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Okay, so this is a random thought that just hit me, and I'm going to make all of you suffer for it.
Dwarves should have a rich musical tradition, mostly vocals, but some strong percussion
As for what made me thing this: Disney's Snow White and the 7 Dwarves, The Hobbit, and tons of other media sources.
In universe why? Work songs. Lots of cultures have a musical tradition that evolve from work songs. And Given one of the biggest things about Dwarven culture is Their mining, this make especial sense. They use the songs to keep time and make sure they work in time with one another. Some songs, about caution or sadness, would be used to prevent them from striking in perfect synchronization, and generating dangerous harmonics in less stable tunnels. Tons of professions take up this habit of singing to keep time. from smiths pounding an billot in perfect rhythm, to chefs using the pacing of a song to keep the recipe and timing of the food. (needless to say Traditional Dwarven songs can be HOURS long)
this would also later evolve into singing magic into their creations, using the song as part of the verbal componants of a ritual.
Historians and Librarians also take up the habit, and thus older and traditional Dwarven Literature is written in meter and verse, not that this occurs to translators.
Most races don't recognize dwarven appreciation for music because the stronger empahsis is on being in time, they care much less about harmony, than they do for staying with the rhythm.
Thus while most Dwarven musicians are always off pitch and the instruments can seem untuned, EVERY Dwarven musician can keep time better than a metronome. Of course great Dwarven musicians sound wonderful to all ears, but as long as you can keep time, Dwarves never discourage you from singing.
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I would think Dwarf music should be bass-heavy since low frequencies attenuate a lot slower than high frequencies (which is why when people drive by with the volume turned up, all you can hear is the bass). So the person in the next mine shaft might be able to hear the beat but could never hear the melody.
The other thing I would add is that "communal singing" for rhythmic, monotonous tasks (like "swinging a pick") is probably pretty common in Dwarf culture, think Sea Shanties.
It's also possible that dwarf hearing is capable of hearing a much lower range of frequencies of sound than humans, because of the time spent underground. People can hear from about 20 Hz to 20 kHz, but some birds (like pigeons) can hear as low as .5 Hz.
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IMO, dwarf music might emphasize percussion instruments to align with "traditional" activities like mining and smith-work; or marching for warriors. As a side note, I would expect dwarves to have developed "tap-codes" or other forms of percussion signaling (similar to horn calls) for use underground.
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new Dwarven headcannon occured to me, it's a bit off topic but it's my thread I'll Necro if I want to.
Not all Dwarves are miners and smiths. This is a mistaken impression because the dwarven words regarding occupation are more focused on the overall project, than the specific task being performed. Many Dwarves who proudly, and among dwarves accurately, name themselves as Miners were water bearers, who's whole job focused around getting water and restorative drinks to the Dwarves deep in the mines working and sweating. Others who say they are miners, were medics tending to injuries minor and major that occur.
Dwarves who say they are warriors may carry weapons on the front lines, or they may be the Dwarf back in the fortress shining armor and sharpening swords as a quartermaster for poorer recruits who don't have family heirlooms.
A dwarf may call themselve a sword maker, and we might them as a jewler because they whole focus is the filigree and inlaying of precious metals in the handle, guard and pommel.
And they would all be welcome to tell their tales among other dwarves and call themselves Miners, Warriors, and Smiths. because the Dwarves understand each of these things is necessary for the whole project.
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I love this kind of thread! But it seems to be hard to get them started and keep them going.
Copying in and expanding upon some of what I wrote in a thread that I made related to this, but which hasn't gotten much traction:
Earth precedents:
- • In parts of Africa, closing the circle early resulted in 5 divisions of the octave (not sure if equal), with the octave stretched to work with the inharmonic instruments that could be made and maintained with limited materials availability in a hot climate that is not friendly to most European instruments.
• Some music (Slendro) in Indonesia does the same thing, while some other music (Pelog) in Indonesia uses 9 divisions of the octave (not sure if equal) with 7 of the 9 notes normally being used.
On Golarion:
- • Environments commonly used on Golarion but not commonly used on Earth would be expected to have an influence on music-making.
• For instance, those living underground and having easy access to stone and metal but not to wood or most other organics could find themselves pushed in the direction of making instruments of the idiophone families, consisting of struck bars or rods, which would have highly inharmonic partials, thereby causing effective harmonic relations between notes to be different from those produced by stringed, woodwind, and brass instruments; yet they would also be able to make brass instruments and even metal "woodwind" instruents and pipe organs, both of which would tend to have more conventional harmonics. That sounds an awful lot like a large part of the Dwarven population to me, as well as some other Ancestries.
