Re: Help? Asciification of musical language
| From: | william drewery <will65610@...> |
|---|
| Date: | Friday, June 11, 2004, 21:26 |
|---|
One could really go totown with this idea of a musical
language. You could let the way certain intervals
resolve be a form of reflection. You might hiave such
that every root forms a melodic consonance, and that
different passing tones and other introduced
dissonances create the morphology.
Travis
--- Sally Caves <scaves@...> wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Rachel Klippenstein"
> <estel_telcontar@...>
>
>
>
> > Hello everyone
>
> Hi!
>
> > It's been a while since I've posted, but I haven't
> been away.
> > I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions for
> how to represent a
> > musical language online... I have such a project
> on a back burner, and
> > I think I would have more incentive to work on it
> if I could post to
> > the list. I've sort of figured out an own writing
> system for it, but I
> > haven't managed to figure out a successful ascii
> representation for it.
>
> Wonderful! I have long thought of having a musical
> language, so I'm glad
> you're working on this. I could never figure out
> how I'd do it, though; at
> first I wanted chords to be part of it. But the
> idea was so intriguing: it
> could be used for code; someone could sing a verse
> of song, and have the
> melody convey an entirely different message, issue a
> warning, or whatever.
> How cool is that? :)
>
> > A fairly full description of the phonology I'm
> trying to represent can
> > be found in the archives here:
> >
>
http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0309C&L=conlang&P=R20245&D=0&H=0&O=T&T=1
>
> Yes, looked at it. What I wonder is if you intend a
> certain or certain
> mode(s)/scale(s), or if you want accidentals. The
> do-re-mi essentially
> gives you just the major scale (that is if you start
> with do--here she
> breaks into a loud rendition of "Doe, a deer! A
> female deer!")
>
> Ahem.
>
> Would minor scale, or would any of the various modes
> (dorian, aolian, etc.)
> be a consideration? What if you wanted the Devil's
> Interval, say, to
> express shock? Or just the subjunctive? or a nice
> sense of fairy warning?
> :)
>
> Do re mi could do this depending on where you start
> the first note of the
> scale. But it doesn't handle accidentals very well.
> That might not be a
> consideration for you.
>
> When I think of a tune and I'm away from my piano, I
> write it down with
> small letters for the base and capitals for the
> treble (I use a two octave
> scale usually), with sharps and flats in front of
> them; it could be asciized
> thus:
>
> low c (relative pitch) c sharp= #c, d, #d, e, e
> flat=/e, f, g, a, b, middle
> C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C. Here's the tune for
> "Stormy Weather" (without, of
> course, the timing):
>
> /b b D /b b D b D /D C
> /b b D d
> Don't know why there's no sun up in the sky, stormy
> weather...
>
> Of course d flat could be c sharp; I've been trained
> to adhere to key, but
> here I offer it as a method of giving musical
> relationships that is a
> shorter script than do-re-mi, and more encompassing
> than abc.
>
> > Or, here's a briefer description:
> > -It's based on relative pitch, not absolute pitch
> > -There are 7 different notes (the equivalent of
> segments)
> > -Beats (the equivalent of syllables) contain 1 to
> 4 notes
> > -The relative lengths of the notes within the beat
> is not phonemic
> >
> > So the system needs to be able to represent the 7
> notes and their
> > grouping into beats; I think that's all.
> >
> > I could just represent the notes with note-names,
> with |a| (or possibly
> > |c|) representing the first note of the scale, and
> putting a symbol
> > like a hyphen between the notes, so that you would
> end up with
> > something like
> >
> > a adg abde-dg deg-fc a
>
> Nice and minor! Do you intend modality to convey
> meaning? I've always
> thought that it would be part of my musical
> language. There is so much to
> all music that conveys emotion (in socially agreed
> upon ways, of course).
> Since you're doing seven tones, this suggests to me
> that you can play around
> with any of the western diatonic tones in an octave.
> Would changing these
> arrangements contribute semantically?
>
> > (Not representing real words, since I don't have
> any yet; just trying
> > to convey a visual impression) My issue with this
> is that using
> > letters looks like they're intended to be
> pronounced as consonants and
> > vowels; also, it gives the false impression that
> it represents the
> > actual intervals between the notes - that |ac|
> represents an interval
> > of a minor 3rd, like going from A natural to C
> natural. This isn't the
> > case, since it merely indicates the first and
> third notes of the scale,
> > which could be either a major or minor scale, or
> neither.
>
> How would you indicate otherwise? You could start
> with c: ce. This puts
> you squarely in the western system of major and
> minor scales. Unless you do
> as I showed and have a twelve-tone system of
> representation. Another
> suggestion: use a through l for the twelve tones in
> the base and A through
> L in the treble. Might confuse people who know
> music and associate a and c
> with a specific interval, though.
>
> > Or I could use the numbers to represent the notes,
> with 1 being the
> > first note of the scale, and 7 being the 7th.
> Then the above sequence
> > of notes would be written
> >
> > 1 147 1245-47 457-63 1
> >
> > That looks terribly illegible to me.
>
> Me too. It looks like the ISBN number for a book.
>
> > What do youguys think? Letters, numbers or
> something else? I guess
> > you could write it in solfege... That might be
> better. Hmm, that
> > would give something like
> >
> > do dofati dorefaso-fati fasoti-lami do
>
> And that looks like a regular conlang.
>
> Sally
> scaves@frontiernet.net
>
http://www.frontiernet.net/~scaves/teoreal2.html
> (I don't think any of my .ra files are openable
> anymore)
>
> PS I love the devil's interval! Bernstein leaned on
> it heavily in "West
> Side Story": Maria! I just met a girl named Maria!
> And then that song the
> Jets whistle: c #f C #f c #f C. Did I get that
> right? Working from memory
> here.d I get that right? Working from memory
> here.