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The modern Arab tone system, or system of musical tuning
Musical tuning

In music, there are two common meanings for tuning:* #Tuning practice, the act of tuning an instrument or voice.* #Tuning systems, the various systems of Pitch used to tune an instrument, and their theoretical basis....
, is based upon the theoretical division of the octave
Octave

In music, an octave The octave is occasionally referred to as a diapason.The octave above an indicated note is sometimes abbreviated 8va, and the octave below 8vb....
 into twenty-four equal divisions or 24-tone equal temperament
Equal temperament

Equal temperament is a musical temperament, or a system of Musical tuning in which every pair of adjacent notes has an identical frequency ratios....
 (24-TET), the distance between each successive note being a quarter tone
Quarter tone

A quarter tone is an interval about half as wide as a semitone, which is half a whole tone.Many composers are known for having written music including quarter tones or the quarter tone scale, first proposed by 19th-century music theorist Mikha'il Mishaqah , including: Pierre Boulez, Juli?n Carrillo, Mildred Couper, Alberto Ginas...
 (50 cents
Cent (music)

The cent is a logarithmic scale unit of measure used for musical interval . Typically cents are used to measure extremely small intervals, or to compare the sizes of comparable intervals in different tuning systems, and in fact the interval of one cent is much too small to be heard between successive notes....
). Each tone has its own name not repeated in different octaves, unlike systems featuring octave equivalency. The lowest tone is named yakah and is determined by the lowest pitch
Pitch (music)

Pitch represents the perceived fundamental frequency of a sound. It is one of the three major auditory system attributes of sounds along with loudness and timbre....
 in the range
Vocal range

Vocal range is the measure of the breadth of pitch that a human voice can phonate. Although the study of vocal range has little practical application in terms of speech, it is a topic of study within linguistics, phonetics, and speech pathology; particularly in relation to the study of tonal languages and certain types of vocal disorders....
 of the singer.






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The modern Arab tone system, or system of musical tuning
Musical tuning

In music, there are two common meanings for tuning:* #Tuning practice, the act of tuning an instrument or voice.* #Tuning systems, the various systems of Pitch used to tune an instrument, and their theoretical basis....
, is based upon the theoretical division of the octave
Octave

In music, an octave The octave is occasionally referred to as a diapason.The octave above an indicated note is sometimes abbreviated 8va, and the octave below 8vb....
 into twenty-four equal divisions or 24-tone equal temperament
Equal temperament

Equal temperament is a musical temperament, or a system of Musical tuning in which every pair of adjacent notes has an identical frequency ratios....
 (24-TET), the distance between each successive note being a quarter tone
Quarter tone

A quarter tone is an interval about half as wide as a semitone, which is half a whole tone.Many composers are known for having written music including quarter tones or the quarter tone scale, first proposed by 19th-century music theorist Mikha'il Mishaqah , including: Pierre Boulez, Juli?n Carrillo, Mildred Couper, Alberto Ginas...
 (50 cents
Cent (music)

The cent is a logarithmic scale unit of measure used for musical interval . Typically cents are used to measure extremely small intervals, or to compare the sizes of comparable intervals in different tuning systems, and in fact the interval of one cent is much too small to be heard between successive notes....
). Each tone has its own name not repeated in different octaves, unlike systems featuring octave equivalency. The lowest tone is named yakah and is determined by the lowest pitch
Pitch (music)

Pitch represents the perceived fundamental frequency of a sound. It is one of the three major auditory system attributes of sounds along with loudness and timbre....
 in the range
Vocal range

Vocal range is the measure of the breadth of pitch that a human voice can phonate. Although the study of vocal range has little practical application in terms of speech, it is a topic of study within linguistics, phonetics, and speech pathology; particularly in relation to the study of tonal languages and certain types of vocal disorders....
 of the singer. The next higher octave is nawa and the second tuti. (Touma 1996, p.17-18) However, from these twenty-four tones seven are selected to produce a scale and thus the interval of a quarter tone is never used and the three-quarter tone or neutral second
Neutral second

A neutral second or medium second is a musical interval between a minor second and a major second. Three distinct intervals may be termed neutral seconds....
 should be considered the characteristic interval. (ibid, p.23)

