The Squid of Dells
The Squid of Dells is a devotional form of music directed toward the worship of Aye the Furs of Heather originally devised by the elf Conibo Woodendrummed. The form guides musicians during improvised performances. Three singers recite nonsensical words and sounds. The melody has long phrases throughout the form. Only one pitch is ever played at a time. It is performed using the aratha scale.
- Each singer always does the main melody and should stress the rhythm. The voice stays in the middle register.
- The Squid of Dells has a simple structure: three to five unrelated passages.
- Each of the simple passages is very slow, and it is to start loud then be immediately soft. Each passage is performed in the ene rhythm. Each passage should be performed using mordents.
- Scales are constructed from twelve notes spaced evenly throughout the octave. The tonic note is fixed only at the time of performance.
- The aratha heptatonic scale is constructed by selection of degrees from the fundamental scale. The degrees selected are the 1st, the 2nd, the 3rd, the 4th, the 5th, the 7th and the 8th.
- The ene rhythm is made from two patterns: the timafi and the fidale. The patterns are to be played over the same period of time, concluding together regardless of beat number.
- The timafi rhythm is a single line with four beats. The beats are named emu (spoken em), upe (up), amama (am) and thafatha (tha). The beat is stressed as follows:
- | x`x - - |
- where ` marks a beat as early, x is a beat, - is silent and | indicates a bar.
- The fidale rhythm is a single line with two beats. The beats are named tarathe (spoken ta) and cuthefi (cu). The beat is stressed as follows:
- | x - |
- where x is a beat, - is silent and | indicates a bar.
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