Rant on music

[limyaael]

Ah, on to music in fantasy. Once again, as with clothes, this is going to be about general things, since I can’t tell you exactly what kind of music was played at ancient Greek festivals or whether the people in your alternate-England shouldn’t be enjoying a certain style of music because that would have to be alternate French. (Those kinds of

Comments

[tabicetas]

I'd love seeing a full orchestra do musical magic. Each section could be responsible for different parts of a spell: percussion for stability, basses and celli to provide the core, violins to do the main bulk of the spell, and woodwinds to fine-tune the magic. Or something.

For point number six, singers can't even sing well after they've eaten certain foods. It'd be interesting to have a battle scene after dinner, and the singer can't work her magic because her vocal chords won't cooperate. I've never seen anything happen to all of these musical magicians when they're out of tune, or botch a rhythm, or miss a note. I can't imagine that the results would be pleasant, yet they're never shown.

I do have a race whose voices are described as silvery, but they actually have metal vocal chords, and their voices freak most people out. The entire overtone series is wrong in their voices, as compared to 'normal' ones.

[beccastareyes]

Hevaens, yes. Not to mention what an upper respiratory infection does to the human voice. I was in choir in high school, and our teacher told us in the weeks before a concert, we better be extra careful to have lots of vitamins and wash our hands a lot, because of the risk of colds.

This didn't stop me muddling my way through dosed up on cold medicine.

[tabicetas]

And then there's always stage fright. I know lots of musicians who're incapacitated by stage fright (myself among them), to the point where they have a hard time performing. Shaking, nausea, chills, sweating, and I know one person who vomitted before every performance. Why don't any of the musicians in books have stage fright, even a mild form? Especially since they're generally expected to face down the Big Baddy, which would add a whole new level to the fear factor.

[angevin2]

For point number six, singers can't even sing well after they've eaten certain foods.

Yeah. Dairy products, for instance, screw you up big-time.

[farmercuerden]

*peers* Your livejournal icon is a morris dancer, isn't he?

I think I love you.

[criada]

I'd love seeing a full orchestra do musical magic.
I've got something like that. Music can be used in my world to alter peoples mindstate, particularly emotions. So a master composer would be able to fine tune people's emotions while listening to the performance. They will feel exactly what he wants them to! At some point I want to have a villian who uses it to brainwash people like the Brain did in the Animaniacs. :)

[tabicetas]

Wow. That would have a lot of uses.

Can they use smaller groups as well? I could see a chamber group performing in the background of a diplomatic meeting, ensuring that tempers stay even and nobody gets too worked up.

[criada]

Ooohh... That's brilliant, and works in perfectly with what I'm writing. Thanks! I know I've been only scratching the surface of potential for this idea, which is based on the idea that music (played by any number of people,) will sympathetically vibrate the emotional energy of a person. So thanks for the ideas!

[frenchpony]

Oh, yes. I read The Soprano Sorceress, which satisfied me, and I had no desire to read any further in the cycle. I thought that, in general, it was a fairly generic Ye Olde Cheap Fantasy, but I loved the way that the music was described. The main character really had to keep her voice in condition and work at her singing. The fact that the sorcery took up so much energy that she almost couldn't eat enough to keep on her feet -- singing is hard work! And the thought process she had to go through when composing a spell or designing her instrument. Just the thought about the shape and resonance, and picking as a base an instrument she knew how to play.

Too bad the fantasy was so generic.

[criada]

I loved the fact that she was a singer, not a composer, so she was writing death spells to Row, row, row your boat.

[aurorae90]

Very true: For contests and recitals, I'm not to drink milk or eat sugars because they'll coat your mouth.

[limyaael]

...Damn. You've never seen a full orchestra work musical magic in a fantasy novel? I was hoping that at least one music person would snort indignantly and tell me they had, so that I could go read it.

This is why people should talk to singers before they write things like this! I can't understand why they don't. I mean, I know book research can be intimidating, but surely they could e-mail a few friends?

[onyxflame]

It's not easy to sing while you're moving around a lot either. People do it all the time with choreography, but it *does* take practice. And I'd like to see someone sing while galloping on a horse without his voice bobbing around a lot.

Speaking of which, how about boys whose voices are changing? If they had the power of magical music, I bet they'd hit some pretty scary notes and fuck things royally, heh.