• I can foresee that despite being thought of as stodgy and uninventive by those giving a cursory look from outside, Dwarves might actually have a lot of musical innovation, as crafters of musical instruments take great pride in using the inharmonic partials of idiophones (described above) to generate new forms of harmony and indeed inventing tuning systems together with their instruments, and thereby competing instrument makers might well come up with competing tuning systems.
• They might want an arcanaphone (see below) to glue it all together.
• Since Golarion has working magic, this should enable the development of arcanaphones, which would be Golarion's equivalent of synthesizers, but using magic instead of electricity to generate sound. Given the existence of fairly low-level magic for making convincing sounds of things that aren't really there, the cost of such instruments should be only moderately outrageous -- out of reach of most of the common people, but easily in reach for the nobility and upper merchant classes.
• And if they had short fingers (which also sounds like Dwarves to me, as well as Small Ancestries), it would tend to drive them to develop keyboards of layout radically different from the Halberstadt (piano/harpsichord/organ-style) keyboard familiar to us; such radically different keyboards started to appear at least as early as the 1800s on Earth, so their development on Golarion would not be completely unexpected). Of course, having idiophones lends itself to the use of hammers to strike them, and the idiophone components may or may not be laid out in a pattern like a keyboard (much as seen on Earth). Having short arms and fingers becomes less of a problem if you can use long hammers to get reach.
• And if they had enough wealth, as the Dwarves are reputed to have (along with great longevity), their nobility might even be inclined to splurge for something like a pipe organ having as many as 50 notes per octave as well as numerous ranks, that would cause Earth-based accountants (even those working for nobility) to take fright. Even for the Dwarves, such instruments would almost certainly be very rare, but greatly prized as national treasures.
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I like the idea that a dwarven 'keyboard' instead of a single long row like we have on a piano, might be a pair of smaller round keyboards, with the users hands sitting in the center, able to reach the keys arrayed around their palm without much movement of the hand from a central position. A form of xylophone designed along this, with bars of different sizes, or even different alloys, would be operated by a dwarf who wears metal caps over their fingertips, so that, instead of rapping them with a bar, they'd be tapping each bar with a metal-tipped finger to produce the tone.
The notion of different metals giving off different tones might carry through to both smithing and jewelrycraft, as metalworkers might 'sound' various metals and listen to the sound they produce to appraise the purity / content of a metal sample (or coin, etc.), which could look unusual to a non-dwarf, to see a moneychanger tap a silver coin with a tiny steel hammer and listen to the tone to determine if it's counterfeit or pure.
Heh, I wonder if something like this sorta counts as an appropriate dwarf/dwarven music? ;)
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I like the idea that a dwarven 'keyboard' instead of a single long row like we have on a piano, might be a pair of smaller round keyboards, with the users hands sitting in the center, able to reach the keys arrayed around their palm without much movement of the hand from a central position. A form of xylophone designed along this, with bars of different sizes, or even different alloys, would be operated by a dwarf who wears metal caps over their fingertips, so that, instead of rapping them with a bar, they'd be tapping each bar with a metal-tipped finger to produce the tone.
That could certainly work on a small scale, although to get more compass, you would want to hold hammers with some reach. Although related to this concept would be the idea of arranging the instrument to go most of the way around you so that you don't need to move from one end to the other to access all of the notes (this would come in REAL HANDY for a marimba -- those things get LONG). This would be like how timpanists usually arrange the timpani in semicircles around them (you can occasionally get a glimpse of this in the video of Diggy Diggy Hole linked in Here4daFreeSwag's post above).
The notion of different metals giving off different tones might carry through to both smithing and jewelrycraft, as metalworkers might 'sound' various metals and listen to the sound they produce to appraise the purity / content of a metal sample (or coin, etc.), which could look unusual to a non-dwarf, to see a moneychanger tap a silver coin with a tiny steel hammer and listen to the tone to determine if it's counterfeit or pure.
Apparently this is something that is actually done on Earth.
And remember that idiophones don't just include metallophones and xylophones. They also include lithophones.
And here is an awesome video on natural and crafted lithophones. And with its cave environments, it seems quite appropriate for Dwarves, even though these things are to be found right here on Earth.