Verse:Hmøøh/Roshteria/Music

Music

Traditional Wiobian music places much emphasis on melody, often having two melodic voices in counterpoint for high-class music, though more modern music often calls for more dense orchestration. (read: cobbled together from gamelan, Southeast Asian and Baroque influences. Some Korean stuff will probably get in too) The music is based on a scale with fifteen notes per octave, that is capable of both small movements in melody and harmonic shifts ranging from the subtle to the dramatic. A wealth of inharmonic instruments such as metallophones (Ɉürl-Zrong-Smiḥ), marimbas (Geim-Zrong-Smiḥ), cymbals and drums serve as ingredients for this sonic landscape. However also valued are harmonic instruments (such as stringed instruments e.g. the plucked or bowed zither-like Tünd, the strummed and fretted Þaus-Bung, and the bowed Nisch&Ker; as well as fixed-pitch wind instruments; and last but not least the human voice), for their ability to imitate the human voice and to emphasize canonically harmonic intervals.

Musics of neighboring cultures such as Trây music are broadly similar.

Instruments

How could instruments accomodate 15 notes per octave?

Idiophones

The idiophones are:

• metallophones (Ɉürl-Zrong-Smiḥ) and marimbas (Geim-Zrong-Smiḥ)

Zrong-Smiḥ

A suitably modern Zrong-Smiḥ is made up of three parallel rows of keys tuned in equally spaced pentatonic scales.

Tuning and scales

• 8 + 7 is the most space-saving "black and white" layout, ∴ porcupine?
• 5 + 5 + 5 could work too

Origins and development

Long story short:

The Wiobian tuning system has its origins in the quasi-equal pentatonic scale, found in our world in e.g. gamelan music - this system is described in Classical Wiobian records:

C   D   F   G   A   C

Then, Wiobian musicians in the "Wiobian Renaissance" started experimenting with more "interesting" sounds, such as major thirds (5/4, ~400¢), and a "major seventh" to serve as a leading tone:

C   D   F   G   A   C
        E\|         B\|

Coincidentally, the major third was a leading tone to F and the major seventh was a major third to G! Exploiting this fact, leading tones were successively added under each note of the equal pentatonic scale, eventually resulting in:

C   D   F   G   A   C
    D\| E\| G\| A\| B\|

Later, more dense orchestration increased the demand for chromatic movements. Thus eventually the full 15-tone gamut was complete:

C/| D/| F/| G/| A/|
C   D   F   G   A   C
    D\| E\| G\| A\| B\|

Modern

Nominal names

• do - 0\15
• ko - 3\15
• lo - 5\15
• go - 6\15
• wo - 9\15
• dżo - 11\15
• no - 12\15
• cho - 14\15
• do - 15\15