tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Feb 09 23:52:21 2000

Back to archive top level

To this year's listing

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]

Re: RE: Klingon Music

Please realize that you've made a number of assumptions 
here that have no confirmation. To say that Klingon has a 
nonatonic musical scale is not to say that means you start 
with an octave and somehow divide it into nine steps. You 
are making that up.

I came up with an off-the-wall idea for what this could 
mean and Okrand responded that it was a very interesting 
idea and that Klingon music "probably" does "something like 
that". In other words, he liked it because it was weird, 
but he was not about to commit to it.

My idea was:

Klingon could have what we humans currently call a 
pentatonic scale. A normal, untrained singing voice can 
usually sing about an octave and a third, stretching to 
two octaves with a little training. That is roughly the 
range of nine notes sung on a pentatonic scale. So, it is 
not that there are nine named notes and then you start 
repeating notes at a higher frequency. There are simply 
nine named notes. Period. Nobody sings more than nine notes.

Meanwhile, since singing ranges vary, two different singers 
will not necessarily sing the SAME nine notes. This not 
only extends the range of choral counterpoint, but it also 
creates dissonant intervals in a scale that normally lacks 
them, much in the way one person cannot fight. It takes at 
least two.

Meanwhile, Klingon musical instruments would mimick singing 
ranges, so that each Klingon musical instrument would play 
only nine notes in a pentatonic scale and different 
instruments would play different scales, so groups acquire 
a wide range of frequencies, tone colors and dissonances 
uncommon to pentatonic scales.

I've wanted to write something using this compositional 
technique, but so far I have not gotten around to it.

charghwI'

On Thu, 3 Feb 2000 22:45:29 -0500 (EST) qenobIywan 
<[email protected]> wrote:

> jatlh DloraH:
> 
> >>Disclaimer: I am most definitely not an expert
> >>on music I guess this is more as a question
> >>than a statment. In either an octive or
> >>nonave, when you jump from a note at one
> >>level to the same note on the next level you
> >>are doubling the frequency. In an octive that
> >>distance is divided into seven notes. In a
> >>nonave its divided into more notes; but
> >>jumping from one level to the next is still just
> >>the frequency doubled.
> >>
> >>qar'a'?
> 
> jIQochbe'...
> 
> jatlh tuv'el:
> 
> >=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0toH! This is not
> confirmed by Maltz
> >(or anyone that I've heard), but if it is correct, a
> >nonave is the frequency tripled instead of just
> >doubled, and is divided into eight notes, three
> >triads.
> 
> Is "nonave" an actual musical term? (I couldn't find it in my music
> dictionary.)
> 
> Anyway, KGT makes no mention at all of a "nonave."
> 
> KGT p. 72:  "Older Klingon music was based on a nonatonic scale--that is
> one made up of nine tones."
> 
> And from everything I've read in my music books (I'm no music major,
> mind you), a "scale" is a series of notes from any given note to the
> next occurence of that note, which is double the frequency. So for the
> Klingon nonatonic scale, {yu} and {yu} would be equivalent to "do" and
> "do." It's just the in-between notes that would be different. I guess
> the big question is whether or not the in-betweens line up with any of
> the notes in Terran music.
> 
> Well, anyway, the average interval between two consecutive notes in
> Klingon music is apparently 1.5 Terran(?) half steps. I've tried a few
> "Klingon" scales on my keyboard, and some don't sound too bad, while
> still sounding a bit alien...
> 
> 
> ---
> 
> reH taHjaj tlhIngan Hol...
> 
> Qapla'
> 
> qenobIywan
>

Back to archive top level