h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I've been learning the bouzouki. I went for five bouzouki lessons while I was in Greece and have ordered a bouzouki which should be arriving soon. The Greeks have far more scales than the major and minor which are common in Western music, and I will have to practise playing at speed in each of them.

I was interested to find out where these scales came from. They are Turkish scales which have been modified to fit on an instrument with frets. A Western fretted instrument plays the Western equal temperament scale, with 12 equal semitones per octave.

Turkish music is related to Arabic music and Persian music, and is very badly documented on the web - different accounts have conflicting versions of scales. Since it uses notes which are not in the Western scale, different people have found different ways of writing it down. The Arabic world seems to write down their music using Western notation with added quarter tones, but all admit that that's not actually the way it is played. Turkish sites suggest that their system is based on Pythagorean tuning with certain notes optionally flattened or sharpened by a ninth of a whole tone (a unit they call a comma). But then they say that they usually exaggerate this flattening or sharpening to make the scale stand out from other similar scales. I also suspect that Arabic scales are the same as Turkish scales, but can't confirm it.

So my head is full of Turkish commas, tetrachords, Western cents and Arabic quarter tones. I need to get all that out of my head and get back to my bouzouki playing. But I hate to abandon any piece of knowledge I've learned. So I think I'll write an entry summarising it all in a way that I can understand. Then I can forget it all, and will be able to learn it again in double-quick time if I ever need to.

Sounds like a plan.

Indeed. Can't wait!

GB

Hmm. I've changed my mind. I can see that I would just keep going, into more and more detail, and it would end up as a complete study of the music of the Middle East, and possibly of India and Central Asia as well. That would take me years.

So I'm just going to forget it all. I can work it out again in the future if I need to.

Relax and enjoy the peace, man


lil xxx

Thanks lil