The Offbeat Cashews

The Offbeat Cashews is a form of music used to commemorate important events originating in The Coati of Shedding. The rules of the form are applied by composers to produce individual pieces of music which can be performed. The music is played on a uyitha. The entire performance is extremely fast, and it is to become louder and louder. The melody has mid-length phrases throughout the form. Only one pitch is ever played at a time. It is performed in the asematha rhythm. Throughout, when possible, composers and performers are to make trills and modulate frequently.

• The uyitha always does the main melody and should build as the performance proceeds. The voice stays in the dull low register.
• The Offbeat Cashews has a simple structure: three to four lengthy unrelated passages.
• Each of the simple passages is performed using the ebecari scale.
• Scales are constructed from twenty-four notes spaced evenly throughout the octave. The tonic note is fixed only at the time of performance.
• The ebecari heptatonic scale is thought of as two disjoint chords spanning two perfect fourths. These chords are named iwarivuli and emayethi.
• The iwarivuli tetrachord is the 1st, the 3rd, the 5th and the 11th degrees of the quartertone octave scale.
• The emayethi tetrachord is the 15th, the 19th, the 21st and the 25th (completing the octave) degrees of the quartertone octave scale.
• The asematha rhythm is made from two patterns: the afene and the ocaquica. The patterns are to be played over the same period of time, concluding together regardless of beat number.
• The afene rhythm is a single line with two beats. The beat is stressed as follows:
• | x - |
• where x is a beat, - is silent and | indicates a bar.
• The ocaquica rhythm is a single line with four beats. The beats are named slothepanine (spoken slo), feri (fe), uwame (uw) and cucecuse (cu). The beat is stressed as follows:
• | - x`x - |
• where ` marks a beat as early, x is a beat, - is silent and | indicates a bar.

Events