Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier
and
Harmonic Secrets of Arabic Music Scales
Hot Arabic Music Secrets Revealed: Perfect Harmony!
"Playing Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier in today's equal temperament is like exhibiting Rembrandt paintings with wax paper taped over them.
Those who attack equal temperament, the tuning of our modern musical instruments seem to be attacking the great European musical tradition itself. After all, the music of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, et al, was written for 12 equally-spaced pitches to the octave, right? And if we change our tuning, that music would no longer be playable as it was intended to be heard, right?
Dead wrong.
Equal temperament - the bland, equal spacing of the 12 pitches of the octave - is pretty much a 20th-century phenomenon. It was known about in Europe as early as the early 17th century, and in China much earlier. But it wasn't used, because the consensus was that it sounded awful: out of tune and characterless.
Renaissance and early Baroque music played in meantone sounds seductively sweet and attractive. By playing it in modern equal temperament, we do violence to its essential nature. Perhaps that's why this repertoire is no longer often heard. It's been painted over with the ugly gray of equal temperament.
Each key in meantone or well-tempered tuning was a little different, and Bach wrote The Well-Tempered Clavier in all 24 major and minor keys in order to capitalize on those differences, not because the differences didn't exist.
The error that Bach wrote the Well-Tempered Clavier in order to take advantage of what we call equal temperament crept into the 1893 Grove Dictionary, and has since been uncritically taught as fact to millions of budding musicians. Lord knows how long it will take to get that error out of the universities. It's still in all kinds of reference books."
-- above quotes from An Introduction to Historical Tunings by Kyle Gann
The Result:
Western musicians and listening audiences are like babies who have eaten only genetically modified foods and who have therefore never even tasted a real tomato and don't know what they are missing!
In my new book, Harmonic Secrets of Arabic Music Scales, I am taking advantage of ancient musical wisdom which both pre-dates and actually formed the foundation for the European Renaissance. By studying the musical scales presented in this book we can actually re-create the deep harmonies in which European composers like Bach, Scarlatti, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Chopin and Grieg originally composed before the "white bread" system of modern equal temperament took over our music.
With the plethora of new music-making apps and programs like Thumbjam, Sufi Plugins, Mugician, Geo-Synthesizer and many more all enabling composition in any number of justly intonated scales, we can simultaneously bring back the true beauty and depth of classical European music and move into the uncharted future of global music.
Here is a link to more information about my new book, Harmonic Secrets of Arabic Music Scales with 2 CD's:http://www.gldesignpub.com/HarmonicSecretswithCDs.html
Imagine hearing the sounds of true harmony for the first time... The very first time!
And imagine learning the art of Deep Listening for the very first time... And so much more!
Happy music making! Cameron Powers
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