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Write-up Week 8 – Transcribing Rhythm

Jon Fernquest, MUS678B Dr.Fairfield,

KOETTING ON TUBS NOTATION

Koetting’s “Analysis and Notation of West African Drum Ensemble Music” is the basic reference
piece for using the TUBS system for transcribing rhythm. The notation was developed by Philip
Harland for the UCLA African study Group, an African drum ensemble, starting in 1962 (125).

In TUBS, parallel lines of boxes represent different instruments, usually drums, with each box
representing one “fastest pulse,” a basic time unit in music as fast as 700 beats per minute. In the
sequence of fastest pulses there is "no inherent hierarchy of stress or accent" and no box has greater
significance than the others. TUBS is ideal for African drum rhythms because they consist of
continually repeating patterns in which accent is said to not play a role as it does in western rhythms:

“TUBS avoids the time signatures and bar lines of western notation, which mislay rhythmic
emphasis onto gross beats and which translate the drum ensemble patterns into particular
metrical measures with an inherent stress structure (even without these the manner in which
western notation groups notes together with joining flags and writes notes and rests of varying
duration implies a stress structure, or at least an ordering of rhythmic sequence according to
some organization principle however ambiguous)” (127).

Those with training in western musicianship have to momentarily forget what they have learned and
stop focusing on downbeats, pick-up strokes, rests, all of which “obscures the true character of the
patterns as they are conceived and played.” Reliance on western notation and musical ideas can lead to
problems, including ambiguity of meter:

“Increasing complexity of patterns will lead to increasing ambiguity of meter as the gross beats
become more obscure. As patterns become more diverse and the gross beats fail to coincide
across the ensemble, the metrical approach will show a confusion of differing meters among the
varying parts. As patterns (especially of a master drum) increase in variation, the meter-oriented
person must deal with the issue of ever-changing meter. Any one or a combination of these
metrical factors will tend to divert his attention from the interrelated patterns of the ensemble as
a whole and increasingly cause him to focus on relatively isolable patterns, such as those of the
gong or some supporting drums” (my italics)

There are a few important qualifiers to this view that I have come across. First, in Hornbostel’s
transcription paradigm, that we have studied previously, bar lines can represent generalized “grouping
or phrase structure” not necessarily “metrical structure.” To quote the Hornbostel paper we read, “each
grouping is delineated by a bar line. Whatever appears between two given bar lines represents a
melodic-rhythmic unit” (Clayton 2000:29). Second, the concept of “meter” is contested, meaning that
there are multiple theories or ways of viewing what it actually is. When one studies transcription one
also seems to be addressing at the same time, at a very fundamental level, what music is and what you
see in music. As the Densmore paper shows, she simply did not see the underlying unity that the notion
of “fastest pulse” provided. In studying historical papers, as we do in transcription class, we are
essentially studying imperfect partial conceptions that were later revised by later research.
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Continuing with the previous line of thought, that meter consists of “interacting pulse streams” is the
“widely accepted” theory of Lerdahl and Jackendoff (1983):

“…meter is described in terms of the interaction of two or more concurrent levels of pulsation,
in such a way as to generate ‘beats’ which are relatively strong or weak (the ‘stronger’ beats
being so in an abstract structural sense, not necessarily louder or otherwise more stressed than
the ‘weaker’ beats). A time point which is perceived as a beat on two different levels of
pulsation is ‘structurally stronger’ than a point which is felt as a beat on only one level. For
music to have meter therefore, it must be perceived to have at least two such pulse levels: often
there will be three or more.” (Clayton 2000:31)

In light of this, TUBS still may have the advantage of simplicity. The theorist Arom (1991), whom I
used in my write-up last week, views meter according to a more restricted definition as a “regular
pattern of accentuation.” If there is no “audible accentuation pattern,” or ‘accentual matrix’, meter
ceases to exist, which is clearly too restrictive. Rather, Lerdahl and Jackendoff better describes African
polyrhythm which “consists of of a web of interlocking, periodic rhythmic patterns, organized around a
single primary pulse level” (Clayton 2000:31).

Returning to TUBS, the "full package" of sonority, notoriously absent in western notation, can be
provided within TUBS boxes indicating "techniques used by the performer to produce the pitch,
loudness, tone quality, and carrying power of the sounds.” A simple dot in the box represents sounds
without any characterization of their sonority, H represents high pitched sounds, L low pitched, S an
open stick stroke, horizontal line through a dot a dampened stick stroke, as well as many others (127,
129).

