I don’t know a lot of the music terminology I probably want to refer to, but here goes:
Most western music is based on a 4/4 time signature. But even that which isn’t is based off of some multiple of four. Melodies are often repeated four times before a bridge or transition to another part. Percussion is based on patterns of four beats, or a multiple thereof. Essentially it seems that the use of four repetitions or beats has a strong influence in every aspect of western music.
Is this universal? Do non-western cultures heavily feature using patterns based around the number four? If so, why? Is there something inherently musical in the structure?
My last quarter of college, I only had one more class for my major to take, so I used the rest of my time taking a couple of rather goofy classes, one of which was gamelan. Gamelan is an Indonesian musical style and is, rather weirdly, quite popular at UC Santa Cruz. (The Indonesian government gave the state of California a really fancy gamelan set years ago, which apparently sat in a storage room at UCLA for years until UCSC requested it. We used a more ordinary set for class, though.) There’s even a seperate gamelan room at the music center. Now, I had played the flute for years and years and was at one point very serious about music, and had taken theory and all that. Gamelan basically involves banging on lots of different stuff, and I thought it would be easy and fun.
But that shit was HARD. It did NOT use 4/4 or anything I could wrap my brain around. Now it was years ago and I can’t get more specific, all I knew was that I was no better at banging on my xylophones or drums or gongs than my classmates who couldn’t read music, and probably worse than most, because I kept trying to work the music into something I could recognize and losing the beat. It WAS fun, though.
In short, I would say no, there is nothing inherently musical about 4/4 or 3/4 or 6/8 or any of the most common time signatures, but they’re so ubiquitous in Western music that it’s tough to imagine how it could be otherwise.
True, but even in, say, “The Beautiful Blue Danube”, the phrases of the piece are in four-bar groups, and those four-bar groups are often in overarching meta-groups of four. Anyone who plays in an orchestra for long enough stops needing to count the four-, eight- or sixteen-bar rests in Classical- and (some) Romantic-era pieces; they just become instinctual.
Back when all (official, western) music was church music, there was a period when 3 was considered the “divine number” and everything was in threes. That is: what we would now call 3/4 or 9/8. Someone whose music history/theory classes are more recent than mine (like, within the last 30 years) will come along shortly to be more specific.
I could swear there’s a column on this, but I think it has to do with us having two hands, two feet, two eyes, etc. Most rhythm is stepping and beating. Don’t ask me how that adds up to four.
That’s what I thought. 3/4 or 12/8 and other “three” times are just ways of making the music easier to write, and, hopefully, to read. By using 3/4, you stipulate that a quarter note will occupy one third of the measure, for its melody line. You *could[i/] write the same thing in 4/4, but you would have to use an ugly mess of notes, dots, and ties to render it in writing, and it would be hard to read and parse out, even for many experienced musicians.
We do tend to think in multiples of two in Western culture, I don’t know if this extends to others. Between the time I first looked at this thread, and now, I was a little curious to realize the fact the 2007 is nearly 1/3 over, but nobody ever cares to notice that milestone. We normally care only about the year, the quarter, and maybe the half-year. No journal I’m aware of comes out three times a year, and people often recklessly plan budgets around the erroneous notion that a month is four weeks long, exactly. It’s as if we tend to force things into neat groups of two and four, even if that doesn’t really work.
This link describes Indian time signatures. Some seem to be based on 4s, but note that there is one, Pluta-virana, that is 13 (I think Ravi Shankar mentions a 13-beat rhythm in “Sounds of India”), and this sentence:
“The number of aksharams in the laghu is one of 3, 4, 5, 7 or 9, and this characterises the variety (jaathi) of the talam.”
indicates rhythmic organizations based on other than 4.
There’s point in western European music history where triple metres are more common than fours. Or where phrase lengths did not have any single overriding principle. Notation systems developed alongside this music, and disappeared when no longer needed (our 6/8, 9/8 system being one remnants of them).
And it’s nothing necessarily to do with three having a particular liturgical purpose, but simply ever-changing musical styles. Secular music and sacred compositions both reflect these changes.
