#choral scholars impress me

[markrothkono61]

Why in the world is a mini choir practice taking place in my neighbour’s room? I don’t mind it when my neighbour (pay attention to the singular), sometimes practices. However, as I am writing this there are at least six people belting songs in booming baritone voices. I really like our choir, they are all marvelously talented don’t get me wrong. But I am also trying to write an essay and apply to be in the crew of a theatrical production, and I simply cannot do that if the walls are shaking with ‘Hark! The Herald Angels Sing’.

[scobbe]

What happened Sunday, I want to mention it because I don’t know, it was like one of those crisis situations that reminds you how you’ve felt your whole life. Like it was intensely “triggering” in a really awful way, and hence is forcing me to try to approach this whole situation in a way that isn’t going to grind me down, and maybe it will actually get me over a lifetime of stuff. If I can do it.

But what happened was we were hanging out in the priest’s office after our class on Sunday, I was sitting on the old couch with the not-straight woman on my left and my mother on my right. To my mother’s right, our priest was in her usual chair, very tired but still happily chatting away, as she tends to do after class. My mom was really enjoying being out and socializing and was very perky and positive, almost to an irritating extent. And on the other side of me the not-straight woman kept barking out support for just about everything our priest said, and the words ‘sycophant’ and ‘toady’ kept going through my mind, because she gets like that around our priest, like she’s got a corner on everything the church has ever done in the past six years. 

In the meantime, I’d developed the sort of migraine that makes you kind of nauseous, and I was hungry and thirsty to begin with, and losing all ability to verbalize anything much myself. I was in pain but my mother was really enjoying herself and I do love being in our priest’s company, even if I was feeling lousy. But the not-straight woman was really getting on my nerves.

Into this scene the organist enters, like a furtive opossum at the back of the room. It took a good minute for the priest to cajole her into joining us, after which she settled into a chair to the left of the straight woman, like some kind of European music scholar with her glasses and her waistcoat, rattling off German titles to organ chorales and talking about the composer’s love for the newborn Christ.

So they are all talking. And I’m nearly catatonic in my discomfort and pain, trying to keep my eyes open and follow the conversation. And the organist would just land her attention on me while she was talking, and I could hold it, I could bear it, but then my mother or the straight woman would go on about something and I would feel like two waves just crashed over me from either side and threw me into the bottom of the ocean. I’m sitting there in triangulation with these two older lesbians I love and admire so so so much, and I want to be present for them so so much, but with the headache and the discomfort the two not-gay women on either side of me kept drowning me and drowning me and drowning me.

There is nothing that could have made me leave that room with the organist and the priest and their old beautiful friendship. But I just felt so buried, so useless, so nondescript, so unimportant, so impercievable as I have ever been seated amid all the more pretty or charasmatic or louder or more relatable women like my mother and the non-straight woman. It’s like almost 6 months at this place with these people and I felt like I had gotten nowhere, that I was just a smear of a shadow between two brighter lights, there on the couch in that room.

It was utter agony. Like I’m not trying to impress anybody; I don’t want any prizes or stickers or special attention. I just want to somehow define myself so that I’m at very least visible as who I really am. Define myself the way they have defined themselves, in playing the organ slow and elegant instead of loud and fast, and in being conscious of every word spoken and even more conscious of those that shouldn’t be said. Furtive opossum music scholar and my priest who is like a mug of hot chocolate... And what am I, O Lord, what am I?

[kmkzchckn]

Chicken Scratch: NPC Idea

So it occurred to me the other day that I have lots of great NPC ideas for various systems.... and sometimes just an NPC idea with no system in mind, so I am going to do a little run of chicken scratches with NPCs in them for everyone to steal, improve, and use.

First up is my idea for an evangelist.

This guy drops into just about any DnD setting pretty well, even any edition of DND, though for today’s purposes ill be using 5th edition.

Race, human makes the most sense starting out, though you could easily make them of any race if there would be religious evangelists of that races usual faith. And instead of cleric, which is the obvious choice, we go with bard.

Stat wise I feel the priority for this character should be: CH>CN=WI>IN=DX>ST

This affords us a charismatic character who also has back uop stats similar to his clerical brethren, with a focus away from direct physical combat.

Background: I’d say go with the scholar or clergy background, representing that this person is truly a member of their faith, and knows their role inside of it. The idea is for them to be a vocal mouthpiece for the tenants of their faith guiding the flock from the front lines, pushing the borders of their faiths reach with their guiding actions, impressive speeches, and rousing chorals.

Bardic College: Lore works if you want a more knowledgeable evangelist, and use their expanded spell casting to pick up clerical spells, but I also think the college of Glamour lends itself to the ideal of being an inspiring leader guiding others to bold action in the name of your faith.

Feats: Assuming you go human and have a feat at first level, I would say that taking magic initiate to pic up some cleric cantrips is a good call, but you could also go for observant or skilled to better round out the npc. Resilient is also a good call as it would increase the evangelists survivability when facing danger sin the name of his faith.

All in all the general idea for this character is to be a charismatic proponent of what ever chosen faith you slot them into. Emphasize their leadership role, have them give public speeches to inspire the masses. I envision this individual as a true believer, but it is also possible to make them a charlatan outright, and have them spreading their religion more like a snake oil salesman at which point the college of whispers might be a better fit for the npc overall. 

Future npc ideas will be better formatted, as I wrote this one out on the fly, and didn’t pre-write before typing, but the general idea is here and any one could take it and use it in a future session or campaign. Happy gaming everyone!

[talhaghafoor2019-blog]

Learning Music Theory – Rocking Horse Music

A common argument that springs up once in a while (more common in the guitar community), is whether knowing music theory is beneficial or a stumbling block to one’s creativity. On one hand, having theory knowledge equips the musician to understand and breakdown what is happening in the song. On the other hand, some say the “rules”of theory imposes limits on a person’s creativity. I’m assuming that most people reading this would be keyboardists with some classical music background, so this is probably a moot point. But I feel this is still worth discussing to better understand the views of the other musicians in our band. 😉

The biggest example is the “rules of harmony”. People who have seriously studied music theory would have heard of this. While studying the rules of harmony, we are taught to follow the rules and write a 4-part harmony to accompany a melody. The first impression most people get is that harmony should not have rules as it limits creativity. But try to look at it from another angle. The rules of harmony were created by music scholars for the purpose of stylistic analysis and interpretation. They are followed if you want your music to sound like a baroque chorale. From an artistic point of view, it’s good to know, but not necessary to follow. For me, I tend to take a middle ground. The theory is good for you to know what is going on, but don’t let that stop you from experimenting with new sounds and styles.

On a more practical note, music theory allows you to solve problems during rehearsals. If you need a chord to link two different songs in different keys, you can simply use the dominant chord in the new key to link into that song. Or if a key is too high for a singer, you can transpose the song to a more singable key on the spot.

These are just some of the problems with easy fixes if you are equipped with theory knowledge. If you have any other ideas on the kinds of problems theory knowledge can help with, feel free to add your comments below.