Thracian mode?

[VELLTONE MUSIC]

What kind of music mode Orpheus use to play?
It is very interesting hypothetical question
- is it possible to exist ancient 'magical' Orphic/Thracian mode different from phrygian minor?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0h1etLjIXs

[anomandaris1]

Modern name of modes come from mismatching the ancient Greek ones in Medieval times. Ancient Greek scales are also constructed from highest note to the lowest, not from lowest to the highest like now. So, what you call now "Phrygian" was called "Dorian". But it's possible that this Dorian was the major scale, but upside down, because that's what you get when you flip modern "Phrygian"!

There are several remaining treatises on ancient scales, I think the most popular is by Ptolemy where he gives them as division of string lengths.
Many of these scales are quite exotic unless you are into blues or Asian maqam music.

[jancivil]

I'd rather get into something real. We don't know how this music sounded. If it really was sticking to phrygian or dorian scales, it isn't terrifically exotic in construction. One kind of supposes they cared about being in tune... Maybe it's like the Greatful Dead between songs.
- at any rate measuring a cave as though it shows certain tones were preferred because of impact (or whatever the argument is) seems insufficient to bring this music to our ears.

I get that your sentiment is hometown-enthused but that music in all probability did not sound very like the minor pentatonic riff in the video.

[VELLTONE MUSIC]

Basically we have no idea what is history of world music,i agree
If we go back before known history, how many interesting things may be discovered

[jancivil]

We can guess from measurements, and gauge from the measurements what will have been an interval in a song, versus say a 'comma' to solve the basic geometric problem of 3:2 never resolving inside of 2:1. I found nothing from antiquity that is different than our known just intonation systems. The thing that remains a mystery is the rhythm. One supposes this tribe (Plato heralded one of them over all others, I think it was Dorian) vs the next tribe had rhythms supposed to signal their tribal something something.

[jancivil]

as to can it exist, it probably can, and if true it's possible it's lost, just not emphasized enough to be passed down. as I suggested, Plato found one of these, Dorian iirc, morally superior to others, and this kind of thing determines what gets to become history.

[VELLTONE MUSIC]

There is 4000-5000 years old culture before hypothetical 'thracian' mode related to system of ceremonies or ritual songs which affect people spiritual way,so may be just minor with semitone interval(s) somewhere like today 'psy' electronic styles use same minor modes with semitones here and there to achieve 'psy' effect,but what if there was a different ancient systems?

[jancivil]

maybe create things which give you that impression or feeling

I have no idea, I understand a lot of the general received information of the so-called Pythagoreans but another whole era like that, no clue.
I would say one thing, 'minor' as a basis is modern-day. dorian, phrygian

ancient greece-surviving music of

for inspiration or thinking a little outside the box maybe look at the chromatic genera of these modes and compare with the diatonic. The enharmonic is not typically very useful as material, kind of just abstract results of measurement.
This, note well, is a modern take on it. If they DID create enharmonic genera-based music, it DEFINITELY sounded 'different'.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_s ... ree_genera

[vurt]

cant remember if its plato or herodotus, but they constantly go on about the sky being bronze, sea being green and such.
no references of blue (apparently) from any writing of the time.
this leads some researchers to think that part of our eyes evolved later, the cone that sees blue.
whether true or not, im not here to say.

so. why am i saying this here?
maybe, hearing was different back then.

we can look at birds as an example.
many species of birds have had to change the frequencies of their calls, due to the industrial revolution, to fight with the mechanical noises. some have had to change their songs, to either mimic or avoid mimicing various things (alarms...)

just worth thinking about

[VELLTONE MUSIC]

There is some ancient artefacts found here and there around the world,i highly wish archeologist to find more ancient instruments to see let's say 5 000 - 1 000 bc evolution of music globally.
Not sure how authentic this pentatonic flute is,but for sure old civilization discover different music scales and use them for specific events.Cheers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JD0NDdZKOq0

[Musicologo]

Contrary to what has been said, we know A LOT of things about a LOT of different musical cultures of the musical past. The scientific study of music it's called Musicology and it is a science with over 100 years, althought it's prime branch, Ethnomusicology, only established itself as more credible after 1964. Still, plenty of work has been done since then.

Well, the most recent scientific studies done on ancient greek music have been revealing lots of interesting things. I highly recomend this musicological book:

https://oxford.universitypressscholarsh ... 0198794462

Technological determinism is the number one factor, so an analysis departing from the actual musical instruments, reveals the tunings and the scales available, whereas the ethnography of the past, starting from the concepts and behaviours of the people practicing the music (namely texts, the link between poetry, tragedy, dance, etc..) unveils the kind of rhythms and musical contours that were available. Some old notation fragments were also found. All in all, I'm posting here some fairly recent credible references that will provide much information for anyone interested.

You can read the full first chapter here, and carefuly see the lyre dyagram, tunings and extraction of scales:

https://www.academia.edu/33725493/_Epic ... s_pp_17_46

Then chapter II deals with the settings of greek texts to music, and how that was done, influencing pitches, contours, rhythms, etc, etc....

I also recomend these reconstitutions by musicologists of Oxford and Cambridge and their reasoning:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vVN748-GJ0

Here is the news about it:
https://theconversation.com/ancient-gre ... like-99895

Have fun exploring!...

[BertKoor]

cant remember if its plato or herodotus, but they constantly go on about the sky being bronze, sea being green and such.
no references of blue (apparently) from any writing of the time.
this leads some researchers to think that part of our eyes evolved later, the cone that sees blue.
whether true or not, im not here to say.

so. why am i saying this here?
maybe, hearing was different back then.

Physical evolution is too slow for that. People around the globe have the same sensory system. On the other hand, evolution of culture (and language) goes much faster.

For work we use a software building system that on completion shows a coloured ball. Failure is red, but success is blue instead of green. The reason is quoted below: the initial author is Japanese.

Q. "Why do Japanese people say that they have blue traffic lights when they are really green?" –Question submitted by John Sypal

A: According to the book, Japan From A to Z: Mysteries of Everyday Life Explained by James and Michiko Vardaman, the first traffic signals in Japan were blue instead of green, but the blue lights were difficult to see from a long distance away so they were replaced with green ones. Vardaman says that the custom of referring to traffic lights is a holdover from those days.

This sounds like a good explanation, but the problem with it is that you will hear Japanese people refer to other green things (like cucumbers, spinach, and sometimes grass) as being blue as well. This is because historically, Japanese people considered green to be a shade of blue. For example, the Chinese character for blue, pronounced ao is made up of two characters, iki (life) and i (well) and refers to the colour of plants which grow around a well, a colour between green and blue. When Chinese people see the character, they say it means green, but Japanese people say it means blue.

Japanese books on colours tell us that there are four tertiary colours: red, blue, white and black, and that all others are shades of those four main ones. Ao, therefore, is a sort of ideal blue, halfway between green and blue. The sky is said to be blue, but it is a different shade of ao than a traffic light is. Tree leaves are said to be green, but green is a shade of ao, like crimson is a shade of red.

In another interesting cultural difference relating to colour, Japanese children always colour the sun red instead of yellow.

[VELLTONE MUSIC]

Troy was just a legend before somebody to find it
So who knows,may be 'magical' orphic thracian mode never exist,or may be there is tons of interesting stuff to be discovered in the future,who knows...
Cheers

[BertKoor]

Etruscan man with three flutes

[Kinh]

wha-ta-talkin' bout