I have read a bit of "the great theory of music" by "chrysanthos of madytos" and a few papers by Markos Skoulios but I want to know more about Octoechos and understand their structures better. any help is appreciated.

Hi all,

Forgive me if this isn't the correct community to be asking this question, but I am wondering if anyone knows of a dataset that has a regional history of the names of songs that were popular on radios during that time frame. For example, if in some specific zipcode, such and such song was the most listened to, during a specific year. Anything that ranges back from the 70s to now.

If anyone has any suggestions or pointers, it would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you in advance!

What are some ongoing debates in ethnomusicology? I am curious about what the common disagreements and unsolved questions are. If I'm not mistaken, the origins of bluegrass is one such question, but what else is there? I'm especially curious about controversies related to Asian music but anything goes

We have aerophones, idiophones, membranophones, chordophones, and electrophones. Are there any classifications that could exist in theory, but seemingly don't exist on Earth?

Maybe liquiphones (sound from liquids) or plasmaphones (sound from plasmas)? If so, could they be combined with aerophones to create "fluidophones"? What about magnetophones (sound from magnetic fields)?

Heya folks!

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I'm a sophomore in high school, and I'm just considering my options for what I want to do in college. I know that I've always wanted to teach, especially in music or history/anthropology. Ethnomusicology is a wonderful blend of these subjects that has fascinated me to no end for years. I'm a theater kid and play in my school's bands, leading to a lot of performances, but performance isn't something I feel would be my preferred end goal. Of course, if I end up a music teacher, especially at a high school, I would need to perform for school concerts and the like, which I am more than alright with, but performance just feels more like a hobby to me. So i'm curious on what everyone's opinions would be. Would it be better to go into a music related major and go into an ethnomusicology graduate program seeing how hard to come by undergraduate programs are, or could I go into something like Anthropology with a music background / take music classes? Is that even a possibility for most programs? If you want or need to know more, I am fully willing to provide. I'm just curious about my possible options. Thanks!

I have like 3000 cool books. Would be nice to completely devote to african drumming and knowledgr/books/research

Hi guys! How’s it going? Today, I have a question that any of you can answer and/or comment on or give suggestions to: which country has created the highest amount of music in the key of A-flat (especially Church music, because I’m doing some personal research on Christian music across the world)? (and I already know the A-flat major / F Minor is a very uncommon key signature, but I still want to know which country it is most prevalent in, especially from a perspective of Church music) Any responses would be very appreciated, and I’m open to hearing as many perspectives and responses as possible. Thanks, guys!

Was thinking about the comparative lack of emphasis on rhythm in Western music theory, and got me thinking about the general lack of drums as a featured instrument in Western art music. Clearly drums are present in Europe throughout the time period, but the sense I get is that as instruments they were largely relegated to folk or military music contexts (if I'm wrong here, please let me know!)

But that got me wondering if this is a result of Western European art music largely moving away from a context of dance towards what might be termed 'courtly' or 'aristocratic' contexts, which largely would also be the contexts in which academic music theory developed. I was wondering if this was a phenomenon that might be seen elsewhere--where drums remain in popular contexts, but the art music of the aristocracy loses an emphasis on drums leading to its relative absence in any sort of academic theory.

This all is to ask--to what extent are drums present within the classical traditions and music theories of the Turkish, Arabic and Persian cultures, as well as the Chinese and Japanese traditions? (or elsewhere, these are just the areas I have at least an inkling of information about--I will say my extremely limited knowledge of Indian music theories indicates it's not the case there.)

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Hi, can anyone here recommend me interesting books about the history / practices of white voice singing (also called open voice, full voice or natural voice)? Books about Ukrainian / Bulgarian / Polish / Russian folk music are also welcome. Thanks!

This was a common belief among Southerners in the 1990s and even earlier, all the way to “it was a government conspiracy,” although of what sort, I don’t know. The idea is that bluegrass (and subsequently Americana and American folk and perhaps even country) is a ginned-up genre created by relatively recent songwriters (pros in the ‘30s and ‘40s, including for the Carter Family), and that it was never played prior to that and certainly not in the areas they claimed (or marketed) that it came from, and that no examples were even found by musicologists, who only found a pre-country ‘cowboy chords’ tradition of playing a guitar in downtime around the southern Texas region, possibly borrowed from Mexicans. Does anyone have any thoughts or insight into this?

