#can we talk about the alto clef. i'm dying to talk about the alto clef

[lordarsonizzzzt]

THEIR IDEAL DATE W/ YOU

I just wanted to write something cause im bored

characters: Jack Bright, Alto Clef, Kondraki, Draven, Iceberg, Gerald

JACK BRIGHT

✦ Jack strikes me as a funny guy when in a relationship, dates with him aren't fancy and shit, he doesn't want to go to a place where you have to waste tons of money for food

✦ She prefers going to McDonald, convencing the staff to give both of you balloons if they have any. Maybe go to an arcade or go bowling, fun dates are her thing.

✦ If you want to, she can book some fancy restaurant so you both can go, but it really isn't his thing. I'm so sure Bright just loves goofing around when not in the foundation cause those are the few times he gets to be out of the place.

✦ Don't get me wrong, he's loyal to the Foundation but it can be a bit too much plus the whole being inmortal thing, he preferes dates that involve going out and to places where you will have a fun story to tell.

ALTO CLEF

♫ Similar to Jack, he preferes fun dates, fancy never was and never will be his thing.

♫ But contrary to Jack, he prefers being indoors, that being said, he loves dates where you two cook together.

♫ HE IS going to mess with whatever you are doing, and YOU WILL have to try and stop him from putting weird shit into the mix.

♫ If you are baking a cake, he's going to try to put gummy worms in it, if you are making dinner, he'll try to put chocolates in the spaguetti.

♫ But that's perfect with you, because that's your man.

♫ If you both already planned to have a date but that day was kinda of shitty for him, he'll try to put through it anyways, most likely you will notice and it wil be time for cuddles and maybe a movie that is just there for background noise while both of you sleep.

♫ I headcannon Clef as a pretty clingy guy when in private, he needs constant praise but he'll prefer dying before admiting it, Lily left some pretty nasty scars on him (both mentally and phsically), so this 'dates' are more of a schedule for both of you, they happen once a week.

KONDRAKI

⌛︎ So this one depends on how much you support his drinking habit.

⌛︎ If you are ok with it you both will go to a bar and have a few drinks, but make sure they are actually a few because he doesn't know when to stop.

⌛︎ If you aren't okay with it, then you'll have dinners in your home, same as Clef, Kondraki prefers dates indoors rather than outdoors, he craves that domestic life. Hell! he may even invite Draven and Talloran if it's cool with you.

⌛︎ If Draven comes, he is not buying any alcoholic drinks, not even beer.

⌛︎ If he doesn't, he'll buy probably two cans of beer or vodka, enough to not get him wasted.

⌛︎ Dates with him are filled with talking about this and that, a new book he got into, some dumbass in the Foundation, a guy you don't like from your work and so on.

DRAVEN

➳ THIS BOY.

➳ Anything will do good with him, wanna go to the beach? Okay! Want to try out food in this new restaurant? Sure, let's go! Wanna do a picnic? HE'S ON HIS WAY.

➳ He likes to have dates at night time, maybe have some take-out and eat in a park while you both talk, walk around holding hands.

➳ He likes to gossip, no you can't change my mind. He'll call you up and will tell you to come to his apartment, when you are there, there are a lot of bags of chips, candies and sodas

➳ You'll paint his nails while he tells you about some weird break up that happened in the foundation, you will ask him to stay still because he uses his hands so much to get his point across.

➳ Probably the only one that will take you to a fancy place with no trouble, yeah it's not his thing but it doesn't hurt to act like you are both rich and important people for one night.

➳ 10/10 would date again.

*I RAN OUT OF PATIENCE TO DO LIL DRAWINGS FOR THEM SORRY LMAO*

ICEBERG

❆ THIS. BITCH.

❆ "Why do you wanna go out if we see each other every day"

❆ Don't expect going out with him, he has to be in a really good mood to take you out, if you wanna go alone or with friends he has no trouble paying for you.

❆ But he's just, not going out, not his thing at all.

❆ Similar to most in this list, preferes staying inside, he'll make breakfast for you and you can watch a movie on the mornings.

❆ At night time, he'll order something from your favourite place and probably some dessert, he'll tell you he got it because it was cheap and it was for him, but since he was going to get something might as well feed you too.

