#playing an instrument is so different from composition ..

[snailmakesgames]

No music yet, but I've got a proper title screen!!

I think this is starting to heavily lean more towards GBC than NES but... I really love it so I may end up keeping it anyway LMAO

I think the main thing that might make it not NES-faithful is the parallax between the game logo and the background .. Colors should be okay going by the palette per 8x8 grid rule, but it definitely would not be able to move like that unless the entire thing was a huge sprite. Oh well.

[summerscaries]

OK a bit of a different take on the "I'm piano and you're forte. You're allegro, I'm andante. We're boléro, prostitué." It's obviously a big metaphor and here's what I think is going on (I'm not a musician I'm so sorry if these terms are bullshit):

Piano and Forte: Piano is soft, forte is loud. These terms refer to styles of playing but also make up the word for the instrument itself, pianoforte, two sides of the same coin-both needed to be able to play a song.

Allegro and Andante: Andante refers to a tempo of a walking pace 76–108 bpm, Allegro is faster 120–168 bpm "quick" and "bright." I think this is less about how these tempos symbolize Louis and Lestat and more about how they're drastically different and don't seem to match up. Specifically to go into the following line talking about...

Boléro: With the accented e, boléro seems to be specifically referring to the orchestral piece by Maurice Ravel from 1928. I think it's likely this is the reference due to the date falling within Loustat's marriage and, the main thing, the two opposing tempos of the piece! The backing track is faster than the main melody, calling back to that allegro and andante line. This piece is also widely considered to be Ravel's masterwork and is a very well-known composition.

Prostitué: Lestat thinks that they're opposites not just in temperament but also in bed, and the matching of their oppositions works just as well sexually as it does in life.

The whole verse is basically saying, "We're different and that should mean we clash, but take a look at this example of how we work so well! We're opposites but we slot together to make a perfect whole."

[me-sploh-rada-imas]

so i wrote down everything kris said in the spoken part of the q&a bit of the discord live thing and shared it on the joblr discord, but @leopardom suggested i collate it all here as well!

will there be an mv?

yes, definitely, cannot say exactly when. but we have a very good idea for it and i can't say anything right now. a lot of our balkan fans will be very excited about it. we might drop it after the song gets an x amount of streams. maybe 500,000 or something like that. i am not the person who decides.

how long did it take you to record?

complex question. in hamburg we spent 3-4 days on it and recorded 70%. mostly everything except the vocals and some synths. the rest was around a month in ljubljana to finish it, then we mixed it for 2-3 weeks. (mod jokes about sharing there were eight versions in the openstage, kris is confused) more of trying to catch a feeling than a specific sound, that's why. it's hard to communicate that with a mixing engineer. usually it takes about that many versions before we're satisfied.

what was the thought process behind the cover art?

the photo was taken by mark pirc. the artwork seems random at this moment, i can't say much, but it will make a lot of sense.

why did you decide to remove the intro?

i've seen some people asking about this. there's the two-sided nature of playing music before it's officially released. we weren't satisfied with it on tour but it was presentable to be played live. when we got to hamburg we decided we didn't like the arrangement anymore, it wasn't in line with the vibe and spirit of the composition of the song. we toned it down and made it more sensitive because of the lyrics and mood of the song.

bojan said in warsaw that final version would have more instruments (confusion by kris that he was talking about bluza?)

i have no idea what he said, maybe he was referencing the fact that we played the pijano version of the song. but there are like at least maybe 3 or 4 layers of synthesisers and pianos so maybe he was thinking of that. all of those are credited to our "piano playing god jan". i did the guitars apart from the acoustic which is bojan's doing. nace and jure did their parts on drums and bass. the future live performances will be the new version.

who were your biggest influences getting to the final mixed version?

good question. i don't think we had one specific song in mind. we felt like it's a ex-yugoslavian evergreenish kind of song which we grew up listening to, we just wanted to keep that vibe while transitioning from an acoustic song to a complete arrangement. i think we succeeded. i know during the recording process žare said he would liken this song to a song by simple minds or talking heads or something like that, i'd have to look it up. also it kind of gives me the same feeling as when listening to a song by plavi orkestar called od rođendana do rođendana.

