can anyone be kind to give some tips on how to pronunce the malevolous pitch accent 
is there any resource to drill? anything?
cheers!
Noooooooooooooooooo!
Donāt do it! You canāt cross over to the dark side!
Iām kidding, of course. 
But Iām serious when I say that the pitch accent is not very practical. And of all the audio recordings Iāve heard of people trying to imitate the ancient pitch accent, none convinces me. So, choose wisely, my son, you are going to deal with a very complex issue (IMO).
Donāt let them talk you out of it! Iāve never had any vocal interaction with anyone in the Classics community or a formal course in Greek (or Latin) and so I was shocked when I learned how the people in Academe pronounced the Classical languages. I thought the purpose of scholarship was to learn how things were. Anybody can mangle a languageās pronunciation to conform to their own language habits!
Now that Iām through rantingā¦ Iām trying to learn Homeric Greek, and a big part of that is learning why this is poetry. Today anything printed with ragged right margins is poetry, I guess, but then it was the rhythm and articulation, so I want to learn the best ideas we currently have on what that was. Yes, if you were sent back to Homerās time in a time machine, you undoubtedly couldnāt pass as a native, but the purpose is to read poetry AS poetry.
As an English speaker, though, itās uniquely hard to learn to appreciate quantitative verse, never mind with a pitch accent. The rhythm of English is very unusual: we have a very heavy stress accent, reduce or even eliminate the vowels in unstressed syllables, and speed up or slow down so that the stressed syllables in key words in the sentence come at as evenly spaced in time as possible. All this is the very antithesis of what you need to pronounce Homer properly!
It may sound insane, but I think the language with living native speakers that you could learn the most from in this regard is: wait for itā¦Japanese! It has a pitch contour thatās completely independent of syllable length, syllables that can last different numbers of āmorai,ā to use a Greek term: 1 for a short vowel, 2 for a long vowel or a closed syllable, or even 0, like the su- in sukiyaki. Unlike English with its evenly-spaced key stresses, the (in)famous āmachine-gun articulationā of Japanese insists on making each mora occupy exactly the same length of time. All this while raising and lowering the pitch to conform to the accent. AND there are native speakers who can tell you if youāre doing it right. The main thing is to become accustomed to the fact that the speech habits of your language are not laws of nature; something we English speakers especially need help with!
Good luck with your attempts to master the pitch accent, and let us know about any discoveries you make!
thanks guys
ad amadeum
But Iām serious when I say that the pitch accent is not very practical.
i believe thee,
And of all the audio recordings Iāve heard of people trying to imitate the ancient pitch accent, none convinces me.
i cant judge, i dont even know how they are supposed to sound. thus far i only know the names: rising a rise-and-falling.
So, choose wisely, my son, you are going to deal with a very complex issue
i will. hum!
ad arvid
Donāt let them talk you out of it!
he is not serious, be not bothered 
I thought the purpose of scholarship was to learn how things were.
funny, i spent 3 years in college (enough to not go back there again) and convinced myself that their purpose is the opposite.
Iām trying to learn Homeric Greek, and a big part of that is learning why this is poetry
me too
Today anything printed with ragged right margins is poetry
true, unfortunately
but then it was the rhythm and articulation
do not forget the themes, there must be themes, a subject which ever, unlike today
As an English speaker, though, itās uniquely hard to learn to appreciate quantitative verse, never mind with a pitch accent. The rhythm of English is very unusual: we have a very heavy stress accent, reduce or even eliminate the vowels in unstressed syllables, and speed up or slow down so that the stressed syllables in key words in the sentence come at as evenly spaced in time as possible.
my difficult as a portuguese native are others, namely to pronunce the vowels, which we either eat or change the quality when unstressed; i overcame this a long time ago when learning latin
and of course the inexistance of regular pitch, except in 2 vowels, which have a high constant pitch, which do not agree at least in the idea conveyed by the name rising and rise-and-falling -.-
It may sound insane, but I think the language with living native speakers that you could learn the most from in this regard is: wait for itā¦Japanese!