❆ He got himself something else tho, he didn't ate desseart because it was for you.

❆ This one also craves domesticity, but he won't say it. He loves kisses in the morning when making coffee, holding hands when coming home and cuddling at night.

❆ Hell! He may even tell you that he loves you, and verbal affection from him is one hell of an achievement.

GERALD

⚠︎ HE LOVES PICNIC DATES.

⚠︎ HE'LL BUY EVERYTHING IF NEEDED, BUT PLEASE JUST GO OUT WITH HIM TO A MEADOW OR A HILL AND HAVE A PICNIC DATE WITH HIM. HE'LL EVEN BEG.

⚠︎ Everything he gets is from the market, if he cooks he'll burn everything down and he just wants dates with you to be perfect, he feels like he doesn't deserve you and feels bad because there are so many guys out there that are better than him.

⚠︎ So he tries, he really tries to make these dates perfect, there is no way anything can go wro-

⚠︎ So, most of the time you end up going home and having the picnic on your backyard.

⚠︎ He gets attacked by bears, beers, steps on snakes by mistake, everything that could go wrong goes wrong.

⚠︎ He may even cry.

⚠︎ When you are in your backyard he'll try to feed you parts of the cake he bought, only to attract more fucking bees.

⚠︎ You'll feed him a strawberry and he'll choke on it, but that's to expect.

[astriiformes]

Hello Owl House fans!

Are you a fic and/or meta writer? Do you love Raine Whispers? So do I! And as a semi-professional musician who’s been playing strings for almost 15 years, I thought it would be fun to put together a handy info post on orchestral stringed instruments for people to use when writing fic, meta, or anything else about Raine, with a specific focus on things that I could see being useful to writers, including questions like:

What instrument does Raine play? (Surprise! It probably isn’t a violin!)

How do you take care of a stringed instrument?

What are some useful words to describe the different parts of an instrument or the act of playing one?

Is it possible to injure yourself while playing strings?

Wait, hang on, what was that about it not being a violin? (No, really!)

And more!

(Also, if there’s anything I don’t go over in this post but you’re curious about -- or something that I do, but you find confusing -- please feel free to send me an ask. I love talking about playing strings, and would love to be a point of reference for other TOH writers!)

So, without further ado:

Q1: Hey Nate. Back up please. Why did you say Raine’s instrument might not be a violin?

So, there are actually two different modern orchestral stringed instruments that are a similar size and shape to Raine’s. The violin has a slightly bigger, much less-famous cousin called the viola. People like to make fun of it -- and viola players, called “violists” -- for being a little weird and awkward, but almost any famous piece of orchestra music you can name has parts for violas in it too!

I have some stake in pointing this out because I’m a violist myself, but I also bring it up because I noticed something pretty cool in “Follies at the Coven Day Parade” that actually suggests Raine might be a violist, too -- not a violinist!

It’s in the sheet music in Eda’s file on them:

While the music itself is fairly nonsensical, it’s clearly written for the viola. How do I know? That fancy, curly symbol at the start of the line! It’s a symbol called an “alto clef,” and you almost exclusively see it in viola music.

Clefs are sort of like “languages” that music is written in. If the notes are the words, the clef tells you what they mean.

These are the most common clefs:

(Really, I should say that treble and bass are the most common -- alto is extremely uncommon, and you don’t see tenor too often either.)

The quick, basic reason that different clefs exist is because some instruments obviously make higher or lower sounds than others. If you were going to try to write music for, say, all the high notes a violin plays in the same notation as all the really low notes a bass plays, you’d have to use lots of “extra” lines above or below the staff (what musicians call the set of five lines you write music on) to reflect them accurately. By writing music for high instruments in treble clef and music for low instruments in bass clef, musicians can stick to much simpler, easier-to-read notation.

So why does this suggest Raine is a violist? Well, like I said, violas are seen as kind of weird by a lot of musicians, and one reason (among others) is because while most instruments fit comfortably into either bass or treble clef, violas play in a sort of awkward, in-between zone that isn’t quite low enough to write in bass clef, but isn’t quite high enough to write in treble. This means that viola music is usually written in alto clef, which is in the middle of the two. Not a lot of instruments play in alto clef -- and the rest of the ones that do are much rarer than the viola. And while viola music is sometimes written in other clefs if it’s high or low enough (and most violists are usually able to read in multiple clefs), violin music is never written in alto clef, because violins don’t play low enough to need it. Hence, if Raine plays sheet music written in alto clef, their instrument is probably a viola, and they might primarily be a violist!

