Lisa's Casting - "Will my new breath notation help others?"

I come to you with yet another Muzoracle casting.  Lisa is a friend who has kindly bought me my own Muzoracle set (which lets me do these castings for people I know) and Chromatic Harmonica.  Thanks Lisa!  (Muzoracle is a storytelling/divination tool similar to the Tarot card deck, but with cards with musical concepts and 12-sided Musician's dice and Solfege dice.)  This time Lisa asked me if her new breath notation (based on harmonica tablature) will help others with aphantasia to learn to read music.  This is my biggest casting thus far - with 10 positions, so I had to take two pictures of it to capture the whole thing:

My interpretation of the cards and dice are displayed below.  The instrumentation of the piece was guided by the suits of the cards drawn.  Since there were two brass cards drawn in the 3rd and 4th positions, I included Trumpet and French Horn.  Then, in the 5th position we got dealt a card in the suit of Woodwinds, so I used a Flute.  Then in the 8th position we drew a triad of strings so I used a Violin.  And finally, in the 9th position we drew a Soloist of Percussion card so I used a Vibraphone.  If you'd like to find out more about Muzoracle and how castings are interpreted go here:  https://muzoracle.net/

This short musical interpretation of Lisa's Casting is about a minute and a half long.  The piece is in Eb major since the black musician's die landed on Eb/D#.  I then made the following harmonic/melodic underdrawing that I used in the composition of the music.  I started the piece on a single solitary A note surrounded by Silence since the first card drawn was the Silence card.  Then as the piece progressed, I added more notes (Cb, D, and G) and let the piece fall into a rhythm.  I used the brass instruments first since they were the first to be drawn.  Then the Woodwind card got drawn in the 5th position so I had the flute trill between F and Gb.  The strings card gets drawn in the 8th position so that's where the Violin comes in, playing high E major (Fb major since its based on RA) chords as a triple stop.  Then I used the Db and Bb to build a Bb half-diminished b9 chord with the Fb major chord on top since the 9th position is a Soloist of Percussion card (Vibraphone).  The whole piece repeats before finally ending on the tonic chord Eb major (which I added simply for the sake of the music and a clearer tonal identity).

If you've gotten this far, thanks for reading!  And I hope you enjoy listening to this short chamber work I wrote to represent Lisa's 3rd Casting.  Comments, critiques, suggestions, or observations are of course, always welcome.  Thanks for listening!

Hey Peter,

I ignore all your casting and go straight to the music lol. I like the beginning which sound like serial music to me tbh and the irregularly regular rhythm between the brasses. The bitonality starting from b.11 is a nice touch too. Thx for sharing!

Henry

Very unique piece of music, interesting rhythms, and interesting choices for harmony (dictated by the dice)? Do you find it harder to compose based on the rules from the game, or is it easier because you are essentially following a template? Cool piece, and rhythmically weird, in a good way!

10 minutes ago, chopin said:

Do you find it harder to compose based on the rules from the game, or is it easier because you are essentially following a template?

I think it's harder because for me it's very important to evoke the casting in the music as closely as possible.  So I can't always just write the music I want - I have to follow the underdrawing of the casting.  Thanks for your review!