The Pine-Nut of Berries

The Pine-nut of Berries is a form of music used during marches and military engagements originating in The Diagonal Sea-Monster. 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 aspsagu and a abam. The music is melody and rhythm without harmony. The entire performance should feel mournful, and it is to be moderately loud. The melody has long phrases throughout the form. It is performed using the masul scale and in the ozu rhythm. Throughout, when possible, composers and performers are to syncopate, add fills and play arpeggios.

• The aspsagu always provides the rhythm and plays staccato.
• The abam always does the main melody.
• The Pine-nut of Berries has a well-defined multi-passage structure: a theme, an exposition of the theme and a recapitulation of the theme.
• The theme is at a walking pace. This passage features only melodic tones and intervals.
• The exposition is at a free tempo. Only one pitch is ever played at a time in this passage.
• The recapitulation is moderately fast. Only one pitch is ever played at a time in this passage.
• Scales are constructed from eighteen notes dividing the octave. In quartertones, their spacing is roughly 1x-xxx-xx-x-xxxxxx-xx-xxO, where 1 is the tonic, O marks the octave and x marks other notes. 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 bagurod (spoken ba), sastospu (sa), assna (as), xuzestra (xu), roxstat (ro), tekug (te) and odo (od).
• The masul pentatonic scale is constructed by selection of degrees from the fundamental scale. The degrees selected are the 1st, the 6th, the 11th, the 13th and the 17th.
• The ozu rhythm is made from two patterns: the gul (considered the primary) and the obungasnu. The patterns are to be played in the same beat, allowing one to repeat before the other is concluded.
• The gul rhythm is a single line with three beats. The beats are named xedludutoka (spoken xe), dosno (do) and luz (lu). The beat is stressed as follows:
• | x x - |
• where x is a beat, - is silent and | indicates a bar.
• The obungasnu rhythm is a single line with eight beats divided into four bars in a 2-2-2-2 pattern. The beat is stressed as follows:
• | - x | - x | x - | - x |
• where x is a beat, - is silent and | indicates a bar.

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