Q2: So, if Raine is a violist -- what makes a viola different than a violin?

Well, like I mentioned with the clefs, violas sound lower. This is both because they’re a little bit bigger (which means there’s more space inside the instrument for the string vibrations to bounce around and resonate) and because they have slightly different strings than a violin. Each string on both instruments is tuned to a specific note. On violins, the four strings are tuned to G, D, A, and E. Violas also have G, D, and A strings, but instead of having an E string, their fourth string goes below G, and is tuned to the note C -- which actually makes them more like mini cellos than big violins! Having the bigger size means that violas also tend to sound somewhat richer and more resonant (think a “deeper” sound) instead of the really bright, high notes violins play.

This video is a really nice illustration (and you can see even from the thumbnail how much bigger the viola is than the violin, too!)

There’s also a lot that’s different about them culturally. Historically, in our world (although I can’t speak for the Boiling Isles), violas have often been looked-down on and made fun of, because they’re a little weird and awkward to play (being bigger makes it harder to hold, and mean you have to stretch your fingers a lot more to hit the right notes), and composers tend to write the big, showy, fancy pieces for violins instead. People in orchestras like to tell “viola jokes,” teasing violists for being less talented players or for playing what’s considered a “weird” instrument. It’s often still in good fun, but speaking as a violist it does get a little tiring sometimes, as does having to constantly correct people when they compliment my “violin playing.” You could decide the history of the instrument is totally different in the Boiling Isles -- or maybe you could work some of these ideas into a story about Raine! Personally I think the idea of someone playing sort of an “underdog” instrument becoming head of the Bard Coven is super cool and compelling, especially considering Raine’s stage fright and anxiety. But maybe I’m biased as a violist.

(Another fun fact that could work its way into your characterization of Raine, but violists tend to be very defensive of the instrument -- often comically, but we love the viola, and we’re so used to correcting people and putting up with jokes all the time that we tend to get pretty snappy about joking right back.)

In fairness (SIGH) since I have mentioned them a bunch, here are some examples of “viola jokes”

(All taken from “Viola Jokes: A Study of Second-String Humor” in the journal Midwestern Folklore)

Anyways, now you can all join me in imagining Eda decking someone in the face if anyone tried making too many -- or even any -- of these around Raine.

--Seriously though, I think there really is something very charming about  interpreting Raine as a violist exactly because it’s an instrument with a reputation for being a little weird, and out of place, and awkward, which seems like a very compelling fit for a character with bad social anxiety who’s also a bit of a rebel. Famous violist Lionel Tertis liked to call the viola the “Ugly Duckling” or the “Cinderella” of the orchestra, and while I may be biased as a violist who loves Raine, there are a lot of things about it that really thematically suit them, and I’d love to see more people embrace the fact that it seems like it’s canonically the instrument they play anyways!

And yes, maybe I’d love for us violists to get our day in the sun for a bit :)

Q3: What are the different parts of a stringed instrument?

Starting from the top, the thin, curled end with pegs in it (although the top of Raine’s instrument, unlike most modern strings, is actually shaped like a little animal of some kind, which I love) is called the scroll. On the side of the scroll are four pegs, called tuning pegs, because they’re attached to the strings and can be used to tune the instrument. There is also another set of four smaller fine-tuning pegs at the other end of the strings, for fiddlier (pun intended) adjustments. The skinny part of the instrument is called the neck, on top of which is the fingerboard, the dark wooden part (although on Raine’s, again, it’s actually lighter in color) where the player’s fingers press on the strings. In the middle of the instrument, the strings go over a small piece of wood called the bridge that keeps them raised up. To either side of the bridge are the f-holes, where the vibrations we hear as sound “escape” the instrument. 

Also, the bow has fewer parts, but the primary ones to know are the hair (the part that touches the strings) and the frog (the base of the bow, where the musician holds it).

