Relation Between Surface Rhythm and Rhythmic Modes in Turkish Makam Music

Abstract

Sounds in a piece of music form rhythmic patterns on the surface of a music signal, and in a metered piece these patterns stand in some relation to the underlying rhythmic mode or meter. In this paper, we investigate how the surface rhythm is related to the usul, which are the rhythmic modes in compositions of Turkish makam music. On a large corpus of notations of vocal pieces in short usul we observe the ways notes are distributed in relation to the usul. We observe differences in these distributions between Turkish makam and Eurogenetic music, which imply a less accentuated stratification of meter in Turkish makam music. We observe changes in rhythmic style between two composers who represent two different historical periods in Turkish makam music, a result that adds to previous observations on changes in style of Turkish makam music throughout the centuries. We demonstrate that rhythmic aspects in Turkish makam music can be considered as the outcome of a generative model, and conduct style comparisons in a Bayesian statistical framework.