Re: "Old Starrish"

Rachel Klippenstein wrote:
>  --- Fredrik Ekman <ekman@...> wrote: >
> [R]achel Klippenstein wrote:
>
>>By the way, what is your own musical background?
>
>
> I have played violin for about 12 years, played in
> community orchestras and sung in a good childrens
> choir until I entered busy university life.  My music
> theory is not bad, but terribly advanced, though.  I
> know what different chords and scales etc. are, but I
> don't know any of the principles for combining them.
>
>
>>One interesting question is whether your scale is
>>absolute or relative. In
>>other words, does a given vowel always map to the
>>exact same wave-length,
>>or is it decided by the context (ie can the same
>>message be conveyed in a
>>different key)? How are octaves handled? What about
>>"speakers" who have
>>different vocal pitch (women/men/children)?
>
>
> I was thinking that each vowel would be associated to
> a specific note-name (in our system), like C or
> B-flat, and that people with different voice-ranges
> would use a note with that name that was comfortable
> to their voice range.  I toyed around with the idea of
> a relative scale, and decided that the problem with it
> would be that different vowel sequences that
> represented the same intervals could then correspond
> to exactly the same tone sequences, if the speakers
> decided to start them on the same note.
So they use the Western European equal-tempered chromatic scale?

>>To me, the most difficult obstacle would seem to be
>>to accomplish a
>>language that is at the same time not too limited in
>>its range of possible
>>expressions, while still producing reasonably
>>melodious "words". How, for
>>instance, would you avoid tritones and other
>>difficult intervals?
>
>
> So, this is one of the issues that makes the specifics
> of the vowel system a daunting task, so that I am
> probably going to work out the specifics of the
> consonant system out before tackling the vowel system.
>  I have a few ideas, but they need a lots of work.
>
> Maybe you could help me with one thing: I don't know
> specifically which intervals are awkward, and I don't
> know how one would look it up.  Also, what is a
> tritone?  (Oh, probably an interval of three whole
> tones, right?)
Right, an augmented fourth. They're notoriously hard to sing in tune.