Q4: How do you take care of a violin or viola?

Very carefully! The thing about orchestral stringed instruments is that they are basically held together by tension (specifically, the tightness of the strings). Some of the parts -- like the bridge, or the wooden peg on the inside of the instrument that helps with keeping it in place -- aren’t even attached in place. They stay where they are because of the strings. While Raine’s magical viola might be tougher than a real-world one, all strings players know the terror of dropping or even roughly jostling their instrument, and we’d definitely give you points for authenticity for working that in somewhere. 😅

The importance of the tension of the strings can come up in other ways, too. One is if you break a string! It’s most common for this to happen while tuning, because turning the tuning or fine-tuning pegs increases the tension of the strings (in order to change the sound they make when you play them), so if you tighten one too much or it’s gotten worn enough that it can’t take the tension, it can snap. But it IS also possible for strings to break when you’re playing! It’s honestly a little scary -- especially with big instruments, like cellos and basses, where there’s a lot more force stored in the strings; the one time I had a string snap while I was playing my viola, it was mostly just startling -- but it usually happens if they’re particularly worn out and/or somewhat over-tightened.

The other time string tension is important is when replacing your strings, which musicians might do for a variety of reasons -- when a string has broken, replacing old, worn-out strings with new ones or ones that offer a different sound, etc. When you replace strings, you have to do so one at a time, because otherwise, if you tried to replace them all at once, there wouldn’t be any tension left to keep the instrument together! I find this makes replacing strings a little nerve-wracking, but it’s not too difficult to do properly.

Being made of wood, stringed instruments are also sensitive to changes in humidity and temperature. If you bring one from a cool, dry place to a wet, warm one, or vice versa, it’s very likely that you’re going to need to adjust the tuning a lot more than normal, because the tension on the strings is so different. Winter is an especially precarious time for the care and keeping of instruments because it’s so cold and dry many places, and you never want to leave an instrument outside for too long when temperatures are extreme (although the low humidity is actually the bigger danger).

Tension is important for the care and keeping your bow as well, but in a somewhat different way. There’s a little peg at the bottom of the bow that you can use to tighten or loosen the hair, and when not using their bows, musicians keep them loose so as not to put too much strain on the bow. Raine’s bow is actually really interesting -- you may have noticed that instead of being a relatively straight line, it curves more like a bow-and-arrow. Standard modern bows actually do have a very subtle concave curve to them, but Raine’s much more dramatically convex-curved bow is more evocative of the bows used during the Baroque era, which some musicians -- particularly those who play a lot of Baroque music -- still use today. (This is incredibly ironic to me because most Baroque era viola parts are either incredibly boring or non-existent, but I’m pretty sure Raine’s is for Bard Rule Of Cool, and maybe a bit of a nod to the very Early Modern aesthetic influences in TOH). But even Baroque bows, while constructed a bit differently, still operate on this same principle.

One of the last “care and keeping” of points I want to touch on has to do with something called rosin. Rosin is a small, hard “cake” of, essentially, treated sap from pine trees that you rub on you bow so that the hair has a better grip on the instrument’s strings (which is what draws noise from them). Invariably, rosin will then come off the bow as you play, in the form of a fine dust. You don’t want to let this dust build up on your strings or the body of the instrument, so strings players will often keep a soft cleaning cloth in their cases, to clean off the rosin dust after playing.

(Another note about rosin -- while some violists prefer rosin similar to the kind violinists to, others prefer somewhat softer, darker rosin closer to the type used by cellists, since it can be better for gripping larger strings.)

Q5: How do you take care of yourself while playing a stringed instrument? Is it possible to get hurt if you aren’t careful?

Yes, it’s definitely possible to get hurt! Being a professional musician has some risks in common with being a professional athlete, like needing good technique to make sure you’re using the proper muscles to avoid straining them, injuries from repetition or overuse, and playing demanding some unusual positions that aren’t particularly natural for the human (or, presumably, witch) body.

