The power of the pentatonic scale
Hans Aberg
tom_k
"Hans Aberg" <haberg_...@math.su.se> wrote in message
news:hcnadv$grq$1...@news.eternal-september.org...Thanks for the clip, Hans.
I had the opportunity to meet his father, Robert McFerrin, Sr. who was the
first African-American male to appear with the NY Metropolitan opera. Even
after his stroke in the late '80s, he still had an impressive voice and was
a thoroughly delightful gentleman.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_McFerrin
Tom
Hans Aberg
> Thanks for the clip, Hans.
>
> I had the opportunity to meet his father, Robert McFerrin, Sr. who was the
> first African-American male to appear with the NY Metropolitan opera. Even
> after his stroke in the late '80s, he still had an impressive voice and was
> a thoroughly delightful gentleman.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_McFerrin
There is a snippet here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpdehvuuLe0
They are totally different in style. Jr. appears also in this video
http://www.amazon.com/Music-Instinct-Science-Song/dp/B0028X6KYW
Hans
tom_k
Very different styles, but Sr. was very, very proud of Jr. - as he should
be.
Tom
Jon Slaughter
He, Bobby, seems like a great guy... I would be proud too. For some people
it is nice when their offspring exceeds the typical imbecial... I mean
person. I guess that feeling is in the minority though...
Whats a real same is that there are many successful and intelligent blacks
out their that are excellent roll models for our youth yet are pushed asside
because it doesn't suit certain powerful people's agenda. (I don't mean to
bring race in to it but I just always get that warm fuzzy feeling when I see
a successful black person that also is intelligent and is well adjusted. But
of course what do I know... I'm just another racist... at least thats what
obama et. al has told me.)
WeReo_ScoTTy
Orangeboxman
The only thing that's a crock of shit is the idea that there's
anything mysterious about why the scale he's using
in terms of why it should have a comparatively positive cognitive bias
across all cultures.
"for some reason" he says?
I can give you a bunch of reasons.
But does he ask me?
No.
LJS
lol,
But do you realize that by one answer to the OTS V/I question has the
pentatonic scale he uses as the first five different tones presented
in the series? By another answer, it does not.
By this response, I think if you decide to pursue it, you would be
leaning (at present) to calling it Dominant.
LJS
LJS
OR Maybe one of your reasons is that you consider the OTS to be Tonic!
After rereading your post and looking at it from another slant, you
may be of the Tonic persuasion.
LJS
WeReo_ScoTTy
news:f61d7f47-c2d6-4ce5...@p35g2000yqh.googlegroups.com...
Orangeboxman
5 tones of the harmonic series, nor has any tonic or dominant in it.
The scale is consistent with those 3:2 derived both in China and
ancient Greece, independent of consideration of higher harmonics or
how to resolve ic6 dyads, real or implied.
Not that that's my answer to 'some reason'; I just don't want you guys
each building your own little house of cards around this scale for me
to knock over after you've wasted even more effort.
Jan C. Faerber
<scottamer...@ixpres.com.no_spamm84037uj> wrote:
> "Orangeboxman" <J...@orangeboxman.com> wrote in message
Well, I just find it very interesting to read the title "Notes &
Neurons" and
B. M. Ferry at a world science festival.
Once I bought an album - I don't find it with google at the moment.
I think it was titled "Live in Bombay" with the Beatles and Ravi
Shankar and others. Recorded in the 60's or 70's.
It was quite interesting to listen to the Beatle's songs which sounded
a little bit different then on their label.
Ravi Shankar came after the western groups. (I think not only the
Beatles - maybe Bob Dylan was there or others sang Beatle songs - I
don't remember.)
He introduced his music by some explainations - like "the Indian music
is a little bit different then western music." It was clear that he
was willing to cooperate but you could her that beside his respect
there was aswell some resentment. He really tried to encourage the
huge croud of crazy folks to wake up and clear their minds to take him
serious.
On wiki you can read that
"In the 1970s Shankar distanced himself from the hippie movement."
The pentatonic scale is quite simple.
I would say it is sometimes a compromise between major and minor
scales on one side
and 22 microtones ("śrutis") in an octave.
