elkies@brauer.harvard.edu (Noam Elkies) (11/14/89)
[There must be a better newsgroup for this than comp.music!] I wrote: :(*) Something I've been wondering about intermittently, and reminded :of by your mention of gamelan music: Gamelan music is dominated by :instruments with an overtone series very different from the familiar :overtone series that dominates most Western music. It also uses :very different tunings, tunings which unlike their Western counterpart :developed (I assume) without knowledge of overtones. Thus it could :make an interesting test case for the perennial debate about the :naturalness of a system of tonality based on the overtone series. :Has any significant research been done into the relation or lack :thereof between gamelan tunings and gamelan overtones? csz@well.UUCP (Carter Scholz) responded: >I've played Javanese gamelan for 4 years, have studied with Javanese >musicians, and have investigated the tuning systems & discussed them >at length. The idea of a tuning derived from the overtones of the >instruments is seductive, but will not, I think, hold water. As I >understand it, the tuning is set on the gender, which is a resonated >instrument with a waveform as close to a sine wave as you could ask. >The other, more clangorous instruments are tuned from this reference. >(However, there is still a great deal of empiricism involved in >stretching the octaves, etc. The main point is that the instrument >builder does not seem to be listening to any overtones when determining >the tuning; he sings, and uses the sinusoidal gender for reference.) But this only answers half of my question: the tuning is not *consciously* derived from the overtone series (which is precisely why it might be a good test case; had the tuning been purposefully rooted in the gamelan's overtones it would be just another version of the chicken-and-egg debate re Western tuning). The interesting problem is whether gamelan intonation is *subconsciously* influenced by overtone reinforcement. For starters, can you post or give a reference to the frequency ratios of the common gamelan scales? Or is the scale so flexible that such questions are meaningless? --Noam D. Elkies (elkies@zariski.harvard.edu) Dept. of Mathematics, Harvard University
rreid@esquire.UUCP ( r l reid ) (11/14/89)
In article <3156@husc6.harvard.edu> elkies.zariski.harvard.edu (Noam Elkies) writes: >[There must be a better newsgroup for this than comp.music!] No, this is fine! Let's not be like the CMJ, which seems to have totally abandoned any discussion of music so they can publish article after article about computers. As long as there is a context (and there is - we who compose on these mighty machines have a freedom to work with things like tunings, so therefore a discussion of tunings is quite in order!) I'm hanging on every word. Well, a lot of them. By all means, let's continue - if not here, where - comp.dsp? :-) -- Ro rreid@esquire.dpw.com {phri|cucard}!hombre!cmcl2!esquire!rreid rlr@woof.columbia.edu
mls@cbnewsm.ATT.COM (mike.siemon) (11/15/89)
In article <3156@husc6.harvard.edu>, elkies@brauer.harvard.edu (Noam Elkies) writes: > problem is whether gamelan intonation is *subconsciously* influenced > by overtone reinforcement. For starters, can you post or give a > reference to the frequency ratios of the common gamelan scales? > Or is the scale so flexible that such questions are meaningless? Jap Kunst, _Music in Java_ has a number of tunings, recorded in cents, in appendices. However, for the purposes of your imagined study they would be of little help. The major "scales" of gamelan music (slendro and pelog) are rather flexibly defined, with each orchestra tending to be different from others. (There is a sort of Wittgensteinian "family resemblance" among all pelogs, in terms of where the intervals are large and where smaller and a resemblance of all slendros against pelog in a more uniform set of intervals.) The study would have to work with frequency analyses of the actual instruments. Of course, if it could be done that might even allow for a significant differentiation from a null hypothesis (but I doubt it :-)) About all I can say is the strictly scientific observation that all the Javanese gamelans I have heard sound wonderful. -- Michael L. Siemon Hell is a different pain, for there is despair. ...!cucard!dasys1!mls But of all pains that lead to salvation, this ...!att!sfbat!mls is the most pain -- to see thy beloved suffer. standard disclaimer -- Julian of Norwich
csz@well.UUCP (Carter Scholz) (11/16/89)
