Interpreting Castings on an Instrument


The Muzoracle website on its own allows you to hear the key of a casting, and to experience its harmony cards.  If you play an instrument, however, you can take things further and actually play a casting's positions— it’s not hard to do, if you can read music and know your way around intervals and solfège. In the key the Musician’s Die has determined, you simply play the solfège notes indicated, adding harmony below or above each if there are harmony cards involved. (You build harmonies upward when the cards are above the Solfège Dice, and downward when the cards are below them.) Beyond that, the casting can be expressed as a whole, either by simply playing one position after the other, or by taking it all in at once and improvising something that expresses the casting's gestalt.

If you’re playing an instrument with fixed, equal temperament tuning—like an acoustic piano—you’ll miss the unique qualities that the Telluspheric Tuning Matrix provides. You’ll also miss the positions of the casting being heard in their respective suits. What you’ll have instead, though, is performance—and that’s worth a lot. There’s a kind of heightened awareness, a getting inside of each position, that happens when one plays while finding meaning. If you’re casting for someone else, the energy exchange is enhanced: the whole experience becomes more intimate somehow. It's well worth the trouble if you can make it happen.

If you’re working with a DAW, like Logic or Cubase, your options of what to play increase. You can create a template using whatever sound you like for each instrument family, and, if so inclined, download the Telluspheric Tuning Matrix (as an .scl or .tun file) and include it (coming soon on that last bit). Again, though, the biggest effect is achieved in the act of making music while you cast, however you go about it.

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