Re: Turkish makam

[Adam Good]

On Mon, Jan 16, 2023 at 4:30 AM Luca Fascione <l.fascione@gmail.com> wrote:

> All this being said, I just read there are hundreds of makams, which makes
> me wonder whether it
> wouldn't be more effective to provide a simple method to indicate the
> makam of a piece at the start
> of the score, for all but the most common N ones (maybe N could be
> somewhere between 50 and 100?).
>

Very creative speculating on your part! However, it's really very very
simple and nothing needs to happen here. For starters, makams are not
scales or too akin to what we think of as modes in "western music", they're
like melodic journeys that have a beginning note or area and always always
always have a finalis or ending note that never deviates. This journey is
called "seyir" which could translate to "path". Though they are not simply
scales, one can strip a makam down to its most basic form and notate a
simple 7 note scale and since we may need accidentals, we really like to
use a key signature.

Let's take the makam Rast:

g a bfc c d e fb

the pitch g just happens to be the finalis...every song or instrumental
composition will have a melody that must end on that pitch. And the
accidentals say "b one koma flat" and "f four koma sharp" so I'll add those
in my key signature which, using turkish-makam.ly

\key g \rast

That's it. At the top of the score in the titling I would write the makam
name and the form of the composition:

Rast Şarkı
or
Rast Peşrevi

etc.

The most common makams number around 60+ then they start to get more rare.
But they exist and I'd defined them in turkish-makam.ly

I hope that makes sense and gives something of an idea. I sure do
appreciate the interest!!

Adam