# Balkan Music



## Mr. Big Noodles (Sep 13, 2010)

I went to a traditional music festival in Northridge yesterday and checked out a few workshops. The Balkan music workshop was really interesting, so I thought I'd share the handout from the class, as well as discuss some of the theory stuff.

















I've also attached these files in PDF format.

Obviously, I'm no expert on this stuff, but here's the gist from what I've gathered in about an hour:

Traditional music from the Balkans is based on modal theory from the Ottoman Turks. This is a system that uses pentachords, or makams (alternatively, maqam), rather than scales that span an entire octave. For those of you who don't know what a pentachord is, let's take a D major scale: D E F# G A B C#. If we take the first five notes from that scale, we get D E F# G A, which is a pentachord. Note that the "chord" in "pentachord" does not mean that all the notes are played together simultaneously; it's just a way of saying that they're notes that are in a group. You can think of pentachords, tetrachords, hexachords, etc. as bits of larger scales, even though they came first, historically.

In soloing, or other cases in which one would want to go beyond the fifth, you would stack one pentachord on top of the other. So, in the first line of Page 1, you'll see the rast makam on G, which is essentially a major scale pentachord. If we wanted more notes, we could add another rast, starting on D. Alternatively, we could play another maqam and put another maqam on top of it. The idea is to think of these things as scalars chunks, and to keep to original maqam in mind.

A quick note on this "partial flat" deal: in the Western world, we might think of this as quarter tones. In Balkan and Turkish music, though, it is thought that the space between a semitone is divided by nine. "Partial flat" could mean one ninth flat, three ninths, four ninths, whatever. From what I gather, it's dependent on region.



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Rhythms in Balkan dance are much more complex than rhythms that we associate with dance in Western music. Pretty self-explanatory. As with a lot of musical cultures that deal with odd meters, you want to think of the meter in groups of twos and threes. For example, the pajdushko rhythm on page 2 is in 5. The measure is divided up like 2+3. The ruchenica following it is in 7, 2+2+3, and the lesno following that one is 3+2+2. I danced to that 9 that follows the lesno on that page, which was interesting.


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The next couple of pages are musical examples. I'd like to point out on the fourth page that the key signature is not exactly orthodox - it contains both sharps and flats. The guy teaching the workshop said that the maqam is notated at the beginning of the music in the Balkans, so it makes sense.




If anyone knows more about this kind of music or a similar music, please contribute. Learning about this stuff was definitely the highlight of my day.


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## Rashputin (Sep 13, 2010)

I don't understand any of this, but I have heard some balkan music, and it is crazy. Stian Carstensen of Farmer's Market is really good at this stuff:



Steve Vai also explored some of the traits of balkan music in Freakshow Excess:


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## ShadyDavey (Sep 13, 2010)

*brain explodes*

I'll download those very helpful .pdf's and then pick pieces of my skull from the wall....very cool, not a subject I know anything about


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## signalgrey (Sep 13, 2010)

My Grandmother is Turkish and Serbian, and my mom is a Serb, and im a half serb/dutch mix.
this music is irresistible to me. I heard lots of it growing up and i remember my grandmother crying because of a few songs.

love it.


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## Waelstrum (Sep 13, 2010)

Good stuff in that area: it's complex, fast, expressive, danceable... It achieves excellence in such traits that in western music normally sacrifice the others to obtain.

Is that Pravo rhythm meant to be 4th 8th 4th 8th instead of the dotted note rhythm? I've noticed that a lot of people get those rhythms confused, or use them interchangeably. If not, then that implies some 4/3 polyrhythms. (Get your Balkan djent on.)

Those key signatures seem like they're showing the #7 in harmonic minor (or naturalised 3 in phrygian dominant as the case may be) which is something I wish was more acceptable in western music.


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## theclap (Sep 13, 2010)

Real nice stuff man.
note the Vai guitar in the first video.


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Sep 13, 2010)

Waelstrum said:


> Is that Pravo rhythm meant to be 4th 8th 4th 8th instead of the dotted note rhythm? I've noticed that a lot of people get those rhythms confused, or use them interchangeably. If not, then that implies some 4/3 polyrhythms. (Get your Balkan djent on.)



I believe that they are interchangeable, depending on the dance and speed and so forth. I keep reading online that it can either be in 2 (E. S E. S) or 6 (Q E Q E), but I haven't been able to find anything that compares it to a swing rhythm or a dotted rhythm. 



> Those key signatures seem like they're showing the #7 in harmonic minor (or naturalised 3 in phrygian dominant as the case may be) which is something I wish was more acceptable in western music.





I'll have to learn more about Ottoman notation. The key signature thing caught my eye, too.


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## nolow (Sep 15, 2010)

signalgrey said:


> My Grandmother is Turkish and Serbian, and my mom is a Serb, and im a half serb/dutch mix.
> this music is irresistible to me. I heard lots of it growing up and i remember my grandmother crying because of a few songs.
> 
> love it.



