The Musical Oat

The Musical Oat is a devotional form of music originating in The Beak-Dog of Dregs. The form guides musicians during improvised performances. One to three speakers recite The Custard-Apple of Hoppers while the music is played on a adul and three lemgot. The musical voices cover melody, harmony and rhythm. The entire performance is slow. The melody has long phrases throughout the form. It is performed using the roxstat scale and in free rhythm. Throughout, when possible, performers are to glide from note to note, use mordents, syncopate and match notes and syllables.

• Each speaker always should evoke tears and is to be moderately loud.
• The adul always should be graceful and is to fade into silence.
• Each lemgot always should be passionate and is to start loud then be immediately soft.
• The Musical Oat has a well-defined multi-passage structure: an introduction and a theme, a lengthy bridge-passage and one to two series of variations on the theme.
• The introduction is voiced by the melody of the lemgot, the harmony of the adul and the speakers. Each of the lemgot stays in the crisp middle register and the adul ranges from the piercing low register to the strident middle register. This passage features only melodic tones and intervals.
• The theme is voiced by the melody of the adul and the speakers. The adul ranges from the strident middle register to the heavy high register. This passage features only melodic tones and intervals.
• The bridge-passage is voiced by the melody of the adul, the rhythm of the lemgot and the speakers. The adul covers its entire range from the piercing low register to the heavy high register and each of the lemgot ranges from the harsh low register to the crisp middle register. This passage features only melodic tones and intervals.
• Each of the series of variations is voiced by the melody of the lemgot and the speakers. Each of the lemgot ranges from the crisp middle register to the vibrating high register. Chords are packed close together in dense clusters in this passage.
• Scales are conceived of as two chords built using a division of the perfect fourth interval into eleven notes. The tonic note is fixed only at the time of performance. Preferred notes in the fundamental scale are named. The names are tekug (spoken te, 1st) and barulo (ba, 9th).
• As always, the roxstat hexatonic scale is thought of as two disjoint chords drawn from the fundamental division of the perfect fourth. These chords are named ragu and daxst.
• The ragu trichord is the 1st, the 7th and the 11th degrees of the fundamental perfect fourth division.
• The daxst tetrachord is the 1st, the 2nd, the 7th and the 11th degrees of the fundamental perfect fourth division.

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