Turkish musical theory

[fragment]

I thought I should make a new thread for this, it continues from what a discussion started in this thread (http://www.freethought-forum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=13996).

Here's the relevant diagrams from the saz booklet. Sorry about the low quality, I have no scanner, so these were taken with a camera.

The first one shows the difference between semitones in western music theory and Turkish theory. Western is on the upper left, showing G# and A♭ as the same note. The middle, large diagram shows the four different notes that Turkish music can have in with the tone, and introduces some notation.

The second and third images show how fiendishly complicated this can make things. There are 24 notes in the octave. Great. Which ones do I play? Well, the fifth image shows how the fretboard relates to the notes of C major (and whatever modes you might happen to like playing that use the same notes). Cool, so I can play any tune that works on the white keys of a piano, all well and good, but not especially interesting. How about all those other notes, anything interesting I can do with them?

The fourth image gives notes on a stave that relate to all the frets. Unfortunately it seems to use a different notation system to that introduced in the earlier diagram. It also doesn't give me much information on how to use them.

What I would really like is something which says, "here's how to play a typical Turkish scale". That would give me a pretty good base to play around with and an entry point into how the whole koma/24-notes-to-the-octave thing works.

Then I go and find this page (http://www.sazmania.co.uk/sazmania.co.uk/MAKAM%20-%20SCALES.html), which tells me:
All this makes the makam system one of the most intricated modal systems in the world, but perhaps the least understood.

So it's probably back to plan A and muck around with the thing and see what I like the sounds of. At least that SazMania site has a handful of chord charts I can have a play with.

[Ensign Steve]

That is awesome, fragment. Thanks!

[Petra]

Parisa Arsalani solo saz (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7d0stZ2eG1I)

:)

[fragment]

So, I looked up the Wiki page on Makam (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makam), and I'm getting a bit more of an idea. Turkish theory defines 12 sets of intervals of four or five notes, that can be layered on top of each other to create the notes of a makam. Thus you can take Çârgâh beşlisi starting on C (western notes C, D, E, F, G) and add on top Çârgâh dörtlüsü starting where the first set ends (western notes G, A, B, C), giving you the Çârgâh Makam, which has the same notes as western C major, i.e. the white keys on a piano. Apparently this "is very little used in Turkish music, and in fact has at certain points of history been attacked for being a clumsy and unpleasant makam that can inspire those hearing it to engage in delinquency of various kinds."

Makam are more restrictive than western scales, though, in that they specify a direction, a "dominant" which becomes a tonal centre in the middle of a melody, and that the composition must end on the tonic.

But, of course, things are never easy. This page (http://www.musiq.com/makam/page3.html) informs me that "scholars from Turkey and Egypt have developed sophisticated theories to justify particular symmetrical tuning systems, but in reality, musicians play altogether something different." Hmm.

Still there's enough theory there to get me doing some experimentation.

[Watser?]

Here for your entertainment is the highly psychedelic Baba Zula with Pırasa (leek).

http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=_eWdG4vL5Qo

Can't get the You Tube thing to work :mutter:

[D. Scarlatti]

We westerners have at least one scale, the melodic minor scale, that specifies direction, or at least where the scale contains different notes depending whether it's ascending or descending. We have a dominant, too, although maybe that means something different in Turkish music.

[fragment]

Yeah, I put "dominant" in quotes though, because, while that wiki page uses that word to translate the Turkish term güçlü, it can be on the note that in western theory would be the sub-dominant, so it's not really a good translation. In the Çârgâh Makam (C major), the güçlü is G, as in the west, but it would be possible to construct another makam with the same notes in which the güçlü is F.

The melodic minor is a good point. Some of these differences between western and Turkish theory seem to be more a matter of emphasis than one having features that are entirely missing in the other. Also, direction may be a bit of a weak translation - the wiki page isn't especially detailed or authoratitive, but they go so far as to compare the restrictiveness of a makam to a tone row. I suspect this is stuff you really need to learn off an experienced practitioner, but it's interesting to dabble.

Of course I'm well out of my depth here in western musical theory too, but I'm learning a little about both in the process.

[D. Scarlatti]

Sounds like you're doing pretty good to me.

I just got through trying to explain to one of my piano students why the 'A' in a C diminished 7th chord is not really an 'A' at all, but rather a B double flat (the chord is made from C-Eb-Gb-Bbb, strictly speaking).

[fragment]

Thanks for the vote of confidence. I can understand the dim7, but it's sorta not the way I'd think about it if I came across one. I'd just think "stack of minor thirds, kinda dramatic, dunno which note to consider the root". I'm pretty slow at reading music or thinking in theoretic terms, so I tend to muck around with stuff and only later try to figure out what's actually going on... and get confused in the process.

Them's the limitations of being a self-taught guitarist, I s'pose - lucky I don't aspire to the dizzying heights.

[D. Scarlatti]

All minor thirds, exactly. That's how I tell them to put it together for practical purposes. And if you look in, for example, a book of scales and arpeggios, you'll see the diminished 7th arpeggio notated as C-Eb-Gb-A, because the notation is simpler.

But we were discussing a series of chords in C, and how we move through altering the tones with accidentals:

C-E-G-B = Cmaj7
C-Eb-G-B = Cm(maj7)
C-Eb-G-Bb = Cm7
C-Eb-Gb-Bb = Cm7b5 (a.k.a. a half diminished chord)
C-Eb-Gb-Bbb - Cdim7 (a.k.a. a full diminished chord)

See what I'm sayin'?

Then we put that dim7 chord over, say, a D in the bass, and we have a D7b9, a common jazz chord (we've been working on all the alterations you can make to dominant 7th chords).

Have you got a keyboard? It's a hell of a lot easier to learn theory than on a stringed instrument, since it's all laid out there in front of you. On the other hand, the way the keys are set up, intervals don't always move in parallel like they do on the guitar.

For example, here are the changes from the second four bars of My Funny Valentine (key of Cm):

Abmaj7 (Ab-C-Eb-G)
Fm7 (F-Ab-C-Eb)
Dm7b5 (D-F-Ab-C)
G7b9 (dom7)

Notice all the common notes in the first three chords, and that they each move down a minor third, but because of the way the black and white keys are laid out, you get three different chords: a maj7, a m7, and a m7b5.

Anyway I'm rambling.