I went to too many weddings, I cant stand the traditional music anymore.


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## distressed_romeo (Sep 15, 2010)

You should check out this guy. He plays a lot of traditional Eastern European music using an eight-finger tapping approach. He's pretty fascinating to listen to.


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## theclap (Sep 15, 2010)

we all know that just looks impressive hahaha. good stuff though like a foreign keller williams lol.


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## denisstojkovic75 (Dec 9, 2011)

I adore Balkan music especially with gipsy rhythm. This is my favorite:
The No Smoking Orchestra: Time of the Gypsies, punk opera : Music CD
as well as performance:
Time of the Gypsies - Punk Opera by Emir Kusturica (DVD + Book): DVD Emir Kusturica & No Smoking Orchestra


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## Guitarchitect (Dec 9, 2011)

Thanks for posting these SW! I'm bummed that I missed this.

I did grad studies with Miroslav Tadic at CalArts, and studied Turkish music and arabic music independently. If you've ever played God of War II, that's me playing Saz on a couple of Mike Reagan's tracks. 

Anyway. It's a complex area because the systems all intermingle with each other and you get these different regional goulashes that everyone in each individual area says, "now if you want the REAL Balkan music..."

You can pm me for more info. But I can cover some broad strokes here.

If you want to go to (one of) the sources, Turkish music is interesting in that it is a completely distinct system from the other arabic musics. They might call it makam vs maqam - but the intonation system is completely different and there are a lot of variations in the jins as well.

So starting here:

mus2okur (Mus2okur) has an AWESOME pc program (runs on a windows shell in Mac) that has over a thousand tunes with midi and proper intonation. It also details the rhythmic cycles and has a ton of theory info. The Demo is free. The full product is $50 and it's worth every penny. They also have a music notation program Muse 2 that allows microtonal entry.

The book that got me started was MAKAM. It was unavailable for a long time but has recently been re-released on AMAZON. (http://www.amazon.com/Makam-Modal-P...=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1323455494&sr=1-1)

Balkan music is a huge topic I think Bulgarian wedding music is a good place for people to start. 1. Because it uses a lot of different rhythms (often at high speeds) and 2. Because (for people on this forum) - Ivo Papasov plays more notes in a solo than some people play in their careers. ; )

On Ivo's last tour Kalin Kirilov was playing guitar and bass. As part of his doctoral thesis he wrote a LARGE paper on harmony in Bulgarian music that would right up your alley. You should be able to get it through Proquest (ProQuest Document View - Harmony in Bulgarian music) if not let me know.

Ryan Francesconi is a CalArts guy who went to Bulgaria to study Tambura. He often leads a lark camp class on Bulgarian music and rhythm and usually has a bunch of pdfs on his site (Ryan Francesconi) for the class, but it's down right now. Maybe check google docs - but in addition to charts he has some cool examples of mordents and other ornamentation.

Timothy Rice's, May it fill your soul has some musical examples - but it has a lot more information on performance and pedagogy that may be of interest.

getting back to Balkan music in general.

Most of the charts I have were from Miroslav's transcriptions. If you want to hear some macedonian music SHREDDED on acoustic - pick up Krushevo w. Miroslav and Vlatko Stevanovski. Vlatko has a rock trio that plays some of this stuff as well. (and I apped his arrangement of Kaladjsko Oro for the trio I play in).

Guys on this forum may also want to check out the Romanian Taraf De Haidouks track called Rustem. The meter isn't odd - but if you check out how the band (in particular the accordionist) phrases over the tune it speaks a lot to the push and pull of rhythm that's indicative of the style.

But in terms of info - the Kirlov paper is the one to get your hands on. 

I saw the link to Enver Izmailov which was cool. That guys like a Balkan Stanley Jordan. Love his live stuff with the Black Sea Trio.

Sorry - this is completely rambling but I'm trying to type a lot in short period of time!! 

I hope it helps - But yeah hit me up if there's something more specific you're looking for in terms of info, notation or intonation.


-Scott


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Dec 10, 2011)

Guitarchitect said:


> Thanks for posting these SW! I'm bummed that I missed this.



Thanks for your contributions, dude. I haven't been to the festival since 2010, so I don't know if they're still bringing this guy in to do the class, but you should check it out if you can.



> I did grad studies with Miroslav Tadic at CalArts, and studied Turkish music and arabic music independently. If you've ever played God of War II, that's me playing Saz on a couple of Mike Reagan's tracks.


We're about to play six degrees of separation here. Gerard Marino talked in my film scoring class about God of War and a couple of other things he did. He had the voice of a radio host, and the vocabulary of a sailor. 



> Anyway. It's a complex area because the systems all intermingle with each other and you get these different regional goulashes that everyone in each individual area says, "now if you want the REAL Balkan music..."


That sounds about right. I wish I had more cultural background with this sort of stuff, but I suppose I have to supplement.



> [shit-ton of sources]


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