The Verses of Styling
The Verses of Styling is a form of music used during marches and military engagements originally devised by the elf Ola Sprayedlilac. The form guides musicians during improvised performances. The music is played on a ilare. The entire performance should be made expressively. The melody has phrases of varied length throughout the form. Pitches are densely packed in clusters as music moves from chord to chord. It is performed using the adi scale and in the upe rhythm.
- The ilare always does the main melody.
- The Verses of Styling has a simple structure: three unrelated passages.
- Each of the simple passages is at a hurried pace, and it is to be loud.
- 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 adi hexatonic scale is constructed by selection of degrees from the fundamental scale. The degrees selected are the 1st, the 5th, the 10th, the 13th, the 17th and the 21st.
- The upe rhythm is a single line with two beats. The beats are named amama (spoken am) and thafatha (tha). The beat is stressed as follows:
- | x - |
- where x is a beat, - is silent and | indicates a bar.
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