steve-bbb Posted October 17, 2015 Share Posted October 17, 2015 [b] [url="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jun/29/plato-mathematical-musical-code"]Plato's stave: academic cracks philosopher's musical code[/url][/b] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leschirons Posted October 17, 2015 Share Posted October 17, 2015 Very, very interesting article. Thanks for posting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leftybassman392 Posted October 17, 2015 Share Posted October 17, 2015 (edited) Interesting indeed. If it's correct then it will require the academic community to extensively rethink what we thought we knew about Plato, and about the Pythagoreans, and the music of the period, and ... The research is still at a fairly early stage in it's development, and as stated at the end of the article it will take some time before the full picture will emerge (if indeed it does). I studied under Barker at the University of Warwick, and I recall that the music of the period is a particular interest of his. I certainly drew on some of his research in my series of articles published elsewhere on Basschat. One caveat I would urge people to consider though - we need to be extremely careful and cautious about putting modern ideas about musical form and structure onto the ancient Greeks. The simple fact is that they didn't think about it in anything like the same way as we do today. I won't bore people with the details here (if anybody's interested then they might like to look up my work in the 'Theory and Technique' section), but they just didn't. How this research might affect our understanding of music in Plato's Greece is still a very long way from being clear. For one thing, the Pythagoreans were Mathematicians: the scales they came up with were Mathematical constructs based on what we would identify as ratios. As a sect, their interest in music as a performance activity was minimal. Furthermore, I'm not aware that a 12-note scale of the kind that we might recognise even existed at the time (the Pythagoreans did have a method for generating a series of 12 musical intervals - which I suspect will turn out to be linked to this work - but whether it was ever actually used to generate a working scale that was actually used by actual working musicians is a long way from being clear). As I say, fascinating stuff, but let's not be hasty... Edited October 17, 2015 by leftybassman392 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dincz Posted October 17, 2015 Share Posted October 17, 2015 "dissonant fifth". I guess we're talking about a very different scale then? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leftybassman392 Posted October 17, 2015 Share Posted October 17, 2015 (edited) [quote name='dincz' timestamp='1445080553' post='2888643'] "dissonant fifth". I guess we're talking about a very different scale then? [/quote] More commonly known as a Wolf Fifth. If you want to check it out, Wikipedia covers it pretty well. While you're there you may also want to check out the closely related topic of the Pythagorean Comma (which you can link directly to from the Wolf Fifth article). Edited October 17, 2015 by leftybassman392 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BassTractor Posted October 17, 2015 Share Posted October 17, 2015 [quote name='dincz' timestamp='1445080553' post='2888643'] "dissonant fifth". I guess we're talking about a very different scale then? [/quote] In a 12 note scale (one that goes from root note to root note over one octave), the fifth note within the scale would not constitute what we call a "fifth", which is in interval. If the root note is the first note, then the 5th note would be what we call a major third. However, note that in the article, the different notes of the scale are being compared with what they call the 12th - - not with the first. I do not know which is the 12th note. For all I know, it might be the root note, and they start counting with what we would consider the minor second. I'm convinced though that the article is lacking in explaining the link between a musical 12 note scale (which is exponential), and the (different?) sizes of chunks of text. I think it's likely the author of the article did not understand the research. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leftybassman392 Posted October 17, 2015 Share Posted October 17, 2015 (edited) At the risk of repeating myself, the Ancient Greeks didn't do scales the way we do scales. Modern scale theory doesn't work, and any attempt to use it is misplaced. Plato lived around 25 centuries ago. Forget pretty much everything you thought you knew about scale structures. When the text talks about a 12-note musical scale the reference is almost certainly to the sequence of intervals created by a method called Pythagorean tuning (hint: Wikipedia is your friend here). The Pythagoreans attributed mystical significance to mathematical phenomena - they weren't remotely interested in music (at least not in the way we think of it). More importantly, the musicians of Plato's day wouldn't have used it in their music making (although to be fair it would have gained acceptance for this purpose as time