Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2016 August 16

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August 16

Ottoman empire's parts or subdivisions

Is there a website that shows a proper map of Ottoman Empire before its decline or fall? I ask this because I wonder which part of Somalia, which part of Oman, which part of Qatar, which part of Emirates, which part of Bahrain, which part of Kuwait, which part of Eritrea, which part of Djibouti and which part of Sudan became part of Ottoman Empire? Donmust90 (talk) 01:41, 16 August 2016 (UTC)Donmust90Donmust90 (talk) 01:41, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

Um, did you look at Ottoman Empire, near the top of which you will see File:OttomanEmpireIn1683.png explained as showing the maximum extent of the empire? --69.159.9.219 (talk) 02:41, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

It could be whether a single map constitutes a reliable source. Looking at Abyssinian–Adal conflict in the Adal Sultanate article the 1566, 1683 Zeila area on the map as part of the Ottoman Empire is not otherwise explained or documented. The reference in the lede of the Ottoman Empire article, supposed to support inclusion of the Horn of Africa in the empire, does not make mention of it. However in fine Egypt Eyalet had an establishment in Zeila and claims to the Somali region of Ethiopia up until 1885. --Askedonty (talk) 08:24, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

Why no 8/8 time?

Our time signature article mentions 2/2 and 4/4, but not 8/8. Of course it all depends on what you consider a "bar", and also a "beat", I guess, so there's a certain element of arbitrariness in the distinction.

But it seems to be clear enough that Beat Me, Daddy, Eight to the Bar required an answer song called Bounce Me, Brother, With a Solid Four (both recorded by the Andrews Sisters, I think). So why doesn't 8/8 actually show up on the sheet music?

(As an aside, I don't actually have the sheet music to Beat Me..., and if anyone does and can report the time signature, that would be the bee's knees.) --Trovatore (talk) 05:09, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

You can see the first page of (a version of) the sheet music here or here, both written in 4/4. I think the "eight to the bar" refers more to the "feel" of the boogie-woogie rhythm than anything about the notation. 8/8 is sometimes used when there is an irregular pattern of 3+3+2, or similar, though it's often explicitly written as 3+3+2/8, as in this piece by Bartok. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 08:07, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, Andrew. The normal Lindy Hop count goes one, two, threeeee-and four, five, six, sehhh-ven eight, and you can see that the piece in the music you pointed me to is written in all eighth notes, though they're only lightly swung if at all. But I guess my question is, why aren't these "beats"? Is it about what the drummer plays? --Trovatore (talk) 13:53, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

I went and listened to the Andrews Sisters' version to refresh my memory, and I take it back about "lightly swung". It's not what I would call a Lindy rhythm but it's distinctly swung. --Trovatore (talk) 15:11, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

For most questions like this (where you start thinking about how the mathematics of music theory or time signatures *could* be used, and wonder why they are not), the answers in my experience seem to be in the vein of "accident of history", "tradition", "we like our music that way", or sometimes "go see a music Ph.D defense for that".

Another way of putting it: why bother to use 8/8 when it is functionally isomorphic to 4/4 with Half-time_(music)? Actually that last link at least briefly mentions the notion of 8/8, so that might help a bit. SemanticMantis (talk) 14:48, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

8/8 does not have to be so. In fact, in classical, the notation 8/8 instead of 4/4 tends to imply an uneven grouping of the eighth notes, perhaps 3+2+3 or 3+3+2. But because of its very ambiguity, the exact irregular grouping tends to be spelt out explicitly, as in the Bartók example AndrewWTaylor brought up. 4/4 with half-time in classical tends to be simply written 4/4, with the understanding that performers should be able to work out that the eighth notes feel like beats instead of half-beats. This has a great deal of tradition behind it; Mozart often wrote 2/4 where we would similarly write 4/8. Double sharp (talk) 15:40, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

User:SemanticMantis: "accident of history", "tradition", "we like our music that way", etc : Those also seem to cover why we see almost literally nothing in A-sharp minor (7 sharps). Compared to it, the obscure key of D-sharp minor (6 sharps) is relatively common. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 23:13, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

User:JackofOz, yes, thanks for that good example. I'm only beginning to appreciate things like that. For tangentially related reading on "we like out music that way", you might like this [1] write up of how certain keys and chord progressions completely dominate in pop music. And here [2] is a distribution of key signatures found in songs on Spotify. Classical/orchestral music is probably underrepresented in both cases, but still an interesting illustration of how we avoid certain structures out of habit and tradition. SemanticMantis (talk) 16:07, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

The issue I raised is somewhat different from those, though. Those examples are about why certain structures predominate in the actual music. In my case, the music is what it is; the question is why it isn't transcribed in what would seem the most natural manner. It would seem natural to have Bounce Me... notated as 4/4 on the sheet music, and Beat Me... as 8/8; that would capture an actual difference in the music as it is actually played and heard.