we saw bojan post a photo [of a notebook page] with stolica bluza while in london, what was the development process from that?

the first memory i have of the song is bojan coming into the living room and having the lyrics of the first verse and chorus already written, trying to figure out the chords. it was a well-defined song when i first heard it, i can't speak to his initial perception of the song, it came out of him very quickly, which is always a good sign. i think we all very quickly understood what the assignment was with this song so to speak. often we get a song where we want to arrange it and do it but have a lot of figuring out to do, but this song was very clear cut. it fell into place very quickly by our standards.

playing the unfinished song live was an experiment, did you like the process?

it's not the first time we've done it but it's the first time in a long time we've played unreleased songs. we did it before the first album, which was a whole different experience. it's been interesting to see it play out in this international surrounding. i think it did help, especially for šta bih ja, which immediately gained a very positive reception from the crowd and gave us a lot of confidence and direction. we knew we didn't have to change much for šta bih ja, while with bluza we kind of knew this wasn't really what we wanted from the song.

can we expect more songs similar to bluza?

uhhh... i'm sick if you can hear it. i think there will be like one more song comparable to bluza, also in serbian, a bit more slow paced, but the rest won't be that similar. there's only a limited amount of space for that type of song, we don't want to repeat ourselves. hopefully the album will sound like a unified body of work but there's still a lot of variation in it to satisfy our desire for, i don't know, experimenting with new sounds and song types and concepts.

[glass--beach]

(Forever????????) has such a hold on me. How did it come to be?

started when i stumbled upon this video on youtube

it’s a very pretty song but the cloyingly sweet americana of it all made it ripe for ironic decontextualization. i took a little loop of the song and used it as an outro for bedroom community, overlaid with an audio recording of my therapist from college leading me through hypnosis to attempt to calm me while i was suffering a very intense manic episode. (this man might have been a bit of a quack but i have yet to meet a therapist who is not on SOME kind of bullshit). it’s meant as a tragic ending to bedroom community, the return to status quo, stepping over the bodybags and going back to regular american suburban life. it’s the moment of panic that god it really is gonna be like this forever and then it’s the repression. the moment of submission to the cissexist culture…

now of course i didn’t even end up using that version, i was a little wary of both any copyright issues that might come from so prominently featuring a well known sample and also sharing what was meant to be a very private audio recording and so i ended up taking the chord progression & melody of the song and using it as a jumping off point for what was basically a new composition. (the old version is in the demos that we released though). the final one is just two guitars playing slightly different arpeggios of the song’s chords and some synths doing the melody. to me i think much of the intended meaning still comes through but being an instrumental with its reference points pretty obfuscated i think most just take it as a very pretty but melancholy song.

i’m fascinated by the near universal nostalgic feeling people seem to get from it. our youtube upload and many unofficial ones are loaded with comments of people mourning deceased loved ones or old relationships. i get it and find that all very sweet and beautiful but i can’t help but feel conflicted as someone who, despite often feeling obsessed with the past as much as anyone, would consider myself politically anti-nostalgia. bedroom community makes that a little more overt with its criticism of the anachronistic suburban “middle class” order being upheld through implicit (sometimes explicit) violence - the “son of a soldier…” verse especially. forever is in conversation with the same idea but has ironically been so decontextualized as to now seemingly take on the meaning of the original song i had sampled. i think its success on streaming through sleep/study playlists contributed to my complete rejection of “vibe” based playlists & passive music listening in general that led to the intentionally obtuse aesthetic & writing of plastic death.

umm anyway i’m glad you like the song!! i like it a lot too. it was one of those rare instances in music making where i truly felt i was channeling the divine. i didn’t struggle with it at all, it’s just, one day it wasn’t and the next day it was. i’ve not really talked about it at length much and last time i did i don’t think i could properly get across what it meant to me or why i did it the way i did. i understand my then 23 year old self more than ever now though lol

[lil-tachyon]

For the last couple weeks I've been drawing logos / designs for local-ish (mostly NJ, some PA and NY) bands as warmups in the morning. Here's what I've come up with! Massive post below the break explaining each logo + where to find each band and listen to their music.