passed). While I'm here, the phrase 'attributed to Pythagoras' in the text is a bit misleading as well. Although the Pythagoreans seem to have been the first to think in terms of tuning intervals in this way, the technique of sequential application of 3:2 ratios (which is how you create a Pythagorean tuning sequence) was well known long before they got their hands on it: technically, it's a practical application of a much older piece of Mathematical theory. Edited October 17, 2015 by leftybassman392 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Happy Jack Posted October 17, 2015 Share Posted October 17, 2015 I am so out of my depth here that it's not even funny, but I am genuinely enjoying trying to follow all this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EssentialTension Posted October 17, 2015 Share Posted October 17, 2015 Seeing as he hasn't linked it himself, leftybassman392's stuff on ancient Greek music is here ... [url="http://basschat.co.uk/topic/59011-ancient-greek-music/"]http://basschat.co.uk/topic/59011-ancient-greek-music/[/url] Recommended if you are interested in this stuff. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leftybassman392 Posted October 17, 2015 Share Posted October 17, 2015 Thanks ET. Forgot to get round to it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cytania Posted October 17, 2015 Share Posted October 17, 2015 It's not out character for Plato to have written his manuscripts according to a self imposed mathematical plan. This is the man who saw 'celestial spheres' overlaid across the globe and heavens. The giveaway would be Plato using filler words so that key concepts fell at the right point which would introduce a certain clumsiness to the texts. Alas I have not read Plato so cannot say if this is so. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EssentialTension Posted October 17, 2015 Share Posted October 17, 2015 [quote name='leftybassman392' timestamp='1445097699' post='2888792'] Thanks ET. Forgot to get round to it. [/quote] Well, thank you I think. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BassTractor Posted October 17, 2015 Share Posted October 17, 2015 [quote name='leftybassman392' timestamp='1445086839' post='2888712'] At the risk of repeating myself, the Ancient Greeks didn't do scales the way we do scales. [...] When the text talks about a 12-note musical scale the reference is almost certainly to the sequence of intervals created by a method called Pythagorean tuning (hint: Wikipedia is your friend here). [/quote] I've removed a lengthy reply to this because it was... er... long, and people can't be expected to read and understand it all, much because of my limited English. However: The Greeks, when layering fifths either had no notion of an octave, and did not wrap the row of fifths so it became a circle (thusly dividing an octave in 12 steps), or they did. If they did not, then your allowing the wolf fifth and the Pythagorean comma into this thread adds to the confusion. Both have strong, direct relations to latter day scales - both with 12 steps per octave. If they did, then what you wrote is fair game, but then you should accept the notion that they did build a scale roughly like we do, though for different purposes. Dunno who was the addressee of the Wikipedia hint, but in case it's me, allow me to clarify that I taught this stuff in music college, so I'm not a complete beginner. Not trying to use that as a crowbar, but trying to be clear and to avoid misunderstandings. Also, it's roughly 35 years ago for me, so I do not claim to know this stuff by heart now. Whatever the case may be, the article still was unclear about the row of notes and what it was (what order for example) and what that twelfth note was that the other notes were compared to. I still believe the article's author failed to understand the subject matter. Dincz' use of the fifth as our fifth interval probably is a misunderstanding. But if it is indeed our fifth, then the rest of the article's sentence around that becomes quite absurd. I think it's more probably that it's the fifth tone in the row and its frequency relationship to the twelfth tone in the row. We have not been told which tones these are, and I'm not gonna use time to check different alternative explanations for validity. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DavidMcKay Posted October 17, 2015 Share Posted October 17, 2015 (edited) You know, don't you, that when aliens do indeed invade - this kind of knowledge will be part of the solution that eventually defeats them. Edited October 19, 2015 by DavidMcKay Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TrevorR Posted October 18, 2015 Share Posted October 18, 2015 (edited) [quote name='Happy Jack' timestamp='1445088901' post='2888722'] I am so out of my depth here that it's not even funny, but I am genuinely enjoying trying to follow all this. [/quote] Those who have studied these things properly will cringe at this as is is very much a paraphrase rather than an academic treatise (it annoys the heck out of my nephew who studied music at Goldsmiths). But for the average muso you could do worse than the explanation of Pythagorean theory and tempering in