing it to make every artistic decision for us. If so, then we are not musicians, artists or writers but dispensable automatons.

The movement away from traditional tonality can free up the strangle hold tonality has had on melody. Utilizing harmony in service of the melody is the challenge of the day. Indian and middle eastern melody far outpaces western melodic practice by leaps and bounds precisely because its making up for the lack of harmony. Modal jazz and free jazz artists were going there but took a left turn at the last minute and free jazz was having too much of the undesirable open ended formlessness. It would be nice to hear more inclusion of Indian embellishments in western music.