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

[luna_manar]

Limyaael: Have you ever read Madeline L'Engle's A Swiftly Tilting Planet?

Setting aside the blatant Christian undertones for a moment, I thought the use of the chant/song in that book was quite well-done. Each chapter name was a line of the poem, and the chapter itself would reflect that line in some way. The song itself has no power unless the person saying it understands completely what it means, and the way it comes together at the climax of the book, I thought, was very well-executed.

[limyaael]

Yes, I read it when I was about 11 or so. That was a period of my life when I didn't really pay attention to the Christian stuff (I just didn't notice it), and I still retain a lot of affection for it. I still remember a few of the poem's lines.

[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.

Harry Potter Sue Comic

[isdestroyer]

I just found this link to a comic making fun of Mary Sues in Harry Potter. I didn't know where else to post this so here it is.

http://piratemonkeysinc.com/ms1.htm

Hmm, I can post links here, Right?
I apologize again for being off topic.

Re: Harry Potter Sue Comic

[limyaael]

I've seen the comic before, but I'd lost the link. Thank you for posting it again!

Re: Harry Potter Sue Comic

[isdestroyer]

You're welcome. Glad to have been of help.

Re: Harry Potter Sue Comic

[kjkhyperion]

• Weren't your eyes violet?
• They change color
• Neat! So do mine!
• Mine to!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

[tabicetas]

Um... If you want to get really technical, there are very few passages where you shouldn't be changing dynamics, at least subtly. Music is always supposed to be going somewhere, and one of the most effective ways to do that is through small dynamic changes - crescendoing on long notes to add intensity, diminuendoing before ending a phrase. McCaffrey probably wasn't thinking of that, true, but the point still holds. On the other hand, I've never seen a piece that changes its time signature every measure. I'd probably cry if I did, especially if it's going between a metre counted in duple and triple time.

But I agree completely that research whenever you're using music (or phsyics, or anything else you don't know about) is important.

[frenchpony]

Pieces that change time signature every measure do exist. William Billings occasionally writes like that. I've forgotten the name of the particular anthem involved, and I don't have my Sacred Harp book with me, but he wrote an anthem with a segment that switches from 4/4 to 3/4 and back every measure for a bit. We think that he was trying, in his eighteenth-century way, to write in 7/4, and that was as close as he could get to imagining a time signature like that.

It's a bit of a challenge to beat, and you have to pay attention, but it can certainly be done. Duple meter in Sacred Harp, no matter what it is, is led with just a down-up motion, and triple meter is led out-down-up. So, to lead this particular section of this anthem, you have to get into a pattern of down-up-out-down-up, wash, rinse, repeat. Takes some practice, but it's certainly doable.

[farmercuerden]

Here's a man of jollity, from Yeomen of the guard by Gilbert and Sullivan:

8 measures of 4/4, a measure of 5/4, 2 measures 4/4, 1 measure 5/4, 6 measures 4/4, 2 measures 5/4, 2 measures 4/4, 2 measures 5/43 measures 4/4, then alternating measures of 3/4 and 4/4 for 6 measures. 5 measures 4/4. 2 measures 5/4, 2 measures 4/4, 2 measures 5/4, one measure 4/4, one measure 3/4, one measure 4/4, one measure 3/4, 6 measures 4/4, then there's a repeat back to just before the last 5/4 until some dialogue is concluded.

It's not every measure, but it's close. Of course, some of it is effectively in 7/4.

It could be worse. Sullivan has a habit of having one person sing in 6/8 over everyone else singing 4/4, and things like that.

It happens.

[larathia]

I do have a song-mage among my stock set; the theory behind what he does is that music is mathematical, and forces can be represented in mathematical equations.

So he doesn't sing "songs" or even "melodies" when he's casting spells, and he can't really improvise on the fly - each spell he creates is the product of pages and pages of mathematical equations translated into musical notation, and it's holding that whole equation in his head while he sings that creates the magical effect