The Umber Luxuries

The Umber Luxuries is a devotional form of music originating in The Bright Lies. The rules of the form are applied by composers to produce individual pieces of music which can be performed. A speaker recites any composition of The Quiescent Amethyst while the music is played on a zong and a anga. The music is melody and rhythm without harmony. The entire performance is moderately fast. The melody has short phrases throughout the form. It is performed using the abo scale and in the urdu rhythm. Throughout, when possible, composers and performers are to alternate tension and repose, play arpeggios and play staccato.

• The speaker always should feel playful.
• The zong always provides the rhythm and should perform with skill.
• The anga always does the main melody and should feel mysterious.
• The Umber Luxuries has the following structure: one to two passages and another one to two brief passages.
• Each of the first simple passages is to start loud then be immediately soft. Chords are packed close together in dense clusters in this passage.
• Each of the second simple passages is to become softer and softer. This passage typically has some sparse chords.
• Scales are constructed from twenty-four notes spaced evenly throughout the octave. The tonic note is fixed only at the time of performance. After a scale is constructed, the root note of chords are named. The names are ekxox (spoken ek) and asmuk (as).
• The abo pentatonic scale is constructed by selection of degrees from the fundamental scale. The degrees selected are the 1st, the 5th, the 11th, the 16th and the 23rd.
• The urdu rhythm is made from two patterns: the ozse (considered the primary) and the nuklat. The patterns are to be played over the same period of time, concluding together regardless of beat number.
• The ozse rhythm is a single line with eighteen beats divided into four bars in a 2-4-5-7 pattern. The beat is stressed as follows:
• | - x | - - x - | x x x X - | x ! x - - x x |
• where ! marks the primary accent, X marks an accented beat, x is a beat, - is silent and | indicates a bar.
• The nuklat rhythm is a single line with nineteen beats divided into three bars in a 6-6-7 pattern. The beat is stressed as follows:
• | x X x x - x | x x X - x x | x x x x ! - x |
• where ! marks the primary accent, X marks an accented beat, x is a beat, - is silent and | indicates a bar.

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