Polyphony

[Lanadyr]

[OOC: Everyone's welcome to participate in this thread. The intention is for players to write scenes, connected or disjointed, relating to their characters' relationships with music. Learning to play, perfecting existing craft, composing original works, simply enjoying music, whatever else you can think of, it's all fair game. If the individual characters meet during the thread, sooner or later, to share their interests, or even play together, so much the better. Because this is HVR, this thread could also include things that happened before characters even arrived in the Deep Forest. Have fun!]

***

Orb started slowly, as the piece demanded, but the slowness didn't last long, also as the piece demanded. A steady, swinging rhythm, meant to loosen muscles that didn't exist in her artificial frame and lull naive listeners that did not exist within earshot, suddenly erupted into a faster, louder, complex mass of intertwined quarter note points and eighth note counterpoints and sixteenth note counter-counterpoints that handily shook the expansive, emptied hall about her.

The thick wooden sticks that Orb held, wrapped along their lower ends with natural rubber so that she could hold them within her glass hands, with no additional thought given to a comfort she did not strictly need, flashed through the air at a quickened pace, striking the drum head in alternating, flowing, shifting beats with a precision that had quickly become second nature during her lessons. Every note was struck perfectly. Too perfectly, her instructor noted in a slight dismay.

The rhythm quieted and slowed to a crawl as suddenly as it had previously increased in its bombast, but remained multifaceted, interlaced with many sharp, insistent beats and the painfully paused echoes where beats should have been and the skipping steps of muffled and shuffled drum head scrapes and the clacking of wooden stick against wooden stick that all cooperated to weave a percussive tapestry around herself and her instructor. Orb showed no signs of fatigue. And no signs of losing herself in the piece, for good or ill.

She finished the piece exactly as it was to be finished. She clapped her sticks together, above her head, and placed them on the ground. She then walked up to the white-robed elf, who had been standing a bit away, and who was, at that moment, removing small pieces of cloth from his ears.

Orb did not have to ask the question that the instructor then answered in his smooth, quiet voice. "Technically precise. As always."

Orb tilted her head a bit to the side. "You sound disappointed."

"Not disappointed, exactly. 'Confused' would be more accurate." He placed the erstwhile earplugs into some hidden pocket or another within the folds of his robes. "Orb, why did you decide to come to me and take up drumming?"

Orb straightened herself. As she did not sweat, and her normal clothing allowed for the required movements, she did not bother to change for her practice sessions, though her sleeves were rolled above her elbows, and her hat lay upon her rucksack at the far end of the interior space. She spoke matter-of-factly, as she usually did. "I don't have the lungs for wind instruments, and my fingers are not suitable for most string instruments."

"Not quite what I meant." The bald elf always seemed to have a gentle smile upon his face. "Why music?"

Orb considered the question for a moment. "I thought that music would be an interesting endeavor."

The instructor nodded slightly. "And what are you endeavoring towards?"

Orb thought this an odd question. "Proficiency."

"Proficiency is a means, not an end." The elf began to pace around a bit, his hands wrapping around his thoughts as they left his mind. "Orb, one does not pursue music, or any artistic endeavor, simply for the intellectual exercise. Art, ideally, appeals to that which isn't easily defined by the intellect. Existence sometimes seems to consist solely of tangibles, but the spaces between these tangibles, where a great deal of worthwhile intangibles exist, has to be excavated using tools that fit between the tangibles, between the gaps in logic and reason." He then turned back to Orb. "Between the technically precise application of eighth notes."

Orb remained still. "I'm not certain I understand."

The elf sighed. "Orb, you've learned the basics and more of how to drum. Very quickly, I might add, most likely due, somehow, to your artificial nature. Now that you have this language, I want you to use it as something more interesting than an elaborate metronome. I want you to say something meaningful with your drumming, something others will want to listen to."

Orb nodded, believing, falsely, that she understood. "Of course. What would you have me play?"

The elf walked slowly toward the drum, and the young woman made of marbles followed. "I can't tell you. Or, to be more precise, I can only point down the road. It is you that must walk down that road."

The elf paused on the opposite side of the drum. Orb picked up her sticks once again and took up her playing stance, and the elf continued. "Let's start with something that I know you understand. You're naturally very serene. I want you to play…being at peace."

"A peaceful rhythm."

The elf slowly shook his head. "No, I don't want you to play a peaceful rhythm. I want you to play how you feel when you're at peace, or I want you to play something that will put listeners in that state. Those two things may well be one and the same, or not. That is for you to decide."

Orb remained motionless for a moment. "How do I convey any emotional state, let alone peace, with a drum?"

The elf shrugged, the smile never leaving his face. "Well, the obvious tack would be something slow and quiet, but, again, that is for you to decide. You have the language, Orb. Imagine what it is to be at peace, and 'speak' in gibberish until the language and the imagination align."

Orb's grip upon her sticks tightened a bit in uncharacteristic nervousness. Her instructor shook his head in an amused response. "Would you prefer to play the opposite of being at peace? I seem to have flustered you."

"Perhaps that would be easier." With no more prologue, Orb began. She began, as instructed, by 'speaking' in gibberish, easily focusing on how off-balance she felt at that moment, with no set patterns to iterate, no songs to play, just her and the instrument before her.

Her confusion, and her onsetting frustration, at the exercise eventually began to affect her drumming. The beats were ugly, imprecise, wrong. And…oddly fitting.

But not fitting enough.

She continued to experiment with the sounds that she was making, repeating that which she heard that seemed to best represent her emotional state. The feedback between the music and the player began to relax Orb, giving her something to focus on, something to strive for.

This relaxation brought to the improvised piece, presumably about being ill at ease, more stability and more calm. As she realized that her music and her interior life could indeed reflect one another, her reaction was joy at realizing what her drumming could do, and the drumming began to speak to this realization in turn.

She was enjoying herself, immensely. She had lost sight of her instructor's explicit goals, but she felt she was honoring the implicit goal between those tangibles. The interesting endeavor had just become much more interesting.

The instructor nodded as Orb continued. She has gotten worse, technically speaking. Because of who and what she is, and how disconnected her more passionate emotions are from her practical, day-to-day activities, it will take her time and practice to combine the actions and her feelings. But at least she now realizes that there are indeed these two threads to tie together.