I really love to listen e.g. to gospes singers from south america
who treat the tones quite strange to european ears.
Of course that south america is not india and not hindu.
Just to add this:
Gandharva Veda Music is called the mother of all music.
"The Secret Life of Plants (Harper and Row, 1989) also documents
research on the effects of various types of sound and music on the
growth and health of plants. When Gandharva Veda music was played to
plants, the plant which was closest to the source of sound virtually
embraced the loudspeaker. When hard-rock music was played, the plants
moved away from the source of sound."
http://maharishi-programmes.globalgoodnews.com/vedic-music/research.html
LJS
Its consistent with a lot of things. This is one of them although I
wonder if your comment about the fiver first tones is relative to my
comment about the first 5 different tones. If the 7th partial of the
HS is taken as a sharp maj6th over the fundamental rather than a flat
min7th, the Tonic sonority of the HS, then it is the first 5 notes,
tones, or frequencies, what ever term floats your boat.
LJS
Orangeboxman
> HS is taken as a sharp maj6th over the fundamental rather than a flat
> min7th,
That would be convenient.
But, it's not a sharp or flat anything. It's correct just as it is.
In all natural timbres, though, it will only ever be higher than
the arithmetic interval which is its perfectly harmonic form.
On a piano with sufficiently short, thick strings, it is
hypothetically possible to produce a harmonic in that position
which is closer, yet, to the equal-tempered major 7th. Of course, that
stretches everything else, too, so that might
prompt you to tell me that the the string fundamental has gone flat,
and left other things almost in place.
...
For my next point about McFerrin's scale, I will need you all to
consider the 3rd tone, which the audience provides to him
without his actual instruction.
Relative to the tone a third lower (provided by McFerrin), is what the
audience provides closer to 5:4, 81:64, the 3rd root of 2, or the
square of the 5th root of 2?
Can anyone get me the putative frequencies with a machine instead of
using their ear?
That will really help.
Orangeboxman
LJS
Why? We are not talking about scientific accuracy here. We are talking
about the interpretation of our ear. The ear is an amazing thing. It
can be trained to hear one Hz off with tones vibrating at 10,000 hz
(maybe a lot more) yet it can also provide a very pleasurable
interpretation with the 12 -tet and the tempered scale we use is very
out of tune with the actual scientifically accurate tones when
calculated. In addition to that, when our music was being conceived by
the early musicians, they made these decisions concerning the actual
tones that they used for their music before there was even any thought
of the actual frequencies or ratios. (as far as any recorded record
can show!) So to me, the very introduction of something other than the
ear, especially the ear of a very young child, will probably give
something other than an accurate account of how early musicians would
have heard and used the notes.
I would think that more realistic matter would be to try to find the
least corrupted ears around (children) available to us and go from
there. They wrote it by ear, why should we not discuss it by ear. If
they, the children and the early musicians, recreated or created the
Pentatonic scale, then wouldn't that be the best way to investigate
the question? (which is yet, Unanswered)
BTW, I will have to look it up and check, but didn't he give the
audience the m_sl tones and they came up with the rest? This is the
exact way that Bernstein seems to speculate that music as we know it
started its long evolutionary process leading at least until the time
of the "switch" to 12-tet
LJS
Orangeboxman
In order for that to happen, I'll first need the data.
The intervals I have mentioned are different enough that mechanical
measurement will be very sufficient for this purpose
in terms of correlation to perceptual differences. I just need there
to be a consensus first on which interval is actually more likely
being approached out of those mentioned.
LJS
>
> > HS is taken as a sharp maj6th over the fundamental rather than a flat
> > min7th,
>
> That would be convenient.
>
> But, it's not a sharp or flat anything. It's correct just as it is.
I wasn't suggesting that the Harmonic Series element 7 was sharp or
flat. I was suggesting that the 12-tet tuning system was out of tune
with this partial and that its assignment to the Bb rather than the A
would be somewhat arbitrary! Why did they choose one over the other?
Was it because of the ear? or because of electronic measurement?
