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Session for Week 4

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Title: Session for Week 4


1
Session for Week 4
  • Transcription Debate
  • Music of Islam and Middle East
  • Sudan, Turkey, Morocco, Pakistan, Egypt, Syria,
    Afganistan (Islamic Traditions)
  • Gamelan

2
Transcription
  • The debate over use and methods of transcription
    has long been a major issue in ethnomusicology.
  • It exemplifies the old insider/outsider
    phonemic/phonetic (emic/etic) problem.
  • Phonemic importance to insider shades of
    meaning in small adjustments of language.
  • Phonetic how perceived by the outsider.
    Bartoks transcriptions were phonetic but
    meaningless to the insider.

3
Notation
  • Not simply a visualisation of music but
    expresses cultural meaning only to those who are
    of that culture.
  • all established systems of notation have
    developed in response to the particular
    requirements of the tradition they serve . each
    one of them is sufficient unto its purpose or,
    when it ceases to be, is modified or discarded in
    favor of an improved system.

4
Origins
  • Origins in formalised signalling systems of
    memorizing and teaching.
  • Written notation limited to literate societies
    but conditioned by social context in that
    society. Motivation usually as an aide memore
    in performance and as means of communicating
    ideas about the music.
  • Either descriptive or presciptive

5
The symbols used
  • Normally taken from some other existing system.
  • Greeks first to use alphabet for instrumental
    pitches.
  • Chinese used five monosyllables (written
    characters) to denote the notes of the pentatonic
    scale.
  • Signs either phonic (already presentations of
    sound outside music) or graphic.

6
Parameters
  • Notation is perceived visually provides
    information corresponding to a musical entity
    unfolding over time. Different systems give
    different quantities of information per time
    unit.
  • 4 basic parameters of music pitch, duration,
    loudness and timbre
  • Many secondary ones which may be crucial for
    definition of style/genre.
  • Each parameter may be represented and each needs
    some sort of division of scale or quantifiable
    unit.

7
Western Notation
  • Reflects its origins in Plainsong and Church
    usage.
  • Developed for prescriptive purposes (to play
    from) it is also reasonable good for descriptive
    purposes (to realise what has been heard). But
    this is because we all have a good idea of what
    the symbols mean.
  • However it emphasis the vertical structure as
    that is what Western music is mainly concerned
    with.

8
Transcription and Ethnomusicology
  • Until 70s all agreed it was very difficult but
    essential. Skills were practiced hard and highly
    developed basic primary skill of the
    ethnomusicologist of diagnostic and preservative
    purposes.
  • Adapted Western notation with lots of
    diacriticals to move from prescriptive towards
    descriptive and give sense of style.
    Transposition to a tonality with as few
    accidentals as possible any combination of
    sharps and flats. Plus and minus arrows for
    micro-tones. Rhythmic groupings shown by
    irregular beaming and bar lines. Precise
    metronome markings important. Variants
    incorporated into stave. Text accompanied melody
    and with phonetic transcription of sound and
    philological commentary.

9
The problem
  • Hornborstals ideas followed through and
    rationalised by panel of experts 1949-50.
  • Transcription in generation of Bartok, Herzog and
    Densmore became high art and produced
    transcriptions that have never been surpassed.
  • However these transcriptions can never be played
    from and would be meaningless to native musicians
    even if they were musically literate.

10
Disadvantages
  • Using a mainly prescriptive form of notation for
    descriptive purposes.
  • We single out structures and aspects in the music
    of other societies that resemble familiar
    structures/features in our music and write them
    down ignoring things for which we have no symbols
    or to which our ears are not sensitive.
  • We expect the notation to be read by people who
    do not carry the tradition.
  • Charles Seegar said To such a riot of
    subjectivity it is precocious indeed to ascribe
    the designation scientific.

11
Seegars Melograph
  • Produced in 1959 to give a three-fold
    photo-graphic display that incorporated 1.
    Pitch-time graph 2. Amplitude-time graph 3.
    Timbre-time graph.
  • Meant to give more data and be objective
    culturally neutral.
  • Gave the whole detailed musical event, whereas
    traditional notation does not differentiate
    between stages of musical event attack, decay
    etc.
  • Highly efficient for melody but could not
    separate parts of polyphony.
  • However little used does not distinguish what
    is significant.

12
Problems
  • Our hearing is only of a given competence and
    much of what the melograph records we do not
    register too detailed.
  • Physiological aspects of hearing the brain has
    to interpret the signals and people hear and see
    what they expect to hear and see selective
    listening.
  • We are influenced by our memories and musical
    syntax.
  • Great difference between what an automatic
    transcriber would hear and an experienced
    listener of a particular idiom .

13
New Notations
  • Avante garde music tried to fix all elements of
    performance in ever more complex notation.
  • Backlash against this set in with 60s
    experimentalism and free graphic score notations.
  • In Ethnomusicology debate hotted up and all
    manner of approaches tried. Notations developed
    for specific genres.

14
Hoods Ideas
  • 1. Give original notation if there is one and
    learn to use it. Also give a translation of it.
  • 2. Use of mechanical transcription for details
    of performance.
  • 3. Have a universal system of manual
    transcription. Hood suggested a version of
    Labannotation

15
Case for Using Western Notation
  • Universal all Western trained musicians use it.
  • Adaptable can be doctored and customised.
  • Accurate enough for purpose does not show too
    much.
  • But on each of the above it also fails

16
Reids Suggestions
  • 1. Suitability such that we do not get misled
    by apparatus of transcription.
  • 2. Accuracy should aspire to this.
  • 3. Flexibility account for variables in
    tradition.
  • 4. Utility easy to use and quote.
  • 5. Practicality use with photocopying and basic
    equipment
  • 6. Cross-cultural applicability no ethnic bias
  • 7. Universality intelligible to all after
    short time.

17
Advent of Music Technology
  • The great advances in recording technology have
    removed the basis for the primacy of
    transcription. Why do it at all when the music
    itself can be so available?
  • Computers can now produce printouts based on
    digital process. Any extraction of musical
    parameters can be displayed in real time.
  • However little desire to use this technology on
    the part of ethnomusicologists.

18
Final Ideas
  • 1. Transcription can never communicate music,
    but can communicate ideas about music.
  • 2. It cannot give style as this must be done by
    performance but can be useful in discussing
    aspects of music if it visually represents those
    aspects.
  • 3. As long as ethnomusicology is driven by
    academic (especially in USA) transcription will
    remain within the bounds of Western notation.
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