Teenage Halloween- a staple of New Jersey basements for probably about a decade now and finally getting wider recognition in the last couple years. Pop punk / power pop with a killer horn section. First time I saw them was in New Brunswick playing with Walter Etc. and Blowout. They played a killer cover "Build Me Up Buttercup" and my wife got a black eye in the pit. Recommended tracks: "Brain Song," "666," "Clarity." Their first EP is on a separate bandcamp page btw, check it out here it's great.

Sweet Pill - They will call themselves a Philly band but in my heart they'll always be from Glassboro. Definitely one of the more recognizable names on this list. Emo revival - early stuff is more twinkly, more recent stuff is heavier. All of it's great. Recommended tracks "Nephew," "High Hopes."

Shark Club - Central Jersey's finest. I'm very biased because I actually know these dudes and they did the music for my wedding. Some of the best pop punk you'll hear and the nicest people you'll meet. Recommended tracks: "Game Theory," "Bill Murray," "Heavens to Betsy."

Rest Ashore - My favorite band for the last (oh God I'm old now) eight years. From gut-wrenching emo ballads to virtuoso math-rock instrumentals they do it all. One time I got to sing vocals on "Lucy's Theme" at a house show- thank you Erica! Recommended tracks: "Hjarta," "Chinese Opera," "Devotion," "Soyuz Sweetheart." Too many bangers to name honestly, just deep dive their discography.

Morus Alba - First band I ever went to see at a house show and still one of my absolute favorites. Their music feels like the bridge between the best pitchfork, /mu/ alt rock bands and high energy basement emo. I mean that as a compliment and I hope it comes off as one lol. I should note that since 2019 Morus Alba has morphed from a band into an experimental hip-hop project so later releases sound radically different and basically disconnected from the earlier stuff. Also my favorite release from them, Live at Isabelle's, has been scrubbed from the internet but if you'd like the files just email me. Recommended tracks: "Skyscraper," "Human Resources," "The Goodnight Waltz."

Have a Good Season - another Jersey mainstay that's still going strong. Emo revival in their earlier releases, now with more 70s power pop influences in their newer stuff. See them live, they put on a fantastic show and usually play some great covers in addition to their original music. HaGS guys if you're reading this, please put your version of "Since You've Been Gone" online, I'm begging you. Recommended tracks: "Joseph / Shel Silverstein," (you have to listen to them together for the drop, so good) , "Gum, "Gleaux / Scab." Also, frontman Nic Palermo interviewed me once.

Elephant Jake - If you see any of these bands live make it EJ, they put on such a damn good show. Electrifying indie punk from the Empire State. Recommended tracks: "F.D.C." "Sarah Moyer," "Goodness to Honest," and of course you gotta learn "Sebastien Bauer" for the singalongs.

Blind Lion - Sadly one of the greats that we lost along the way. Defunct since about 2017. I only got to see them once but it was a great performance. Alongside their own stuff they played some killer covers of "Bad Moon Rising" and "Moonage Daydream." I had trouble doing a logo design for them because I actually really like the composition, if not the "Ed Hardy-ness," of their existing logo so what you see here are two separate attempts, neither of which feels entirely satisfying to me. Frontperson Larry Flately currently plays in Nematode and also handled production of Bradley Gardens joke hiphop group The Breakfast Boiz under the moniker "DJ Ova EZ." Recommended tracks: "Brumous," "Dinner."

Fighting Seasons - A band that I sadly found out about too late (via a sticker under the bridge in my town which has since been painted over). 2010s pop punk that packs a helluva punch, especially considering that I'm pretty sure the members were high schoolers for most of the band's existence. I think some members may have gone on to form Sawce (FFO Chon, Polyphia, that type of music) but I can't remember where I read/heard that so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Recommended tracks: "Fighting Seasons," "Oil on Canvas"

Milkmen- Another fallen giant, officially disbanded in 2019. Like Morus Alba, they played the very first house show I attended and their few releases remain on constant rotation in my home. Used to put on a great show and were one of the bands I always thought would make it big until suddenly they weren't around anymore. Frontman Ben Thieberger contributed guitar and vocals to Covid quarantine project Kin if you're looking for a bit of an extra fix but beyond that I don't know what these guys are up to these days, sadly. Recommended tracks: "Ramus," "Johnny Dangerously," "how sieves catch breeze," "K.O.T.H."

