#Whalesong (Music)

[lobotomy-maybe-bestie]

i think trans people SHOULD get famous for bad art. i think trans people SHOULD get a major following for things they don't really put their whole heart into. i think trans people SHOULD be huge stars on the internet for decidedly mid quality content with problematic themes.

[spontaneite-fr]

Immediate new project get

Sing...sing a song... A new gene begins displaying on modern dragons! Plus new achievements, den slots, and Ancient parallels appear!

[rxttenfish]

might be slightly manic today because i've done an obscene amount of things, including drawing the wifes being silly :3

kindly imagine miranda saying that "hiiiiiiii" less like how you'd imagine a person saying hi would be done, and more like the whalesong version of whistling. she's a musical girlie.

[dapper-hydra]

A lot of people talk about what makes us human, and I’ve heard them say it’s compassion or the ability to use tools or intelligence or something but a lot of animals on earth have all those traits. One thing I’ve never heard of other animals having is MUSIC. I’m not counting bird/whalesong or anything to that effect because that’s their equivalent of just talking. Maybe it’s music that makes us human? Please correct me if I’m wrong like genuinely please tell me if there’s an animal that does music anyways I’m sure you could train or teach like a chimp to play the drums but could it have perfect pitch? Could it enjoy the music? Could it improvise? Could it figure out that the snare does this and the bass does this? Could it teach another chimp?

edit: @nube-de-lluvia brought up something absolutely HUGE that I can’t believe I completely glossed over, which is the fact that although other animals do music and may have perfect pitch (depending on the definition), they might not EXPRESS THEIR EMOTIONS THROUGH IT like yeah they sing for mating purposes which might show love but like humans sing about Everything they Ever Feel like genuinely any emotion you can name; love, sadness, anger, jealousy, happiness, hell people even sing about beer and trucks and if I missed anything else PLEASE tell me because I can feel my ideas deteriorate while I type

[st-just]

1. Is there a soundtrack that you really like despite not liking the thing it is a soundtrack for? 2. Favourite winter beverage? 3. Tell me a world building detail, from anything, that's not all that plot relevant but just super neat

many horror and sci fi games. I hae no interest in FPS' at all but the Dead Space OST is amazing for ttrpg background music

low effort: hot chocolate and/or coffee with some extra milk. High effort: warm hard cider with mulled rum butter

In 2010s anarcho-transhumanist cosmic horror rpg Eclipse Phase there''s an entirely benign subculture who put their net worth into buying bodies that are basically photovoltaic space whales and chill out in (relatively) close orbit of the sun communicating through radio wave whalesong.

[rubyfoxfyre]

I have a question about The Riddle of Magic! What does the Umbral Sea sound like when Alastor takes longer journeys through it?

Thanks for the fun question! 🍷

I imagine Alastor is usually so in his headspace he doesn't really think about it, but it would likely be something like the muffled noise when you have in a set of earphones without any music, like the isolation of silence with only the sounds of the self - breath, and a heartbeat.

But at the same time, there is distant echoing like a hum, or ringing - a sound that carries through the dark because of the spirits that are also passing through the Sea. I think spectres would "sing" in their way, like the timbre of whalesong, but also resonant like bells - something that's hard to pinpoint exactly where it comes from.

In terms of a "themesong" for the Umbral Sea, I often think of Alio Die's Transcendental Path for a sort of drifting experience, with the somewhat more focused melancholy of Leyndell as the theme of the distant Horizon, and all the possibilities that lay there.

[foccaccia]

if i were jonah, i would have stayed in the whale. where its safe and dark and beautiful. youre cradled by whalesong and the ocean. gods made the ribs of the whale your jailcage but its better behind bars. his cruelty keeps you from a quick death, keeps you as passenger not food inside the whale, but when you sing to the whale, the whale sings back. what if your prison loved you. what if you stayed in the dark and in the music and let ninevah burn.

[minecraftbookshelf]

Mos question/worldbuild prompt: What is music like for the ocean empire, with them being underwater and all. What kind of instruments work, how does it sound, and what kind of cultural presence does it have? How much of that is translated to the swamp’s amphibious culture?

Oh, and even out of the water, do you have headcannons about music throughout the empires? Popular styles, cultural importance, fun fantasy twists?

*looks at you with big autistic eyes*

Some music thoughts!

For these its less like, concrete ideas and more impressions with a few points scattered throughout

Ocean music is primarily vocals and visuals, with the caveat that the vocals that a lot of sea-folk are capable of differ radically from what land dwellers would think of when they hear the word "vocals". It's voices yes but its also clicks and thumps and vibrations in the water. I've mentioned whalesong before and that is definitely part of it. Oceanic dance is awesome too, lots of flowy accessories and circling in the water.

