The Intricate Sparkle
The Intricate Sparkle is a form of music used for entertainment originally devised by the elf Fewetha Ravenwire. The form guides musicians during improvised performances. A singer recites nonsensical words and sounds while the music is played on a umola. The music is melody and rhythm without harmony. The entire performance is to start loud then be immediately soft. The melody has mid-length phrases throughout the form. Never more than an interval sounds at once. It is performed in the atho rhythm. Throughout, when possible, performers are to use mordents.
- The singer always does the main melody and should be delicate. The voice ranges from the middle register to the high register.
- The umola always provides the rhythm and should be passionate.
- The Intricate Sparkle has a simple structure: three unrelated passages.
- Each of the simple passages is very fast. Each passage is performed using the ifife scale.
- Scales are constructed from twenty-four notes dividing the octave. In quartertones, their spacing is roughly 1xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxO, where 1 is the tonic, O marks the octave and x marks other notes. The tonic note is a fixed tone passed from teacher to student. After a scale is constructed, notes are named according to degree. The names are fathinu (spoken fa), thili (thi), fomire (fo), fela (fe), aweme (aw) and yaniye (ya).
- The ifife pentatonic scale is constructed by selection of degrees from the fundamental scale. The degrees selected are the 1st, the 8th, the 12th, the 15th and the 20th.
- The atho rhythm is a single line with sixteen beats divided into two bars in a 8-8 pattern. The beats are named datome (spoken da), lari (la), aratha (ar), imeri (im), thuna (thu), fidale (fi), tarathe (ta) and cuthefi (cu). The beat is stressed as follows:
- | x x'x x - - X - | - x - X x x - x |
- where X marks an accented beat, ' marks a beat as late, x is a beat, - is silent and | indicates a bar.
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