User:IlL/Spare pages 1/79

Owing in part to the large number of tones in the Zzean language, how Zzeans perform and view music radically differs from mainstream Western culture.

For Zzeans, non-"tonal" elements such as rhythm, ornamentation, and scale choice are vital for distinguishing monophonic singing from normal speech. Choral vocal music that uses big block chords is wordless; polyphonic word-ful singing is used in specialized contexts.

The boundary between vocal and instrumental music in Zzean culture is somewhat ill-defined, as pitched instruments can "speak" by imitating the tones of speech. One can also choose to play instruments in a more "relaxed" or "conversational" manner by playing in speech-like contours rather than song-like ones, an option also available for voice.

Forms and styles

Zzean singing traditions include:

• an intoned singing tradition
• hiphop/rap (speech with stylized rhythm and sometimes autotune)
• a religious chanting tradition with much ornamentation
• musical theater that seamlessly alternates between song and speech
• formal speeches may be delivered as songs accompanied by instruments
• something really weird
  • Begins from Ancient Zzean secret societies?

Instruments

• a shruti box that plays 5-note drones for guiding singing
• "talking" pitched instruments: drums, flutes, fretless bowed and plucked strings
• a monochord/bass drone to reinforce the tonic of a scale (because the melody might not tonicize it)
• a pasta guitar

Scales

Zzean music is abstractly based on a pentatonic framework, onto which the five tone levels of Zzean are mapped. The tonic of a scale can be any of the 5 level tones. Seven-note scales are viewed as ways to ornament 5-note scales. However, not all Zzean pentatonic scales are octave-equivalent.

Traditional Zzean scales are not based on an equal tuning or the overtone series, but from 12 equal string length divisions of the octave or 6 equal string length divisions of the Pythagorean fifth. These scales are:

• 12eldo: 24/24, 24/23, ..., 24/12
• 6eld3/2: 18/18, 18/17, ..., 18/12

"Avant-garde" versions of Zzean instruments are tuned in 24eldo or 12eld3/2.

As scales are viewed as colorings of the tones of speech, a form of chord-scale theory is fundamental to the Zzean tradition.