The System of Bristles

The System of Bristles is a devotional form of music directed toward the worship of Rogon the Sculpted Brilliances originating in The Amusing Nations. The form guides musicians during improvised performances. The music is played on a ilum. The entire performance is moderately fast. The melody has mid-length phrases throughout the form. Chords, seldom-used, are sparse -- intervals and single pitches are favored. It is performed using the nithros scale. Throughout, when possible, performers are to modulate frequently and play legato.

• The ilum always does the main melody.
• The System of Bristles has a simple structure: a lengthy passage.
• The simple passage should feel agitated, and it is to be very loud. The passage is performed in the thothil rhythm.
• Scales are constructed from twenty-four notes spaced evenly throughout the octave. The tonic note is fixed only at the time of performance. Every note is named. The names are nek (spoken ne), lastta (la), cish (ci), ani (an), shato (sha), almef (al), onod (on), osp (osp), arin (ar), umo (um), rostfen (ro), hiner (hi), ohe (oh), nazweng (na), tod (to), zomuth (zo), bepa (be), noloc (no), kes (ke), suku (su), musda (mu), uzu (uz), onaf (on) and agthreb (ag).
• The nithros pentatonic scale is thought of as two disjoint chords spanning two perfect fourths. These chords are named agtha and dik.
• The agtha trichord is the 1st, the 7th and the 11th degrees of the quartertone octave scale.
• The dik trichord is the 15th, the 21st and the 25th (completing the octave) degrees of the quartertone octave scale.
• The thothil 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.

Events