The Adorable Phrases

The Adorable Phrases is a form of music used for entertainment originating in The Wickedness of Trouble. The form guides musicians during improvised performances. One to two singers recite nonsensical words and sounds while the music is played on a uspax. The music is melody and rhythm without harmony. The entire performance should feel mysterious and is moderately paced, and it is to become softer and softer. The melody has long phrases throughout the form. Only one pitch is ever played at a time. It is performed using the xenmu scale. Throughout, when possible, performers are to make trills and modulate frequently.

• Each singer always does the main melody. The voice stays in the high register.
• The uspax always provides the rhythm.
• The Adorable Phrases has a simple structure: three unrelated passages.
• Each of the simple passages is performed in the usmdas 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.
• As always, the xenmu pentatonic scale is thought of as two disjoint chords drawn from the fundamental division of the perfect fourth. These chords are named abo and asmuk.
• The abo trichord is the 1st, the 7th and the 8th degrees of the fundamental perfect fourth division.
• The asmuk trichord is the 1st, the 2nd and the 8th degrees of the fundamental perfect fourth division.
• The usmdas rhythm is a single line with thirty-two beats divided into four bars in a 8-8-8-8 pattern. The beats are named uto (spoken ut), nol (no), dab (da), agun (ag), ung (ung), stotho (sto), bor (bo) and osm (osm). The beat is stressed as follows:
• | - - x - - x x x`| x - - - - - x x | x - x`x'- - - x'| x - x x'x - x'- |
• where ` marks a beat as early, ' marks a beat as late, x is a beat, - is silent and | indicates a bar.

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