It has a pitch contour thatās completely independent of syllable length, syllables that can last different numbers of āmorai,ā to use a Greek term: 1 for a short vowel, 2 for a long vowel or a closed syllable, or even 0, like the su- in sukiyaki.
where can i learn more?
Good luck with your attempts to master the pitch accent, and let us know about any discoveries you make!
thanks, i will
The problem with reconstructing the old pronunciation is that it requires one to make a few decisions about what is most likely. Since there are legitimate differences of opinion on this, you cannot be sure that person A using a reconstructed pronunciation will make the same decisions as person B endeavoring to do the same thing. With that warning, I lay out my practice below.
1. I pronounce the grave (i.e. the reduced, word-final acute not at the end of a clause) as though it has no accent at all. For example, Ļį½“Ī½ Ī²ĪæĻ Ī»į½µĪ½.
2. On a short vowel, I pronounce the acute as high. For example, Ļį½³?Ļ.
3. On a long vowel or a diphthong, I pronounce the acute as rising. As in, Ī²ĪæĻ Ī»į½µ.
4. I pronounce the circumflex as high-falling (some people might go for rise-fall), as in Ī¼Īæįæ?Ī±.
I am more restrained in the pitch interval between the high and low pitches. I believe Dio. Thrax says the interval was a musical fifth, but thatās pretty extreme typologically (that is, itās unusually large compared to other languages that use pitch accent), so I suspect he meant the interval used in public speaking, where you expect some exaggeration.
Listen to Annis; he has some great articles about reciting Greek poetry, including some mp3s of his own recitations on his site http://www.aoidoi.org/ Great stuff!
What helps me is to tap my fingers in a regular beat and try to make each long syllable (a closed syllable or one with a long vowel) take up two beats and each short syllable only take one. Then when an accent comes up, just raise my pitch by what seems like a realistic amount, and drop down immediately for the next beat (mora, the Greeks would have said.) An acute accent on a short syllable is easy, just a higher pitch; but to me, an acute accent on a syllable with a long vowel means that itās the second of the two morai thatās accented, and a circumflex means itās the first. Of course, speaking slowly like this, itāll sound kind of choppy, but itāll smooth out as you speak faster.
One advantage of this way of looking at things is that it makes all those complicated accent rules almost transparent: Visualize a pitch contour over the word, just blipping up for one beat, which can be no more than third from the end. Then if the final syllable becomes long, this shoves the whole word farther back under the pitch contour, and the accent would move forward in the word. Or if it was a circumflex, it would have to become an acute because that little blip in pitch would have to move to the second beat of the vowel instead of the first. That long list of accent rules used to drive me crazy, but once I started visualizing it like this, it became almost automatic.
Like Annis said, bards in declaiming poetry undoubtedly exaggerated the change in pitch. Just remember, this WAS a spoken human language. If something sounds too artificial to you, it probably is.
I strongly agree with Will on all points Ć¢ā¬ā grave indicates NOT to rise, and nothing else, and in particular that the Greek circumflex most closely resembles the regular accent of Spanish (for example in ĆĀ”JosĆĀ©! Ć¢ā¬ā the final vowel has a Greek circumflex, a rise and fall on the same syllable).
Will knows what heās talking about, and I concur fully with him.