I was reminded recently in another post of the Blue's addition of the
m7 to color the I and IV chord. I think that poster questioned the
ability of the Tonic chord to be functioning as such because of the
added m7th. This addition as a color tone to the Blues somehow made it
impossible to be a Tonic chord because it was then a dominant sounding
chord. Well, when we listen to the blues, it is rather easy to hear it
as tonal and the I7 does not function as a dominant at all in the
blues and neither does the IV7. This is another instance, in addition
to the childern's singing, that involved quarter tones or micro tonal
differences as a factor as to what we name the tone (M6# or m7b) as
a color tone to the obvious Tonic of the Blues. Could it originally
have been "sung" by the African slaves as a sharp A rather than a flat
Bb? Maybe the real down home blues chord color is really a I6 chord
(add 6 of course, not the inversion!!) instead of a I7.
Here are two different "based upon the ear and the ear alone" ideas
of how these two things were originally conceived. Of course, once it
was promoted as the m7 chord or the m7 name to the 7th element of the
OTS, then our ear is quite capable of stretching what is heard to make
it harmonious to our unscientific ear which sends a signal to the
brain for interpretation even though we are more used to the 12-tet.
The question is still unanswered.
LJS
>
LJS
I can't help you here. I can only relate to it from a human
standpoint. There seems to be something universal that is and was
happening when we put our mind into a musical mode. The only thing I
can think of is the Harmonic Series. Maybe Hans can help you out
here.
I will wait for your conclusion or presentation to see if you can come
up with anything that will allow me to see another viable source for
the pentatonic scale being a "universal truth". I will be surprised
but elated if you can shed another solid reason for this phenomenon.
LJS
Orangeboxman
to the other 2 pitches, not about the universality of the scale.
I'm trying to see if someone here has some objective metrics on this
thing...
LJS
While waiting:
I am taking his comment about the universality of this scale as true
because of my experiences and study as I traveled as a teacher. But my
impression of the video was that the audience was not a typical
audience. I could be wrong and I did no research, but I got the
impression that this was a discussion at a university or possibility
even a music camp. The audience may not have been rehearsed, but they
certainly did find their pitch quite easily and their ensemble
technique was rather good for a random audience.
I don't know if they would have been as good of an instrument if it
was a typical audience that just happened by the studio and came in
for a free discussion.
The only point to this observation is that if you are going to measure
the collective pitch of this particular audience. The deck may be
stacked. Although, I do think that the same general result would occur
with at least most audiences, they just might need more instruction
and coaching to get this ball starting to roll.
If the audience is indeed trained musicians. Their natural ears may
very well be corrupted by their training to sing more closely to the
12-ter tuning even though they may have been vocal majors.
Just some idle thoughts.
LJS
LJS
Orangeboxman
'While we're waiting'...
I DO NOT buy the implication that the scale, itself, is wired into us.
I DO buy the implication that the cognitive propensities that make the
scale intelligible ARE wired into us,
but that's not the same thing.
The 'smiley face' image is also universally intelligible, but it also
didn't exist as such until some time in the 1960's.
We are wired for faces, not for the smiley face.
LJS
> Thanks, yes.
>
> 'While we're waiting'...
>
> I DO NOT buy the implication that the scale, itself, is wired into us.
If this is responding to my post. (I can't tell by the way your posed
appear when I receive them) but if so, I made no suggestion that the
implication of the scale is wired into us. The implication of the
scale is instead "wired" into physics. We hear it whenever we hear a
vibrating string or a column of air producing a fundamental sound.
This should certainly influence us. We hear it when we hear sounds. We
feel it when we sing a tone. We can see it with a strobe, we can
measure it when we stop the string at various partials. It is a part
of life. The Overtone Series is a part of our universe and we don't
have to be wired into it in order for us to be influenced. We are
educated by it from the moment that we start to develop our sense of
hearing and there are sounds for us to hear.
I am talking about a learned response and the "teacher" is the
natural physics of our environment.
>
> I DO buy the implication that the cognitive propensities that make the
> scale intelligible ARE wired into us,
> but that's not the same thing.
>
> The 'smiley face' image is also universally intelligible, but it also
> didn't exist as such until some time in the 1960's.
>
> We are wired for faces, not for the smiley face.
