Re: musical talk?
| From: | Diana Slattery <slattd@...> |
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| Date: | Sunday, October 25, 1998, 3:53 |
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<P>Sally Caves wrote:
<BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE>On Sat, 24 Oct 1998, Nik Taylor wrote:
<P>> Baba wrote:
<BR>> > Can anyone help me get info' about an auxlang called something
like
<BR>> > "solreme"? It uses 7 notes (sounds) to create a whole language.
<BR>>
<BR>> I know a little about it, I've found some sources on the Net, but
I
<BR>> don't remember where.
<BR>>
<BR>> Anyways, the idea was that the seven notes (do, re, mi, fa, so, la,
ti)
<BR>> could be used as phonemes, thus it would be a language that could
be
<BR>> sung. I suppose you could probably sing a natural language,
while
<BR>> encoding another message in that language (tho I doubt it would sound
<BR>> very musical).
<P>Drat, this was a concept I had many many years ago, and people went...
<BR>"huh?" My notion was that it was chords that expressed grammar--and
<BR>INTERVALS--whether it was a second, a third, a fourth, a fifth or a
sixth
<BR>in the succession of notes or chords. It is easier to hear intervals
<BR>between notes than specific notes by themselves. By "two notes,"
I'm
<BR>assuming, Nik, that you mean two notes played together? Or two
notes
<BR>played in succession?
<P>Anyways, pronouns were one note each, prepositions and a
<BR>> few other words were two notes (42 combinations, since there were
none
<BR>> with the same note repeated twice), some basic words were three notes,
<BR>> and there were some opposites (maybe all opposites, I don't know)
which
<BR>> were formed by flipping the notes around, so that if (randomly
<BR>> generated) refaso meant "good", then sofare would be "bad".
There were
<BR>> some 4-note words, but I don't think there were any 5-note words.
The
<BR>> name comes from the French version of the notes' names, which used
sol
<BR>> instead of so and a couple of other differences. That's all
I know.
<P>Hasn't it always been _sol_, Nik? Except in _The Sound of Music_,
where
<BR>it's thought to be "sew... a needle pulling thread..."
<P>Yeah, this could make for some pretty atonal music. The idea that
<BR>really grabbed me, and you mentioned it above, was that a choir could
sing
<BR>these chords using words that contradicted the meaning of the music.
But
<BR>I never could put it into any kind of system, since my musical sense
<BR>demanded a certain aesthetic. Majors and minors already encode
a kind of
<BR>meaning in western music, interestingly. So do certain rhythms.
<P>Sally</BLOCKQUOTE>
This idea of a mapping--direct or indirect--of tones to language is one
of the ideas--and practices I am exploring in the visual language I am
constructing. Looking at it, it strongly suggests a musical notation.
The questions are legion; Sally, you begin with chords/grammar. I
have begun learning and using a nifty software tool--MetaSynth--that, among
other features, allows one to paint sound and synthesize in a range of
instruments (and you can build your own), scales--from our 7 noter to quartertones
and microtones about as thin an interval as you want to slice it.
<P>If anyone is interested, the website is at:
<BR><A
HREF="http://www.uisoftware.com/PAGES_FLASH/index.html">http://www.uisoftware.com/PAGES_FLASH/index.html</A>
<BR>
<P>and examples of music created with the program are at: <A
HREF="http://www.metasynth.com/METASYNTH/MUSIC/Musicgallery.html">http://www.metasynth.com/METASYNTH/MUSIC/Musicgallery.html</A>
<P>Diana Slattery</HTML>