Quote:
Originally Posted by Fretsource
The best example is the pentatonic scale. It is found in almost every culture and corner of the world dating back to prehistory (not sure about Australian Aboriginal music, though - I'd be interested to know if it occurs there too.)
Occurring independently among diverse ancient cultures suggests that the appeal of its note relationships is due to mankind's musical awareness being conditioned by the naturally occurring harmonic series present in all musical tones.
Of course it wasn't a scale at first, it was just an appealing series of five note relationships that could make pleasing melodies. It wasn't a scale until musicologists on noticing that there were only five note relationships used in their music, put the notes in order of pitch and called it the pentatonic scale.
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Now that is really interesting. I was aware of the use of pentatonic in Chinese and Japanese music, and had always assumed that its origins were to be found in Africa, and made its way to China/Japan via trade routes across central Asia.
Does the pentatonic scale receive much use in Indian music? I understand that their division of the octave is based on 22 increments, and I believe some Chinese music may even have a few more. The pentatonic scale is fairly easy to identify in Chinese music, but I have never noticed it in Indian music.
As an aside, I spent three months in India working on various World Vision projects and the like. Music is everywhere. I found it somewhat difficult to listen to, as it sounded out of tune all the time. Very interesting rhythmically though.
Aboriginal music is somewhat different. It uses less than 12 tones - maybe 7 (certainly open to correction on this), to divide up an octave. To my white ears it sounds out of tune as well - but in a different way to Indian music.
As another aside, I wonder how much concepts of tuning have to do with social conditioning? I would suspect a lot. I readily accept disscordant jazz as being quite normal, but I was exposed to jazz from a very early age. Once at school I was playing some blues, and a friend of mine who had grown up in a very conservative Chinese family, she had only ever listened to Western Art Music, specifically the Classical and Baroque eras according to the dictums of her father, freaked out when I ended on an altered dominant chord.
To me it was quite acceptable, but to Leanne it was verging on blasphemy!