musical systems (was fictional worlds)

 --- Herman Miller <hmiller@...> wrote:
> Olaetian has words for different kinds of musical
> instruments. I
> actually drew crude pictures of some of them, and
> made notes on the
> pitch range of each one.
how are they tuned ? do you use the twelve-degree
scale or modern western music, the 7 degree scale of
old western music, the 5-degree scale of eastern
music, or what ?

i imagine you'ld want to base the harmony on the
harmonic series, but where are the divisions between
harmony and dissonance ? in western music it seems to
have moved slowly from the fifth (3/2) up to (
possibly ) the major second (8/7 or 9/8) but further
than that is still considered dissonant. the octave
(2/1) and major fifth (3/2) are now considered bland
and not really harmonic at all, although they were
vital to parallel organum.

is the diminished fifth (7/5) considered dissonant (
diabolo in musica ) or colourful ( i think it's a
gorgeous sound ) ?

btw, any vocabularly relating to all of this ? modes
of the scale, harmonic intervals, note names, &c.

too many questions !

bn

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