Listening for the New Intervals -- the DRONE Can Help

by

Ivor Darreg

When one hears a non-12-tone tuning for the first time, the new tends to be assimilated to the familiar-we try to put these sounds into the old 12 pigeonholes our music teachers installed in us some time back. Years of listening can wear deep grooves in our minds, so some way of overcoming this habit is obviously necessary.

Much of our new exploring, for practical and financial reasons, will have to start with one-note-at-a-time instruments, whether the tried-and-true violin or the contemporary synthesizer. Also, most persons will want to try out a song or tune they already know, to find out if it still will work in a new scale-system. But: with a lone melodic line, there is no point of reference, save our memory of the tonic or starting-note or some prominent tone in the tune.

Even if one has an instrument capable of harmony, it is too much to expect people to jump into deep water for their first swim-too much complexity may turn them off permanently. That is, practice and gradual progress is just as important for the xenharmonic listener as it is for the performer or the composer. An appreciation of the new intervals has to be galned, in order that the music can make sense.

Whatever the new system may be-just intonation or 17-tone or 31-tone temperament or some deliberately inharmonic scale like 13-tone -- the listener has to be accustomed to the new intervals among the tones of the system, before being able to make out the new subtleties and melodic/harmonic possibilities. Otherwise, the new scales will seem just plain "out of tune" and be emotionally rejected, or in some cases, subsumed under the orthodox harmonic patterns-perhaps as if they were mere "bending" or deviations.

It so happens there is a well-known instrument most people have heard now and then, which has stubbornly resisted the pressure to make it conform to twelve-tone equal temperament: the Highland Bagpipe. One reason for this success could be that it has three drones~ bass note and its octave sound continuously, making unfamiliar as well as familiar intervals with the melody played on the chanter. A fixed point of reference is thus furnished the listeners, so they do not have to use their memory to compare melQdy notes sounded in succession, but the fact that this is not the piano's scale and that some pitches have subtle variants is brought home at least on a subconscious level. Some bagpipe tthunees are in a key such that the drones are not the tonic, but the idea works anyway.

Over in India a special drone instrument is often used, and again the listener has a continuous point of reference, which may or may not be the tonic in our terms, usually a soft but penetrating tone sounded by another player. This can be quite a help to the Western listener in realizing that India uses a different tuning-system.

Many parts of Europe have the vielle or hurdy-gurdy, a bowed instrument with drones -- indeed the introduction of drones on this type of instrument parallels their introduction in the various species of bagpipe. In classical music a drone is called "organ point" or "pedal point" because a sustained tone is easily realized on the pedal clavier. However, we should allude to the rarer high-pitched drone under which the rest of the business proceeds: the opening of Nicolai's Overture to The Merry Wives of Windsor and Borodin's On the Steppes of Central Asia are telling examples.

This suggests that in some introductory compositions for helping people escape the Twelve-Tone Squirrelcage, a treble drone instead of a bass drone might be experimented with, or alternated. Now, just because I am recommending drones for ear-tralning and beginning practice, don't go overboard! That could get very tiresome. Just because a hurdy-gurdy or bagpipe must sound the drone(s) continuously unless they are yanked out, doesn't mean that I want anybody to follow that tradition slavishly!

With a synthesizer, one could add an adjustable drone oscillator. For violin or cello, besides the obvious droning on an open string, one could have such an oscillator set up, or a second player giving the sustained tone when needed. On a refretted guitar, the sixth string could be tuned to some desirable drone~pitch-perhaps tuning it an octave below the fifth string, or a fifth below it.

In recent months, I have built special drone-instruments with melody-strings on one side and choice of drones on the other. This scheme prevents accidental sounding of drones when not wanted. Fret-names are provided as for the Megalyra, with 12-tone beside just intervals and charts for other systems would be easily attached.

There are cases where a double or triple drone is useful. Double organ-points are common in the classical literature. Some drone-instruments have a double drone.

A special case of drones takes a low tone and by filters or variable resonators accentuates this or that member of its harmonic series. The inverse process, of sounding faintly a high tone and playing a subharmonic series melody below it, would be well worth experimenting with. (I.e. all tones of a subharmonic melody with upper drone would have that drone's pitch as one of their harmonics.)

After the newcomer to xenharmonics has become accustomed to this or that tuning-system, examples with merely now-and-then drones can be used; later on, it can be dispensed with. Drones are especially valuable when someone is learning to sing in a non-twelve scale.

The timbre or harmonic constitution of a drone-tone is extremely important, since the new intervals will not be defined or clearly set off one from another unless the drone has a long series of harmonics. Smooth dull tones like the sinewave or abnormal tones like the odd-harmonics-only square-wave or bass clarinet are not suitable. A cello-like or reedy tone-quality is best... What is sometimes called a "thin" tone. Preferably it should have no vibrato at all, for the purposes of this article.

While you are learning to hear new intervals, you need something reliably steady to measure Then you will feel more sure of where all these strange melodies are going.