Re: Musical conlangs

bnathyuw wrote:

> would this be played or sung ? you mention a left hand; does this
> imply playing on a keyboard instrument
I'm a keyboard player myself, so I find it easiest to think keyboard.
Having two hands playing is the most obvious way to reduce the length
of the words, which could easily be horrendously long.

However, questions such as "would it be played or sung" are ultimately
conculture questions, because maybe it's the language of an alien race
with instruments built into their bodies (e.g. under their wings).

> but in general i spose i would suggest looking at how the structure
> of complex musical phrases can be reconciled with that of complex
> sentences, and then try to introduce features where they converge
Exactly. I agree.

To help me brainstorm when I was messing about last night, I consulted
my copy of "Traditional Music in Ireland" by Tomas O'Canainn, which is
available at http://www.celt.com.au/hculture.html and highly
recommended.

H. S. Teoh wrote:

> Very good point. Most people don't have perfect pitch, and therefore
> would have trouble knowing the precise pitch of an isolated note. On the
> other hand, most people are able to tell the *relative* pitch differences
> between a series of notes. I.e., most people can hear the difference
> between, say, a perfect 5th and a major 3rd, even if they can't name it.
> (However, it becomes less clear when dealing with pitches in the same
> class -- not many untrained people would be able to tell the difference
> between a minor 2nd and a major 2nd.)
Some more flexibility is possible if one assumes it's a language for
an alien race. It's more important to me that the result (played by a
skilled musician) should sound beautiful to the human ear, than that
the average human would be able to understand it. If one designs it
for humans to understand, that's great, but I'm not committed to that
limitation.

The project is, I still think, beyond me right now, but it's OK to
dream, is it not?

Adrian.

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