#;songs of the bards { music }

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Started a new book series, and has been a journey...an Odyssey, if you will.

[perplexingly]

I love you video games that have ambient sounds of people casually humming/singing while working or idling or drinking, without any accompaniment of music

[underthevenadahl]

Anywho if you're like me and can't get enough of the dragon age soundtracks, here's a playlist with them all! 6h and 23 min, organized by game + the bard songs!

Dragon Age: The Playlist

"So long as the music plays, we dance"

[artemlegere]

Ossian Singing His Swan Song

Artist: Nicolai Abildgaard (Danish, 1743-1809)

Date: 1780-1782

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen, Denmark

Description

The Danish artist Nicolai Abraham Abildgaard, like many of his contemporaries, merged influences of Neoclassicism and Romanticism in his work. He was very fond of both classical and Nordic literary motifs. Ossian played a major part in his work, and his Ossian Singing his Swan Song has almost become the defining image of the blind bard.

The last section of Ossian, entitled Berrathon, presages Ossian's death and tells of what will be his last song:

"Such were my deeds, son of Alpin, when the arm of my youth was strong. Such the actions of Toscar, the car-borne son of Conloch. But Toscar is on his flying cloud. I am alone at Lutha. My voice is like the last sound of the wind, when it forsakes the woods. But Ossian shall not be long alone. He sees the mist that shall receive his ghost. He beholds the mist that shall form his robe, when he appears on his hills. The Sons of feeble men shall behold me, and admire the stature of the chiefs of old. They shall creep to their caves. They shall look to the sky with fear: for my steps shall be in the clouds. Darkness shall roll on my side.

Lead, son of Alpin, lead the aged to his woods. The winds begin to rise. The dark wave of the lake resounds. Bends there not a tree from Mora with its branches bare? It bends, son of Alpin, in the rustling blast. My harp hangs on a blasted branch. The sound of its strings is mournful. Does the wind touch thee, O harp, or is it some passing ghost? It is the hand of Malvina! Bring me the harp, son of Alpin. Another song shall rise. My soul shall depart in the sound. My fathers shall hear it in their airy hail. Their dim faces shall hang, with joy, from their clouds; and their hands receive their son. The aged oak bends over the stream. It sighs with all its moss. The withered fern whistles near, and mixes, as it waves, with Ossian's hair.

'Strike the harp, and raise the song: be near, with all your wings, ye winds. Bear the mournful sound away to Fingal's airy hail. Bear it to Fingal's hall, that he may hear the voice of his son: the voice of him that praised the mighty!'"

[vamprisms]

listen. everyone loved the silly musical number boss fight in bg3. whoever makes baldur's gate 4 (and it will get made because it made like a bazillion dollars or whatever) needs to add a bard companion where if you have them in your party the gameplay is largely the same but a bunch of the boss fights and interactions will have musical numbers

[screechingfromthevoid]

Dorian with the crown keepers in some quiet taverns in quiet towns as they travel, he's always up late. He can't quite fall asleep well. So he sneaks out to a different tavern than the one they're staying at. He doesn't want to risk someone recognizing him in the morning.

At the new taverns, he goes straight to their stages. The emptier the better but it's not hard for him to convince a half drunk bard to get even drunker.

Sometimes he'd sit on the poorly lit stage and strum his mandolin and not say a word at all as he started to pluck out a tune. The chords are simple at first, something he heard in a dream. Every night spent working, adds another measure. Deeper swells and higher jumps. A mournful reverberation. He was stuck for a while.

Until he hears "glad you're not here... wish you were anyways".

Then, disjointed and seemingly unexpected, a reprise of that first plucking, an octave and a half lower. Still major, still jovial. Just. Deeper. Just... Realer.

I'll fix the transition later, he thought.

That's when the lyrics came. They weren't good but they spilled out of his mouth involuntarily. If it were up to him, those thoughts, those feelings would stay caged in his heart. Instead, a room full of strangers knew him more fully than his intimates.

