There has been much argument about Arab music as to whether the scale was divided into seventeen steps or eight, as is our scale. Some people think they hear it as seventeen tones divided into one-third steps, but Baron d’Erlanger, a great authority on ancient Arab music, says that there are two distinct musical systems still in use. One comes from their ancient home in Asia, and the other from the Pharaohs of Egypt. And the fact that these two systems have been mixed in using them leads to the question of what the real scale is. Baron d’Erlanger finds, as the result of his experiments, that if we could lower, ever so slightly, the third and seventh tones of our scale, we would have the old Pharaoh scale in its simplest form. The other scales can be played on stringed instruments on which there are no fixed tones as there are on a keyboard instrument like a piano, and can therefore play the intervals that do not exist on the piano. [Illustration: _Laura Williams, American Singer of Arab Songs, in Native Costume, Accompanying Herself on El oud (the Lute)._ ] It is impossible to say how many scales or modes the Arabs use, because each change of the tiniest part of a step creates a new mode, and there are many combinations possible. Some say that there are thirty-four modes; another says that there are twenty-four, one for each hour of the day. There are also modes for the four elements—fire, water, earth, and air; for the twelve signs of the zodiac, and for the seven planets. Each mode has a name, called after all sorts of things like cities or tribes or ornaments, in fact, anything familiar to the people. The weird effects made by the _Gloss_ or musical ornaments like the trill, grace notes and slidings give the music a dreamy fascinating character, the charm of which is increased by its frequent changes from double to triple time, or from triple to double. INSTRUMENTS It is through the instruments that we can trace the Arab influence in our own music. When we come to the story of the Troubadours, you will see them using the lute, the principal instrument of the Middle Ages. This was called _el oud_, which gradually became _lute_, because the Europeans heard the words that way. So you can see here, how art travels through the chances and changes of wars, wanderings, conquests and political shiftings of power among the different nations. Most of the Arab instruments are of Persian, Egyptian and Greek origin, but as we said above, the Arab became so mixed with other peoples of the world, that in wandering about, what is really theirs in music or instruments, or what was borrowed from others, is difficult to tell. But we can tell you that the popular music of the Arab, as you hear it today, in bazaars and cafés of Northern Africa and in parts of Asia where Arabs are still to be found, has remained practically unchanged throughout the centuries. Even the instruments are the same.