Post something just for the heck of it

[Kulindahr]

The thirsty land took away all the water from the rivulets.

The rivulets flew away [to the sky] because the [filthy, thirsty] land was not treating them well.

Thanks to an extremely thirsty land, and to all the rivulets being driven away, now a desert can exist.

^ The first phrase I heard in some Anglo documentary about wildlands out there...

I wish I could find the image online....

In geology class we looked at a river that flows nicely across a green plain, then cut through an escarpment and flowed down an alluvial fan, reached the bottom of the fan, and disappeared. The land "downstream" from the alluvial fan was all desert. We were supposed to explain this.

Only some of us got it right: the land below the escarpment sat on a very porous rock formation and the river just disappeared into it, and some sixty kilometers or so farther along it reappeared as a multitude of springs bubbling up and rejoining.

So the ground drank the rivulets, and farther on it gave them back.

 

[Kulindahr]

Beautiful!

How do they know how the strings were tuned?

(The lyre design makes me think of Stargate....)

 

[belamyi]

I wish I could find the image online....

In geology class we looked at a river that flows nicely across a green plain, then cut through an escarpment and flowed down an alluvial fan, reached the bottom of the fan, and disappeared. The land "downstream" from the alluvial fan was all desert. We were supposed to explain this.

Only some of us got it right: the land below the escarpment sat on a very porous rock formation and the river just disappeared into it, and some sixty kilometers or so farther along it reappeared as a multitude of springs bubbling up and rejoining.

So the ground drank the rivulets, and farther on it gave them back.

What I was referring to was something sillier: the stupid documentary was talking about mere draughts.

- - - Updated - - -

It was not about the disapperance of a water flow, but about the disappearance of water at all.

 

[purina]

Beautiful!

How do they know how the strings were tuned?

(The lyre design makes me think of Stargate....)

http://www.peterpringle.com/silverlyre.html

...this lyre is strung with silk. The ancient Sumerians would have used gut, but silk (which was unknown to the Sumerians) is just as strong and hard as gut, and produces a fine tone that is comparable in every way to the highest quality gut strings. I also know how to make silk strings of any gauge or color, which facilitates experimentation. Gut strings can be extremely expensive (fifty or sixty dollars a piece), they can break very easily, and finding them in the right length and thickness for a non-traditional instrument like a Sumerian lyre, can be difficult.

Another concession I have made to modernity is to string the lyre with the highest notes closest to the player, and the lowest notes farthest away. The original lyres were strung in the opposite way, with the lowest notes closest to the player, but reversing the order in no way changes the timbre of the instrument or the music it produces. It just makes the lyre easier to play for modern musicians who are used to the conventional order of the strings on harps.

The lyres of ancient Greece, Rome and northern Europe had bridges that were comparatively narrow, with an A-shaped profile, and notches for string placement. Why does this matter? Because if the bridges of Sumerian lyres were of the bench-shaped, flat variety, they were undoubtedly made that way so the strings would produce an extended growling buzz, similar to the sound produced by the Ethiopian "begena" and the Indian “tamboura”, sitar, surbahar, and other instruments of the “vina” family (which also have bench-shaped bridges). In India this sound is called “djovari”, which means “life-giving” in Hindi. It is rich in harmonics and overtones, and it is a timbre much sought after by the classical musicians of northern India.

Many years ago, I had the opportunity to watch Nodu Mullick (the late Ravi Shankar's sitar maker) work on the bridge of a surbahar, and with very delicate filing and testing, he brought the vibrating string to life. Judging from the Sumerian artists' images we have, and passages in the cuneiform texts that describe the great lyres as "lowing like bulls", I think we can safely assume that they did not sound at all like the more delicate and clear-voiced harps and lyres of the Mediterranean and northern European regions. The secret is in the bridge.

 

[purina]

 

[frankfrank]

^ WOW. Some amazing world music there. Your posts are always interesting.

 

[Alistair]

 

[Alistair]

 

[belamyi]

^ Is that Grace Jones' cat?

 

[belamyi]

 

[Peloso]

 

[Alistair]

Just a man with his cock in hand

 

[ChristianGianni]

 

[ChristianGianni]

Boston 1851 ...

 

[ChristianGianni]

 

[belamyi]

"The script Sanskrit is now commonly written in is..."... seriously?

 

[belamyi]

View attachment 1512486

I read it as wrong as it was written.

 

[belamyi]

 

[belamyi]

 

[Alistair]