Re: musical talk?

At 10:50 PM 10/24/98 -0400, Tim Smith wrote:
>At 05:24 PM 10/24/98 -0400, Sally Caves wrote:
>>Drat, this was a concept I had many many years ago, and people went...
>>"huh?"  My notion was that it was chords that expressed grammar--and
>>INTERVALS--whether it was a second, a third, a fourth, a fifth or a sixth
>>in the succession of notes or chords.  It is easier to hear intervals
>>between notes than specific notes by themselves.  By "two notes," I'm
>>assuming, Nik, that you mean two notes played together?  Or two notes
>>played in succession?
>>
>
>I think in Solresol it was two or more successive notes that defined a
>morpheme; it was melody, not harmony.  The idea was that one person should
>be able to sing it.  However, your idea of harmony being grammatically
>significant is interesting.  I've actually thought about aliens whose vocal
>apparatus is such that they can sing in harmony with themselves, and what
>kind of musical language they could develop.  (The idea of a strictly
>melodic language, sort of like birdsong but much more complex, is fairly
>old, but still IMHO interesting.  Although a lot of people have talked about
>it in general terms, I'm not aware of anybody -- except the inventor of
>Solresol -- who's actually tried to work it out in detail.)
>
You might want to take a look at my languages Machi and Bogomol, which I
think do something along these lines, at

http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Corridor/2711/zlang.html

-- Terry