Swamp music is a mish-mash cultural collection that has influences from the Ocean, from Mythland, and from their own history. There's also a distinct "bayou" flavor to it. Lots of drums and vocals from the ocean and also the sort of simple, makeshift instruments that don't look like instruments. Spoons and washboards and gourd shakers. They also absolutely have an instrument similar to the banjo. A lot of Swamp dance takes place in shallow water, ankle deep. kicking and splashing and laughing.

for other empires...

I think the most concrete musical thoughts i have are for Pixandria and are, again, kind of dance centered. Because Pixandrian dances are a huge thing, culturally. they tend to be short and high energy, lots of twirling, which always looks amazing bc Pixandrian clothes tend to involve robes and lots of draping fabric and for dancing they add cords and long, drapped belts and jewelry and bells.

Fae music has been described by many mortal visitors and no two accounts describe the same thing. The Overgrown keeps its secrets. (But sometimes, on the Helianthian borders, in the dim lights of dusk or dawn, if you listen closely enough you can hear what sounds like distant panpipes. Every Helianthian child is taught to never follow the pipes.)

[ihavetoomuchhomeworkforthis]

Crazy humans are weird idea I just had while I was brushing my teeth. Okay, so what if our world is the only one where people and animals are designed to be able to create and communicate with sound? Not that the other alien species can't hear or make sound at all, if they step on a twig it still snaps, if they clap their hands it still makes a sound, their breathing can still be audible, and a stampede of elephant-equivalents will still make a thunderous stampede noise you'd need to be able to feel and hear, but what if none of them have vocal cords? What if the closest they can get is a sort of hoarse screech of unconventionally forceful breathing? What if we're the only ones with speech and birdsong?

Alien species communicate through tap-stomp dancing and facial expressions and sign/body language and rhythmic drumbeat patterns and little handpats on whatever surface is available (including themselves).

Nothing could have prepared them for our thousands of languages, the sheer volume we're just effortlessly capable of, the precision and variety and eloquence in the sounds we can produce. The apparent cacophony of birdsong and crickets chirping and cats meowing and lions roaring and dogs barking and whalesong, and just all the vastly different sounds everything on our planet can make. The musical instruments which aren't just percussion and string, but also wind instruments.

Just- what if we were the only ones with speech?

If I were more creative and less tired right now I'd write a mini-fic thing, if anyone sees this and somehow gains that kind of inspiration, PLEASE do, I'd be honored, thank you.

[lobotomy-maybe-bestie]

the last poll i did had only seven votes and was a tie. so pls vote and rb for bigger sample size maybe

[hrodvitnon]

Assorted Headcanons and a Golden Demise sneak peek

Heya! Now that I’ve posted chapter nine, I can finally share a few of the MonsterVerse headcanons that I’ve thought up.

On Tiamat:

Monarch’s profile on Tiamat says that while she can replicate the noises of most other animals in her Titansong, she cannot actually speak. Considering how complicated just plain old whalesong is, I’m easily comfortable saying that Monarch is wrong, and that Tiamat is the only known Titan who can actually, verbally, speak in human languages.

Also, consdering the name of the ability is “Titansong”, in the coexistence or symbiosis timelines, she may be convinced to sing along with humans. And there is no music group that wouldn’t want ft. Titanus Tiamat on one of their songs.

Also, I don’t know fully why, but I have her in my head as having a personality somewhat like a dolphin. She’s the one Titan that can defeat Godzilla in water, in his own element, and she knows it. Playful, but somewhat sadistic.

On the ORCA:

This bit draws from the novelization a little, but in the book, Maddie specifically mentions that the ORCA is cycling through the frequencies of the awakened Titans. So, maybe it can only affect Titans that it scanned and has the bioacoustics of? (this is really so I can add more Titans to the surface without there being plotholes)

On Monarch’s status:

Monarch’s founding has been the subject of a few retcons, and is still being actively changed about with the M:LOM show coming out, but assuming Skull Island’s view is true, Monarch was a pretty small organization up until the expedition. After that, they grew enough to be able to construct the Janjira outpost at the very least, but after 2014 I think there’d be enough evidence of Titans that Monarch would actually become a true, worldwide and supranational organization.

On Jinshin-Mushi:

While the JS-M Primes may have hunted Godzilla’s kind to reproduce, considering how devastating a worldwide plague of them would be, I’d say most Titans would be generally adverse to leaving them be. The parasites would be hunted by everyone else just as fiercely as they do to Godzilla’s species.

