Talk:Arab tone system

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Incorrect![edit]

Everything on this page is wrong. There is no equal division into twenty-four quarter tones.

1. the tone system is not based on an equal division of the octave; fourths & fifths are perfect, which from the start, rules out the equal quarter tones.

2. at the cairo conference in 1932, they tested the 24-tone theory by tuning a qanun to those equal tuned notes, and then played musical examples for arab musicians. all agreed it was out of tune.

3. in actual practice, there are more notes in between a half-tone than 1. there are more on the order of 12-20 different notes in use in between a standard half step. the so-called "quarter tones" differ in their intonation from maqam to maqam; there are also several differently tuned varieties of "natural" and "flat."

4. touma (who unfortunately is a bad source on most things) is only quoting from one old theorist who claimed that there was a 24 tone system; but many other theorists over the course of arabic music history have refuted that with other experiments.

more references to follow.

Abushumays 02:57, 2 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I fully agree; this article is grossly insufficient. Although an equal-tempered 24-tone system has been used to approximate the system used in Arab music, it is a poor approximation of practice, especially when applied to certain subgenres. It is more accurate to use the Pythagorean system, which divides the octave into 53 commas, although this is still an approximation, and subtle microtonal distinctions exist in practice that depart from any codified system. For elaboration, see A.J. Racy, Making Music in the Arab World: The Culture and Artistry of Ṭarab, particularly pp. 106–117, and references cited there. --Ninly (talk) 03:13, 2 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

So, if there is so much incorrect information, why has nobody since 2007 been ready to correct this article? Like this, it seems misleading any reader who doesn't check the talk page. Munfarid1 ([[User talk:Munfarid1|talk] 08:31, 20 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Intonation[edit]

I agree with people here; this article is wrong and insufficient. Even according to Touma himself, "[t]o temper the scale by dividing the octave into twenty-four quarter-tones of equal size would be to surrender one of the most characteristic elements of this musical culture." If anyone is still watching this page, please provide some sources here in the talk page for re-writing this article to be credible. Otherwise I will attempt to do it myself with the limited resources that are available on the internet. Also, I deleted a sentence from the article because it didn't make any sense and there was no citation given. Eflatmajor7th (talk) 07:22, 3 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]