The Nut of Tones

The Nut of Tones is a form of music used during marches and military engagements originating in The Infamy of Whiplashes. The form guides musicians during improvised performances. The music is played on a losmo. The melody has short phrases throughout the form. Only one pitch is ever played at a time. The music repeats for as long as necessary. Throughout, when possible, performers are to make trills.

• The losmo always does the main melody and should stress the rhythm.
• The Nut of Tones has a well-defined multi-passage structure: a lengthy introduction and a verse and a chorus all repeated two times.
• The introduction is very slow, and it is to fade into silence. The passage is performed using the sangob scale and in the ellusmesmuk rhythm. The passage should be performed using rapid runs.
• The verse moves more quickly than the last passage, and it is to start loud then be immediately soft. The passage is performed without preference for a scale and in free rhythm.
• The chorus resumes the original tempo, and it is to start loud then be immediately soft. The passage is performed using the odo scale and in the langkaz rhythm.
• Scales are conceived of as two chords built using a division of the perfect fourth interval into eight notes. The tonic note is fixed only at the time of performance. Every note is named. The names are strob (spoken stro), kestraruga (ke), dot (do), obst (obst), omuslone (om), gul (gu), xedludutoka (xe) and luz (lu).
• As always, the sangob heptatonic scale is thought of as two disjoint chords drawn from the fundamental division of the perfect fourth. These chords are named ragu and uturo.
• The ragu tetrachord is the 1st, the 2nd, the 5th and the 8th degrees of the fundamental perfect fourth division.
• The uturo tetrachord is the 1st, the 3rd, the 5th and the 8th degrees of the fundamental perfect fourth division.
• As always, the odo hexatonic scale is thought of as two disjoint chords drawn from the fundamental division of the perfect fourth. These chords are named ozzok and axslor.
• The ozzok tetrachord is the 1st, the 4th, the 6th and the 8th degrees of the fundamental perfect fourth division.
• The axslor trichord is the 1st, the 5th and the 8th degrees of the fundamental perfect fourth division.
• The ellusmesmuk rhythm is a single line with twenty-four beats divided into five bars in a 2-6-5-5-6 pattern. The beat is stressed as follows:
• | x x | - X - x - x | - - - x - | - X x - x | - - - - x - |
• where X marks an accented beat, x is a beat, - is silent and | indicates a bar.
• The langkaz rhythm is a single line with four beats. The beat is stressed as follows:
• | x X x x |
• where X marks an accented beat, x is a beat and | indicates a bar.

Events