# 8 Distances between notes in Arab classical music

In Arab music theory, the gamut is sometimes said to consist of 24 equally spaced notes – double the number of notes in the Western pitch system, which has 12. An octave of the Arab system is shown in Table 3, which draws on work by the Lebanese music theorist Mīkhā’īl Mushāqa (c.1840) and the US ethnomusicologist Scott Marcus (1989).

The first column of the table gives the note names in Arabic and the second in English. As you can see from the third and fourth columns, each note is approximately 50 cents away from its immediate neighbours. 50 cents is half of a semitone and thus a quarter tone (also called a quarter step).

As will be explained a little later, distances between notes often vary significantly from the ones shown here in actual music making. For deliberate aesthetic reasons, musicians will play them sharper or flatter. However, the table is a good initial introduction to the pitch system.

The notes marked in bold in the table are understood to be more important or fundamental than the others, and they are thus highlighted. The lowest note is at the bottom of the table and the highest is at the top.

## Table 3 First octave of modern Arab pitch system (Marcus, 1989, p. 99, pp. 810–11; see also Davis, 2001; Mashāqah c.1840, plate 1)

Arabic name for note | English name for note | Distance from lowest note in cents | Distance from previous note in cents
--- | --- | --- | ---
Nawā | G | 1200 | 50
tīk Ḥijāz | G half flat | 1150 | 50
Ḥijāz | F sharp | 1100 | 50
nīm Ḥijāz | F half sharp | 1050 | 50
Jahārkāh | F | 1000 | 50
tīk Būsalik | E half sharp | 950 | 50
Būsalik | E | 900 | 50
Sīkāh | E half flat | 850 | 50
Kurd | E flat | 800 | 50
nīm Kurd | D half sharp | 750 | 50
Dūkāh | D | 700 | 50
tīk Zirkūlāh | D half flat | 650 | 50
Zirkūlāh | D flat | 600 | 50
nīm Zirkūlāh | C half sharp | 550 | 50
Rāst | C | 500 | 50
tīk Kawasht | B half sharp | 450 | 50
Kawasht | B | 400 | 50
‘Irāq | B half flat | 350 | 50
‘Ajam ‘Ushayrān | B flat | 300 | 50
nīm ‘Ajam ‘Ushayrān | A half sharp | 250 | 50
‘Ushayrān | A | 200 | 50
qarār tīk Ḥiṣār | A half flat | 150 | 50
qarār Ḥiṣār | A flat | 100 | 50
qarār nīm Ḥiṣār | G half sharp | 50 | 50
Yakāh | G | — | —

The key point is that there are not only tones and semitones in Arab music theory, but also quarter tones and three-quarter tones.

OpenLearn - Introduction to music theory 2: pitch and notation
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