In the absolutely fascinating British documentary series How Music Works host British composer Howard Goodall explains that most music is essentially binary in nature. He feels that this is due to the natural pulses of our heartbeat and the motion of bipedal walking. He talks about the invention of triple beats to break up 2 and 4 beat patterns but then plays The Blue Danube and counts it in 3/4 time and then 2/4 time to show that the “DNA” of the rhythm is binary.
He also stated that in British music the original use of triplets was in folk music. Its persistence, he feels, has something to do with its familiarity from speech and poetry patterns. He recites a limerick to a drummer playing triplets to demonstrate what he means.
I wouldn’t take everything Howard Goodall says in that documentary as gospel. He’s correct that the examples he uses have particular rhythmic characteristics. Extrapolating from this a general principle is misleading.
Edit: “He also stated that in British music the original use of triplets was in folk music.” - Wow! Did he really make such a claim?!
Perhaps so but I have since recalled another little trick he does to demonstrate the point. He plays a metronomic beat for the viewer to listen to. After you have had enough time to pick up the 2/4 or 4/4 accents, he reveals that there are none, that it is just a human habit to “hear” them whether they are there or not.
Well I guess he didn’t state it like that. He said that triple time has always been a mainstay of Anglo/Celtic folk music. I simply assumed that folk music predates any other form of music in any region. Sorry if there was some form of Anglo/Celtic pre-folk music.
Actually, it (gamelan) does. Were you playing Balinese or Javanese gamelan, Kyla? My exposure to Balinese is limited, but enough to say that the 4/4 idea applies, albeit with some non-Westeren twists.
Javanese gamelan uses something akin to “measures” called “gatra.” Gatra have four beats, emphasized as one TWO three FOUR, instead of the ONE two THREE four that Western musicians are used to. But the beat has a similar “feel” and Western musicians who become serious about gamelan have been heard to say that they start counting Western musical pieces so that 2 and 4 are the strong beats (keeping the emphases in the same places, but shifting where they say “one”).
The really cool thing about Javanese gamelan (or one of many) is the fundamentally non-Western idea about developing the rhythm and melody together. You start with a “skeleton” (balungan) which is a simple melodic line, usually played at a fairly chipper pace at the start of a piece, with limited embellishment. Then, as the balungan is played repeatedly (musicians think of the music as cyclic, rather than a straightforward beginning-to-end) it slows down and more space is left between the beats of the balungan to permit more embellishment in between. This concept is called “irama,” and as you move from irama 1 to irama 2 to irama 3 etc., the skeletal melody is much slower but the overall sound is much “faster,” really much denser, because a lot is happening in the in-between spaces.
As irama notches up, the number of beats in between goes up by a factor of 2 (not exactly a 4/4 sort of thing, but close). Irama 1 is sort of analogous to having eighth notes in between the quarter notes that represent the skeleton. In irama 2, you have 16th notes playing between the quarter notes. And then 32nd notes. And so on. (But the balungan is always slowing down to accommodate the extra density.)
So, while it is quite different in concept from Western music, that fundamental tug of the 4/4 rhythm is most definitely still in place.
(If any other Javanese gamelan players are reading this, please don’t flinch at my oversimplifcation and leaving out of qualifications and details. I know, I know … I’m just trying to explain things easily.)
Or that it’s a habit of ears familiarised with western music?
If he said it’s been a mainstay of British folk music for as far back as we have concrete evidence, then fine. That’s not all that far, though. Of course, because we have a language which naturally falls into such rhythmic patterns, it would make sense that songs from further back used similar patterns.
Compare to the samples here, Parisian music from around 1200, full of triplet rhythmic patterning at the expense of duple patterns. This is music where we have a surviving clear rhythmic notation which allows us to recreate the sound with reasonable accuracy. (Although don’t take any single performance as gospel, either!)
I’m at a loss here. You bring up further early stuff to prove what? He was simply making the point that triplet patterns aren’t some new invention - they aren’t a product of classical music, or rock or the blues or jazz; they are ancient.
You seem determined to chastise me by agreeing with his point of view.
CairoCarol, is there somewhere one can go, on the 'net, to learn about this stuff? My brother-in-law leads a gamelan, but he lives too far away for me to have any interaction. I’d like to understand what’s happening, but with 8 kids my free time is limited.