Stand and Wave - New York (now Philly) pop punkers delivering instant dopamine hits with every track. Another great live act, see them with EJ if you can! They often play shows together. Recommended tracks: "Convos," "Mrs. Dash," "Splashton Kutcher," "Michael Collins."

My Chemical Romance - You know who they are. While I was drawing all these other logos I ran a poll on Patreon to decide which famous New Jersey band should also be graced with a drawing from me. MCR won the poll by a hefty margin so unfortunately you won't get to see me do an illegible black metal take on Hoboken's Yo La Tengo. I ended up doing two versions: the one with the halo is the first, the one with the bats was the second. I tried to do something kind of thin and elegant with the first one and I don't think it's terrible but I also wasn't quite satisfied with it. For the 2nd attempt I tried to lean into the kind of pulpy, almost horror punk aesthetic of early MCR and I think that one looks better even if it's less original.

Anyway if you took the time to read through all this, thank you very much! And please support these bands! Also If any of the links aren't working please let me know.

-Logan

[remembrancer-of-heresy]

You know, I love power imbalances. It’s always interesting to write about serfs. But since I value art (Serve the 3rd Legion), I prefer the remembrancers. And I decided to think about which particular remembrancers would be most interesting to write about relationships with the primarchs. Here is the list:

Documentarist (Journalist): Horus Lupercal, Roboute Guilliman.

For the first, it is important to feel his importance and self-centeredness. Write down his story as vividly as possible so that everyone understands how wonderful he is and how hard he tries. How much people should appreciate him and respect the title of Warmaster. Well, over time, you will truly become a personal documentarist when he decides to reveal to you the personal aspects of his life. So this time you have appreciate how wonderful he is.

The second needs a documentarist to record the history of the Imperium. He respects your order. And your personality. Because you are not a sycophant and write everything as it is. In 40k he needs a documentarist so that everyone will start seeing him again as a man and not a god. Alas, you will have to write down even the strangest things, such as “In such year, Guilliman could not lift a piece of paper because his armor was in the way. He joked. Cato didn’t laugh.”

Imagist: Alpharius/Omegon, Corvus Corax, Lion El'Jonson.

Simple and functional. You stay out of the way and photograph important events that can be studied later. And considering your profession, you have quite a high level of insight. And this attracts such hidden and suspicious individuals as these primarchs.

Historiographer (Historian): Magnus the Red, Jaghatai Khan, Leman Russ

The thirst for knowledge and the desire to understand the past will definitely bring you and Magnus together. You will literally be on the same page, discussing many events from different angles.

Well, given the fact that you are a historian, everything is interesting to you. Including a foreign culture that you respect and try to understand. At this moment, Jaghatai Khan is already taking you away on a bike.

And since you know that history can write one-sided personalities, you understand that something deep may be hiding behind the barbarian. You know it's a façade. At this moment, Leman is already throwing you over his shoulder.

Musician: Angron, Mortarion, Konrad Curze.

The way your fingers gently touch the instrument, the compositions you create. But the most important thing is your voice. Reminiscent of the rustling of leaves or the murmur of a river. Feels like fog. The best reassurance for unstable primarchs like these trio.

Painter: Fulgrim, Sanguinius.

These art lovers will love all the remembrancers. But I am sure that they will give preference to painters. Because they paint the real world as they see it. Because they would like to see the world like that and so on. A real space for imagination that knocks primarchs off their feet. And if, in addition to your talent, you also have your own different opinion about art (+ perfection), then at that very second you will have a very artistic admirers.

Sculptor: Perturabo, Dorn, Ferrus Manus.

Well, there’s no need to rant too much here. The first two primarchs regularly play with large-sized Lego. So it will be much easier for them to communicate with a sculptor who will understand them at least a little. But yes, praise from them is also like a stone. Ferrus Manus loves art, but not to the same extent as Fulgrim. A sculptor would be much more suited to Manus's aesthetic views than a painter or musician.

Wordsmith (author): Lorgar Aurelian.