Protector of air, guard of heart, bulwark of us

His simple plucked out tune, a dreamed up melody for a man he could only dream of.

You say you don't lead. But when I look to you, you're drenched in the boreal crux

A deep and quiet start to the encroaching swell, getting louder and higher.

Crowns of spiders couldn't tempt me astray from your due north

Trilled eight notes that felt like crawling legs and whispy silk on the back of the neck.

I thought you might be the wind caught in my sails. Always only you caught in my fibers

His last word carries a sour note, it sounded wrong, out of tune. Like he was.

A storm by another name, gold and red and melting black, tore us off course

Dorian's run was backwards, like he was free falling from a ledge. Accidentals plaguing it's decent.

It's harder than ever to orient through shades of grey and leave behind no remorse...

That reverberation was accompanied by a strain in his voice. Something that happened every night once he made it to that point. It came next to a swallow of something in his throat. That transition came to him, when Dorian thought about what got him out of his slump, he laughed. Bashfully, sheepishly. He always felt his face burn.

My heart aches. Stay steadfast. Fairer winds...

What a thing to say instead of I miss you.

I have stolen a world away. You are there, I am here. And all I want is to be together when we wake

His melody, their melody, picked up again. His fingers started to pluck staccatos in between the languid chords.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Or so they say. This distance has only made mine bleed icar

Dorian wouldn't allow himself to end this with a confession. At least, not one of guilt. It wasn't supposed to be about his straying. It was supposed to be about Orym. It was supposed to be about the man he-

I look for the direction ivy green grows. I look to you still, to find my way.

Sometimes he ended the song with another reprise of his dreamy melody. Sometimes, his fingers would slip on the strings and rancid mistakes would ring out into the crowd. It seemed to depend on how hard they fought that day. How much more Opal stained.

Dorian would always thanked the crowd before taking up the coins that were haphazardly thrown on stage. He wouldn't set out a hat or cup, it wasn't about that, but there was always coin at his feet by the end.

He'd walk quiet streets and thought about Bertrand. Dorian understood now, what he said about walking alone at night. He stepped carefully up lulling tavern stairs thinking about picking up a bottle for a round of "what the fuck is up with that" with friend that weren't waiting for him. He slid into the room he shared with his brother, acknowledging every time that this was the first time they did that. They never shared a room or a bed as children. They didn't share much. Now fully grown, he felt they were more childish than ever.

Dorian curled into himself on his cold side of the bed and thought about how he used to have a pulsing heart beat on his skin. Whether it was across his legs, against his back, against his chest. He never felt loneliness like this before. He never felt the absence of someone before.

And he was worse for it

[vultursvolans]

bro i’d love to be a bard in a fantasy au

[weirdly-specific-but-ok]

good omens as a song i wrote when i was 14...

Hello sweet maggots, it's the Official Good Omens Mascot. So I write music, and I just found a song I'd written when I was 14 about my then-crush. He did not deserve it and was really quite horrible, but I looked at it now and it gives a lot of Crowley to Aziraphale vibes? Don't mind the quality, I was fourteen and wrote it in an hour, I swear I do better now. A lot of it may sound silly. But have it here:

[stanza 1]

I lay my cheek on soft worn cloth

I lay my head against a shoulder

I smile at the moonlight and the lapping lake

Breathe a familiar smell, and am emboldened

[pre-chorus]

For here can I hurt nobody

Now well known features I study

In my dreams, in my dreams

[chorus]

For here I am safe, and so are you

Both of us are safe like we've never been

Here things just... happen which we can never do

You and I are safe from you and me

In my dreams, in my dreams

[stanza 2]

Broken glass litters the sand

But our feet rest on sweet smooth stone

Warm, as is your hand, holding mine

Rough and steady, I'm not alone

[bridge]

Moonlight dims in front of your smile

Your voice and the gentle waves are one

Angel's wings glow serene in the night

You are my family, you are enough

We're in my dreams

We're in your dreams, Angel.

Yeah. This song was called Angel.

