| Author
|
Ancient texts as guides for music composition
|
Psycosmo
IsraTrance Junior Member
Started Topics :
42
Posts :
787
Posted : Sep 13, 2006 23:21
|
Hi Im wondering if anyone is familiar with any religious texts that outline principals of music composition/sound design of music to be used for sacred/magical purposes. I have heard that there are ancient Greek texts from various mystical schools like the Pythagoreans that discuss the spiritual properties of sound, but have not checked them out.
I found one quote when flipping through an english translation and commentrary of a Kashmiri text from the 9th century. The following was posted in another thread, but I started this thread because I think it's worth a whole thread and it should be in the music production section.
A music principal that alot of chillout music seems to be tuned in with seems to be described in Vijñãna-bhairava, a text believed to date to sometime in the 9th century earlier, from Kashmir. The quote is Dhana 18 verse 4 as translated by Paul Mueller-Ortega and Jaideva Singh c. 1991 (Im not a Yoga practicitoner, or even scholar of Sanskrit or Indology, so anybody please correct me if they think im misunderstanding or misusing this verse in any way)
Quote:
|
Translation (by Paul Mueller-Ortega):
If one listens with undivided attention to the sounds of stringed and other musical instruments which on account of their (uninterrupted) succession are prolonged (1), he will, at the end (2) be absorbed in the ether of consciousness (and this attain the nature of Bhairava.
notes (by Jaideva Singh):
1. The resonance of musical notes lasts for a long time and being melodious it attracts the attention of the listener. Even when it stops, it still reverberates in the mind of the listener. The listener becomes greatly engrossed in it. A musical note, if properly produced, appears to arise out of eternity and finally disappear in it.
2. When the music stops, it still reverberates in memory. If the yogi does not allow his mind to wander to soemthing else, but concentrates on the echo of the music, he will be absorbed in the source of all sound, viz parAvAk and thus will aquire the nature of Bhairava.
|
|
So does anyone else know about passages in religious texts that are directly relevent to music making. Has anyone experimented with applying any such teachings?
|
|
|
shachar
Basic
Started Topics :
13
Posts :
402
Posted : Sep 14, 2006 12:14
|
sounds interesting...
find us more about that |
|
|
|
Dark_Dork
IsraTrance Junior Member
Started Topics :
26
Posts :
1266
Posted : Sep 14, 2006 16:09
|
Groovy indeed
 Dressed to kill you look so right... I am drunk with lust tonite. |
|
|
|
Boobytrip
IsraTrance Junior Member
Started Topics :
39
Posts :
988
Posted : Sep 14, 2006 16:13
|
Sounds interesting to me too. I know that in ancient times, people thought that things in nature that displayed order were cosidered to be evidence of divine design. Since our perception of musical frequencies is ordered in a mathematical fashion (intervals between tones are multiples etc.) music would have been seen as divine as well. Also, if you are a bit like me, music can evoke experiences that can be classified as spiritual.
Anyway, watch out with using those ancient formulas, you might create the "killing melody". Killah ! 
|
|
|
|
djzed
Started Topics :
3
Posts :
48
Posted : Sep 14, 2006 16:38
|
"According to legend, Pythagoras, by divine guidance, discovered the mathematical rationale of musical consonance from the weights of hammers used by smiths. He is thus given credit for discovering that the interval of an octave is rooted in the ratio 2:1, that of the fifth in 3:2, that of the fourth in 4:3, and that of the whole tone in 9:8. Followers of Pythagoras applied these ratios to lengths of a string on an instrument called a canon, or monochord, and thereby were able to determine mathematically the intonation of an entire musical system. The Pythagoreans saw these ratios as governing forces in the cosmos as well as in sounds, and Plato's Timaeus describes the soul of the world as structured according to these same musical ratios."
Very interesting stuff. Even after thousands of years, these are still the intervals that sound pleasing to the ear. |
|
|
|
Psycosmo
IsraTrance Junior Member
Started Topics :
42
Posts :
787
Posted : Sep 14, 2006 19:25
|
|
pants!
Started Topics :
1
Posts :
79
Posted : Sep 15, 2006 06:26
|
there are some problems with the pythagorean scale though ... all modern western music is based on concert pitch where a = 440hz. google it if you want more info, other places can explain it better than i can.
you might also be interested in www.trance.edu
in chinese medicine there are the "5 healing sounds" you might want to look into as well. |
|
|
|
Psycosmo
IsraTrance Junior Member
Started Topics :
42
Posts :
787
Posted : Sep 18, 2006 05:20
|
Im not very good with the music theory thing (which is why I don't produce music ) so the whole pythagorean thing is out of my league (I just brought it up because I thought it might help other people) but this page: http://www.music.sc.edu/fs/bain/atmi02/pst/index.html looks like it might have some useful info for converting between Pythagorean and modern scales.
I couldnt find much usefulf about the '5 healing sounds' most of the stuff I found was kindof new-agey looking and did not reference which Taoist texts the 5 healing sounds are described in, nor could I find a precise definition of them. Anyone know?
|
|
|
|
djzed
Started Topics :
3
Posts :
48
Posted : Sep 18, 2006 15:12
|
The pythagorean scale is almost the same as the diatonic scale (white notes on a piano) that we use today, and have been using for the last 300 or so years.
There are still seven notes, and there are still the intervals (thirds, fourths, fifths etc...).
The only difference is that the pythagorean notes are tuned slightly differently. The way we tune our notes these days is actually imperfect. What we call a "fifth" should really be the interval of 3:2 = 1.5,
but with our 12 tone scale we tune it as
2^(7/12) = 1.4983
(7 is used because a fifth is 7 semitones)
The reason behind this is kinda complicated to explain here, but it has to do with the fact that the original phythagorean system, with "perefectly" tuned intervals, didn't allow for key changes to distant keys within the same peice of music (they would have to retune their piano or whatever). If you want to know more about this, read up on J.S. Bach's the Well Tempered Clavier.
So these days the pythagorean tuning is pretty useless. What would be really interesting to see is if someone created a plugin synth that used pythagorean tuning as opposed to the standard, to hear how different it would sound. Maybe psytrance can be the first genre to return back to the "perfect" tuning system of the ancient greeks...  |
|
|
|
Fragletrollet
Fragletrollet
Started Topics :
111
Posts :
1748
Posted : Sep 18, 2006 19:04
|
yeah, such a plugin would be really cool =D
There should also be more focusing on other types of scales with different intervals... |
|
|
|
extone
Started Topics :
1
Posts :
13
Posted : Sep 20, 2006 03:04
|
Quote:
|
So these days the pythagorean tuning is pretty useless. What would be really interesting to see is if someone created a plugin synth that used pythagorean tuning as opposed to the standard, to hear how different it would sound. Maybe psytrance can be the first genre to return back to the "perfect" tuning system of the ancient greeks...
|
|
Absynth has tuning options that include pythagorean, indian..etc. As well as the ability to create your own. You simply select the tuning you wish from a list and all notes are re-tuned to the new pitches. |
|
|
|