Lorgar is a preacher, so he will be fascinated by a remembrancer with oratory skills. Or more precisely, someone who can turn words into something beautiful. What thousands of people will re-read or listen to.

Vulkan…no idea really. But let's say Wordsmith, because the word has “smith” :)

[thumpypuppy]

hey can you talk about I WON’T LET YOU GO HOME from ISAT and how you went about making it? It is so good. me and friends really like it. thank you in advance if so! the game is so good and your soundtrack has played a key role in making it literally life changing.

Lindar here!

Thank you SO MUCH for the kind words.

Firstly, I have to give credit to InsertDisc5 who gave incredible direction and has been to date one of the best people I've worked with.

So let's start from the beginning: We establish a specific instrumental tone with the pseudo-chiptune synth we've heard a lot, especially in the title theme. This was created using NI Massive, which was one of the most heavily used synths in the OST. We're doing kind of a basic heavy metal riff here, but making it chiptune-y.

Next we fade in for the first and only time in the soundtrack a SNES strings pad to fill out the chord structure and provide additional melodic content.

Then of course for our more intense moments we roll out Toontrack Superior Drummer 2 + Metal Foundry, featuring the amazing drumming styles of the one and only Sandra Baker. I think she went absolutely ham to contrast with how simple the first section is.

So next we hit our stride and establish what the piece is really saying. The drums simplify a bit to leave room for the melody, and then we hit a "drop" of sorts into the next section.

Now we're rocking to a reprise of the title theme in a more major tone, but it's feeling less hopeful and more like a longing attachment to memories of the past.

In the second half of the title theme we run a reprise of the death/loss theme as a counter-melody while also introducing a new little motif stab underneath. We hear it in the strings as sort of the response to a call that hasn't actually been made, and then it's repeated in the bass, and finally the whole band states it all at once as we move into the next section.

Again we're stating the title theme, but this time in a different mode with a gliding, reverby, monophonic lead that feels like it's floating. Each phrase keeps rising in intensity, desperately reaching for that memory.

Finally after all of that wildly changing energy and anxiety ramping up we hit a breakdown featuring probably some of the best orchestral composition I've managed thus far (not to toot my own horn). I was really shooting for "pained" as the sound of this section. Half-time feel drums where we're so incredibly out of energy, but no! The drums pick up into double-time as we desperately reach out for comfort!

I gotta say Sandra went absolutely wild with the blastbeat snare while still doing a half-time feel. Like it feels like there's so much tension even while we're winding down to the end of the piece, floating in a place where we keep moving towards hope but always resolving on the minor. We have a lot of movement here through different keys and modes that continually give us a feeling of moving forward while always returning to the feeling of loss.

Finally, for the album version, we cap the ending with a slow restatement of the beginning of the piece for piano and violin (I don't remember the specific piano I used here but it wasn't the Spitfire Labs muted piano for once, and the violin is from Spitfire's Sacconi Quartet).

As far as an in-depth musical analysis goes, I'd have to open the session again to get really specific with what I did on a theory level because it's been like a year or more since I wrote it, and my computer's primary hard drive died (luckily I have all my sessions on a different drive), so I'm spending the weekend reinstalling everything.

I think the crux of this piece in particular is that, while there is new melodic content that explains the emotional context of the scene, we still rely on the recontextualization of leitmotifs for added effect. I'm not sure if it makes me lazy or a genius, but it's something I leaned into heavily.

It's like…

Step 1: Someone is crying. Their friend tries to cheer them up. Play something kinda sad and a little bittersweet.

Step 2: Play that same melody in a different situation but slightly different to be totally appropriate while also calling back to the original event.

Step 3: Make it into a major-key power metal song because you're winning with the power of your friends caring about your feelings.

Humans are pattern-recognition machines. It works with motifs, it works with specific instrumentation, it works with pretty much anything. Make an aesthetic choice about your instrumentation, utilize it, and punch people in the feels.

As soon as the studio is back up and running I'll see if I can't add on to this with an actual theory analysis, and meanwhile I'm gearing up to start doing classes on mixing and sound design, so look out for that as well!

Thank you again for your ask!