The music-making of an African drum ensemble is like starting up a large complicated machine
with many interlocking parts. Each instrument, except the master drum, plays a repeating pattern. In a
typical West African drum ensemble, when a piece is to be played, the proper patterns are selected from
the repertory the master drum signals the gong to play the gong pattern, then the basic drum pattern is
played by the master drum, then each intermediate and lesser drums, rattles and gongs enter at
permissible places:

“...in the pattern of the previously entering player with whom he has a primary time relation,
meaning that the two adjust their timing first to each other and only after that to the other
performers. After his entrance each player joins the others in making the various timing
adjustments necessary even in the best groups to achieve the proper pattern relationships that
will fulfill the nature of the piece.”

Koetting provides a surplus of examples and it is also worth noting that a major form of music-making,
namely electronic music using music sequencers such as Ableton Live uses a notation like TUBS.

PANTALEONI ON DENSMORE

In Pantaleoni’s “One of Densmore’s Rhythms Reconsidered” a hitherto hidden unifying “fastest

pulse” is discovered in an old transcription of Native American music. Densmore was an early and
prolific transcriber of Native American music who worked at the Smithsonian. Her several volumes of
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transcriptions stand out on the shelves of Sinclair library. Pantaleoni, seeking to investigate the act of
musical transcription with its human imperfections declares:

“A Densmore transcription has been singled out for this study not to
denigrate her work but only because it offers a prime example of distortion
due to Western influence.”

The original recording is slowed down significantly and there is a discussion of how this distorts the
sound of the recording. Nowadays, we have at least partially overcome this problem as can be seem in
the tempo slowing feature in the Audacity sound editor that adjusts the pitch as well as slowing the
tempo. In fact, modern signal processing technology might make a lot of transcription tasks easier and
more accurate, allowing one to filter out pitches or voices in a certain frequency range, being one
example.

In the slowed down transcription, he is able to identify a “fastest pulse” that is not played by any
one instrument but which is implicitly there and which the musicians rely on to stay in sync. Pantaleoni
concludes, “we make at least five assumptions in hearing Western music which we
should not make when hearing non-Western music:

1. Small pauses are interpretive and incidental, and need not be written down.
2. Slightly unequal durations are to be understood as equal.
3. Vibrato and other "interpretive" effects are purely decorative.
4. Rhythmic coordination rests upon rhythmic coincidence.
5. Stress marks structure.”

ALLEN’S DISSECTION OF CUBAN RHYTHM

Alen’s “Rhythm as duration of sounds in tumbafrancesa” is an attempt to make up for

deficiencies of manual aural human transcriptions. The paper looks at rhythms in Cuban music from
the ground up, timing the duration of notes and investigating in detail the relation of raw acoustical
sounds and their relation to elements of western notation such as the eighth note. The author
deconstructs the ideal rhythmic relations that manual transcription assumes.

A percussion instrument named the “cata” is said to “carry the most stable rhythm” along with
two pitches as well. Furthermore, “the rhythms of the cata amount to just two different values between
notes, in the relationships 1:1, 1:2, and 2:1,” represented by eighth and quarter notes in the
transcription. Other instruments, the “bua” and “tambora” are characterized by their own time
relationships as well:

“The two buas introduce rhythms in different relationships, such as 1:3 and 3:1, as well as
others that stray further from these simple ratios. In the case of the tambora, there is only one
temporal relationship between the only two notes it uses in its characteristic rhythm, and their
relationship is in the vicinity of 5:3.”

This is where things get interested with parallels to our second transcription exercise. Namely, if one
tried to fit those African rhythmic patterns into TUBS boxes perfectly, they don’t really seem to fit
when you take a very close look at them under an audio microscope. This judgement is based on
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viewing the sounds in the Audacity audio editor (included in my transcription write-up), particularly
the attack, sustain and decay of the sound, the parts that western notation does not typically depict
accurately, according to previous readings. As the author notes regarding the idealized timing patterns
for the instruments he presents:

“It should be noted that these relationships are only approximations of their real values, and
they were made to facilitate representation using the simple relationships that music notation
offers us. The rhythms themselves are much more complex. Therefore, when we finished the
transcriptions and had the scores for all the toques, we found that we were not satisfied with
what we had.”

Furthermore, this is said to be a generalized problem in ethnomusicology:

“This was the impetus to begin work on finding a solution to a problem that musicology has had
to face, a problem which is a result of not having a scientific musical notation system that will
allow a more precise graphic representation of the music being studied.”