NoCoolUserName, with 8 kids, you should START a gamelan group! … That’s just a joke, but only because the practical problems (like acquiring and having space for a gamelan, plus locating a teacher) are probably insurmountable, depending on where you are located. Otherwise I’d be quite serious; one of the wonderful things about Javanese gamelan is that it is accessible and enjoyable for people with all skill and knowledge levels. It is fantastic for kids of all ages.
I am part of a gamelan bulletin board that is *not * a good starting point for newcomers to the subject, but they might have some suggestions for you. I’ll ask on that board and send you a private message later regarding internet resources for newcomers. (BTW, if your brother is a serious gamelan musician, we’re almost certainly no more than a degree apart; the foreign gamelan-playing community is small and most people know each other at least tangentially).
Meanwhile, until I can suggest some internet resources, the book by Jennifer Lindsay is generally regarded as the best book for newbies.
In New York City, an out of work jazz drummer named Ed was thinking of throwing himself off a bridge. But then he ran into a former booking agent who told him about the fantastic opportunities for drummers in Iraq. The agent said “If you can find your way over there, just take my card and look up the bandleader named Faisal–he’s the large guy with the beard wearing gold pajamas and shoes that curl up at the toes.” Ed hit up everyone he knew and borrowed enough to buy transport to Iraq. It took several days to arrange for passport, visas, transportation into Iraq and the shipping of his equipment, but he was finally on his way.
Ed arrived in Baghdad and immediately started searching for Faisal. He found guys in pajamas of every color but gold. Finally, in a small coffeehouse, he saw a huge man with a beard–wearing gold pajamas and shoes that curled up at the toes! Ed approached him and asked if he was Faisal. He was. Ed gave him the agent’s card and Faisal’s face brightened into a huge smile.
“You’re just in time–I need you for a gig tonight. Meet me at the market near the mosque at 7:30 with your equipment.”
“But,” gasped Ed, “what about a rehearsal?”
“No time–don’t worry.” And with that, Faisal disappeared.
Ed arrived in the market at 7:00 to set up his gear. He introduced himself to the other musicians, who were all playing instruments he had never seen in his life. At 7:30 sharp, Faisal appeared and hopped on the bandstand, his gold pajamas glittering in the twilight. Without a word to the musicians, he lifted his arm for the downbeat.
“Wait!” shouted Ed. “What are we playing?”
Faisal shot him a look of frustration and shouted back, “Fake it! Just give me heavy afterbeats on 7 and 13.”
I’m not a musician or music theorist. I’ve researched related topics before because they’re related to stuff that I was interested in. In particular, I had to learn some things to figure out what was going on with the fragments of a bone flute anthropologists found that was possibly made by Neanderthals.
There’s something called a pentatonic scale which has 5 notes per octave. Music made for that scale tends to sound “odd” to people who are used to Western music partly because the stresses or grace notes tend to fall in a different pattern.
You could argue that the octave itself is a multiple of four, and you’d be right, in a way. The sounds we think of as notes are remarkably similar across cultures. That’s due to the fundamental properties of the physics of sound and he way we interpret sounds. Notes of one-half the frequency and double the frequency of a reference note are perceived as being “the same”. That quite often leads to fours or multiples of it being used in musical notation and thinking. Really though, it’s an expression of twos.
The mathematical relationships do not have an exact correspondence to the way instruments are tuned or played. There’s a whole branch of music theory that deals with tuning systems and their effects on music, the playability of instruments, and the psychological effects from the resulting tones. It’s quite involved and I’m sure that people who are that into the theory behind music spend time discussing this stuff in the same way that backyard mechanics talk about ways to improve car performance, or sports people argue about referee calls.
Flamenco music is a bit odd, which is no surprise considering its mottled history. It preserves aspects of quite old musical systems called modes, which I don’t really understand well. I don’t think most people other than Medieval or Renaissance musical scholars, or of course music theorists, concern themselves with modes anymore, though I could be wrong about that. I certainly had to dig to figure out anything about it when I ran across a reference to Phrygian modes, etc. in a fantasy novel.
