Re: musical talk?

On Sat, 24 Oct 1998, Nik Taylor wrote:

> Baba wrote:
> > Can anyone help me get info' about an auxlang called something like
> > "solreme"? It uses 7 notes (sounds) to create a whole language.
>
> I know a little about it, I've found some sources on the Net, but I
> don't remember where.
>
> Anyways, the idea was that the seven notes (do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti)
> could be used as phonemes, thus it would be a language that could be
> sung.  I suppose you could probably sing a natural language, while
> encoding another message in that language (tho I doubt it would sound
> very musical).
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?

Anyways, pronouns were one note each, prepositions and a
> few other words were two notes (42 combinations, since there were none
> with the same note repeated twice), some basic words were three notes,
> and there were some opposites (maybe all opposites, I don't know) which
> were formed by flipping the notes around, so that if (randomly
> generated) refaso meant "good", then sofare would be "bad".  There were
> some 4-note words, but I don't think there were any 5-note words.  The
> name comes from the French version of the notes' names, which used sol
> instead of so and a couple of other differences.  That's all I know.
Hasn't it always been _sol_, Nik?  Except in _The Sound of Music_, where
it's thought to be "sew... a needle pulling thread..."

Yeah, this could make for some pretty atonal music.  The idea that
really grabbed me, and you mentioned it above, was that a choir could sing
these chords using words that contradicted the meaning of the music.  But
I never could put it into any kind of system, since my musical sense
demanded a certain aesthetic.  Majors and minors already encode a kind of
meaning in western music, interestingly.  So do certain rhythms.

Sally
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Sally Caves
scaves@frontiernet.net
http://www.frontiernet.net/~scaves/teonaht.html

Rin euab ouarjo vopy vytssema tohda uo zef:
ar al aippara brottwav; ad kemban aril yllefo
brotwav fenom; vybbrysan brotwav an; he ad
edirmerem brotwav kronom.

"A cat and a man are not all that different.
Both are on my bed; both lay their head on their
arm; both have mustaches; both purr when they
sleep."
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