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Verse:Hmøøh/Talma

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Etalocin (/ˈeɪtəloʊsɪn/ or /ˈeɪtəloʊkɪn/; Clofabosin: ẹtalocin /e(ː)talokin/, from Dodellian Ätın + Clofabosin locin 'land') is a continent of the conworld Clotricin.

History

Don't make a Standard Fantasy/Medieval Setting for premodern Etalocin

fake English names are placeholders

Tíogall names (the Irish-looking ones) should be replaced with Chick Corean names

Replace Netagin with Varquun

Add some racism

Geography and climate

Economy

Demographics

Languages

The following language families are represented in Etalocin:

Linguistic areas:

  • Western Etalocin
    • Clicks
    • Tone
    • Grammatical mutation
    • Sex-based gender system
    • Head-initial
    • Austronesian alignment
    • Head-marking in possessive NPs
  • Northeastern Etalocin
    • Head-initial
    • Polysynthesis
  • CW-Complex (Eastern Etalocin)
    • IE, Uralic or "Altaic" aesthetic
    • Head-final/"Altaic" grammar

Society

Etalocin was, and still to a large extent is, a Crapsaccharine World. Etalocin boasts a robust tradition of intellectual activity, especially in mathematics and music. However, Etalocian society is a highly stratified meritocracy, which historically caused considerable friction between social classes.

The social cost of nonconformity (especially for men) was quite severe. Crimes were punished harshly (often by forced labor, torture, castration, or death, in addition to public shaming).

Polygamy was and still is legally recognized in Etalocin cultures, though many people are monogamous.

Traditional elite culture

Elite boys were first educated in either a "boarding school" which taught a curriculum of rhetoric, poetry, classical language, math, fine arts, and science, or a military academy. By age 15 they were expected to enter into university study (or military service) in order to specialize into one or more roles in elite society. To enter specialization one was required to pass the entrance exam administered by a university. If one could not enter specialist training he was effectively banished from elite society. Those who passed the "boarding school" curriculum but failed to specialize usually worked as "managers", low-level officials or schoolteachers. One or more requirements could be waived for a child of exceptional ability in one area.

Elite girls also had access to a full boarding school education (though not to a military education), enough for them to be independent. Unlike males, however, they were not expected to undergo male specialization. Women who wished to become schoolteachers or musicians received appropriate additional training. Some women, mostly courtesans-in-training or those who aspired to marry the most powerful aristocrats, underwent education meant for male specialists.

Pre-modern vulgar culture

The plebs were largely semi-literate but otherwise uneducated and were forced to do menial labor and/or live in unsanitary places. Non-elite military-age men were often drafted into wars.

The common people had plays, and later novels, as forms of entertainment.

Modern

The rise of the merchant class and the free-market economy marks the beginning of Etalocian modernity.

Music

History

The "high" Etalocian musical tradition abstractly considers the space of possible musical intervals to be the intervals with rational frequency ratios factorized into primes, possibly modulo tempering out commas, intervals considered "negligible" for a particular tuning system. Prime factors commonly used in intervals, in addition to 3 and 5, also include 7, 11, and 13 which are not represented well by 12-tone equal temperament.

Just intonation was initially an attractive choice as it was considered easy to tune and evaluate musicians on. Primes higher than 5 may have come from an early tradition of throat singing where having a deep voice and the ability to throat-sing higher harmonics (11-14) clearly was seen as a mark of masculinity. In summary, a major reason that this system of just intervals survived as a mainstay of Etalocian music was likely that maintaining it (without collapsing it to e.g. the common pentatonic scale) functioned as a status symbol.

Music theory and mathematical questions have also motivated each other throughout Etalocian history.

Periodization

Here follows a crude periodization of Etalocian classical music:

  • Throat-singing, natural horns, monochords lead to knowledge of higher harmonics; mainly overtone scales; mainly monophonic
  • Tsâhong Tamdi's treatise Elements of Harmony is published ~> tonality diamonds, Partchian scales
  • more ppl are composing; n-anies and other CPS's; development in non-tuning aspects of music such as forms and texture; emergence of opera; more instrumental; instruments start to assume modern form. Modulations start to become more common. Music mostly sounds "sweet" up to this time.
  • "Romantic" period: freer use of expressive "dissonant" harmony; expansion in available timbres, longer music and larger orchestras; higher-limit (occasionally with ratios of 17, 19, 23, 29, 31) harmony is a given; ppl abandon "scales"; incorporation of foreign styles
  • Temperament period: constant structures and non-meantone rank-2 temperaments; more "Baroque" in its approach to counterpoint; chamber music and seomhoidhrí favored. Some see this as a step to democratizing music.
    • Fugues/canons in weird temperaments is Etalocin's serialism analogue
  • ...

