The Cymose Cotton-Seed

The Cymose Cotton-seed is a devotional form of music originating in The Equality of Foreknowledges. The form guides musicians during improvised performances. A chanter recites The Pensive Metallurgy while the music is played on one to five oter and a diki. The music is melody and rhythm without harmony. The melody has short phrases throughout the form. It is performed using the dodap scale and in the tipoa rhythm. Throughout, when possible, performers are to locally improvise and alternate tension and repose. From beginning to end, when improvising, artists should often include a falling-rising melody pattern with trills and often include a rising melody pattern with flattened sixth degree as well as glides, grace notes and staccato.

• The chanter always does the main melody and should perform sweetly.
• Each oter always provides the rhythm and should perform sweetly.
• The diki always provides the rhythm and should perform with a light touch.
• The Cymose Cotton-seed has the following structure: a passage and another one to two passages.
• The first simple passage is consistently slowing, and it is to be moderately soft. The chanter's voice covers its entire range. Only one pitch is ever played at a time in this passage.
• Each of the second simple passages is at a free tempo, and it is to be soft. The chanter's voice stays in the low register. This passage features only melodic tones and intervals.
• 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, notes are named according to degree. The names are at (spoken at), iadok (iad), poqin (po), oti (ot), nuod (nuo), ojip (oj) and qat (qa).
• The dodap hexatonic scale is thought of as two disjoint chords spanning two perfect fourths. These chords are named dotip and uki.
• The dotip tetrachord is the 1st, the 3rd, the 7th and the 11th degrees of the quartertone octave scale.
• The uki trichord is the 15th, the 19th and the 25th (completing the octave) degrees of the quartertone octave scale.
• The tipoa rhythm is made from two patterns: the toad (considered the primary) and the paciyq. The patterns are to be played in the same beat, allowing one to repeat before the other is concluded.
• The toad rhythm is a single line with thirty-two beats divided into four bars in a 8-8-8-8 pattern. The beat is stressed as follows:
• | - x x - - x - x | x - - - x x - - | x - x x x x x x | x`x x x x x x'x |
• where ` marks a beat as early, ' marks a beat as late, x is a beat, - is silent and | indicates a bar.
• The paciyq rhythm is a single line with nine beats divided into three bars in a 3-3-3 pattern. The beats are named oaf (spoken oaf), ted (te) and qeqok (qe). The beat is stressed as follows:
• | - - x | x - x | x x - |
• where x is a beat, - is silent and | indicates a bar.

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