Reformulating Burmese Harp Tunings

Distinctive in shape, size, construction and playing position, the Burmese harp has been traditionally tuned by ear; that is, without the intervention of a monochord or more recent devices, such as electronic tuners. In the latter regard, it is similar to harps and lyres of Antiquity: in Mesopotamia about four millennia ago, Ancient Greece more than 2300 years ago, and Ancient India about 1700 years ago. Also of plausible relevance to Burmese harp tuning are tunings of fixed-frequency instruments of other Southeast Asian traditions: of Central Java and Thailand, for example. Although such xylophones and metallophones have also been tuned by ear and employed in Burmese classical music along with the harp, the inharmonic spectra of their tones differ from the harmonic spectra produced by the open strings of the harps and lyres just mentioned. In particular, open strings produce predictable beats when plucked simultaneously

Balungan Pélog Tones of Gamelan Kyai Parijata Compared with Sine Tones

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“M'en Revenant de la Joli' Rochelle”: A song from ca. 1500 in the current French-Canadian repertoire

Jay Rahn présente une étude détaillée de la chanson française body temps. le travers à retenues sont folkloriques des caractéristiques les comment illustre et polyphoniques, monophoniques chansons entre différences discute Il Canada. au France en notées été ont versions maintes dont siècle seixième du début dâte qui chanson Rochelle, joli la de revenan

Pairs of Interval Classes in Southeast Asian Tunings

Construed non-numerically (Rahn 2011, 2012, 2013), the following normal-Forte-order formulations accurately model southeast Asian fixed-frequency tunings: sléndro 11111…, the ‘usual’ pentatonic 22323…, Thai pentatonic 11212, 5-tone pélog 11313; Thai ‘equiheptatonic’ 1111111…, diatonis/diatonic 1222122, and 7-tone pélog 1112112. In well-documented instances, two or more of these tunings appear in single pieces that have been realized in one or more cultural settings. In order to convey the consequences of such ‘translations’ from one tuning to another, seemingly distinct tuning, one can observe that since each tuning is ‘well-formed’ (Carey and Clampitt 1989), each maximizes the number of interval-pairs within particular generic-specific interval-classes. In ideal, mathematical terms, if d is the number of steps in a register, the number of such interval-pairs is d2(d-1)/2in ‘degenerate’ sléndro and Thai equiheptatonic, and d(d-1)(2d-1)/6 in the remaining, ‘non-degenerate’ tunings. The formulation outlined above identifies salient structural relationships between realizations of single instrumental pieces in otherwise contrasting tunings and between passages comprising ‘exchange tones’ (métabole) within individual pieces