Re: (attn doc team) Re: Diatonic notation system

[Hans Aberg]

On 11 Dec 2008, at 04:47, Graham Breed wrote:

> Yes, but nobody agrees on what that intermediate pitch *is* do they?
> And Arab pop music really does use equally tempered synthesizers
> however much the purists may object.

It may in fact be even more complicated: the intermediate pitch (or  
absence thereof) may depend on the position it has in the scale, or  
rather which interval is divided.

In Persian music, following Farhat, the neutral second n is used to  
divide the minor third m3 := M + m = n + N, where is N is another  
large neutral, and the major third M3 := 2M = n + P, where P Farhat  
calls a plus-tone. These appear only in the patterns n N, n P, and n  
M N.

In Arab music, the divisions of M3 are often written m M#. This works  
in E12, but in E53, M# is rather large. So I suspect that the  
principle of gravity or attraction mentioned here
  http://www.maqamworld.com/maqamat.html
may draw the m M# division towards n P in E53.

  Hans