On Na Kika:

Canon MonsterVerse gives us very little directly about Na Kika, leaving us to put together the bits we have into a coherent whole. Based on it’s ability to mimic other states, to evade detection, I say it’s as an ambush predator that can even hide itself from the senses of other Titans.

On Titans vs Megafauna/Superspecies

The official definitions aren’t made clear as far as I’m aware, but I’m partial to the distinction being sapience.

Finally, here’s the sneak peek:

---

Ohoho! I really like these, especially the dolphin-Tiamat comparison, fits her very well. Plus her being able to speak human languages has the potential for a lot of mischief and/or terrifying moments.

[brithombar]

finally found a whalesong asmr without music will be working ten hours straight

[jessakaldwin]

as promised, for an audience of none: under the cut is a compiled list of my favorite 8tracks playlists, which I exported to Spotify several years ago during one of the many, many site shutdown scares. I know that 8tracks still exists, I just find using it unpleasant. Hopefully this has preserved some playlists for other interested folks that like this kind of thing :)

Many of these playlists are missing songs or cover art due to Spotify, 8tracks, or YouTube’s limitations, but I’ve done the best I can to maintain them as they were created! Playlists were not made by me, and the 8tracks users that created them are noted.

Dishonored

Wanton Flesh by boatsong

whalesongs by sovngarde

SOFTNESS DOES NOT SERVE ME-- by unkindness

For all the hard work, there is little reward for her by ledts

echoes lost in the garden by otp (i like all of these but this one is my favorite)

The World Leads Us To Guilt by Caketin

cradle songs of comfort by slabprince

Straight Backed With a Dash of the Future to Hand by Playwrightofthedivine

Rise and Fall by DoctorUpstairs

The Kaldwins by Hilda Emerson

fall down by modernprometheus

Metal Gear Solid

Coming in hot by msarduenna

Unknown Soldier by hoppips

STRANGER WITHIN by cryptovolans

i’m with you by derazzed

kazradio and easy listening by millionfish

the rain is my friend by unclepress

i guess i’ll stay a while by octoling

A Strange Love by It’sJustArcher

people were mean to you by yuriprincess

Bit By Bit/Torn Apart/We Never Win by maarten.j

I idolize you by geneween

show me who you are by derazzed

i’ve got a blank slate by Angela Ziegler

The “Kazuhira Miller Musical Experience” or Kaz’s Chopper Flight Songs by UhPrettyMuch

i just want to find the optimal bra for sniper operations, but everyone here is so rude, and pieces of shit by licensedmagicalgirl

This Dream Is For You by Blassy

Bioshock

Tomorrow Will Be Kinder by feuillyons

rapture kashmir party by thesuperblockhead

Drown In Flame the Mountains of Man by notthehawkeye

cast in the sea by niceworkboyo

you belong to me by sanquinis

Look What You’ve Done To Me by muckyknees

god only knows by entrywound

daddy’s little girl by birdorcages

Star Wars

force sensitive by spookyghost

The Scavenger by Ugly Myfanwy

Homestuck

come on baby, make my day by vaswani

lucky 8reak by affableArcheologist

Misc. Others

The Nature That Is Within Us by ididitfordoug (Hellboy)

New Vegas Dreamland by Malevolentmask (F:NV)

The Long Bubble Bath by MysteriousCat (general oldies)

Dusk by junglebee09 (general vibes)

you’ve gotta jim kirk it by vulcan-ology (Star Trek)

don’t worry. by poetiskt (WTNV)

[paleobird]

The cacophony is great, laying open the air long before the sight betrays who is coming or what the noise is. It whistles and trills, sings a song in dozens of voices that weave over and under each other, like whalesong in the vaguest sense and yet holding in it a complexity that makes it become something more. Currents of melody flow and meld into each other, unearthly in the sense that there will be nothing in this life nor the next that sounds like this, that splits the air open and fills it with the orchestra of delights, animal and musical and alien and intelligent all, becoming something more.

It is impossible to predict what comes by by the time that they do, because they are strange, mismatched against the backdrop around them. There is an air of a motley crew of some sort — not in their dress, which is fine and expensive, borrowed from Miranda’s castle and given as an example of her graciousness as a host, but in the way they hold themselves.

There is a little more than ten of them, maybe. The exact number is hard to count because they weave over and under each other like their song, touching each other, hands on each other’s backs and sides, heads nudging against each other, a nip from a pair of jaws or a playful shove. They walk on all fours, their bodies long and sinuous, stoppered once for their large heads and twice for a pair of arms and a pair of legs, short, sitting at a semi-sprawl that occasionally is pulled fully upright. Their tails drag, massive, taller than they are wide, like flags or oars being brought along behind them, huge and well-muscled.