Violists actually have to be extra careful with some of this stuff, because the larger size of the instrument forces you to stretch your fingers further to hit the right notes, as well as to adopt a somewhat more awkward playing position overall. If you watch the video above comparing the sounds of the two instruments, you can see the slight difference in posture pretty clearly. This awkwardness is yet another reason people sometimes have a lower opinion of the viola and violists -- the instrument is, objectively, a bit more difficult to play, which in turn contributes to the perception of violists as “less talented” when they get compared to violin players whose instruments are more natural to hold!

One way to prevent injuries is to make sure you play an instrument that’s the right size for you. This is especially important for violists. While violins, cellos, and string basses all have what’s called a standard “full size” -- the size played by adult musicians, as opposed to smaller ones for kids -- violas don’t. Without going into extensive detail, this is due to another weird quirk of the viola -- while other stringed instruments have a standard size that best complements the tone and resonance of their strings, a true “full size” viola would be too large to play properly. As a result, violas are made in different sizes, measured in inches, and adult violists play the largest instruments they can comfortably and safely play. For most people that’s a 15.5″ or a 16″ (which isn’t the full length of the viola -- it’s the length of the body, minus the neck and scroll). What size you can play depends mostly on the length of your arms and the size of your hands. For example, I’m short, but I play a 16″ because I have pretty large hands. Raine seems to be pretty short as well, so I would guess they either play a 15.5″ or, if they play a 16″, it's because they have longer arms and/or fingers that make it the right choice.

Aside from using correct posture and making sure your instrument is the correct size, the other best ways to prevent injuries as a strings player are doing quick warm-ups (like scales) and taking appropriate breaks, much like with any physical activity. As far as the most common consequences go, musculoskeletal overuse injuries like tendonitis and nerve issues like carpal or cubital tunnel syndrome are among the things musicians watch out for in the elbows, wrist, and fingers, and often a mild case will be cared for with careful stretching and maybe a heat pack, depending on what’s going on. Violinists and violists are also at risk for hurting their shoulders, neck, and jaw, given the position of their instruments between their chin and shoulder. Lots of modern musicians use clip-on shoulder rests to help hold their instrument in the proper position (although Raine doesn’t).

Even if you take proper care of yourself and manage to avoid any injuries that are too serious (though any serious musician that plays as much as Raine does almost certainly gets some aches and pains from time to time), playing an instrument is a physically demanding activity, and your body responds accordingly. Strings players usually develop significant callouses on the pads of the fingers that are used to hold the strings down (the first four, minus the thumb, on your non-dominant hand; from their playing, Raine definitely appears to be right-handed). We also try keep our fingernails very short, to keep that same part of the pad hitting the string (which helps with quality of sound and also some other fancy little tricks). Strings players also tend to build pretty significant strength in their arms, fingers, and even core from playing regularly.

Q6: Can you give some advice on how to describe someone playing a stringed instrument in writing?

Yes! This is one of the biggest reasons I wanted to make this post! I love that so many people are writing about Raine, and since I know it can be a challenge to describe something with as much specific, technical vocabulary as playing strings as a layman, I am so into the idea of helping folks do it more confidently. I won’t throw a ton of words at you here, but I will try to give a very basic rundown.

Before playing, a musician tunes their instrument. These days, this is often done with the help of artificial tuners that produce the right note, so you can match your strings to the notes they’re supposed to be set to (I can think of MANY funny Boiling Isles equivalents to this, including someone just screaming it out). But a professional musician like Raine probably also has a pretty decent ear for the proper notes and some ability to match them even without prompting. Often then you’ll play a couple strings at the same time, too, to listen to the harmonics and make sure they sound right together. Tuning is done, like I mentioned earlier, mostly with the fine-tuning pegs, although if an instrument has just been restrung, has experienced significant changes in temperature or humidity, or has been knocked around some, the big tuning pegs at the top may need to be used.

If a strings player is using their bow, it’s fairly safe to describe them as bowing. When bowing, they are probably playing just one note at a time, although it is possible to play a couple notes on adjacent strings (doing this is called playing double stops) at once. Bowing is actually really significant to playing -- whether you’re moving your bow up and down, or playing a phrase of a couple notes before switching (called a slur -- I know, I know) vs switching the direction of your bow on every note can significantly change the sound and character of a piece. Not the actual notes, but the vibes, if you will. Musicians actually use different symbols to mark slurs, up-bows, and down-bows in their sheet music because of this. Other symbols mark different kinds of bowings -- for example, a dot above or below a note means you play it really quick and short, giving it a more abrupt sound, called staccato. A line over a bunch of notes means you play the notes smoothly and elegantly without breaks, or legato.