One exception: I find the interval of a fifth to be most natural. Will and I have conversed a bit on this subject via Skype. Although certainly some speakers may have done only a third, as Will does, most speakers of Ancient Greek, I believe, would have employed the fifth, as it has been written. It is a very natural interval for the voice to produce; Will himself has intervals of a fifth in his English, as do I and most speakers. I think of the greatly varied pitches that I heard in Italy, and I conclude readily that a perfect fifth makes perfect sense.
oh thanks guys, this was very useful. i found the mentioned recordings and will try to copy them
hi, also worth pointing out that some of the advice given above doesnāt agree with the authoritative book on greek prosody, the one by devine and stephens 1994. (when i say authoritative, i donāt mean conclusive (because what is in grk?), i just mean that there isnāt anything else yet which really treats the area thoroughly.)
e.g. a grave does indicate a rise (compared to the previous syllable) but is lower in pitch compared to the following (this account is cited and approved in probertās recent accenting textbookā¦ for those interested in the history and principles of accenting probert just brought out a book in 2006 which is really good, explaining why some forms are recessive and others arenāt).
the acute on the other hand indicates that the following syllable is on a lower pitch (and this is where the big pitch interval happens, not a massive pitch leap on the accented syllable itself which is usually assumed). pitch rises step by step to and including the acute syllable.
years ago i summarised devine and stephens in a pdf on this old out-of-date site, iliad.envy.nu which i was surprised to find still exists.
you could use willās method perfectly well, just worth knowing there are different views (not necessarily better), cheers, chad.
thanks chad i will tak a closer look into your summary
I learnt greek with the greek modern pronunciation (I am not greek) and was quite surprised at university!!
a curiosityā¦ when a short vowel is long followed by two consonant do you read a long vowel also? so, they should take a lot of time to speak these greek! on the other side, long vowels are supposed to be open so ĆĀæa short vowel that has became long by position is also pronounced open?
by the way, why many people apply reconstructed pronunciation to everything from Homer to Lucian (who lived 10 centuries after) or even, I donāt know, Anna Kommena? 
No ā or at least, you shouldnāt in the reconstructed pronunciation. Short vowels should always be pronounced short. (Personally, I think itās terminology here to blame, and itās very inaccurate in my opinion to say that a vowel is long by position.)
by the way, why many people apply reconstructed pronunciation to > everything > from Homer to Lucian (who lived 10 centuries after) or even, I donāt know, Anna Kommena? >
Because itās easier to use one pronunciation and itās very difficult to figure out what the pronunciation of Greek was at specific moments of times ā with Anna there, I wouldnāt be too surprised if she still pronounced Ļ
and ĪæĪ¹ as a French u instead of the ābarbaricā/āprovincialā modern pronunciation .
Although, not that Iāve looked all that closely into these things, but from asking around, it doesnāt seem like any classrooms actually use a reconstructed pronunciation. They all seem to use an academic (or Erasmian) pronunciation which, whatever may have been itās original motivation, does not accurately reflect the pronunciation of Greek of any era.
Yes. I agitate for terminology that describes vowels as long or short but syllables as heavy or light. Some professional metricians do use this terminology.
I do the short vowels short always, but when it is followed by two or more consonants I give the first consonant an extra time to ring out, thus making a long syllable, or it might be close to a little pause between the consonants. Thatās how I grok it.
I do something similar to what Minghsey says, but I give more emphasis in the tonic syllable (where the accent is located). I donĆĀ“t know if Mingshey gives more emphasis in that syllable or not. Might he illustrate us?
I try not to give stress at the accented syllables. I raise the tone as William describes it: grave->normal pitch(no extra pitch), accute-> high or rising, circumflex-> rise and fall as if the syllable is a combination of two short syllables ; one with an accute followed by an accent-less one. In a poetry it is combined with the feet to give a sense of singing.
Ok. I do what I feel itĆĀ“s right but I think that you know a lot of Greek Language (more than me, I want to say). Anyway, itĆĀ“s obvious that when I read aloud prose (v. gr. speeches) I try not to seem a singerā¦ but a Statesman. 
curious to see how the historic problem of barbaric/classic Greek in Greece has always been related to grammar, vocabulary and the like, NOT pronunciation. I donāt know of a greek writer saying āwe are not pronouncing our language in a proper wayā even the most clean (or kathareusa) type of Greek defender.
seems to be our problem, not theirs