tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Aug 15 14:35:58 1997
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Re: yu-bIm-'egh
- From: "William H. Martin" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: yu-bIm-'egh
- Date: Fri, 15 Aug 1997 17:35:54 -0400 (EDT)
- In-Reply-To: <[email protected]> from "Neal Schermerhorn" at Aug 14, 97 03:12:31 pm
According to Neal Schermerhorn:
>
> QoQ muchwI'pu'vaD QoQ tejpu'vaD je jIghItlh.
>
> tlhIngan QoQvaD maja'chuq vIneH. Daj 'e' DaHarchugh, jIHvaD jabbI'ID yIlab.
> DIvI' Hol yIlo' 'ej vuDmeylIj yIDel.
Hut "note" ghaj tlhIngan "scale". chorgh "note" ghaj "Western
European/American scale". Is a scale based on an octave, like
ours (doubling the frequency), or does the scale repeat at some
other point?
All wind instruments overblow to the octave (first harmonic)
except for the clarinet, which overblows to the octave and a
fifth (second harmonic), which just happens to TRIPLE the
frequency, introducing a three which might be appealing to
Klingons. Touch a guitar string at the 12th fret (cutting the
string in half) and play the octave harmonic, or touch it at
the 7th fret (dividing it into thirds) and play the octave and
a fifth harmonic.
So, would we be slicing up an octave 9 ways, or slicing up an
octave and a fifth nine ways? The latter could actually turn
out to be a pentatonic scale by our current measurements, since
five notes would reside in one ocatave and the other three
would span the half octave remaining.
If we slice an octave nine ways, do we just take a modern modal
scale and grab an arbitrary accidental and toss it in, as
including one of the two extra notes we typically include in
ascending minor scales towards the tonic? Or maybe toss in the
minor 7th and major 7th, so Klingons can play the blues, or
toss a major 3rd into a minor scale so cadences get that
Renaissance feeling? Or maybe the notes don't even land in the
same place. That would ignore the boundaries that harmonics
press us toward, making unkeyed trumpets and bugles disallowed
in Klingon music.
Oh well. I know that Okand did this just to make us shut up
about not knowing anything about Klingon music. He can give us
the names of the notes without committing us to pitches for
those notes. And he knows it, grinning inegmatically.
> 'ej - tlhIngan QoQ *canon* DaHaDta'chugh, jIHvaD jabbI'ID yIlab.
>
> muvuQ tlhIngan QoQ. SoH DuvuQ'a' je?
jIwuQpa', HIja'. jIwuQchoHDI', ghobe'.
> Qermaq
> [email protected]
charghwI'