There are other things you can do to change the character of a note, too. Pressing harder or softer changes the volume of the note (called its dynamics). Wiggling your finger extremely fast on a string as you play a note gives it a beautiful rich, layered sound, called vibrato. A note being marked with three thick lines means you do a similar wiggling/trembling movement with your bow hand instead, to produce an effect called a tremolo. Touching a string extremely lightly instead of pressing down all the way can produce unusually high-pitched, eerie-sounding notes called harmonics. And placing a little rubber mute on the bridge of the instrument can give your playing a dampened, muffled sound.

You can even play without your bow -- plucking the notes out with the fingers of your bow hand when instructed to play pizzicato (although you also keep holding your bow, since most pieces that have you do this switch between bowing and plucking) -- or, hilariously enough, with the back of your bow, in a technique called col legno, bouncing it on the back of the strings to produce a really weird sound that’s honestly hard to describe. I will instead link to my favorite piece that features it, Gustav Holt’s “Mars, The Bringer of War” -- that ominous sound at the beginning that sounds like drums, or marching footsteps? That’s all the strings players in the orchestra bouncing the backs of their bows on their strings!

Hopefully that gives you a place to start when thinking about describing strings playing! There are a lot of technical musical terms that you could employ in your writing, but honestly, having just a couple in your writer’s toolbox, maybe pairing it with some of the other info found here, and watching a video or two of someone playing to get a good picture in your mind will go a long way.

To finish, I’ve pulled a couple quotes from a fic of my own (called “What Resembles the Grave But Isn’t”) which features Raine giving a short music lesson that might give you some idea of how to put all this information together. If you’ve read through even a couple chunks of this post, there are probably more than a few things that will jump out at you here. Hopefully it can offer you some parting ideas about how you might put all this information together in your own stories!

Raine lifted their viola to their shoulder and began playing a few long, open notes, occasionally frowning slightly and adjusting one of the pegs near the bridge of the instrument.

“Sorry,” they apologized. “Just want to make sure everything is in tune.”

Hunter shrugged and started picking at his hands slightly, too uncomfortable in his own skin at the moment to really care about the hold-up. Raine’s tuning shifted to testing dual strings, in harmony, and eventually they seemed satisfied.

“I’m going to play a scale,” they said. “Just a simple one. That’s eight notes, in a pattern you probably recognize – in this case, D-E-F#-G-A-B-C#-D.”

Stiffening their posture, Raine closed their eyes and set their bow to the viola once more. Sure enough, the simple pattern the other witch bowed out on their instrument did sound kind of familiar, even without Hunter having much of an ear for music. Natural. Like all the notes fit together the way they were supposed to.

And, a tiny bit later:

Shakily, he put the bow to the string, trying to imitate the way Raine always held the instrument. When he moved it experimentally, there was barely any sound.

“You have to press on the bow a little more,” they explained. “Don’t worry, I know you’ll be careful with it. Put some force behind the strokes.”

Frowning, Hunter tried again. A clearer – but much scratchier than any of Raine’s playing – note rang out. Hopping up and down at his side, his palisman cheerfully sang the same note.

Sing! Sing together! the bird chirped.

“There you go!” Raine encouraged. “Now try the others. Just a simple scale.”

Hunter took a deep breath, then tried playing the same eight notes Raine had. He’d watched their hands enough to know that they’d switched to another string halfway through, but other than that he had no clue where his fingers were supposed to go. The first note, without any of them pressed to the fingerboard, came out okay enough. Just scratchy. But the rest were a disaster. He wasn’t even sure if he’d even switched strings at the right point.

“Happy?” he snapped at them, cheeks flushing with embarrassment. He shoved the bow and instrument back their direction.

If you’ve enjoyed this post and have any other questions, I would love to hear from you, and would love to talk more about music, strings, violas in particular, and of course, Raine. Happy fic and meta writing, and thank you for letting me ramble on like this on a topic I’m so passionate about!