[canmom]

Music Theory Notes (for science bitches) 1: chords & such

This is one of these series where I use my blog as a kind of study blog type thing. If you're knowledgeable about music theory, it will be very basic. But that's kind of the problem, I've really struggled to absorb those basics!

When I was a teenager I learned to play violin and played in orchestras. I could read music, and play decently enough, but I didn't really understand music. I just read what was on the page, and played the scales I had to play for exams.

Lately I've been trying to learn music again. This time my instruments are zhonghu, voice, and DAWs. At some point I might get my violin back too. But really, I'm a total beginner again, and this time I want to do it properly.

For a long time when I tried to learn about music I would get overwhelmed with terminology and jargon and conventions. I might watch videos on composition and they'd be interesting but a lot of it would just fly over my head, I'd just have to nod along because I had no idea what all the different types of chord and such were. I tried to learn from sites like musictheory.net, but I found it hard to figure out the logical structure to fit it all into.

I feel like I'm finally making a bit of headway, so it's time to take some notes. The idea here is not just to answer the what, but also to give some sense of why, a motivation. So in a sense this is a first attempt at writing the introduction to music theory I wish I'd had. This is going to assume you know a little bit about physics, but basically nothing about music.

What is music? From first principles.

This is impossible to answer in full generality, especially since as certain people would be quick to remind me, there's a whole corner of avant-garde composers who will cook up counterexamples to whatever claim you make. So let's narrow our focus: I'm talking about the 'most common' type of music in the society I inhabit, which is called 'tonal music'. (However some observations may be relevant to other types of music such as noise or purely rhythmic music.)

Music is generally an art form involving arranging sound waves in time into patterns (in the sense that illustration is about creating patterns on a 2D surface with light, animation is arranging illustrations in time, etc.).

Physically, sound is a pressure wave propagating through a medium, primarily air. As sound waves propagate, they will reflect off surfaces and go into superposition, and depending on the materials around, certain frequencies might be attenuated or amplified. So the way sound waves propagate in a space is very complicated!

But in general we've found we can pretty decently approximate the experience of listening to something using one or two 'audio tracks', which are played back at just one or two points. So for the sake of making headway, we will make an approximation: rather than worry about the entire sound field, we're going to talk about a one-dimensional function of time, namely the pressure at the idealised audio source. This is what gets displayed inside an audio editor. For example, here's me playing the zhonghu, recorded on a mic, as seen inside Audacity.

A wrinkle that is not relevant for this discussion: The idealised 'pressure wave' is a continuous real function of the reals (time to pressure). By contrast, computer audio is quantised in both the pressure level and time, and this is used to reconstruct a continuous pressure wave by convolution at playback time. (Just like a pixel is not a little square, an audio sample is not a constant pressure!) But I'm going to talk about real numbers until quantisation becomes relevant.

When the human eye receives light, the cone cells in the eye respond to the frequencies of EM radiation, creating just three different neural signals, but with incredibly high sensitivity to direction. By contrast, when the human ear receives sound, it is directed into an organ called the cochlea which is kind of like a cone rolled up into a spiral...

Inside this organ, the sound wave moves around the spiral, which has a fascinatingly complex structure that means different frequencies of wave will excite tiny hairs at different points along the tube. In effect, the cochlea performs a short-time Fourier transform of the incoming sound wave. Information about the direction of the incoming wave is given by the way it reflects off the shape of the ear, the difference between ears, and the movement of our head.

So! In contrast to light, where the brain receives a huge amount of information about directions of incoming light but only limited information of the frequency spectrum, with sound we receive a huge amount of information about the frequency spectrum but only quite limited information about its direction.

Music thus generally involves creating patterns with vibration frequencies in the sound wave. More than this, it's also generally about creating repeating patterns on a longer timescale, which is known as rhythm. This has something to do with the way neurons respond to signals but that's something I'm not well-versed in, and in any case it is heavily culturally mediated.

All right, so, this is the medium we have to play with. When we analyse an audio signal that represents music, we chop it up into small windows, and use a Fourier transform to find out the 'frequencies that are present in the signal'.

