Re: Melodies move by step in any form of music?

On Sun, 01 Jun 2008 00:34:06 +0100, Jack Campin - bogus address
<bogus@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

>> I was referring to musicians of an earlier time, and why they wouldn't
>> settle on the whole-tone scale as a scale which meets the requirements
of
>> something that is felt not to contain any leaps. The problem with the
WTS
>> is that it does not contain all the tonal degrees - it only has ^1,
while
>> the ^4 and ^5 are sharp. So they wouldn't want to use that in practical
>> music-making.
>
>In some places similar scales *were* used.  The slendro scale of
>south-east Asia is pentatonic with five *equally spaced* notes
>(sort of, the exact tuning varies from one gamelan to another,
>but it's always closer to 5-TET than to the pentatonic scales of
>northern Asia or to anything you might get from the "overtone
>series", however interpreted).  This scale has been around for a
>thousand years at least.
>
>==== j a c k  at  c a m p i n . m e . u k  ===  <http://www.campin.me.uk>
====
>Jack Campin, 11 Third St, Newtongrange EH22 4PU, Scotland == mob 07800
739 557
>CD-ROMs and free stuff:  Scottish music, food intolerance, and Mac logic
fonts

Thanks for this, Jack. I've actually been actively searching for some
time,
for examples of non-Occidental music that does not feature a P5 , and this
is the first time I've found something that fits the bill. I had occasion
to actually play a Chines dulcimer-like instrument ( sorry, I cannot
locate
the name of it in a book, and the man who owned the instrument didn't
speak
English very well, but it had many courses of strings divided into
sectionsby means of 3 wooden bridges.), and I was suprised to find it was
btuned to our very familiar twelve -semitone ET system. The music that
came
out, however,(as he played it) was authentic Chinese music.

I found this 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lX1_Df-mmCc

on YouTube with a search for "Slendro". I find the music to be absolutely
charming. I suspect, though ,that my Western ears are perceiving the 5ths
and 4ths as "off", but not off enough to be something else, thereby adding
to the "expressive " quality of the music.


Danny