SMT-V: The Society for Music Theory Videocast Journal
SMT-V is the open-access, peer-reviewed video journal of the Society for Music Theory. Founded in 2014, SMT-V publishes video essays that showcase research in music theory in a dynamic, audiovisual format, presented so as to have the potential to engage both specialists within the field as well as interested viewers outside the music theory community. The journal features a supportive and collaborative production process, and publishes several videos each year. Read more about SMT-V here.
Latest Issue: 10.6 (November 2024)
“Japanese Tetrachordal Theory in Settings Old and New”
Liam Hynes-Tawa (Harvard University)
Most systems of music theory in wide use today are built on the idea of the octave as the most fundamental frame for pitch—notes an octave apart are said to be equivalent, and scales fill up the range of an octave. But some music came out of cultural spheres that did not think in terms of octave-framing. This video introduces the theory of three-note “tetrachords” used by ethnomusicologist Koizumi Fumio for the analysis of Japanese folk music, and demonstrates how this framework can be useful not only for Japanese folk music, but also for more recent music that is, while heavily Western and octave-framed in some ways, also informed by Japanese folk music. I argue through this analysis that those aspects are difficult to elucidate without a theory like Koizumi’s that is made outside of the octave frame.
Keywords: scale, Japan, folk music, video game music, octave, tetrachord, musical meaning, Cultural Exchange, Cultural Appropriation, and Exoticism, history of music theory, melody and motive