These are the exact lyrics I wrote in 2018. With reference to soft worn cloth, I was actually talking about tartan there, which is now creeping me out. And the familiar smell… doesn't Crowley say he knows Aziraphale's smell?

i started this post without reading through all the lyrics, I just remembered that I'd called it Angel. Now that I've typed it, I'm actually... wow okay. Here can I hurt nobody, here I am safe and so are you... The whole chorus is literally the same as how they can't be together if they want to keep each other safe and how their own love is endangering them (you and I are safe from you and me) and it's only in their dreams that they can be together and still be safe.

I don't think I need to say anything about how the Angel's wings part fits Good Omens.

I know you guys joked about me being the Good Omens Prophet and all, but... I'm... what is this. @neil-gaiman sir I'm going to need an explanation for this, thank you.

Actually, maybe there is no explanation. The whole thing really is... ineffable.

-Asmi

[silver-horse]

TREVOR MORRIS I want you back 😭😭😭😭😭

[myreia]

✦ B A R D

She does not consider herself an archer, but the bow feels slick and powerful in her hand. She settles on the peak of the roof, unbothered by the fog and the rain, leather coat unfurling around her. Like the skill it takes to learn an instrument, hunting is as much about patience as it is about precision. Her breath stills. Her fingers flex, the bowstring taut. They will not see the arrow coming. —level 90 compendium

[ruckis-vandalizes]

"To be the sun and shine my light upon everyone - I'm not sure I'm meant to play that part, but even so, I'd like to sing to those who kept on listening. Even though my song is really not that loud at all, I'm genuinely glad it reaches somewhere."

[hrefna-the-raven]

Playing music for Kar'niss

I tried playing music to Kar'niss and he reacted, only to the spider song but it's still cute <3

[loustica-lucia]

The Bard Songs in Dragon Age Inquisition & their origins🎵

DA Inquisition has a bunch of lovely tavern tunes, but did some of them sounded oddly familiar, before you even started playing? I love listening to European medieval music when I write, and I noticed a few songs that sound almost exactly like them a few years ago, and I thought it would be fun to share them here with you today! [For funsies, I'm gonna put the approximate date of release of these songs and post them chronologically]

• Let's start with Oh, Grey Warden & Packingtons Pound, an english song [around 1500]

• Once We Were & The South Wind, an irish song [1700s]

• Enchanters & The Humours of Tullycrine, an Irish tune with many other names [Different dates???]

• An interesting choice for Fall of The Magister: Erdély induló, an hungarian army march song [around 1940]

Note: I found that one on a Reddit post talking about this subject too, it was fun to see they noticed the same resemblances with the songs I listed there.

•Finishing with the obvious resemblance between The Dawn Will Come & The Edge of Night from The Lord of the Rings (Pippin's song) [2003]

(In this one, even the title is similar! But it comes from a place of melancholy, in opposing to The Dawn Will Come inspiring hope.)

If we go on with this list of Bard Songs, we still have:

I Am The One, based on the eponymous I Am The One song from Dragon Age Origins.

Empress of Fire, ???, but it's Orlais' theme [played everywhere there, especially The Winter Palace]

Nightingale's Eyes, based on Leliana's Song from the eponymous DLC from Dragon Age Origins.

Maker, based on the main theme from Dragon Age Inquisition/The Dawn Will Come.

Sera Was Never, ???

Samson's Tale, ???, but it's also played when you explore The Hinterlands.

Rise, based on the Main Theme from Dragon Age Origins.

Scout Lace Harding, ???

Inquisitor, ???

The Followers, ???

The Slightest Ones, ???

I haven't found the others, but please feel free to add to this!

[risingshine]

Let us die young or let us live forever We don't have the power but we never say never

Sitting in a sandpit, life is a short trip The music's for the sad men

Do you really want to live forever? Forever, and ever-

[seventh-district]

babe wake up a new Venti-coded song just droppped

“I’m as sober as a drunk.

I’m as high as rock bottom.

Free as a man with his hands handcuffed to the bar.”