What really makes things difficult is the so-called “premier” drum or percussion player who is involved
in a sort of contest with dancers creating difficult rhythms that are difficult for them to follow and
dance to and thus whose rhythmic patterns become so complex they are hard to describe:

“...premier improvisations use such complex time relationships that it is only through
approximation that we can squeeze them into the simple relationships found in the scores” (57)

In music and art and aesthetics in general there must be some principle that in order to attract and keep
an audience a performer or artist must be always innovating and coming up with new fresh
aesthetically stimulating material. Of course, some musical and artistic traditions are also sustained by
the exact opposite as well, namely repetition and the exact absence of anything new or innovative. I can
remember an article I once wrote at the Bangkok Post about a young European dancer doing an
apprenticeship with a teacher of traditional Thai Khon dance. The teacher stressed that deviations from
fixed traditional patterns were prohibited. Anyway, when performers push the limits of their art, it
seems logical that it is going to be a challenge to transcribe.

They put aside this most difficult to transcribe improvisation and focus on the temporal
relationships between difficult drum parts and their motifs in the ensemble:

“a detailed study of the exact temporal relationships determined by the different rhythmic
intervals in the various rhythmic motifs that are continuously repeated by the other drums in the
ensemble.”

It seems that this corresponds to what is described by the Gamelan term “colotomy” defined as “the use
of specific instruments to mark off nested time intervals, or the process of dividing rhythmic time into
such nested cycles” (Wikipedia on Colotomy).

“This measurement experiment was done only with the instrument whose transcription revealed
a repetition of a single motif from the beginning of the toque to the end. We did this to be able
to analyze the performance of temporal relationships which appeared to be equal and/or simple
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in the musical transcription, and which showed identical values between the repeated rhythmic
motifs or phrases. The instruments that have these characteristics in the tumba francesa
ensemble are the cata, the two bulas and the tambora.”

As a first step, they sought to ascertain “sound intervals expressed in milliseconds” by using a “Winkel
model repeater” in their “sound Laboratory.” It seems that what they did could be done nowadays by
printing out the timeline in an audio editor such as Audacity, aligning them, comparing them,
attempting to draw lines delimiting sounds and then mapping them to such things as quarter notes or
eighth notes that in turn would give the time ratios in the rhythm. Once again, modern signal
processing technology perhaps provides solutions to transcription problems of the past.

SPEARIT: PROBLEMS OF POLYPHONIC TRANSCRIPTION

Spearrit’s “Drum Rhythms and Flute Music of Papua New Guinea” is a short piece. The
polyphonic music of the Iatmul people of Papua New Guinea that is transcribed features pairs of
instruments of the same type such as "paired slit-drums, paired transverse flutes, paired trumpets and
paired water-drums" (33). “Njangit” is the indigenous word for the distinctive rhythmic patterns that
identify different pieces in the repertory.

Polyphonic and polyrhythmic music presents special problems for transcription. The author seeks
to use technology (“electromechanical aids”) to overcome “difficulties encountered in transcription”
(33). These devices such as the Seeger melograph might be more reliable than subjective and fallible
transcription by ear (“aural transcription”). However, whereas the transcription of the polyphonic flute
music was difficult if done manually, it was simply impossible if attempted automatically with
technology (47). This seems to mirror progress in automatic transcription in which automatic
transcription of a single melodic line is a solved problem, whereas automatic transcription of two or
more polyphonic lines is an unsolved problem because the two lines modify each other’s overtones
(reference available upon request).

The real benefit of automated transcription is said to be in understanding parts of the music that
we cannot hear as transcribers (but presumably contribute to the music in some way that we can hear as
an audience of listeners). This includes selectivity in human transcription by ear since human
perceptual apparatus is limited in the amount of multitasking it can perform. There is also the problem,
noted above, of certain overtones becoming modified when two or more instruments are sounding
simultaneously in polyphonic music, making two simultaneous melodic lines particularly difficult to
transcribe.

The author concludes that purpose of transcription determines the form of transcription that
should be used. Furthermore, musicians in a given culture are likely to have no need for transcription
since they have already assimilated the culture’s music from a young age. This does leave preservation
of the culture for future generations and the education of people outside of the culture in how to play
the music of the culture as legitimate purposes that may motivate transcription. Another legitimate
purpose for transcription is, of course, musical analysis to understand how a piece or whole style or
genre of music works, taking it apart, putting it back together, like a new recruit at West Point doing the
same with his gun, as well as comparing the way it is put together to similar musical forms both inside
and outside the culture, sort of a hazing ritual for neophyte ethnomusicologists.
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REFERENCES

Arom, S. 1991. African polyphony and polyrhythm: musical structure and methodology. Cambridge
university press.

Clayton, M. 2000. Time in Indian music: rhythm, metre, and form in North Indian rāg performance.
Oxford University Press.

Lerdahl, F., & Jackendoff, R. S. 1983. A generative theory of tonal music. MIT press.