Roshar's music

[Ginger giant]

I've been thinking about Rhythm of War and the way that Navani describes the musical scales they use is very interesting.

Real world western music uses a 12 tone system for musical notation. Navani says that the standard on Roshar is a 10 tone system. This has lots of implications for music on Roshar. 

I'm interested if there are any Words of Brandon regarding this subject. I think I want to make an approximation of Rosharan music and would like any additional details to work from.

[Quantus he/him]

If I had to guess based on googling phrases Ive heard and absolutely zero musical theory knowledge: Perhaps they are starting with a framework similar to the Cycle of Fifths to categorize the same 12 numeric tones in a more appealing (to vorinism) base-10 and/or 2x5 as they often do for their divine patterns. 

[Treamayne]

17 hours ago, Ginger giant said:

I've been thinking about Rhythm of War and the way that Navani describes the musical scales they use is very interesting.

Real world western music uses a 12 tone system for musical notation. Navani says that the standard on Roshar is a 10 tone system. This has lots of implications for music on Roshar. 

I'm interested if there are any Words of Brandon regarding this subject. I think I want to make an approximation of Rosharan music and would like any additional details to work from.

Here are some known WoBs on the subject, if that helps:

Spoiler

Quote

Questioner

You did, in your last Q&A, mention you weren't super big on music theory. So did you know, beforehand, when you were designing pure tones, one aligning with all the different Shards, that in your standard octave you have twelve tones, meaning that four Shards and another four are gonna be paired up? Or are you kind of departing from...

Brandon Sanderson

This is part of where I kind of got into trouble with my music theory. I'm like "what if I had a sixteen note scale?" And then I talked to all my music theory people, and they're like, "Well, this and this and this and this." And I'm like, "Oh..." You can't just make a sixteen note scale. It doesn't actually work like that. And so, in this case, there are going to be some tweaks, some things that are there. But this is part of when I kind of talked about how it wasn't quite working the way that I'd imagined way back when, once I talked to people who knew music theory. But I do have how it's going to be going forward.

Dragonsteel 2022 (Nov. 14, 2022)

Quote

Questioner

I’m a bit of a music nerd. I would love to know if Alethi music is based on any real-world music theory? And if so, which culture?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, I was going basically into Middle Eastern music, because that’s one of the basic touchpoints, particularly, for their writing system and their language and things like this. But I tried playing around with different music theory and scales (and I never had a music theory class, despite playing trumpet for years), and I talked to my writing group about my ideas, and they’re like, “That doesn’t work, Brandon. Just don’t do that.” So I didn’t end up putting it into the book, I ended up tweaking it quite a bit. But that is where the roots would be.

Dragonsteel 2022 (Nov. 14, 2022)

 

Hope that helps

[Duxredux he/him]

Maybe they cheat and count some sharps/flats as "real" tones and other accidentals as not real. The Alethi have similar odd tweaks in other areas, like how an "h" can be used to make a name or word symmetrical when it totally doesn't actually make the word symmetrical.

You could designate two notes that are never played and go from there and I don't think anyone would mind. It's easier to remove notes than add notes in this case. Depends on how you want to go about making it sound like it has an Eastern or Middle Eastern quality. Google and Wikipedia say that many Middle Eastern songs use E as the midpoint note rather than C, and the pentatonic scale C D E G A is commonly used in Chinese folk music. Using those notes as the main melody then 5 others for harmonies could work to give it an Eastern feel.

As for rhythm, the Coppermind page on Rhythm is a good place for the known Listener and Singer rhythms. It describes the rhythms of Honor, Cultivation, and Odium which you could incorporate here or there.

[rhythm_of_blues_brothers]

TEXT BELOW HAS SPOILERS

Not knowing much music theory but knowing some klezmer music, I will say that I believe that it (or maybe just the component of it inspired by Nusach?) has "scales" with more than 8 notes (Freygish->10; Mishebeyrekh->9, Adonai Molokh -> maybe 10, I suspect it's actually 11). My sort-of/maybe-understanding of how this works in klezmer is that it's about "progression", e.g the highest note in the major-ish "Adonai Molokh" is used in a piece called "Der Shtiller Bulgar" at a point where the phrase is generally going "on the way up" the scale.  