Well, actually, one of Jack's examples, the one about A# minor, is kind of different from both of these. A# minor is the same as Bb minor, and Bb minor is less cluttered on the page; that seems an adequate explanation for why you would transcribe your piece in the latter key, given that they sound the same anyway. --Trovatore (talk) 18:46, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

But from a mathematical perspective, any music can be written in any time signature. Moreover, anything written in 8/8 can be written and played in 4/4 by changing only bar lines and vice versa, right? And those lines are helpful for composers and performers (a sort of flow control), but they are not really musically meaningful by themselves, as they carry no note or rest info.

If people tend to play music written as 8/8 differently than if it were written in 4/4, that is precisely due to the sort of tradition we are discussing. Right? That's what the 3+3+2 thing mentioned above is, a traditional custom that isn't really part of the strict mathematical sense of a time signature. Sorry, I'm perhaps obviously not an expert here and don't know how to find good refs for these claims, but it is an interesting topic! SemanticMantis (talk) 19:53, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

Well, the bar lines do carry musical information, even if it's not so easy to nail down precisely what it is. You know it when you hear it. To a first approximation, they tell you where the accents go. --Trovatore (talk) 21:53, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

Aha! Now, I claim that is all sort of tradition, not really anything to do with the definition of Bar_(music). I mean I get what you are saying about how isomorphic changes the music can change the intonation and phrasing, at least when interpreted by human players who have trained in a cultural context, but it would not change the playing of e.g. a player piano. That is why I say that the 4/4 vs. 8/8 distinction is not really supported by formal definitions of time signature, but rather it is supported by tradition and history. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:56, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

You're looking from the opposite direction. You're starting from the sheet music, and asking "how is it played?". I'm starting with the actual music (that is, as performed), and asking "why is it transcribed this way?".

Music in the jazz tradition, broadly construed to include swing, R&B, rock, Tin Pan Alley, etc, has various conventions, the important ones being about the music itself (the performance), and they involve regular accents, which tell you where the bars should go when transcribing it. You can come into the middle of a piece and immediately know which count is "one", without ever looking at a score.

So what I'm saying is, Beat Me... and Bounce Me... are both in that tradition, and the former is "in eight" whereas the second is "in four". That's the real thing. It would seem natural to me for that to be reflected in the representation (the sheet music) by using 8/8 for Beat Me.... That's all. --Trovatore (talk) 17:26, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, I think it would be more clear if it were transcribed using the additive notation I linked below, but at this point, the question is getting into "why did [author] do [thing] in [art work]?" We can guess, but ultimately only the transcriber/composer knows their motives. I still suspect it has something to do with cultural expectations e.g. maybe they thought 8/8 would confuse readers, but that's just a guess. Oh well, thanks for the interesting question! SemanticMantis (talk) 19:22, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

Music is not created to be made by machines. It's made by people, though a poor facsimile can be made by machines from sheet music. That's the difference. It's the small things that make the difference in great music. --Jayron32 16:26, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

Time_signature#Additive_meters shows how we can explicitly notate groupings or stress patterns. Without that, we cannot tell any difference between 4/4 and 8/8, unless a human has chosen to play them differently, based on custom and tradition. Those customs and traditions are not part of the formal definitions of time signatures, at least not in any definition I have seen. SemanticMantis (talk) 19:22, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

I'm not really following how the additive thing is relevant here. Did you listen to Beat Me... and Bounce Me..., and do you grok the difference between them? How would you notate that using additive notation? --Trovatore (talk) 18:37, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

So, just as the definition of a word in a dictionary is a good start but not everything there is to know about that word, a time signature gives certain basic information but not everything there is to know about the rhythm of the music. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:12, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

I like the dictionary analogy. When a person actually speaks to you, you get all SORTS of communicative information not written in dictionary definitions: body language, facial expressions, vocal inflections, cultural contexts, ALL convey meaningful communicative information which is not transcribed in the dictionary definitions of words. In exactly the same way, music as it is performed contains many, many important elements which are not in the sheet music, and which cannot be conveyed in the sheet music. Things like "note groupings" and "stress patterns" are partly delivered by convention and tradition, (which is why "2/2" feels different than "4/4" even though they literally have the same number of quarter-notes to the measure), and is partly up to the performer or conductor or music director or arranger. Just as subtle differences in how a person speaks conveys TONS of information not in the words written on a page, subtle differences in how a musician plays a piece have major effects on the feel of the music, even if everyone is working off the same sheet music. This sort of thing is often called phrasing in music; sometimes phrasing is indicated in notation, but lots of phrasing is particular to the performer. As noted in that article: "Phrasing refers to an expressive shaping of music, and relates to the shaping of notes in time, tone colour, dynamics, and other variables. Phrasing relates to the manner of playing the individual notes of a particular group of consecutive notes and the way they are weighted and shaped relative to one another. It does not refer solely to the idealized note values/durations as represented in sheet music, but to the multitude of deviations that the performer needs to make from sheet music if it is to be expressive in a particular style and culturally aware." (bold mine) I couldn't put it better than that. --Jayron32 01:43, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

Yes, thank you for boldly agreeing with everything I've been saying, but using more words ;) SemanticMantis (talk) 16:24, 19 August 2016 (UTC)