Quarter-tone accordion
Tim Cain
Please, does anyone out there know anything about a quarter-tone
accordion? I have heard it on some Egyptian folk music, but am curious
to know what it looks like and how it is 'quarter-tone'
Please help!
Tim Cain
DOKTO...@duq3.cc.duq.edu
Dear Tim,
The 3-CD compilation "Planet Squeezebox" features a track with
quarter-tone accordionist Farouk Mohamed Hassan with the orchestra of
Hossam Ramzy. This is one of my favorite cuts of the entire anthology. It
is very subtle and hard to tell exactly what he is playing, unless, I
assume, you play quarter-tone music!
There is a picture of him dressed in tux with his accordion: a
Borsini piano accordion! Only the tuning is different.
Imagine picking up his accordion, playing an octave, and hearing a tritone!
Sincerely,
Henry
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------
| HENRY DOKTORSKI |
| |
| Accordionist for the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra |
| "Real Musical Depth" -- The Washington Post |
| Pianist & Church Organist |
| Composer |
| Author |
| Music Copyist & Printer |
| PO Box 95 Student of Yoga & Meditation |
| Allison Park, PA 15101 U.S.A. Chess Fanatic |
| telephone: (412) 767-4427 Lover of the Outdoors |
| e-mail: DOKTO...@duq3.cc.duq.edu |
| |
| "I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you |
| the formula for failure - which is: Try to please everybody" |
| --- Herbert Bayard Swope, American journalist (1882-1958) |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Crss...@aol.com
I guess a C and an F# (for example ) are a tritone ! ? I just wonder why
one would use a piano accordion to tune in quarter tones? A chromatic
keyboard would make more sense ! It would bring the notes closer together
still making it possible to finger octaves - but then they may not use
octaves in their music! I couldn't picture the piano keyboard being used in
quarter tones! Still am having troubles! I play chromatic B-griff system as
well as piano keyboard accordions and if I were to want one tuned in quarter
tones I would pick a chromatic to convert!
Jeroen Nijhof
Hans Palm Z/ET (era...@lmera.ericsson.se) wrote:
: Crss...@aol.com wrote:
: > quarter tones! Still am having troubles! I play
: > chromatic B-griff system as
: > well as piano keyboard accordions and if I were to want one
: > tuned in quarter
: > tones I would pick a chromatic to convert!
: I also play the chromatic (C system) but what does
: the word 'griff' mean?
'Griff' is German for 'grip', or musically 'finger arrangement' or
'fingering'. B-griff simply means B system; probably the term
stems from Germany, 'C-griff' and 'B-griff' are used (untranslated)
in Dutch as well. So I wonder whether the B is a B or a B flat..
To return to the original question:
A quarter-tone accordion is not an accordion with 24 keys or
buttons per octave, but an accordion suitable for playing
(some of the) Arabian scales, in which there are quarter tones.
Arabian music does not use major or minor modes, but different
modes all together, in which some of the tones can be quarter tones.
An example of a Middle Eastern scale (without quarter tones) is the
hijaz scale: A-Bb-C#-D-E-F-G-A (going down, the F and the G might
be sharpened or flattened).
For this scale one could imagine an extra tone right in the
middle between Bb and C#; that would be C minus 1/4, then.
Like there are many different church modes, there are also many
different Arabian modes; even so much different, that the saz,
the Turkish long lute, does not come with fixed frets, but with
strings for the frets that one can shift to 'retune' for a different
mode.
Anyway, for these quartertone scales, the number of tones per
octave is limited, about 5 to 8, so one does not have to expand
the piano keyboard: one can get by by retuning some of the reeds.
And a finishing remark: Be sure to get Planet Squeezebox. It's brilliant!
Jeroen
Toby Hanson
In article <96111920044...@emout07.mail.aol.com>,
Crss...@aol.com wrote:
>I guess a C and an F# (for example ) are a tritone ! ? I just wonder why
>one would use a piano accordion to tune in quarter tones? A chromatic
>keyboard would make more sense ! It would bring the notes closer together
>still making it possible to finger octaves - but then they may not use
>octaves in their music! I couldn't picture the piano keyboard being used in
>quarter tones! Still am having troubles! I play chromatic B-griff system as
>well as piano keyboard accordions and if I were to want one tuned in quarter
>tones I would pick a chromatic to convert!
I suspect that there are a few of you who might like a little background
on quarter tones and their use in middle Eastern music. Quarter tones are
what you get when you split a half-step (semi-tone) in half. Quarter
tones are used as parts of specific scales that are used for certain
things. F'rinstance, in Iranian music there are specific scales used for
different times of day, similar to morning and evening ragas in Indian
music. The entire accordion wouldn't necessarily have to be tuned in
quarter tones; one could simply tune the degrees of the scale where it was
needed to quarter tones. I'm not sure what was done in his case, but even
if the whole thing were tuned in quarter tones all that would be needed to
play quarter-tone music would be different fingerings appropriate to
playing that particular style of music.
--
-Toby Hanson
jtha...@halcyon.com
http://www.halcyon.com/jthanson/main.htm
"Remember趴e may not all be Scandinavian, but we're all Smilin'!"
Hans Palm Z/ET
Crss...@aol.com wrote:
> quarter tones! Still am having troubles! I play
> chromatic B-griff system as
> well as piano keyboard accordions and if I were to want one
> tuned in quarter
> tones I would pick a chromatic to convert!
I also play the chromatic (C system) but what does
the word 'griff' mean?
Hans Palm
Sweden
Jeroen Nijhof
Tim Cain (TC...@globalnet.co.uk) wrote:
: Please, does anyone out there know anything about a quarter-tone
: accordion? I have heard it on some Egyptian folk music, but am curious
: to know what it looks like and how it is 'quarter-tone'
Checking Alta Vista for 'quarter tone' and egyptian helps:
It gives the address for the rec.music.arabic FAQ:
http://leb.net/rma/FAQ (why didn't I think of that one before!)
It has amongst others a list of modes with their tone spacing:
Mode: Tone spacing
----- ------------
rast: 1 3/4 3/4 1 1 3/4 3/4
sikah: 3/4 1 1 3/4 3/4 1 3/4
@ajam (Major): 1 1 1/2 1 1 1 1/2
@ajam (Minor): 1 1/2 1 1 1/2 1 1
alkird: 1/2 1 1 1 1/2 1 1
alhijaz: 1/2 1 1/2 1/2 1 1/2 1 1
bayati: 3/4 3/4 1 1 1/2 1 1
Saba: 3/4 3/4 1/2 1 1/2 1/2 1 1
See also http://leb.net/rma/modes.html .
====================================
Jeroen