Standardization

Scientific unit for intervals: exp(1/1728)

Standard pitch: 125 Hz; 120 Hz is used as "baroque pitch"

Temperament nomenclature

Eastern Etalocin

"Sophisticated" popular musicians borrow heavily from "classical" idioms such as: long, quasi-operatic song forms; use of traditional classical tunings and harmony (sometimes getting very harmonically complex chords); complex rhythms and time signatures inspired by non-Etalocian music.

Also something in the Baroque~chiptune cluster.

Instruments

  • penicillin = a wind instrument
  • ditoren = a string instrument

(a lot of overlap with West Etalocian music)

  • organs played with an isomorphic keyboard

Tuning systems

Some "modern" classical composers experiment with tuning systems such as high-limit (primes 17 or higher) JI, various EDOs and linear temperaments, especially higher-limit meantone.

Talma

Musical terms often come from Varquun.

Instruments

Some common Talman instruments are given below with their Chick Corean names; they can be divided into continuous-pitch and fixed-pitch instruments.

Continuous-pitch

Free-pitch instruments are prized for their ability to play in any tuning; ngjeoms quartets and quintets are fertile ground for explorations of tuning systems.

  • ngjeoms = the "Talman violin": a 5-stringed bowed string instrument used for the treble and alto register
    • Tuning: 2:3:5:7:9, lowest string = 125 Hz
    • Desired features: should be loud as possible (while still being strong enough to support the strings)
    • softwood; arched plates; sound post; should be thicker than a viola and be played vertically
    • Electric ngjeoms for vegans
  • ngjeomsam = a ngjeoms that's a 2/1 lower
    • Tuning: 2:3:4:5:7:9, lowest string = 62.5 Hz
  • txavik fretless steel guitar tuned to a hexany
  • lazaf = a trombone; exists in many different pitch ranges, such as soprano, alto, tenor, and bass lazaf
  • musical saw
  • geofus = a slide bassoon
  • iskol = a slide flute
Fixed-pitch
  • spys = plucked string instrument with sympathetic strings
  • jogam = a zither
  • tvekm = a reed instrument
  • feun = a drum
  • sjogreo = some multi-row autoharp thing controlled by a removable isomorphic keyboard (pieces are often written for two or more sjogreo keyboards that are separated by a tuning offset so that the player has access to different octaves)
  • pasta guitar-like instrument of Dry Icelandic origin, with a bridge to separate two rows of strings that are an octave apart. Common models have 21 strings (folk), 29 strings (classical) or 37 strings (deluxe).

Tuning to temperaments was done with reference instruments or monochords before the invention of modern electronics.

Some fixed-pitch tunings:

  • 1/1 21/20 8/7 6/5 5/4 21/16 10/7 3/2
  • 441/440 tempered out: 1/1 21/20 11/10 8/7 6/5 5/4 21/16 11/8 10/7 3/2
  • hexanic: 1/1 21/20 35/32 8/7 6/5 5/4 21/16 48/35 10/7 3/2
  • major: 1/1 25/24 7/6 6/5 5/4 7/5 35/24 3/2
  • minor: 1/1 25/24 15/14 6/5 5/4 9/7 75/56 3/2
  • augmented: 1/1 15/14 7/6 5/4 9/7 35/24 3/2

Pasta guitar tunings:

  • the folk model: 1/1 11/10 6/5 5/4 11/8 3/2 or 1/1 25/24 7/6 5/4 7/5
  • the 29 string model: 1/1 21/20 8/7 6/5 5/4 21/16 10/7 3/2 or 1/1 25/24 7/6 6/5 5/4 7/5 35/24 3/2
  • the 37 string model: 1/1 21/20 35/32 8/7 6/5 5/4 21/16 48/35 10/7 3/2 or 1/1 25/24 15/14 7/6 6/5 5/4 9/7 7/5 35/24 3/2
Music and veganism

String instruments used gut strings before the invention of modern materials. Thus vegan composers and performers traditionally avoided using string instruments.

