A Question For Music Theorists

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I’m listening to the song “Computer Games” by Yellow Magic Orchestra and I’m wondering: What makes the melody of this song sound “Eastern”? Is it using a scale common to Japanese music? How precisely do scales differ to give a melody the flavor of a certain region (i.e., “flatted fifths”)?

― Mark (MarkR), Friday, 18 October 2002 12:39 (twenty-three years ago)

I've never heard the song, Mark, but there are certain things you can do to make things sound "eastern" or "middle eastern". I know a lot of Chinese classical music is based on scales using 1-2-3-5-6-8; if you play on a piano, go to C-D-E-G-A-C, and you can immediately notice that it sounds "eastern". Sometimes people talk about this is an Asian pentatonic scale.

Similarly, scales a lot of people associate with a middle-eastern sound operate in intervals of 1-flat2-3-4-5-flat6-7-8; if you play on piano, go to C, Db, E, F, G, Ab, B, C. This is close to one form of a minor scale in western music theory, but that second note (the flatted 2nd) makes it a "minor mode" at best.

I'm sure that someone well-versed in music of these cultures would be able to say a lot more -- I'm sure there are many different scales and modes in these cultures that aren't commonly known elsewhere.

― dleone (dleone), Friday, 18 October 2002 12:48 (twenty-three years ago)

A long time ago I worked on a fishing boat up around Alaska. One of the crew members was this hardcore metal head (he'd actually played in a band w/ Andy Wood of Mother Love Bone back in Seattle) who brought his electric guitar onboard and liked to sit in the galley "shredding" away on his headphones. A number of Vietnamese guys worked on the boat as well, and I'll never forget this older guy Ming borrowing the metalhead's guitar and playing some traditional Vietnamese song on it (he was quite good.) I always figured it was some totally different tuning that produced that sound, but it amazed me to see the guitar going from playing Metallica's "One" to this distinctly Far East melody depending on who was handling it.

― Mark (MarkR), Friday, 18 October 2002 12:59 (twenty-three years ago)

Also - use of quarter-tones.

― Matt DC (Matt DC), Friday, 18 October 2002 13:40 (twenty-three years ago)

Most Indian music has its own concept of 'keys' (or rag) in much the same way Western music does, only following different rules.

― Matt DC (Matt DC), Friday, 18 October 2002 13:47 (twenty-three years ago)

Dumb it down for me, Matt.

― Mark (MarkR), Friday, 18 October 2002 13:52 (twenty-three years ago)

"This is called that in North Indian music..."

Confusion defined!

― dleone (dleone), Friday, 18 October 2002 13:54 (twenty-three years ago)

"This is called that in North Indian music..."

Heh, brilliant.

Quarter-tones = roughly speaking a tone half way between the a white key on a piano and the adjacent black key.

― Matt DC (Matt DC), Friday, 18 October 2002 14:07 (twenty-three years ago)

Mark, might be worth your while (if you want to explore this deeply) to read Harry Partch's Genesis of a Music or Henry Cowell's New Musical Resources or this one french book on Indian tuning and ratios that La Monte Young endorses (can't remember the title/author right now).

― hstencil, Friday, 18 October 2002 14:10 (twenty-three years ago)

"This is called that in North Indian music..."

it's like this/it's like that/like this/like that

― Mark (MarkR), Friday, 18 October 2002 16:57 (twenty-three years ago)

If you play a standard (harmonic) minor scale, you're supposed to sharpen the 7th, which gives it a really eastern feel. If you go up & down, it really does sound like a tune, as opposed to a scale.

― Jez (Jez), Saturday, 19 October 2002 08:05 (twenty-three years ago)

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