> ...much talk about gamelan tunings, the possibility that they're derived > from overtones, ending with: >of the chicken-and-egg debate re Western tuning). The interesting >problem is whether gamelan intonation is *subconsciously* influenced >by overtone reinforcement. For starters, can you post or give a >reference to the frequency ratios of the common gamelan scales? >Or is the scale so flexible that such questions are meaningless? The scales are very flexible. Pelog tunings (7 tone) generally preserve narrow-wide interval distinctions, but slendro (5 tone) can flop around, so that wide-narrow-narrow-wide-narrow becomes narrow-narrow-wide-narrow-wide on the gamelan in the next town. This doesn't disturb Javanese at all, but it plays havoc with my Western ear. There are no in-print trustworthy references to gamelan tunings. Gadjah Mada University published one in the 1960's which appears systematic--it compares 2 dozen "famous" central Javanese gamelan. Some tunings are also given in KARAWITAN volume 1, ed. Judith Becker, U of Michigan 1984. Jaap Kunst's famous MUSIC IN JAVA (1930's) is untrustworthy: he rationalizes everything to a 1200-cent octave. Hope this helps. Carter Scholz (csz@well.uucp)
alves@aludra.usc.edu (William Alves) (11/17/89)
In article <14592@well.UUCP> csz@well.UUCP (Carter Scholz) writes: > >There are no in-print trustworthy references to gamelan tunings. >Gadjah Mada University published one in the 1960's which appears >systematic--it compares 2 dozen "famous" central Javanese gamelan. >Some tunings are also given in KARAWITAN volume 1, ed. Judith Becker, >U of Michigan 1984. Jaap Kunst's famous MUSIC IN JAVA (1930's) is >untrustworthy: he rationalizes everything to a 1200-cent octave. > I don't exactly know what you mean by trustworthy, but, as it happens, I've just been reading an article called "A Retrospect on a Century of Gamelan Tone Measurements" by Roger Vetter in the current issue of Ethnomusicology. He gives a brief review of the literature on this widely studied topic before going into a largely anectdotal description of a gamelan tuner's methods. Most of his references I'm familiar with, and for those interested, here is my own summary of the problems. It all began in 1884 when Alexander Ellis made a large number of pitch measure- ments of "exotic" instruments, including gamelan, seeking (with his new "in- vention," the cents measurement) to find out how non-Western scale systems compared with 12-tone equal temperament. His failing was that he was searching for one true, ideal pelog and slendro, not stopping to consider that such a standard might be a foreign concept to the Javanese. Therefore, he dismissed the inconsistencies he found as imperfections in the instruments. The preeminent Javanese music scholar Jaap Kunst (whom you mention), also did a large number of pitch measurements, but he, too, fell into this trap, largely as a result of his trying to reconcile Javanese tuning systems to Hornbostel's theory of overblown fifths. Though he later modified his views, there have been plenty of others to the present day who seek to find the "standard" pelog or slendro, often, like Kunst, as part of a quest to fit them into a theory or consistent system. Into this camp falls A. M. Jones (who com- pared tunings in Indonesia and Africa as support for his probably valid thesis of musical influences there), Bukofzer (who sought to prove that slendro was originally a subset of pelog and therefore younger), and most recently (1978) Jay Rahn (who proposed that pelog is a subset of an equidistant nonotonic system). [The last two I haven't read myself; they are mentioned in Vetter's article]. Mantel Hood not only reinforced the fact that there is no one standard for either tuning system, but also discovered the stretched and compressed oct- aves. Therefore most of those many tone measurements which preceded him were invalid because they only measured the central octave. Hood questioned tuners, as does Vetter, to find that this method was quite deliberate. He hypothesized that the "shimmer" or beats that the detuned octaves caused were a remnant of the paired detuning still found on Bali. The article, which I've referenced before here, is "Slendro and Pelog Redefined" in Selected Reports in Ethno- musicology, 1#1. True, there remain a good number of questions, some of which Vetter brings up, but, for me, Hood's article remains the authoritative word on the subject. Bill Alves USC School of Music / Center for Scholarly Technology
csz@well.UUCP (Carter Scholz) (11/17/89)
In article <6496@cbnemls@cbnewsm.ATT.COM (mike.siemon) wsm.ATT.COM> writes:
Jap Kunst, _Music in Java_ has a number of tunings, recorded in cents,
in appendices. However, for the purposes of your imagined study they
Yes, Kunst is a standard reference, but mostly of historical importance,
and unreliable on tunings. He fudged his data by insisting that all
octaves work out to 1200 cents, a European standard that exists on no
gamelan. (Most octaves are tuned wide, 1200-1240 cents, but occasionally
you find one narrow.) Illustration of the danger of carrying a system
into a new situation, especially when you're unconscious of carrying it.