I'm a bit sorry to necromance this thread, but wanted to respond here because for a while I've had the following general thoughts about what should happen with the music if Stormlight were ever adapted to TV/movies:

• The inspiration sources for a lot of the human music should be one or multiple of the Middle-East/North-Africa/Central-Asia/India "modal" music traditions (e.g Arabic and/or Turkish and/or Persian), and the main sources for 'music' of much of Roshar should absolutely NOT be western-European classical music. It's neat that I now have a Sanderson quote to back that up, at least for Alethi music. 
• Since there's so many different Listener/Singer rhythms, I'm guessing the Singer/Listener music system should include lots of different modes AND asymmetric rhythms.
• It's probably completely subjective (at least I don't have a Sanderson quote to back it up), but when I think of Listener/Singer music I imagine: "Rhythm of..." = a specific time-signature or emphasis pattern (e.g some syncopated beat within a symmetric rhythm, or an asymmetric pattern such as the Bulgarian "Lesnoto" 3+2+2) in a specific mode ("Longing" could for example be ANY slow-ish melody in 7/8 3+2+2 and in some designated mode/scale). The "songs of..." examples on the other hand would be actual specific melodies...BUT they should still be sung in a melismatic style with improvised ornamentation.   
• It might be subjective on my part, but there is a specific scene that I imagine having vertical harmony "chord progressions": the "flute orchestra" that the wind creates for Kaladin when he deprograms Nale. In this specific scene, it would be ok to use some piece of (or something resembling) western classical music [though there are other sources that could also inspire this scene]. 

[The-Rizzler]

I wouldn’t be surprised if Book 6 was an in depth exploration of music theory.  Because everyone loves reading about inane topics ad naseum.  Or at least, that’s what Sanderson believes.

[ChipsAHoid He/Him]

On 8/16/2025 at 11:28 PM, The-Rizzler said:

I wouldn’t be surprised if Book 6 was an in depth exploration of music theory.  Because everyone loves reading about inane topics ad naseum.  Or at least, that’s what Sanderson believes.

I think just because Sanderson supplements plot with explanations (like fabrial science in RoW (yes yes it’s horrible and ruined Sanderson for you I know)) doesn’t mean it’s “inane” or that’s what the whole book is about. Plus, music theory is fun!

[Through The Living Ash he/him]

On 8/16/2025 at 11:28 PM, The-Rizzler said:

I wouldn’t be surprised if Book 6 was an in depth exploration of music theory.  Because everyone loves reading about inane topics ad naseum.  Or at least, that’s what Sanderson believes.

I do think the majority of people enjoy reading about in-depth topics and mechanics in the books. It is something that makes them unique, and really supports the hard magic system style. 

[rhythm_of_blues_brothers]

On 8/20/2025 at 10:29 AM, Ashkaloda said:

I do think the majority of people enjoy reading about in-depth topics and mechanics in the books. It is something that makes them unique, and really supports the hard magic system style. 

POTENTIAL SPOILERS BELOW

Yeah I've been fine with it so far. If I did have any writing-style gripe about Sanderson, it's that his combat scenes sometimes take way too long. 

And I enjoyed how the 4th book tied learning about the magic system with the Navani story. 

In terms of being more systematic about the music, I'm fine with having it or not, don't really care. My main interest is if a movie/TV adaption ever happens, about how I think a lot of the music (& especially the Listener/Singer music) should sound - i.e, if Sanderson doesn't explicitly develop a music system before doing a movie/TV adaption, I'd hope that whichever team takes that on doesn't end up doing one of:

• All Roshar music = western European music.

AND/OR

• Orientalism-music i.e every listener rhythm is sung in double-harmonic-major (i.e Hijaz Kar maqam)

Also, to clarify about the number of notes per scale: the examples from Klezmer that I mentioned are modes/scales that extend beyond the octave. And if you're on a not that's different in different parts of the scale, I think you can still figure out "where you are" in the scale based on the phrasing/progression-of-the-melody. Also, I'm mentioning Klezmer because it's system is the one I know a bit about, not because I think it's the best possible inspiration. In fact, I think it's not the best source, because it doesn't have nearly enough scales and time-signatures to choose from (essentially only 4 scales, and largely devoid of asymmetric time-signatures). I'm pretty sure there's other musical styles that have more of both (e.g Balkan regions with time signatures such as 11/8, 13/8, 15/8, 7/8, 5/8, Maqam systems with tons of different modes). And if the "10 notes" thing really is that important, I'm pretty sure there's at least some systems with modes (e.g Persian "Dastgah-e Mahur", which to me appears to be the same as the Klezmer "Adonai Malakh" scale) that extend beyond the octave.

Edited August 22, 2025 by rhythm_of_blues_brothers