Most are a powdery silver tapering down to a light blue, lighter on their undersides where some go fully white with more dramatic patches. There’s a handful that are more colorful, the front of their bodies a deep royal purple, eyes and details outlined in a vibrant yellow, a yellow that dip-dyes over the latter half of their bodies, which are longer and thinner than the others. One in particular is brown, the color of freshly tilled soil, or a flounder, with thick black bars decorating the top of their body and their ventral surface a sandy yellow, and they are larger than the rest.

All of them are muscular, thick, rounded out in the way of ambush predators. Plentiful fat, muscle, and bone means they are not lacking in protection.

Except for one, walking at the front of the swarm, guiding the way as best she could, when so many were happy to walk by her side. That one is thinner than the rest, bony at her edges in a way that seems too stark next to a direct comparison, and she is shorter than all the others, easily overshadowed by the next smallest. Her scales are a dusty rose, dappled where it transitions up to a darker red over her back, a pale cream around her fins and hands and racing stripes on her arms and legs. As ever, it is Miranda who wears the crown, who is clearly someone of a different make than the others, and, for a brief moment, seems happily out of her depth. Bewildered, yes, flustered too, pink around her fins in a strange, aching sort of way, but enjoying herself. Singing with the others, looking at them, tilting her fins to listen to the weaving conversation around her and to catch every detail. She lifts her hand now and then to point something out, to say something, making the song rise up to a crescendo and delighted trills and barking laughter to wash over her.

Well, until she raises her head up to point out something anew to her guests, and her eyes land on Ava.

The tone changes. She speaks a short sentence, cutting and sharp and vaguely with a hint of an alarm call, and the others go abruptly silent. Without them, without their song, it seems the world follows in their wake, holding its breath. They look up, brown and blue and silver and yellow eyes peeking in Ava’s direction. There are very few things in this world or the next that feels like their gaze, and all of them are old, given their titles and their reign by how no one ever sees such a thing twice. To be pinned beneath their awareness is a sensation that brings the reminder of how large they are. How well muscled, how strong. There are so many of them. And they are so quiet.

It lasts only a moment. They turn, moving and acting as one, the mass abruptly and totally silent, and they leave as fast as they appeared, vanishing with no trace and no reminder, nothing left behind to recall this memory, beyond the lingering sight of all their pointed eyes.

To say that such a sight was unusual would be a pretty significant understatement, even for someone as knowledgeable as Ava. She knew about dinosaurs, sure, but the creatures of the ocean were mostly out of her depth--no pun intended. But she knew a big, seafaring apex predator when she saw one... or, well, ten or so.

They reminded her of a strange combination of seal, monitor lizard, and axolotl, but definitely not fitting any of them for certain. Were they reptiles? Amphibians? Fish? Well, whatever, every vertebrate was a fish, but still--

The harpy was so distracted just... staring, that she didn't even realize when they saw her, too. The suddenness of multiple pairs of gleaming, dangerously intelligent eyes looking silently in her direction was enough to make her feathers puff up in alarm and take a single step back. Only when the group turned and departed did she release the breath she didn't know she had been holding, smoothing out her feathers with a long sigh.

"So much for getting a good night's sleep," she muttered.

[supercantaloupe]

repeating myself here i know but everytime i think about dave malloy’s moby dick musical i go a little wild in the brain...genuinely contains some of his best writing imo. like i think the high points of mdamr rival those of octet compositionally and preludes/comet literarily. have you LISTENED to ahab? sermon?? a squeeze of the hand?? plus there’s the variety of the more fun numbers with bosom friend and cetology and stubb kills a whale and the whale as a dish...it’s good writing! it’s good music!! or the numbers that blend drama/emotion with a deceptively sweet tune like shanty and the pacific...and then the serious/dramatic scenes. some of them are fucking gutting, brought to life and emotion even greater than melville’s original prose. whalesong interlude iii/roll on. the pequod meets the rachel (my GD i cannot listen to the pequod meets the rachel without getting weepy. i swear.) but between all the highest highs of the show there’s some deep and utter low points in the writing...i think the script is bloated, the show tries to say too much at once, it’s clumsy and meandering...and ugh, the fedallah monologue...overall the whole product as it is right now makes me so Frustrated cause i see SUCH promise in it (cause there’s So Much there already that’s amazing!!) but the combination of the high points with the lows and all the connective tissue between makes for a messy final product. i really really hope that the show gets revised and revived at some point in the future because i genuinely really want to (and hope to) see it succeed, i think it has something wonderful to offer audiences if it could just find its sea legs (as it were)