What is it that makes the pitch similar in both Celtic and Arabic music, and why is this pitch unusual in other western music?
In: Culture
Not quite sure of the similarities you are noticing in Celtic and Arabic music. However, I can answer how Arabic music is different than western music and it has to do with how we organize sound. In Western music we organize an octave (the distance between two pitches of halved or doubled wavelengths, like A 440 hz and A 880 hz) into 12 chromatic pitches. We then organize them into a series of half steps (one chromatic step away) and whole steps (two chromatic steps away) called a scale, most often a scale with 8 tones including the note an octave above the root note.
In arabic music, the octave is divided into what we call ‘quarter tones’. Meaning their octave instead of having 12 half steps, has 24 quarter steps. The results in having far more notes to work with and more combinations of notes to use to create melodies. Arabic scales known as maqams also utilize different sequences of quarter, half, and whole steps to create interesting tonal sequences which we hear as oddly chromatic and mysterious due to our much more rigid system of notation.
I hope this helps.
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