Monsieur Lemaire & the Persian 17-tone system (mode: Māhour)

In this video, I briefly review an example of a melody in one of the modal categories in Persian dastgah system, called dastgah-e Māhour.
Don't miss the other videos of this series:
• Persian 17-tone system...
• Helmholtz, Hedayat, Py...
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00:00 Monsieur Lemaire and the 17 tones
01:26 introduction
01:40 your suggested adjectives for the Persian 17-tone system
02:14 genus (genera) / jins (ajnas)
03:18 shahed (mese)
04:15 disclaimer
04:48 common melody progressions in dastgah music
05:44 a song in dastgah-e Māhour
p.n: A more logical way to analyze the scales is to put a "pentachord" on the top of a tetrachord. In regard of dastgah-e Mahour for instance, the seconndary shahed (C') is emerged a fifth above, while the primary shahed (F) is still there as a drone one! (Thanks to @Zaphod313 for mentioning this).
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Resource:
Daemi Milani, Farzad. "Persian-Arabic Seventeen-Tone Temperament: A Microtonal Extension to the Heptatonic Scale" Master's thesis, McGill University, 2023.
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Songs used in this video:
"The Royal Salute" by Alfred Jean Baptiste Lemaire
"Sarv-e Chaman" by Mohammadreza Shajarian
"Zarbi-e Mahur" by Mirza Hossein-qoli Farahani
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[@marin4311]

Thank you for making a very technical and serious bridge between Persian and Western musical traditions. Cultures need to talk to each other.

[@farzadmilani]

🙏

[@Alandpope]

Please keep your videos about Arabic music coming! As a violinist I've always wanted to learn Turkish, Iranian, etc. Thanks to you I'm finally learning little by little.

[@farzadmilani]

Sure! I'm happy if I succeed to make any clarity on this topic!

[@alanwild4824]

Those tetrachord diagrams are definitely useful for someone used to western 12edo! For me the mode shifts created a similar feeling to a sudden modal shift in chromatic music. Awesome video!

[@farzadmilani]

I'm happy that it helped!

[@tritoneAsh]

Great videos! 👍🏻 You found the proper way to get deep and visually explain these concepts! Keep up the great work… 👏🏻🙌🏻

[@farzadmilani]

Thank you!

[@John13013]

Thank you so much... Im learning persian music with a Nay and an Oud and its difficult to find content with such clear theory and explanation

[@farzadmilani]

🙏

[@shahbazfawbush]

Lovely, thank you for the visualisation! It allows me to understand the changes and to appreciate the music better

[@jakubolszewski8284]

Great! Thank You! I love this demonstration! سپاسگزارم

[@heikoweise9679]

Amazing videos you doing ,thanks for share this knowledge. maybe one day you have more time to analyse some more modes like in this video. thank you so much great work

[@dalemountain5041]

Hello, I saw that Safi al-Din Urmawi did not develop the 17 tone system as equal temperament. I also heard you allude to a non-equal temperament. Could you go into some of the ratios Safi used for the original system? I think just intonation systems are especially harmonic. Farzad, you are doing such a service to this beautiful music system. Thank you for these videos. I will listen to Persian music and look for more knowledge on dastgah. Simply breathtaking! Other commenters please tell me about any Persian musicians or music you like!

[@farzadmilani]

Thanks for your compliment! Safi-ed-din Urmavi as well as a few other theorists of that time start with obtaining the neutral interval by continuation of the Pythagorean 3:2 ratio. But since the resulted intervals were rejected by the practitioners, they revised those intervals and substituted the generative ratio of 13:8 to obtain them. In that sence, the Persian 17-tone system is a combination of the Pythagorean 3-limit ratios and 13-limit ratios.

[@jonaspfister682]

Thanks for these videos, the bubble diagramms are hugely helpfull in trying to grasp these concepts!

[@world_musician]

Love this topic! Please keep going through the entire dastgah! Interesting way to think about the modulations. at @7:48 changing the second tetrachord to Nava the mood sounds like Isfahan, and @8:36 changing it to Chahargah it sounds like Homayoun

[@farzadmilani]

Sure! Thanks for your comment. Yes, that's exactly true what you mentioned about the modulations.

[@PhilippeMacnabSeguin]

Excellent video! Really looking forward to the next ones!

[@user-ze7sj4qy6q]

your channel is awesome

[@RedWindField]

Incredible work my friend 💙 i would love to see the scale diagrams with more juice (slightly more vibrant animations to highlight the modes) but otherewise the presentation is elegant and sufficient enough for me to follow if I use my ears more diligently.