I also would think that we are not wired for faces, but that this is
also a learned process. We all seem to be more in tune with the faces
of various ethnic faces that are a part of our environment. We know
what we see the most often better than we know what we don't see as
much. We are wired with the ability to learn the difference of what we
see. We are wired with the ability to perceive sounds that we hear.
When we interpret the subtleties or either, we can recognize features
and we can recognize if the sounds we hear are sympathetic with the
OTS or not.
We are not born with the scale. We can only tell if it is consonant
with the OTS or not. The music is not the same all over the world
because we have different ways of dealing with this information and
responding to it. If we are wired, it is only by the preferences of
our environment.
LJS
Orangeboxman
vibrating string or a column of air producing a fundamental sound.
The nervous system does not at all reliably resolve harmonics above
the 10th, so we should not be hearing the major 6th
in the major pentatonic scale, and if the harmonic series explains the
scale, the major 3rd should also be a just third,
which is partly why I'm waiting on that data.
Moreover, if the harmonic series explained the scale, it would be a
scale approaching a 'dominant 9th' (5-34),
rather than what is presented in the example (5-35).
I do think that our response to physical mathematics explains why the
scale is intelligible. But not as the expression
of a single harmonic tone; rather, as a set of simple extrapolations
from relationships that do exist in a single harmonic tone, to
frequencies which are not directly related to each other by such
means.
The major 6th could be explained as the octave reduction of a tone
related to the root of the scale by a series of perfect fifths, or it
could be explained as a duplication below the root of the major 3rd's
position relative to the fifth. That it 'could be both' in some sense
(allowing for flexible intonation, which is neurologically fair) seems
to me like a plausible reason it could seem to 'belong' in the scale.
LJS
> >We hear it whenever we hear a
>
> vibrating string or a column of air producing a fundamental sound.
>
> The nervous system does not at all reliably resolve harmonics above
> the 10th, so we should not be hearing the major 6th
You are not considering the 7th partial as being the "?" as to its
translation into 12-tet notation. I am saying that the ear can
decipher it quite clearly as a "sharp A" as well as a "flat bB". This
is the 7th element and I believe sometimes considered the 6th partial.
Either of those numbers are well within your description of the limits
of our nervous systems.
> in the major pentatonic scale, and if the harmonic series explains the
> scale, the major 3rd should also be a just third,
> which is partly why I'm waiting on that data.
Musicians are very capable of playing hearing the just 3rd and the
tempered 3rd as consonance. This is evident by the ability of well
trained choir to sing equally well a capella in the Just system and
with the piano in a tempered system.
The nervous system collects the data, the brain interprets it. The
brains of the 1600s seem to have been able been able to make the
transition and distinction and I am not sure how much technology they
needed to do it. I think they mostly used their ear. Yes we can hear
the difference of a just third and a tempered chord. We (at least I
can and I don't think I am the only one) can hear the music in either
system and apply the proper pitch associated with both.
So just as you are waiting for the data, so were the Baroque composers
and musicians when they had to deal with it and play using the
mixtures of the two tunings. Musicians can do this. I am confident
that you can do this without any electric tuners or measuring
devises.
On a side note, even though the C D E G A are all in the First 9
elements, and this is the scale I am talking about, I am not convinced
that our nervous system can not process the higher partials. I have
heard wind choirs play compositions with chords of the 9th 11ths and
altered tones in such a manner that they seem so line up with
something and these harmonics are much higher than #10. I am not
saying that I can consciously hear them up at least another 10
partials, but I am not convinced that my nervous system is not
providing the data and my brain has simply not been trained to
distinguish them past a certain point.
Do you have any hard data that proves that we are not experiencing
tones above even our audio range? Just because we don't "hear" them
all consciously does not mean that they are not going into our brain
which simply "hears" them and does not know what to label them.
>
> Moreover, if the harmonic series explained the scale, it would be a
> scale approaching a 'dominant 9th' (5-34),
> rather than what is presented in the example (5-35).
A while back you mentioned about understanding what the question is
and to stay in the same context and the importance of asking the right
questions. It is hard to be totally clear as to all the ramifications
of a "hypothetical" theory. I would need to know how 5-34 or 5-39 to
related to the absolute pitches created by the Harmonic Series. But if
you understand my parameters and assumptions you will see that they
are not relevant.
