Subject: le jbozgi

From: Rob Speer <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2001 21:05:56 -0400

The idea of inventing Lojbanic culture (such as with new forms of poetry)
helped prompt this idea: what if the sounds of Lojbanic words were expressed
as music in a specific way?

There are 12 notes in the chromatic scale, but only 10 of them are used in
either the major or minor scale of any given key. There are also 10
vowels/dipthongs in Lojban: a e i o u y ai ei oi au. So what if each vowel
represents a note?

Here comes a long part where I justify the way I assign each vowel to each
note. You can skip this if you want - I wouldn't want anyone to lose interest
before getting to the song at the bottom.

---
Of those vowels, the most prominent are "a e i o u". Similarly, there are
traditionally five prominent notes of a scale - the pentatonic scale: "Do Re Mi
So La". Music from many different cultures is written on the pentatonic scale,
including traditional Japanese music and American folk music.

The vowels "a i u" are the most common, and the fundamental notes of the scale
are those of the major triad, "Do Mi So".

Now, the do-re-mi notation is a pain, so I'll set Do to be C. So we're in the
key of C. The major triad is C E G.

Assign the vowels like this:

C E G
u a i

and then the rest of the pentatonic scale can be filled in with e and o:

C D E G A
u e a i o

Let the dipthongs ending in 'i' be a half-step above their initial vowel, and
put 'au' above 'i' just because:

C D Eb E F G Ab A Bb
u e ei a ai i au o oi

All that's left is 'y', which can get the rather weak note B.

C D Eb E F G Ab A Bb B
u e ei a ai i au o oi y
---

So now every syllable of Lojban text can be sung as a note. (Put syllabic
consonants on the same note as the last syllable, and sweep between notes for
the odd dipthongs like .ui.) Various Lojban phrases end up sounding very
pleasant this way. But that's not all.

Now Lojban poetry can automatically have a tune. Also, it's possible to write
poetry in such a way that it matches a tune.

Here's some Lojban to the tune of "Simple Gifts" / "Lord of the Dance". (The
lyrics don't make all that much sense and I had to insert two notes which
weren't there in the tune, but hey, it's a first attempt.)

(lowercase = lower octave)
.i mi muvdu je dansu janai rimni bai ma | g g C C D E C E F G G F E
[.i] le nungleki .e le zenba xedydji | (g) D C D g D C D E D b g
.i ti kulnu je .a'u.uacai rilti .ai ca | g g C C D E C E F G G F E
lenu le selsanga [le] selsku cu du | D C D D E E (D) D C C C

-- 
Rob Speer