Music

Native instruments

Vocals

Like many cultures worldwide, the most prominent instrument used in native music and composition is the voice. While this does include the wide range of singing and speaking tones available to human vocalists, local music also contains a variety of unusual vocalized sounds produced by the species native the Underhill culture. Among these, the two most prominent are a wide range of barks, purrs, yips, and howls capable of being produced by the kitsune throat in any of their forms, as well as an unusual susurrant noise that dryads are able to form that resembles the sound of leaves moving a breeze.

Percussion

Drums

A wide variety of drums are produced natively, traditionally of wood frames and with skins provided from the tanned hides of Chic Deer, Omertà Sheep, and Red Burr Goats. In addition to the ubiquitous frame drum style, other models that share traits with other drums worldwide are a bowl-shaped, resonant drum similar to the historical timpani and a goblet-shaped design that bears a strong resemblance to the African djembe. Other native models very between single and double-headed, but almost all are played by hand. While the use of sticks to create specific effects is known, it is not the preferred approach.

Chimes

In addition to the widespread use of drums, another popular percussive instrument is chimes. These are most commonly formed of wood or metal, although bone and crystal (in the sense of leaded glass) types see use as well, usually in religious music. Different tonalities are formed based on the length and notching of the chimes, which are usually played with a stick of the same material. However, hanging wind chimes are sometimes used as an improvisational instrument in outdoor concerts.

Other

Native Yuribans make significant use of the wide range of percussive sounds available to the human body. While clapping, snapping, and stomping are most popular, they are only a start. Slapping (usually by hitting the back of the fingers of one hand against the palm of the other, but sometimes by hitting the thigh to produce a more muffled sound) is often used for emphasis.

Woodwinds

Flutes

While the wooden, transverse flutes imitated by the native Moon Thrushes are best known to immigrants due to the romantic mythology surrounding them, native music employs a wide variety of wind instruments. Blown-end flutes are also seen, typically made of bamboo; both types are seen in metal and bone in unusual circumstances. Native flutes come in a variety of lengths and number of finger holes, offering a wide range of possible tones. Multiple pipe blown-end instruments, related to pan pipes, are also seen but seem to be less popular.

Reed instruments

Reed instruments are also extremely popular. Most commonly seen are a double-reeded, cylindrical pipe similar to the Japanese hichiriki and a single reeded, keyed instrument that bears some general traits with the chalumeau, a precursor to the modern clarinet. Also fairly common are shawm-like double reeded instruments. Typically, these instruments are played in groups of three musicians so that they can stagger breathing intervals, allowing the appearance of seamless playing.

Perhaps the most respected woodwind is an unusual triple piped, single reeded instrument. This setup provides two pipes for melodic fingerings, while the third creates a continuous drone note. Circular breathing is necessitated by this set-up, in addition to complicated fingering; as a consequence this instrument is considered very hard to successfully master.

Most of the reeded woodwind varieties are not played in conjunction with flute type instruments due to the wide disparity in volume levels typically produced by the two different types of instruments. When they are played together, it is almost invariably only as part of extremely large ensembles, when numbers of instruments can be balanced carefully.

Stringed Instruments

Curiously, there appear to be only two stringed instruments in native music. These consist of a bridged, three string dulcimer-like instrument, played with a pick, and a nine-stringed instrument strung on a curved wood frame of approximately two feet in height, played with the fingernails. The former is, like some Japanese string instruments, strung with silk; the latter is wire strung like ancient Gaelic harps.

Native musical aesthetics

To the ears of many immigrants, Yuriban music often sounds exotic, lacking many of the sensibilities common to Western music. Compositions are almost always in minor keys; they are almost never written for groups large enough to form a western orchestra. Usually, pieces are written for groups in multiples of three; six, nine, and fifteen being the most common for actual instrumentation while vocal groups are most commonly seen in sets of nine, fifteen, or thirty six voices. Certain pieces, usually religious in nature, call for complicated choral groups of eighty one individuals, divided into nine smaller groups.

Native music is often described as 'arrhythmic', although this is not precisely correct. Rather than keeping to standard, rarely varied rhythm, compositions often vary in the time signature within each part (known as mixed meter) as well as between different parts. Thusly, they are considered to have irregular or asymmetric time rhythms. For example, rather than following 4/4 time throughout a piece, a percussionist may begin a piece in 5/4 time, progress to 9/4, then return to 5/4; in the meantime, the woodwind accompanying him plays in 7/4.

Part of the reason for this complexity is that written music is still largely unused by native cultures; instead, songs are taught by ear. Furthermore, musical improvisation and adaptation are common trends; in fact, many musical groups form specifically for the purpose of doing so, making music a common social activity.

Certain songs are known by almost all people; not just popular music but a cycle of religious chants that are performed at specific rituals throughout the year. Between infancy, adulthood, and old age, an individual moves through performing different parts of the chants which are complexly multi-layered; an example of a similar concept, although performed in male voice, can be found in the Indonesian ketjack.

Specific songs

Children's jump-rope rhymes

Most jump-rope rhymes chanted by Yuriban children are imported, simply because most Yuriban children old enough to jump-rope are also imported. However, children being what they are, new rhymes are occasionally sighted in the wild.

Head is warm and feet are chilly
    pay the doctor half a lily
Cool in feet but warm in head
    doctor, doctor, is she dead?
Feet are cold but head is hot
    says the doctor, no she's not!
Burning head and freezing feet
    give her ice and soup to eat!

The last line is also commonly found as "give her rice and soup to eat". (The two versions are at best ill-distinguished in actual performance, and either makes enough sense for children to remember easily.)

Tsuki's Song (Hokuto's Interpretation)

On the night of the full moon, it is said that Tsuki sings a song to Engetsu. Having claimed to have heard this song herself, Hokuto claims that it is but a melody that has no words, yet most likely has meaning shared only between the sister moons.