By contrast, in the European equally tempered scale
Equal temperament

Equal temperament is a musical temperament, or a system of Musical tuning in which every pair of adjacent notes has an identical frequency ratios....
 the octave is divided into twelve equal divisions, or exactly half as many as the Arab system. Thus the system is written in European musical notation
Musical notation

Music notation or musical notation is any system which represents aurally perceived music, through the use of written Modern musical symbols....
 using a slashed flat for quarter flat, a flat for half-tone flat
Flat

In music, flat means "lower in pitch." More specifically, in music notation, flat means "lower in pitch by a semitone ," and has an associated symbol , which is a stylised lowercase "b" ....
, a slashed flat and a flat for three-quarter tone flat, sharp with one vertical line for quarter sharp, sharp for half-step sharp
Sharp (music)

In music, sharp means higher in pitch. More specifically, in musical notation, sharp means "higher in pitch by a semitone ," and has an associated symbol , which is often confused with the number sign ....
, and a half sharp and a sharp for three-quarter sharp. A two octave range starting with yakah arbitrarily on the G below middle C is used. (ibid, p.24)

In practice far fewer than twenty-four tones are used in a single performance. All twenty-four tones are individual pitches differentiated into a hierarchy
Hierarchy

A 'hierarchy' is an arrangement of items The word derives from the Greek language , from ?e?????? , "president of sacred rites, high-priest" and that from , "sacred" + , "to lead, to rule"....
 of important pitches, "pillars", which occur more frequently in the tone row
Tone row

In music, a tone row or note row , also series and set, refers to a non-repetitive ordering of the twelve notes of the chromatic scale....
s of traditional music and most often begin tone rows, and scattered less important or seldom occurring pitches (see tonality
Tonality

Tonality is a system of music in which specific hierarchy pitch relationships are based on a Key "center" or Tonic . The term tonalit? originated with Alexandre-?tienne Choron and was borrowed by Fran?ois-Joseph F?tis in 1840 ....
). (ibid, p.24-25).

The specific notes used in a piece will be part of one of more than seventy mode
Musical mode

Mode is a term from Western music theory having three senses: the rhythmic relationship between long and short values in the late medieval period; in early medieval theory, Interval ; and, most commonly, a concept involving Musical scale and melody type ....
s or maqam
Maqam

Maqam is a musical mode structure that characterizes the art of music of countries in North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. In this area we can distinguish three main musical cultures which all belong to the Maqam family, namely the Persian, the Arabic and the Turkish....
 rows named after characteristic tones which are rarely the first tone (unlike in European-influenced music theory where the tonic
Tonic (music)

The tonic is the first note of a scale in the tonality method of musical composition. The chord #The Triad formed on the tonic note, the tonic chord, is thus the most significant chord ....
 is listed first). The rows are heptatonic and constructed from augmented
Augmented second

An augmented second is enharmonically equivalent to a minor third in equal temperament, but is not the same interval in other meantone tunings....
, major
Major second

A major second , also called a whole step or a whole tone,One source says step is "chiefly US."The preferred usage has been argued since the 19th century:...
, neutral
Neutral second

A neutral second or medium second is a musical interval between a minor second and a major second. Three distinct intervals may be termed neutral seconds....
, and minor seconds. Many different but similar ratios are proposed for the frequency ratios of the tones of each row and performance practice, as of 1996, has not been investigated using electronic measurements. (ibid, p.18) Actual practice is estimated to vary within a quarter tone from notation.

The current tone system is derived from the work of al-Farabi
Al-Farabi

Abu Nasr al-Farabi , known in the Western world as Alpharabius , was a Muslim polymath and one of the greatest Islamic sciences and Early Islamic philosophys of History of Iran and the Islamic Golden Age in his time....
 (d. 950 CE) (heptatonic scales constructed from seconds) who used a 25 (unequal) tone scale (see tetrachord
Tetrachord

Traditionally, a tetrachord is a series of four tones filling in the interval of a perfect fourth, a 4:3 frequency proportion. In modern usage a tetrachord is any four-note segment of a scale or tone row....
), with Mikha'il Mishaqah (1800-1889) first presenting the 24 tone equal tempered division. (ibid, p.19)

See also

  • Jins
    Jins

    A jins is a set of three, four, or five stepwise pitches used to build an Arabic maqam, or melodic mode. They correspond to the English terms trichord, tetrachord, and pentachord....