Seikilos Epitaph
— Canon
One surviving melody. Four entries. Thirty-seven attacks placed on a timing and target-frequency grid built to meet exactly.
0.500000 s per unit → entries at 0 / 6 / 12 / 18 s → 148 rendered attacks
Four voices share one source path.
The surviving Seikilos melody is monophonic. In this realization, the same 37-event melody is reused without changing its source pitch path or rhythmic proportions. The source spans 48 primary units: exactly 24 seconds at the chosen tempo.
The video keeps one melody geometry. Register is shown only by each voice's single moving playhead relative to that same line: below / on / above / on. There is no separate octave icon, bead, lane or duplicate trace.
Every attack must land.
Each note onset is a separate event. Repeated pitches are not visually merged: the second and third notes remain distinct strikes, and the same onset logic continues through the late and ending sections. The visual impact is tied to the musical onset rather than added as an independent decorative rhythm.
The onset emphasis changes attack strength only. It does not move note timing or alter the target pitch grid.
Half a second becomes the common unit.
YOTOTOMO places the melody on a D-centered five-limit target grid with D4 = 288 Hz and A4 = 432 Hz, at dotted-quarter = 40 BPM. One primary rhythmic unit is exactly 0.5 seconds. At those target fundamentals, every source pitch completes an integer number of cycles inside that unit.
| Pitch | D ratio | Target Hz | Cycles / 0.5 s |
|---|---|---|---|
| E4 | 9/8 | 324 | 162 |
| F#4 | 5/4 | 360 | 180 |
| G4 | 4/3 | 384 | 192 |
| A4 | 3/2 | 432 | 216 |
| B4 | 5/3 | 480 | 240 |
| C#5 | 15/8 | 540 | 270 |
| D5 | 2/1 | 576 | 288 |
| E5 | 9/4 | 648 | 324 |
1 primary unit = 0.500000 s = 24,000 samples at 48 kHz
12 units = 6.000 s · 48 units = 24.000 s
voice entries = 0 / 6 / 12 / 18 s
37 source attacks × 4 voices = 148 rendered attacks
Octave shifts preserve the integer-cycle property by halving or doubling the target fundamental. The statement applies to ideal target fundamentals on the nominal timing grid; it does not mean the complete sampled-piano waveform phase-resets at note boundaries.
Same melody. Different entry time and register.
The canon entries are six seconds apart. Register is realized as −1 / 0 / +1 / 0 octaves. In the video, the playhead itself carries that relation to the single source line; no second symbol is introduced.
The release candidate is measured, not inferred.
The current audio master used by both the landscape and Shorts exports is a 24-bit / 48 kHz stereo WAV. Its musical timing remains on the same 40 BPM grid and its full duration is 43.200 seconds.
The onset-emphasis layer is applied after the pitch/timing realization. It does not shift event onsets or substitute a second pitch source.
The melody survives. The realization is contemporary.
The Seikilos stele preserves a text with musical notation from antiquity. The surviving melody is historical. The four-voice canon, entry spacing, A4 = 432 Hz reference, five-limit target grid, 40 BPM tempo, octave distribution, piano realization, stereo layout and visualization are YOTOTOMO's design.
This work is not presented as a reconstruction of an ancient Greek canon, nor are 432 Hz or 40 BPM presented as historically authentic values.
Used as a bibliographic reference. Direct event-by-event inspection of the complete score pages is not claimed here.
Twilight-Salamander Grand Piano V6.1a.
The realization uses Twilight-Salamander Grand Piano V6.1a from the Accurate-Salamander Project by Chisato Yamauchi, based on Alexander Holm's Salamander Grand Piano. The official project page lists the V6.1a 48 kHz / 24-bit soundbank and the project license as Creative Commons Attribution 3.0.