Carter Scholz csz@well.uucpalves@aludra.usc.edu (William Alves) (11/20/89)
In article <14601@well.UUCP> csz@well.UUCP (Carter Scholz) writes: > >Yes, Kunst is a standard reference, but mostly of historical importance, >and unreliable on tunings. He fudged his data by insisting that all >octaves work out to 1200 cents, a European standard that exists on no >gamelan. (Most octaves are tuned wide, 1200-1240 cents, but occasionally >you find one narrow.) Illustration of the danger of carrying a system >into a new situation, especially when you're unconscious of carrying it. > I think I know what you mean, but I might phrase it differently. An "octave" in the acoustic sense is by definition 1200 cents (2:1 ratio). An "octave" in Javanese *practice* (as in the West) is defined by the interval between pitches with the same solfege or letter names. What Kunst and most other writers up until Hood unwittingly introduced was the assumption that the acoustic octave must equal the nominal octave, which, as you say, was not the case. Kunst later admitted the possibility that there could be some consistency behind the "out of tune" octaves, but he didn't publish tables which measured anything but the middle octave on the saron. Therefore his inaccuracy was not in "fudging" data, but in omitting relevant data. In any case the problem did not lay in the cents system (as, I think others have im- plied). Cents are an objective measuring tool more convenient than hertz for comparing the relative sizes of intervals. Bill Alves USC School of Music / Center for Scholarly Technology
elkies@osgood.harvard.edu (Noam Elkies) (11/21/89)
In article <6534@merlin.usc.edu> alves@aludra.usc.edu (Bill Alves) writes: >[Much interesting stuff deleted] >[...,] Bukofzer (who sought to prove that slendro was >originally a subset of pelog and therefore younger), The reasoning escapes me here; even if at one time slendro was a subset of pelog, why couldn't that just as easily mean that pelog is a younger extension of slendro (as the Western chromatic scale is of the diatonic one)? --Noam D. Elkies (elkies@zariski.harvard.edu) Dept. of Mathematics, Harvard University
alves@aludra.usc.edu (William Alves) (11/21/89)
In article <3222@husc6.harvard.edu> elkies@osgood.harvard.edu (Noam Elkies) writes: >In article <6534@merlin.usc.edu> alves@aludra.usc.edu (Bill Alves) writes: >>[...,] Bukofzer (who sought to prove that slendro was >>originally a subset of pelog and therefore younger), > >The reasoning escapes me here; even if at one time slendro was >a subset of pelog, why couldn't that just as easily mean that pelog >is a younger extension of slendro (as the Western chromatic scale >is of the diatonic one)? > Beats me. I tried to find the reference, but our library doesn't have it. For anyone who's interested, Bukofzer's paper is called "The Evolution of the Javanese Tone-systems" and it's in "Papers Read at the International Congress of Musicology" ed. by Reese, Chase, and Mendel (NY: AMS, 1944). As I said, I was quoting Vetter's article which said that Bukofzer's thesis was that "the pelog system is the older of the two Javanese tuning concepts, and that the slendro was derived by selecting five tones from the complete pelog scale." Perhaps I shouldn't have paraphrased it in such a way to imply causality (as I haven't read Bukofzer and was relying on Vetter). Bill Alves USC School of Music / Center for Scholarly Technology
elkies@walsh.harvard.edu (Noam Elkies) (11/23/89)
My query about gamelan intonation elicited several interesting posts; basically it transpires that my notion of correlating gamelan tuning with gamelan overtones cannot work because the scales are too flexible, except that octaves are purposefully tuned so as to obtain beats (i.e. purposefully avoiding overtone matching). Two e-mail responses indicate, however, that such correlations have been attempted in Western responses to gamelan music: Don Maghrak (dpm@brooks.cray.com) cites a point in Messiaen's Turangalila Symphony where a deep gamelan tone is simulated by synthesizing its overtones from available orchestral instruments (cf. Ravel's Bolero); Craig Paul (paul@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu) points to a "Balinese" piece by Wendy Carlos on Eir "Music and the Beast" album where the instruments are tuned according to the overtone structure of struck metal or wooden bars. Thanks to all who posted our e-mailed these informative notes. --Noam D. Elkies (elkies@zariski.harvard.edu) Department of Mathematics, Harvard Univ.