In ixi lang musical phrases are named agents you manipulate by name with verb-noun-adjective actions

ixi lang represents each musical pattern as an identifiable, named agent (e.g. ‘jarret’, ‘jimi’) whose behaviour is adjusted by operations applied to its name: shifting, transposition, reversing, inversing, scrambling. These operations are called ‘actions’ and use a deliberately plain verb-noun-adjective grammar (e.g. >shift jarret 2 shifts jarret’s items two slots right) — chosen over the earlier object-method-argument form so a non-programmer audience can read them. Any change made through code is written back into the visible score, so the text is simultaneously the current state and the instruction. Thinking of phrases as manipulable named objects is the core mental model ixi lang affords, and it is what makes rapid live re-arrangement possible.

Examples

jarret -> piano[7 1 5 3 ] names an agent; >shift jarret 2 rotates its notes; actions can also be scheduled into the future (an agent swapping its items every 4 seconds, four times). Users specifically praised ‘thinking of phrases as objects that can be manipulated by their name.‘

Assessment

Given an ixi lang agent jarret -> piano[7 1 5 3 ], write the action that shifts its items and explain why verb-noun-adjective syntax was chosen over object.method(arg).