I am not talking about the absolute pitch of anything. I am talking
about the closeness of the tones to be within the range of our
perception of the tones and how they can be "humored" by our brain to
line up in sympathetic vibrations to the brain's perception of the
actual ones in the Harmonic Series. It does not matter what the actual
pitch is. It matters what our perception of that pitch is and was
when our music system evolved.
The results seem to indicate that Pythagoras may have only "heard" the
overtones of the Octave, the fifth and the next octave. He based his
whole system on these ratios. I would think that if he had trained his
brain to hear the just 3rd in his head, he may have included it in his
calculations.
After man had trained themselves to hear the Greek scales he created,
then the next step seemed to be the addition of the 3rd in the
harmonic sense. They learned to process the next partial. Then most
theorists seem to skip the 7th element. Maybe it was its uniqueness
that had them skip it. OR maybe it is our perception of their skipping
it as on the French horn, the 7th partial is an important partial for
melodic playing on the Hand Horn that was used. It can be used to play
either the A or Bb partial and as it goes up it can also use the 11th
(I think) that is the note halfway between Fn and F# to be either. In
order to discuss my thoughts on the HS and the evolution of our music,
one must assume that the brain is capable of blending these tones in
the proper manner in order to decide upon consonance and dissonance.
If you want to get into a numbers description, maybe Hans will play
with you. I understand that there can be numbers assigned to all the
various tunings and then to different areas and time periods, but I
can listen to music in any of the practiced tunings and after a few
measures, they all sound perfectly natural. Our brain can easily
adjust to all the various tunings and if the music was good when
written in its specific tuning and you are familiar with that tuning,
then that brain is capable of understanding what the 12-tet
approximates and turn it into music. Thus, since I don't think that
the contrapuntal musicians, or the Greeks, or the early 12-tet people
really had access to the fine points that we can measure now, they all
seemed to be able to shape the music in spite of that fact.
If you want to see what I am talking about, you have to make this
distinction. What I am talking about has nothing to do with the
absolute pitches that are produced as the raw data for the music.
>
> I do think that our response to physical mathematics explains why the
> scale is intelligible. But not as the expression
> of a single harmonic tone; rather, as a set of simple extrapolations
> from relationships that do exist in a single harmonic tone, to
> frequencies which are not directly related to each other by such
> means.
This statement seems out of context with your current assumptions
about what I am saying. And being out of my context, I will not
presume to understand what you mean within my context. So I will wait
for agreement and clarification before I will think about this.
>
> The major 6th could be explained as the octave reduction of a tone
> related to the root of the scale by a series of perfect fifths, or it
> could be explained as a duplication below the root of the major 3rd's
> position relative to the fifth. That it 'could be both' in some sense
> (allowing for flexible intonation, which is neurologically fair) seems
> to me like a plausible reason it could seem to 'belong' in the scale.
It could be explained as a lot of things. For my assumptions about the
HS and the tonality of our heritage, I am assuming as little as
possible. I am looking at the possibilities in the context of how our
brain can process the data into a "learned" framework. i.e. it can
process the 12-tet data in music (and the tempered scales that were
used at the time before then) and learn to hear them in both.
In the Video, his audience (western culture, educated musician as I
perceive them) will have one measurable scale. But if he had an
audience from Senegal, or Asia or in the in the Mid-Eastern culture,
or in the hills of Kentucky, I would think that their actual group
pitch would be humored to fit their unique heritage. And if one was
not trained to hear the 12-tet, all of our music would be out of tune
until they heard enough of it to learn what the code means. But as
they learn it, it will also start to sound in tune to them. But our
culture was trained in what came before, it was taught and learned and
then retaught and expanded as our music evolved and I think that it
evolved without the precise measurements and irregardless of the
tunings involved.
Are the tunings important from a scientific and historical
perspective? Yes, very much so as well as to accurately hear in the
"purist" sense the music from the past. Do these precise measurements
and standardization of tunings have anything to do with what I am
saying? No. It really doesn't.
LJS