Help? Asciification of musical language [multiple response]
| From: | Rachel Klippenstein <estel_telcontar@...> |
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| Date: | Sunday, June 13, 2004, 22:31 |
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Sorry everyone for the slowth of my reply, I was in Paris for the
weekend, so didn't have internet access. (I'm visiting my family in
Belgium for the summer, Yay!)
Thanks everyone for your responses!
Steg Belsky ha tera a:
> What about a system where you associate the shapes of letters
> with the notes they're supposed to represent, like in my WhistleLang?
> see:
>
http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0208D&L=conlang&P=R21307&m=39268
Hm, I don't know if that would work for mine because as far as I can
understand, the shapes represent tonal contours, while in my language
the phonemes are individual tones, without contour... and the number of
beats with note combinations runs into the thousands.
Sally Caves ha tera a:
> Wonderful! I have long thought of having a musical language,
> so I'm glad you're working on this.
Well, my work is pretty sporadic, but I think it's a pretty neat idea
too.
> I could never figure out how I'd do it, though;
> at first I wanted chords to be part of it.
I'm a violinist, so my musical thinking is dominated by melody, so I
haven't included chords. But I imagine that it could be quite an art
form to compose/write texts/songs that say two different things and
harmonise with each other.
> 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? :)
Pretty neat all right!
> 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!")
No, I definitely do not intend a certain mode or scale, and that's one
of the issues with using do-re-mi. It would have to be a very flexible
interpretation of do-re-mi, where |do| only stood for the first not of
the scale, be it major, minor, or modal, and I think that would
probably be more confusing than helpful. My intent is that speakers
can vary the kind of scale they use to flavour and vary the emotion of
their utterance. And by kind of scale I mean major, minor, etc., not
which particular key it's in. As I said, the absolute pitch is
irrelevant.
> Would minor scale, or would any of the various modes
> (dorian, aolian, etc.)be a consideration?
They're available to vary the expression. I don't know their specific
uses yet.
> What if you wanted the Devil's Interval, say, to express shock?
> Or just the subjunctive? or a nice sense of fairy warning? :)
Well, wherever it occurs in a scale it can be used - so whenever the
scale someone's speaking in has that interval in place of a certain 4th
or 5th. But I imagine that people would often make accidentals or
switch scales to avoid it, unless they wanted it for special effect.
It'd make a good interjection, though... maybe it could mean "ow!" as
an interjection.
> > 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!
That comment exactly pinpoints the problem with that transcription
system. If I used that system, that could represent a major or minor
scale, or neither. You could explain it by saying that speakers can
insert sharps or flats at will to make the emotion of the sentence fit
better.
"william drewery <will65610@YAHOO.COM" ha tera a:
> 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
One could, though I don't think that would work within the framework
I'm using, since the particular scale used is up to the speaker, and
it's only a melodic language - never more than one note at a time.
Ray Brown ha tera a:
> This is remarkably similar to the phonology of
> Jean François Sudre's auxlang SolreSol, which was published
> IIRC in 1817 and had some following till the early years
> of the 20th cent.
> Boleslas Gajewski published a grammar of the language
> in 1902 and notes:
> "La Langue Universelle de SUDRE possède:
> 7 mots d'une syllabe;
> 49 mots de deaux syllabes;
> 336 mots de trois syllabes;
< 2268 mots de quatre syllabes;
> TOTAL 2660 mots qui ont suffi pour former une langue
> assez complète, facilement acceptable par tous les peuples,
> pour leur relations internationales les plus nécessaires."
Yes, I'm aware of SolReSol, though I think I first heard about it after
I'd mostly worked out the phonology. There are a couple significant
difference between SolReSol and my system:
- SolReSol, as far as I understand, defines the particular intervals
between notes (major 3rd, minor 3rd etc), while mine doesn't; it only
defines which note of the scale it is, but not the exact interval,
since it could be a major scale or a minor one or neither.
- SolReSol only ever has one note per beat, while mine allows up to 4
notes per beat, and several beats are allowed in a word, so mine has a
much greater possible number of words.
This link wouldn't work for me, though it looked like the site might
just be down temporarily.
Philippe Caquant ha tera a:
> There exists at least one musical natlang. It's a
> whistled one, and if I'm not mistaken, its is used on
> Canarias Islands. It nearly died, but I heard that by
> now, it's taught again in schools over there. The
> initial purpose was for the shepherds to communicate
> from hill to hill, I believe.
I'm aware of it, and I'd love to know more about it, but I couldn't
find much information on it, and/or other whistled languages.
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