Talk:Quarter tone

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This article is part of the WikiProject Tunings, Temperaments, and Scales to improve Wikipedia's articles related to musical tunings, temperaments, and scales.

Contents 1 Merge from Arab Tuning System 2 Unicode characters 3 Rast 4 Notation?

[edit] Merge from Arab Tuning System

I suggest this should be merged with the Arab Tuning System article, as the latter is a subset of quarter tone systems. It's weird to have both "quarter tone" and "24-tone" on the tunings template. Rainwarrior 21:52, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

I support the merge, but I'd also love to hear a more detailed description of Arabic tuning in actual practice. The current article basically says "it's 24-edo and that's that". —Keenan Pepper 00:29, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

That would also be good. It's not that I think the Arab Tuning System page shouldn't exist, but at the moment I think it should be a smaller article with reference links to Quarter Tone, which should be a bigger article containing a section about the Arabic quarter tone system. Rainwarrior 07:34, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

You mean Arab tone system? Hyacinth 08:50, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes. Are you in favour of or opposed to this proposed merge? Rainwarrior 12:19, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

At that point I had no opinion. I now oppose. The Arab tone system is all about the three-quarter tone and not the quarter tone. Hyacinth 17:35, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Though it apparently never uses the quarter tone interval directly, all selection of notes for a particular mode come directly from a quarter-tone scale, or rather the quarter-tone scale. (The three-quarter-tone scale is called "8 equal temperament", and is not widely used.) (17:54, 5 April 2006 (UTC)) Perhaps what I mean to suggest is that it should not be on the Template:Musical_tuning as the reprasentative of "24-tone", given that 24-tone and quarter-tone have equivalent meanings, and this quarter-tone page is definitely the more general form of 24-tone tuning. I think this placement in the template caused me to believe that the Arab Tone System page was being used in place of quarter tone. I will withdraw the merge tags, but I will amend both pages in the near future. Rainwarrior 18:17, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Unicode characters

Unicode actually does have characters U+1D132 MUSICAL SYMBOL QUARTER TONE SHARP (𝄲) and U+1D133 MUSICAL SYMBOL QUARTER TONE FLAT (𝄳), but even so, perhaps they should not be used because they're outside the Basic Multilingual Plane and fonts rarely include them. Do they display on default Windows and Mac installations? —Keenan Pepper 18:35, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

I can't see them, and I have a few of the multinational fontsets installed. There isn't a universal quarter tone sharp or flat anyway. (The half a sharp and backwards flat are fairly common though, which is what I'm assuming these are.) - Rainwarrior 05:41, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Ah, but that's the beauty of Unicode. Unicode doesn't specify what shape the glyphs should be, just what the characters mean. —Keenan Pepper 15:45, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Rast

Neutrally speaking, I wonder if it is correct, under "Music of the Middle East," to say "Many Arabic maqamat..these follows." Since my knowledge does't suffice, I can't claim, I haven't heard any maqamat, dastgah, gushe, radif, etc. in Arab music notwithstanding (well..I can't remember any genuine traditional music of Arab oops..Rajaz?) but as far as I'm concerned Arab dont have such word as "Rast." This might has happend since part of Persian music history (that after say Barbad) is in Islamic Iran and composers lived from Bukhara to Baqdad.

hhmmmm!? /:{>

Downtownee 19:25, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Notation?

I would love to include an example of how quarter tones would be notated. The article includes a list of some composers that implemented quarter tones in their music (Most notably Charles Ives, I would say) - does anyone have an image of proper quarter tone notation?Deep treble 15:01, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't have an image, but the notation I've seen most often looks like the following:

1. half sharp - one vertical stroke with two horizontal (looks like a sharp cut in half)

2. sharp and a half - three vertical strokes with two horizontal

3. half flat - same as a regular flat but written backwards (horizontally flipped)

4. flat and a half - a backwards flat stuck to a regular flat (they share the same vertical stroke)

There are other notations, but this is the one I've seen most, and it is fairly simple. - Rainwarrior 15:23, 16 March 2007 (UTC)