Fred's Casting No. 2 - "How will I revive my sports career?"

For my 15th casting Fred asked the Muzoracle "How will I revive my sports career?" (Muzoracle is a storytelling/fortune telling/divination tool similar to the Tarot card deck, but with cards with musical concepts and 12-sided Musician's dice and Solfege dice. Perhaps it may be thought of as a special musical Oracle card deck.)

My interpretation of the cards and dice are displayed below. Since the black 12-sided musician's die landed on D, the piece was set in that key and pertains to the Sacral Chakra. All the cards drawn were in the suit of Percussion (besides the two elemental cards in the 1st Position - Melody and Tonality). So I chose Crotales, Vibraphone and Woodblocks as the instruments for this casting. If you'd like to find out more about Muzoracle and how castings are interpreted go here: https://muzoracle.net/

This short musical representation of Fred's 2nd Casting is about a minute long. I created the following melodic/harmonic underdrawing guided by the cards and dice. I started the melody in the Crotales and only once the melody hit C# (Ti) did I introduce the Vibraphone and Woodblock accompaniment, guided by the position of the Accompanist card.

If you've gotten this far, thanks for reading! And I hope you enjoy listening to this short chamber work I wrote to represent Fred's 2nd Casting. Comments, critiques, observations and suggestions are of course always welcome. Thanks for listening!

Fred's Casting No. 2.pdf

Hi @PeterthePapercomPoser! I really enjoyed your short piece, with its flowing polyrhythms. It has a distinctly nonwestern sound to it, perhaps some gamelan influence? It’s definitely its own thing though. I find it interesting how seemingly arbitrary constraints can help define successful and engaging music. As Stravinsky wisely said, “Whatever diminishes constraint diminishes strength”.

While I’m not superstitious, I also find it artistically stimulating to think of music in symbolic terms. For example, I naturally each pitch with a specific color. Besides, composers already tend to associate musical themes with concepts in individual works.

Edited 16 minutes ago16 min by CrystalCanon