Re: Musical conlangs

On Thursday 17 October 2002 03:11 pm, Adrian Morgan wrote:
> 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?
Now I come to think of it, Jack Vance wrote a story about an alien race, the
Kaa, who had a flutish/flutey language.  And they had large sections of
continuous narrative to indicate states of mind, requests, arguments,
whathaveyou ...  I also can't recall the novel's title, but the central
character was an interesting muso called Gastel Etzwane.

Anyone else remember him?

Wesley Parish

>
> Adrian.
--
Mau e ki, "He aha te mea nui?"
You ask, "What is the most important thing?"
Maku e ki, "He tangata, he tangata, he tangata."
I reply, "It is people, it is people, it is people."