scales in Howard Goodall's Big Bangs. A nicely simplified and populist explanation... http://youtu.be/41g2fSYZ4Sc Apologies to those who have looked at this properly... Edited October 18, 2015 by TrevorR Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steve-bbb Posted October 18, 2015 Author Share Posted October 18, 2015 [quote name='TrevorR' timestamp='1445152319' post='2889060'] A nicely simplified and populist explanation... Apologies to those who have looked at this properly... [/quote] thanks for not posting Brian Cox Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DaveFry Posted October 18, 2015 Share Posted October 18, 2015 An even simpler introduction ; [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEVGQKwKeCc[/media] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leftybassman392 Posted October 18, 2015 Share Posted October 18, 2015 I've been going over some of the works that I used in developing my articles, and I found this lovely extract that perfectly illustrates the difficulties of studying this stuff from a modern perspective: "[i]It was the unanimous verdict of all the musicians present that, while the music of the less civilised nations was often crude, barbarous and monotonous in the highest degree, the Greek hymn stood quite alone in it's absolute lack of meaning and it's unredeemed ugliness; and much surprise was expressed that a nation which had delighted all succeeding generations by it's achievements in the other arts should have failed so completely in this art which it prized and practised most. Yet all this criticism is an absurdity based on the fallacy that music is a universal language.[/i]" (Macran, from the introduction to his translation of Aristoxenus' Elements of Harmony, 1902) (Context: the author is relating his recollections of a lecture by a colleague on the subject of music from the distant past - with illustrative examples that included a fragment from an ancient Greek hymn - to an audience comprised, in part, of professional musicians.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cytania Posted October 18, 2015 Share Posted October 18, 2015 So, simple ratios are good for metal 😄 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leftybassman392 Posted October 18, 2015 Share Posted October 18, 2015 [quote name='cytania' timestamp='1445168045' post='2889211'] So, simple ratios are good for metal [/quote] What, like 2[sup](7/12)[/sup]:1 you mean? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TimR Posted October 18, 2015 Share Posted October 18, 2015 [quote name='TrevorR' timestamp='1445152319' post='2889060'] Those who have studied these things properly will cringe at this as is is very much a paraphrase rather than an academic treatise (it annoys the heck out of my nephew who studied music at Goldsmiths). But for the average muso you could do worse than the explanation of Pythagorean theory and tempering in scales in Howard Goodall's Big Bangs. A nicely simplified and populist explanation... http://youtu.be/41g2fSYZ4Sc Apologies to those who have looked at this properly... [/quote] I saw this a long time ago and take it as a perfect explanation why transposing from one key to another has to be carefully done. Maybe I like it over simplified. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leftybassman392 Posted October 18, 2015 Share Posted October 18, 2015 (edited) Transposing in Equal Temperament is a doddle - it's to do with... Actually, and at the risk of sounding a bit patronising, a lot of this stuff really will make more sense if people take the time to read my articles on the subject. Essential Tension linked it a while ago but here it is again: [url="http://basschat.co.uk/topic/59011-ancient-greek-music/"]http://basschat.co.u...nt-greek-music/[/url] The video is very good by the way - it skirts over one or two issues a bit too easily for my liking, and the narrator's tone is a bit patronising, but apart from that it goes through it very nicely (and, annoyingly, is more interesting than reading through my articles as well... ) Edited October 18, 2015 by leftybassman392 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DavidMcKay Posted October 18, 2015 Share Posted October 18, 2015 I [b][i]would[/i][/b] contribute to this thread but I don't want to come across as condascending [i](that's when you talk down to people). [/i] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leftybassman392 Posted October 18, 2015 Share Posted October 18, 2015 (edited) [quote name='DavidMcKay' timestamp='1445185350' post='2889400'] I [b][i]would[/i][/b] contribute to this thread but I don't want to come across as [b]condascending[/b] [i](that's when you talk down to people). [/i] [/quote] You mean [b]condescending[/b] I presume? Edited October 18, 2015 by leftybassman392 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DavidMcKay Posted October 18, 2015 Share Posted October 18, 2015 [quote name='leftybassman392' timestamp='1445188516' post='2889450'] You mean [b]condescending[/b] I presume? [/quote] Doh! Yes, that's the one! [i](sidesteps off the stage.......)[/i] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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