From: ywlee@herodotus.cs.uiuc.edu (Youngwhan Lee)
Subject: Re: Super-set system
Keywords: Korea, writing system
Organization: University of Illinois, Dept. of Comp. Sci., Urbana, IL
Date: Wed, 8 Apr 1992 03:44:07 GMT

phantom@casbah.acns.nwu.edu (James Choi) writes:

>Indian music has more than 12 tones at modern western music uses.  I think
>it as 18 tones or so.  It may not be exact, but the Indian music scale can
>represent pretty much every note on modern western music (this means every
>single song you like).  Indeed, it is a superset.  If you are not
>satisfied, then imagine a 24 tone scale.  This one IS a superset scale.
>Except, the music played on that scale will not be pleasing to our ears and
>we do not have a simple way to write such note on a music sheet.

Good example. Let's forget about the music itself at the moment and 
think about the denoting system for the music. One side you have
a 24 tone scale, the other side you have 12 tone scale. Which one
would you go for as a tool denoting music? 

(To be honest with you, I don't know much about music. Therefore,
my terminology may be incorrect here and there. Nevertheless, I 
think I can argue pretty good based on your music example :-)

Think about the Korean music, you have only five tone scale and all
Korean music can be denoted by the five tone scale. Wouldn't it be 
nice to have your own music denoted in 12 tone scale as modern western 
music? In this way, everybody in the world can play your music without 
getting into learning your own denotation system?

>Now, is it a superb music scale?

Comparing Korean music denotation system (which didn't virtually exist,
as far as I know) to modern western music denotation, I would say the 
latter is superb tool. Note that I did not say the music is good, but 
the denotation is superb. 

>  I would say no because I would not like
>the music played on that scale (listening to citar music for an extended
>period of time is tiring for me) and I DO NOT NEED that many notes. All I
>need is 12 tones per octave. 

That is how you are trained to listen. Say you live in a stone age. Your
family have a number system which can count upto five. And your 
friend's family have a number system which can count upto ten. Now you 
are claiming you only want to count five and you don't want to know how 
to count upto ten because in your world you don't perceive the number 
more than five. You say all you need is five numbers and you will be
happy with them. As long as you are happy, I'm also happy about it.
But wouldn't you want to have a better system? 

Let me iterate my point once more, if a class of objects is purposeful, 
then the objects are comparable. Not only that, you want to keep yourself 
in the side of better tool because the poor tool may limit your ability.

>Imagine a martian coming to the earth and bragging about their 24 tone
>system which can completely play all the music we have and much much more.
>Will we, the earthlings, be envious?  I for one will not care.  And while I
>will admit that the 24 tone can produce infinite^12 variations, I will be
>happy with just infinity.

I don't know why you defintely say you don't want to hear 24 tone system.
Well, if you know 12 tone scale is the absolute physical ability in listen-
ing music, then that's different story. Otherwise you may come up with 
developing the ability in listening a new dimension of music by training 
yourself for those music. This is just as we Koreans shelled out from 
five tone scale music to 12 tone scale music and change to love the 12
tone scale music.

(Again I never want to imply five scale tone music or 12 tone scale music
is less attractive than 24 scale music. But for denoting music as a tool, 
24 scale denotation system is a better tool unless it generates too
much difficulty in using it, of course.)

youngwhan.
Newsgroups: soc.culture.korean