Middle Eastern violin tunings?

[Left Headphone]

"Moroccans use the normal GDAE tuning; Turks tune GDAD, Arabic tuning is GDGD, and the Iranian masters have used all these tunings and others."

Anybody know how this works out in Hertz. Most Western tunings are A=440hz. How would that translate to Middle Eastern tunings in hertz?

[JumpingJackFlash]

"Moroccans use the normal GDAE tuning; Turks tune GDAD, Arabic tuning is GDGD, and the Iranian masters have used all these tunings and others."

Anybody know how this works out in Hertz. Most Western tunings are A=440hz. How would that translate to Middle Eastern tunings in hertz?

These issues are different.

The violin 'tuning' refers to the 4 strings on the Violin, which, as you said are normally G, D, A, and E, from lowest to highest. Violins from other countries might have one or more of their strings tuned to different notes (in the same way a guitar player might).

But, even though the strings are tuned to different notes, the overall tuning of A=440 Hz might still apply. - It's just that, for example, the top string might be tuned to D (587.3 Hz) rather than E (659.3 Hz). (However, the overall tuning may differ also, but like I said, this is a separate issue.)

[BertKoor]

More important than the tuning (that's always relative to whatever the reference is) is the following:

The main difference between the Western chromatic scale and the Arabic scales is the existence of many in-between notes, which are sometimes referred to as quarter tones, for the sake of simplicity. In some treatments of theory, the quarter tone scale or all twenty four tones should exist. According to Yūsuf Shawqī (1969), in practice, there are many fewer tones (Touma 1996, p.170).

Additionally, in 1932, at the International Convention on Arabic Music held in Cairo, Egypt - and attended by such Western luminaries as Béla Bartók and Henry George Farmer - experiments were done which determined conclusively that the notes in actual use differ substantially from an even-tempered 24-tone scale. Furthermore, the intonation of many of those notes differ slightly from region to region (Egypt, Turkey, Syria, Iraq).

As a result of these findings, the following recommendation was issued: "The tempered scale and the natural scale should be rejected. In Egypt, the Egyptian scale is to be kept with the values, which were measured with all possible precision. The Turkish, Syrian, and Iraqi scales should remain what they are..." (translated in Maalouf 2002, p. 220)[citation needed]. Both in modern practice, and evident in recorded music over the course of the last century, several differently-tuned "E"s in between the E-flat and E-natural of the Western Chromatic scale are used, that vary according to the types of maqams and ajnas used, and the region in which they are used.

Musicians and teachers refer to these in-between notes as "quarter tones," using "half-flat" or "half-sharp" as a deisgnation for the in-between flats and sharps, for ease of nomenclature. Performance and teaching of the exact values of intonation in each jins or maqam is usually done by ear. It should also be added, in reference to Habib Hassan Touma's comment above, that these "quarter-tones" are not used everywhere in the maqamat: in practice, Arabic music does not modulate to 12 different tonic areas like the Well-Tempered Klavier. The most commonly used "quarter tones" are on E (between E-flat and E-natural), A, B, D, F (between F-natural and F-sharp) and C.

(taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_mus ... tern_scale )

[Left Headphone]

good info... cool...

[BertKoor]

And ofcourse you DO know that violins don't have any frets. So they can play any pitch they want, like with a ribbon controller...