RE: Ets harimon

[Lev Koszegi <lev...>]

Michal wrote:

> Thanks, Lev, for the information and let me (and the list !)
> know about your book: it sems very interesting.
> Pardon my ignorance, but how will you write down the non
> 12-tone melodies?

I will use the conventions adopted for writing Arabic music in Western-style
notation. This involves extra accidental marks:
a "flat" symbol with a line through the stem for "half-flat",
a "sharp" symbol with only one vertical stem for "half-sharp",
a "half-flat" plus a "flat" symbol for "three-quarters flat" and
a "half-sharp" plus a "sharp" symbol for "three-quarters sharp".

This may sound a bit confusing at first, but in practice, you usually only
need to use the "half-flat" symbol, and very occasionally the "half-sharp"
symbol, for the most common scales.

One thing I will stress in the book, and must stress here, is that these
"half-flats" and "half-sharps" aren't exactly quarter-tones - in other
words, these notes do not fall exactly in between the white and black keys
of a piano, for example. Usually, they are a little sharper (or sometimes
flatter) than that by 5 to 8 cents (100 cents = a semitone in the Western
tempered scale), so that the neutral third of the Rast scale (for example)
is not 350 cents higher than the tonic, but 355-358 cents higher.

The only way to learn this is to hear it, so the book will come with a CD of
the scales and the tunes so that the listener can hear what the notes should
be, and sing along until they get it.

Lev Koszegi
Heartistry Graphics
http://www.heartistry.com

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