Most musical instruments are designed to make sounds that are combinations of certain frequencies at integer ratios. For example here is a plot of the [discrete] Fourier transform of a note played on the zhonghu:

The intensity of the signal is written in decibels, so it's actually a logarithmic scale despite looking linear. The frequency of the wave is written in Hertz, and plotted logarithmically as well. A pure sine wave would look like a thin vertical line; a slightly wider spike means it's a combination of a bunch of sine waves of very close frequencies.

The signal consists of one strong peak at 397Hz and nearby frequencies, and a series of peaks at (roughly) integer multiples of this frequency. In this case the second and third peaks are measured at 786Hz, and 1176Hz. Exact integer ratios would give us 794Hz and 1191Hz, but because the first peak is quite wide we'd expect there to be some error.

Some terminology: The first peak is called the fundamental, and the remaining peaks are known as overtones. The frequency of the fundamental is what defines this signal as a particular musical note, and the intensities of the overtone and widths of the peaks define the quality of the note - the thing that makes a flute and a violin playing the same fundamental frequency sound different when we listen to them. If you played two different notes at the same time, you'd get the spectrums of both notes added together - each note has its own fundamental and overtones.

OK, so far that's just basic audio analysis, nothing is specific to music. To go further we need to start imposing some kind of logical structure on the sound, defining relationships between the different notes.

The twelve-tone music system

There are many ways to do this, but in the West, one specific system has evolved as a kind of 'common language' that the vast majority of music is written in. As a language, it gives names to the notes, and defines a space of emotional connotations. We unconsciously learn this language as we go through the process of socialisation, just as we learn to interpret pictures, watch films, etc.

The system I'm about to outline is known as 12-tone equal temperament or "12TET". It was first cooked up in the 16th century almost simultaneously in China and Europe, but it truly became the standard tuning in the West around the 18th century, distilled from a hodgepodge of musical systems in use previously. In the 20th century, classical composers became rather bored of it and started experimenting with other systems of tonality. Nevertheless, it's the system used for the vast majority of popular music, film and game soundtracks, etc.

Other systems exist, just as complex. Western music tends to create scales of seven notes in an octave, but there are variants that use other amounts, like 6. And for example classical Indian music uses its own variant of a seven-note scale; there are also nuances within Western music such as 'just intonation' which we'll discuss in a bit; really, everything in music is really fucking complicated!

I'll be primarily discussing 12TET because 1. it's hard enough to understand just one system and this one is the most accessible; 2. this has a very nice mathematical structure which tickles my autismbrain. However, along the way we'll visit some variants, such as 'Pythagorean intervals'.

The goal is to try and not just say 'this is what the notation means' but explain why we might construct music this way. Since a lot of musical stuff is kept around for historical reasons, that will require some detours into history.

Octaves

So, what's the big idea here? Well, let's start with the idea of an octave. If you have two notes, let's call then M and N, and the frequency of N is twice the frequency of M... well, to the human ear, they sound very very closely related. In fact N is the first overtone of M - if you play M on almost any instrument, you're also hearing N.

Harmony, which we'll talk about in a minute, is the idea that two notes sound especially pleasant together - but this goes even further. So in many many music systems around the world, these two notes with frequency ratio of 2 are actually identified - they are in some sense 'the same note', and they're given the same name. This also means that further powers of 2, of e.g. 4, 8, 16, and so on, are also 'the same note'. We call the relationship between M and N an octave - we say if two notes are 'an octave apart', one has twice the frequency of the other.

For example, a note whose fundamental frequency is 261.626Hz is known as 'C' in the convention of 'concert pitch'. This implies an infinite series of other Cs, but since the human ear has a limited range of frequencies, in practice you have Cs from 8.176Hz up through 16744.036. These are given a series of numbers by convention, so 261.626Hz is called C4, often 'middle C'. 523.251Hz is C5, 1046.502Hz is C6, and so on. However, a lot of the time it doesn't matter which C you're talking about, so you just say 'C'.

But the identification of "C" with 261.626Hz * 2^N is just a convention (known as 'concert pitch'). Nothing is stopping you tuning to any other frequency: to build up the rest of the structure you just need some note to start with, and the rest unfolds using ratios.

Harmony and intervals

Music is less about individual notes, and more about the relationship between notes - either notes played at the same time, or in succession.