Tuning systems

Classical music:

  • Older music uses 5, 7 limit JI scales (a variety of them; or free JI?)
  • Culminates in 11 limit JI and temperaments (mostly as approximations to JI; perhaps also a temperament-temperament like say 22edo).
  • Someone defined the concept of linear temperaments and used some rank-2 temperaments for the first time in compositions. (Matrices were known by then! Also linear temperaments arise naturally from equating similar intervals in constant structures)
  • Dekanies, eikosanies and other scales that maximize the number of consonant chords per note

Popular music prefers "simpler" just scales:

  • 6:7:8:9:10:11:12
  • 5-/7-odd limit diamonds
  • 1 3 5 7 hexany

Traditional folk music: 6:7:8:9:10:11:12

Musical forms

  • Art song settings of poems, with spys, sjogreo, or chamber accompaniment. Poems may deal with:
    • Nature, idyllic settings
    • Love
    • Mystical themes
    • A short dialogue
  • Opera
  • Cantatas
    • Winter solstice cantatas - there was a period where many composers wrote winter solstice cantatas.

Notation

Scale-neutral JI notation:

  1. Notes are written on a staff similar to our staff but the scale is 8:9:10:11:12:13:14:15:16, not the diatonic scale
  2. Accidentals indicate various small intervals
  3. Shift of fundamental: Let (x,t) be a tuple of the form (level on staff, time). When you draw a point (x1, t1) and another point (x2, t2) after that, and connect them with a curved line, then x1 and x2 are "identified" and the fundamental shifts accordingly (from time t2 on).

Calendar

  • Spring Equinox
  • lagavulin = Eve of ___
  • Summer solstice
  • crifactin in September
  • stannsin = 6 months after Easter
  • Winter solstice (Buirgeadráig): A solstice festival where, among other things, they sing songs hoping for a *brighter* future.

Cuisine

Vegetarian cuisine has been backed by various ethical philosophies that prohibit either killing or inflicting suffering on animals. Some form of vegetarianism is common among Etalocians; however, vegetarians are less common among lower classes.

Using umami ingredients such as seaweeds and mushrooms, and herbs and spices is common to make up for the lack of meat.

Notable figures

  • pseudo-Rocēdy - Etalocian (possibly Ladippic) group of mathematicians, authors of the Braochad Manuscript which is the first text to mention negative numbers, complex numbers and algebra
  • Līccot Attiȝanaedā - Ladippic astronomer, developed the heliocentric model of planetary motion
  • Jissāraħim = Netagin geometer, described Euclidean geometry in 2- and 3-dimensional Euclidean space; his work appears in Thensarian translation
  • Towaomer - ancient Clofabic orator
  • Tsâhoŋ-Tamdi - composer, physicist and mathematician who wrote Elements of Harmony, which has the first known mention of harmonic series; the just ratios generated by a given set of primes
  • Rith-Mârotx - Netagin statesman and political theorist
  • Fosen fat-Tazrir - Netagin chemist, physicist
  • ʔAmmuħ far-Rothâbh - Netagin geometer, physicist and engineer

After two centuries of the Talman Dark Age brought about by a series of natural disasters and plagues...

  • Yakhef Batzaħ - Netagin physician who verified germ theory of disease
  • Ngeysi Meȝnof - Netagin physicist and mathematician who invented calculus
  • Early Netagin composers (responsible for staff directions in Koine Netagin)
    • ʔEȝsø Nuzakh (Elsa Núzach)
  • Ġiakkiūrą Uffanasseh - Nurian artist and polymath
  • Gelta Sŋochtar - Tíogall-speaking poet, father of Modern Tíogall literature
  • Yamphotsaphidamchuerai Ativan - Clofabian lexicographer and novelist
  • Arformoterol Ziagen - Clofabian mathematician and composer
  • Ergosterol Aleve ♀ - Clofabian nurse, pioneered modern nursing
  • Mabés Lechra - Neoibhirian poet and novelist
  • Maedh Túil - A philosopher who invented utilitarianism
  • Raichnís Faoinn - Duínidhean naturalist and composer
  • Aodhàn Càdlàg - Bhadhagha mathematician (real analyst)
  • Tabhikh Vasèŋŋ - Netagin mathematician who worked on complex analysis and Riemann zeta function
  • Cláidhe Aoilinnstéin - Phormatian-Clofabian mathematician; Càdlàg's student
  • Sjameu Panzux (Sjamaigh Panzudh) - Xaetjeon linguist, reconstructed Proto-Talmic with help of Roshterian
  • Reocht Scúdhainn ♀ - Tíogall-speaking algebraist, number theorist, tuning theorist and composer
    • Need some more similarly OP mathematicians.
  • Adhál Baeich (Eodhal Baesj) - Xaetjeon mathematician, a student of Scúdhainn
  • Sterras Salmatar - Clofabian-Duínidhean inventor
  • Cetha Miarchuath ♀ - Neoibhirian botanist and crop breeder. Responsible for a handful of popular modern cultivars.
  • Biūtų Kavvara - Nurian economist
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