Transcript Session for Week 4 - Bath Spa University

Session for Week 4
 Transcription
Debate
 Music of Islam and Middle East
 Sudan, Turkey, Morocco, Pakistan, Egypt, Syria,
Afganistan (Islamic Traditions)
 Gamelan
Transcription
The debate over use and methods of transcription has long
been a major issue in ethnomusicology.
 It exemplifies the old insider/outsider –
phonemic/phonetic (emic/etic) problem.
 Phonemic = importance to insider – shades of meaning in
small adjustments of language.
 Phonetic = how perceived by the outsider. Bartok’s
transcriptions were phonetic but meaningless to the
insider.

Notation
simply a visualisation of music – but expresses
cultural meaning only to those who are of that
culture.
 `all established systems of notation have developed
in response to the particular requirements of the
tradition they serve …. each one of them is
sufficient unto its purpose or, when it ceases to be,
is modified or discarded in favor of an improved
system.’
 Not
Origins
 Origins
in formalised signalling systems of
memorizing and teaching.
 Written notation limited to literate societies – but
conditioned by social context in that society.
Motivation usually as an `aide memore’ in
performance and as means of communicating ideas
about the music.
 Either descriptive or presciptive
The symbols used
 Normally
taken from some other existing system.
 Greeks first to use alphabet for instrumental
pitches.
 Chinese used five monosyllables (written
characters) to denote the notes of the pentatonic
scale.
 Signs either phonic (already presentations of sound
outside music) or graphic.
Parameters
Notation is perceived visually – provides information
corresponding to a musical entity unfolding over time.
Different systems give different quantities of information
per time unit.
 4 basic parameters of music – pitch, duration, loudness
and timbre
 Many secondary ones which may be crucial for definition
of style/genre.
 Each parameter may be represented and each needs some
sort of division of scale or quantifiable unit.

Western Notation
 Reflects
its origins in Plainsong and Church usage.
 Developed for prescriptive purposes (to play from)
it is also reasonable good for descriptive purposes
(to realise what has been heard). But this is
because we all have a good idea of what the
symbols mean.
 However it emphasis the vertical structure as that
is what Western music is mainly concerned with.
Transcription and Ethnomusicology


Until 70s all agreed it was very difficult but essential. Skills were
practiced hard and highly developed – basic primary skill of the
ethnomusicologist of diagnostic and preservative purposes.
Adapted Western notation with lots of diacriticals– to move from
prescriptive towards descriptive and give sense of style.
Transposition to a tonality with as few accidentals as possible – any
combination of sharps and flats. Plus and minus arrows for microtones. Rhythmic groupings shown by irregular beaming and bar
lines. Precise metronome markings important. Variants
incorporated into stave. Text accompanied melody and with
phonetic transcription of sound and philological commentary.
The problem
 Hornborstal’s
ideas followed through and
rationalised by panel of experts 1949-50.
 Transcription in generation of Bartok, Herzog and
Densmore became high art and produced
transcriptions that have never been surpassed.
 However these transcriptions can never be played
from and would be meaningless to native
musicians even if they were musically literate.
Disadvantages
Using a mainly prescriptive form of notation for
descriptive purposes.
 We single out structures and aspects in the music of other
societies that resemble familiar structures/features in our
music and write them down ignoring things for which we
have no symbols or to which our ears are not sensitive.
 We expect the notation to be read by people who do not
carry the tradition.
 Charles Seegar said `To such a riot of subjectivity it is
precocious indeed to ascribe the designation “scientific”’.

Seegar’s Melograph





Produced in 1959 to give a three-fold photo-graphic display that
incorporated 1. Pitch-time graph; 2. Amplitude-time graph; 3.
Timbre-time graph.
Meant to give more data and be objective – culturally neutral.
Gave the whole detailed musical event, whereas traditional notation
does not differentiate between stages of musical event – attack,
decay etc.
Highly efficient for melody but could not separate parts of
polyphony.
However little used – does not distinguish what is significant.
Problems
Our hearing is only of a given competence and much of
what the melograph records we do not register – too
detailed.
 Physiological aspects of hearing – the brain has to
interpret the signals and people hear and see what they
expect to hear and see – selective listening.
 We are influenced by our memories and musical syntax.
 Great difference between what an automatic transcriber
would hear and an experienced listener of a particular
idiom .

New Notations
 Avante
garde music tried to fix all elements of
performance in ever more complex notation.
 Backlash against this set in with 60s
experimentalism and free graphic score notations.
 In Ethnomusicology debate hotted up and all
manner of approaches tried. Notations developed
for specific genres.
Hood’s Ideas
 1.
Give original notation if there is one and learn
to use it. Also give a translation of it.
 2. Use of mechanical transcription for details of
performance.
 3. Have a universal system of manual
transcription. Hood suggested a version of
Labannotation
Case for Using Western Notation
– all Western trained musicians use it.
 Adaptable – can be doctored and customised.
 Accurate enough for purpose – does not show too
much.
 Universal
 But
on each of the above it also fails
Reid’s Suggestions
1. Suitability – such that we do not get misled by
apparatus of transcription.
 2. Accuracy – should aspire to this.
 3. Flexibility – account for variables in tradition.
 4. Utility – easy to use and quote.
 5. Practicality – use with photocopying and basic
equipment
 6. Cross-cultural applicability – no ethnic bias
 7. Universality – intelligible to all after short time.

Advent of Music Technology
The great advances in recording technology have removed
the basis for the primacy of transcription. Why do it at all
when the music itself can be so available?
 Computers can now produce printouts based on digital
process. Any extraction of musical parameters can be
displayed in real time.
 However little desire to use this technology on the part of
ethnomusicologists.

Final Ideas
1. Transcription can never communicate music, but can
communicate ideas about music.
 2. It cannot give style as this must be done by
performance but can be useful in discussing aspects of
music if it visually represents those aspects.
 3. As long as ethnomusicology is driven by academic
(especially in USA) transcription will remain within the
bounds of Western notation.
