chb@vaxine.UUCP (Music Mafiosi) (08/03/83)
Point of order, Chairperson!
Do we include African based and Amerindian based American music in
our definition of Western musics. Those musics derivative of these two
sources include jazz, salsa, Brazilian music and Amerindian vocal music,
which I would think would be included in a definition of "Western".
Anyone who has tried to transcibe some jazz solos (say some of the later
'Trane solos, or even some of Miles solos from the 50s) would realize
the problem in scoring some of the "blues" notes, which are not expressible
as a rational logarithmic number. Similarly, Cuban and Brazilian call-and-
response type music also contains notes occupying the region between spaces
and lines on the staff.
It gets even more complicated than that. Even decidedly Western
musicians can always agree on the frequency of the tone center of
the each of the twelve tones. F'r'instance, Concert A (usually defined
as A=440 Hz) is played as A=438, 446, 452, etc. by various American
symphony orchestras. The Russian orchestras tend to tune to A=422-428!
Another example: Salsa trumpet players always play about 1/8 tone sharp;
it's the style! The point I'm tyring to make (maybe not so well) is that
a lot of music is actually not composed of discrete tonalities, and
musicians inherently (even sub-consciously) realize the limitations
in the twelve tone representation, and make the appropiate non-scorable
adjustments. No matter what discrete tonal representation method used
this would still be the case. So why not stick with what you know,
given all the shortcomings, rather than switch to something totally new,
possibly with the same limitations.
Comments?
Music Mafiosi
a.k.a. Charlie Berg