Because hoo boy since then has this ‘Americana’ catch-all genre bloomed and I know several of the modern songwriters who claim that this is mostly true. In this series of events, country is ‘real’, but it is accepted as as modern as rock ‘n roll — a relatively recent advent created for the modern music industry. But ‘bluegrass’ / ‘Americana’, including the down-home tradition of bands of people playing these myriad instruments including banjo and fiddle, is horseshit according to these people.

I know the fiddle can be traced back to Britain but I am talking about a very particular sort of sound, not the Anglo sung folk tradition with accompaniment occasionally by fiddle.

If so, can I PM you a few questions? Tysm :)

Want to start exploring more traditional/classical/folk music from Africa. What are some good albums to start my journey into some of the music traditions of the continent?

so i've been watching a lot of videos of egyptian wedding drummers (shout out Sharon Drumz) and noticed they use a drumstick that has some natural bendiness/whip to it.

do these sticks have a specific name? would love to source a pair to get a feel for some of the patterns/playing technique but have been unable to get close to anything with open ended word soup searches

Wrapping up my 5th academic year in musicology and I still wrestle with this conflict that a lot talk about: becoming a musicologist can muddy the waters between a passion for listening and listening for work/research.

I do Nordic music, that's my whole speciality, and my secondary specialization is in American roots since that's my background as a musician. This has made it so that it's difficult to listen to any Nordic music or American roots music without it feeling at least a little bit like work. This is the downside for making a career out of what you love.

How do any of you reconcile this conflict if you experience it too? I'd love to hear other perspectives.

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So, I'm interested in theatre, having done theatre since sixth grade. I was curious if any ethnomusicologists study musical theatre from a more anthropological perspective. I'm particularly interested in if there are any for Broadway and West End-style theatre, as I'm sure many experts in Japanese music study Kabuki, and many Chinese music experts study Beijing and Cantonese Opera.

I know theatre studies is a thing, with people studying the writing techniques of playwrights, composers, and lyricists, storytelling techniques, leitmotifs, and more. I'm more interested in people that talk about musical theatre from the angle of it being a cultural phenomenon, writing ethnographies for it, for example.

I know ethnomusicologists study things like jazz, pop, rock and roll, rap, and more, so Broadway wouldn't seem too out of the question for an area of expertise.

Hi guys! I did a little research project on Sacred Harp / shape-note vocal music from the Southern U.S. : I wanted to find out how often Sacred Harp singers in the American South sang songs that had musical accidentals (which are any notes in a piece of music that purposefully differ from the main musical scale (set of notes) / musical key, that the given musical piece uses). So, I carefully examined every song that was in a hymnbook called “Southern Harmony” (which is a very credible and respected source of sheet music for Sacred Harp songs that were sung in the American South), taking a tally of how many songs in the hymnbook have at least 1 musical accidental. “Southern Harmony” has 336 Sacred Harp songs, and only 20 (around 5.9%) of them have musical accidentals, which heavily suggests that the vast majority of the Sacred Harp songs that were sang in the American South have no musical accidentals, and are instead were very diatonic (which means that the Sacred Harp songs in the Southern U.S. do not stray away from their written musical keys and scales).

Hi! Wondering what the thoughts are on Tufts program. My primary goal after grad school is to teach at a university (something in music, not specifically ethno). Will this degree be valuable when applying to teaching jobs in the future? I also have other reasons I'd like to study but that is a major factor for me. Would love any thoughts!!

I am a composer doing my masters at the moment. I am from a tradition of Hindusthani Classical musicians and also study carnatic music with some people in the circle of TM Krishna, online. I want to do a PhD studying a very specific development of a kind of rhythmic counterpoint in Carnatic music, which I’d like to study and implement in my compositional practise. What are the PhD programs that offer the chance to go and study in a specific place (in my case Chennai, India) to document a musicological phenomenon?

Hello. I'm part Greek (my great grandfather came from Lesbos) and looking to connect with the cultures there. I'm very interested in the music of Greece, particularly the music that feels more like a blend of Middle-Eastern/Turkish music and Balkan music. One instrument that once was very common in Greece (and is seeing a bit of a comeback due to young people taking an interest in earlier traditions) was the Oúti, which is visually identical to the Arabic, Egyptian, Iraqi, Syrian, and Turkish Ouds.

I was wondering if Greek Ouds had any distinctions between the other styles of Ouds. I know Turkish Ouds are usually tuned differently from the other styles. I would imagine that, given Greece's history with and proximity to Turkey, the tunings of an Oúti would be close to the Turkish style Oud, but I am unsure. Are there any other differences? Maybe differences in playing style, proportions, etc.?

If you know of any good sources on Greek music (bonus points if it talks about the Oúti), like research papers and ethnographies, let me know.