[@farzadmilani]

🙏

[@meteor09]

These lesson are wonderful! I hope to play Persian and Iraqi style oud one day. Would it be possible to have more song broken down like you did here with dastgah-e mahor, where you show the specific tetrachords being played and when they switched. Your analysis is very helpful! Moteshakeram!

[@farzadmilani]

Thanks for your comment! Sure, I'll make more analysis videos like this one.

[@notime4toi]

Please continue teaching us Persian Music theory, I’ve always been intrigued but have never really found any solid learning materials in English(I don’t speak your language unfornately😢), thank you, subscribed! Btw, can you teach how to compose I this system?

[@farzadmilani]

Sure! I'll make more videos about this topic. Thanks for your comment.

[@notime4toi]

@@farzadmilani thank you in advance, I’m looking forward to the vids!

[@Zaphod313]

Coming from a Turkish/Arab music perspective, this analysis was fascinating! I'd read before in several Western commentaries that the implied finalis within the scales written down by Urmavi, Shirazi and Maraghi was the fourth degree, whereby they would make sense from the modern viewpoint and be in line with modern practice. Being so used to thinking of the tetrachord on the finalis/tonic as tetrachord 1, I initially expected that the shahed would be the equivalent of the ghammaz/güçlü (dominant). This different way of looking at the scale structure is very interesting. My initial impression, being a newcomer to Persian music, is that the conjunct arrangement, but one where some ajnas are pentachords instead of tetrachords, could perhaps have advantages. For example, instead of disturbing the scale structure by moving the disjunction tone and thereby making a fairly smooth-sounding modulation look intimidating, one could look at it as a shift from the Mahour tetrachord to a Nikriz pentachord on the shahed. After all, the implied finalis in the short modulation doesn't appear to shift to G-Chahargah, but rather stays on F, because the drone stays on F. And it uses typical Nikriz phrasing. I wonder if Nikriz is recognized as a modal entity in modern dastgah music? I'm sure that there is a reason for the theoretical system being the way it is, though. Thank you for making such an engaging presentation.

[@farzadmilani]

Thanks for your comment. Good observation, and I agree with you on tetrachord-pentachord conjuct combination. The song that I reviewed is only an example of the application of tetrachords. In the main Radif repertoire the modulations are more straight forward and gradual.

[@farzadmilani]

In paranthesis, the correct spelling of the word NikRiz that exists today in Turkish/Arabic music, is NeyRiz (It's the name of a city in the center of Iran). Probably the letter "ی (y)" is misunderstood as "ک (k)" in transliteration! That's really interesting.

[@Zaphod313]

​@@farzadmilani Very interesting indeed. There are so many Persian terms and toponyms in Arab and Turkish music theory: Rast, Dügâh, Segâh, Çargâh, Nihavend, Isfahan, etc.

[@farzadmilani]

@@Zaphod313 How can I find you in social media?

[@minimal3734]

Of course, a chromatic keyboard only has 12 keys, not 17, but some electronic instruments allow to define microtonal custom scales. So would it be possible to play this song on a chromatic keyboard? Or would we need two different custom scales that we could switch between for different parts of the song?

[@johanwk]

I would love to try this out on my synthesizer, i.e., to put this into a quantizer. Is there a good web resource that will list tetrachord pairs using quarter-tones according to the described systems?

[@marcellsivad7767]

How are the bordune strings of the tar tuned? For me it seems that on of them is an f but I'm not sure if there's also a c.

[@omarwaqar8637]

Very cool. so many questions...I really want to tie some frets on my guitar to get the half flats, any tips? I tried zip ties, and it sort of works.

[@farzadmilani]

Some people use "fretlets" (do not confuse it with fretless guitar), which are movable mini frets that you can put anywhere between the fixed ones.

[@omarwaqar8637]

@@farzadmilani yes I guess this is what I’m talking about abut I was trying to DIY it. I have tired fishing line also but it always called off lol

[@farzadmilani]

@@omarwaqar8637 Do you know Tolgahan Çoğulu? He's done a lot on microtonal guitar.

[@omarwaqar8637]

@@farzadmilani no I’ll check him out. I’m just getting into it on guitar. I play Indian sitar and guitar

[@world_musician]

@@omarwaqar8637 yo whats up Omar! cool to see ya here, hope youre well

[@siaseeds8950]

They call the momentary changes in modes "Mod Gardi"

[@jakubolszewski8284]

But genus is from Latin….

[@moedemama]

Thanks i will write that down

[@DrLogical987]

So many ideas for names for the scales with 1/4 tones... ... But they're just tones! I like the Turkish word for spice. They add spice. Maybe the European common practice 12 tone system should be called bland?

[@dbass4973]

lol it certainly feels a little bit bland after two to three centuries of extensive experimentation within just one system