Contrasting Music

The 2 pieces that uses pentatonic scale I chose to contrast is ‘El Condor Pasa’, which is a Peruvian song, and ‘Arirang’ which is from my culture. These 2 songs have many differences. El Condor Pasa uses 2 pentatonic scales, the E-minor and the G-major. While Arirang only uses D-minor generally. Both songs have the similar dynamics which goes on the whole song. Arirang goes 3 beats per measure while El Condor Pasa has 4 beats. Both of the songs have steady tempos. Arirang has a hopeful melody going on. However El Condor Pasa has a sadder melody. It is hard to compare instrumentation and the harmony because Arirang is a folk song that has many variations using human voice as a main instrument.  

Usage of Andean Music

In the Inca Empire, the music was used in religious ceremonies. For example, in the Inti Raymi, they would play and sing music. Musicians were also considered important in the Inca culture. They had the same social status as artist, musicians, and army captains.





Source- "Inca Civilizations." Crystalinks. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Dec. 2011.
     <http://www.crystalinks.com/incan.html>.

El Condor Pasa

'El Condor Pasa' is the most famous peruvian song around the world. It was sang by Simon & Garfunkel in September 1970. It was first composed in Peru by Alomía Robles. Then Paul Simon listened to the music and created the lyrics to it. The instruments used in this song is a guitar, percussion and a quena.






Source-"El Condor Pasa (Song)." Wikipedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Dec. 2011.
     <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_C%C3%B3ndor_Pasa_%28song%29>.

Andean Instruments

Long before the Spaniards brought the string instruments, there were wind and percussion instruments. For wind instruments there are quena, pan pipe, and bombo. The quena is a wooden flute with 6 holes in the front and 1 in the back. The pan pipe is a wind instrument with 15 diffrent sized wooden pipes. The player blows the pipes and a note is made. The bombo is a drum but the end is covered with llama hide.

The Bombo

The Quena

The Pan Pipe

Source- Musica Andina. "Andean Instruments." Andean Music. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Dec. 2011. 
     <http://www.discpro.org/andean/index.php?mode=instruments>.

Andean Music

In the Andes, music lives through the mountains. The mysterious melody catches your attention. This is Andean music. It is mistakenly known as Incan music. Incan did contribute a lot to the music, however Andean music was a result of many cultural intermixing. The wind and percussion instruments were already invented long before the Incas. When the Incas conquered large areas, the music was spread more. Later when Spaniards came,  string instruments, such as violins and guitars mixed with the Andean music. This later made more branches of music such as Huayno, Carnavalito, and Diablada.

Source-

Andean Nation. " A Short History of Andean Folk Music ." Andean Nation. N.p.,      n.d. Web. 1 Dec. 2011. <http://www.andeannation.com/hist.html>.

The Pentatonic scale

Pentatonic Scales are scales that have 5 notes in an octave, unlike heptatonic which has 7 notes in an octave.  Many types of songs contain the pentatonic scales such as Celtic Folk Music, Hungarian folk music, West African music, African-American spirituals, Jazz, Blues, Rock, and even Children song. Pentatonic scales can be divided to hemitonic and anhemitonic. Hemitonic pentatonic scales contain one or more semitones like flats and sharps. However anhemitonic pentatonic scales don't contain semitones. Most hemitonic scales are minors and they can be easily found in North and West African music. Most of anhemitonic scales are major scales. Other than that there are much more pentatonic scales such as Egyptian, blue mayor, blues minor, and Pythagorean diatonic. 


Source-Wikipedia. "Pentatonic Scale." Wikipedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Dec. 2011. 
     <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentatonic_scale>.