Music of Brittany

Blog, Musicians' Diary, Sound & Video

From an old intense land

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From an old intense land

Our latest video experience, let us know in the comments on the video if you like it 😉 you’ll also find some interesting reference links on the description section under the video, but first enjoy all of the magical beautiful images from Brittany !

Notre dernière expérimentation en vidéo, avec des sous-titres en français. Vous trouverez plein de liens vers en barre d’info sur YouTube pour en savoir plus, mais avant, appréciez les magnifiques images filmées en Bretagne.

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Music

What the hell is the time signature ?

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We have already been talking about rhythm, here for example. Let’s go further with rhythm with this song sample that Simone quickly recorded a couple of days ago :

According to me, most parts time signature is 5/8. But what about the middle part ? Any suggestion would be warmly welcome ! You can also here Simone clapping her hands, this might be the right clue to find the answer !

§Yann

DIY Album, Musicians' Diary

Bağlama’s pitch

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Bağlama, also commonly called “saz” in western Europe has the advantage of having moving frets, which means that fret position can be easily modified until you get the suitable music scale. Moreover, it has extra frets that enables to play notes between the common semitones that you have on a guitar or a piano. Thus, we’re entering the very exciting world of “quarter-tones” and “commas” (you can read this to learn more about this topic).

vue-saz-01
My bağlama

But those “quarter-tones” can be very different from one culture to another, or even from one performer to another. I always have the feeling that quarter-tones are very (!) high in Turkish music (more technically, I would say they’re about 50-60 cents above the lower degree, a semitone equals say 100 cents) whereas they sound usually lower in Breton music (I would say 30-35 cents. I have made some pitch measurements on Breton singer old recordings, and it tends to agree these values).

Therefore, moving frets are very convenient for adapting the instrument to the suitable scale, since you can move some of the frets upwards.

frettage-saz-01
Moving the fret to get the suitable scale

I am pretty happy of the result, you can hear it on this live recording we made in Beirut last year : An Daou Gamerad Fidel

§ Yann

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