Between any two notes we have something called an interval determined by the ratio of their fundamental frequencies. We've already seen one interval: the octave, which has ratio 2.

The next interval to bring up is the 'fifth'. There are a few different variants of this idea, but generally speaking if two notes have a ratio of 1.5, they sound really really nice together. Why is this called a 'fifth'? Historical reasons, there is no way to shake this terminology, we're stuck with it. Just bear with me here, it will become semi-clear in a minute.

In the same vein, other ratios of small integers tend to sound 'harmonious'. They're satisfying to hear together. Ratios of larger integers, by contrast, feel unsatisfying. But this creates an idea of 'tension' and 'resolution'. If you play two notes together that don't harmonise as nicely, you create a feeling of expectation and tension; when you you play some notes that harmonise really well, that 'resolves' the tension and creates a sense of relief.

Building a scale - just intonation

The exact 3:2 integer ratio used in two tuning systems called 'Pythagorean tuning' and 'just intonation'. Using these kinds of integer ratios, you can unfold out a whole series of other notes, and that's how the Europeans generally did things before 12TET came along. For example, in 'just intonation', you might start with some frequency, and then procede in the ratios 9/8, 5/4, 4/3, 3/2, 5/3, 15/8, and at last 2 (the octave). These would be given a series of letters, creating a 'scale'.

What is a scale? A scale is something like the 'colour palette' for a piece of music. It's a set of notes you use. You might use notes from outside the scale but only very occasionally. Different scales are associated with different feelings - for example, the 'major scale' generally feels happy and triumphant, while a 'minor scale' tends to feel sad and forlorn. We'll talk a lot more about scales soon.

In the European musical tradition, a 'scale' consists of seven notes in each octave, so the notes are named by the first seven notes of the alphabet, i.e. A B C D E F G. A scale has a 'base note', and then you'd unfold the other frequencies using the ratios. An instrument such as a piano would be tuned to play a particular scale. The ratios above are one definition of a 'major scale', and starting with C as the base note, the resulting set of notes is called 'C Major'.

All these nice small-number ratios tend to sound really good together. But it becomes rather tricky if you want to play multiple scales on the same instrument. For example, say your piano is tuned in just intonation to C Major. This means, assuming you have a starting frequency we'll call C, you have the following notes available in a given octave:

C, D=(9/8)C, E=(5/4)C, F=(4/3)C, G=(3/2)C [the fifth!], A=(5/3)C, B=(15/8)C, and 2C [the start of the next octave].

Note: the interval we named the 'fifth' is the fifth note in this scale. It's actually the fifth note in the various minor scales too.

But now suppose you want to play with some different notes - let's say a scale we'll call 'A major', which has the same frequency ratios starting on the note we previously called A. Does our piano have the right keys to play this scale?

Well, the next note up from A would be (9/8)A, which would be (9/8)(5/3)C=(15/8)C - that's our B key, so far so good. Then (5/4)A=(5/4)(5/3)C=(25/12)C and... uh oh! We don't have a (25/12)C key, we have 2C, so if we start at A and go up two keys, we have a note that is slightly lower frequency than the one we're looking for.

What this means is that, depending on your tuning, you could only approximate the pretty integer ratios for any scale besides C major. (25/12) is pretty close to 2, so that might not seem so bad, but sometimes we'd land right in between two notes. We can approximate these notes by adding some more 'in between' piano keys. How should we work out what 'extra' keys to include? Well, there were multiple conventions, but we'll see there is some logic to it...

[You might ask, why are you spending so long on this historical system that is now considered obsolete? Well, intervals and their harmonious qualities are still really important in modern music, and it makes most sense to introduce them with the idea of 'small-integer ratios'.]

The semitone

We've seen if we build the 'major scale' using a bunch of 'nice' ratios, we have trouble playing other scales. The gap above may look rather haphazard and arbitrary, but hold on, we're working in exponential space here - shouldn't we be using a logarithmic scale? If I switch to a logarithmic x-axis, we suddenly get a rather appealing pattern...

All the gaps between successive notes are about the same size, except for the gap between E and F, and B and C, which are about half that size. If you try to work that out exactly, you run into the problems we saw above, where C to D is 9/8 or 1.125, but D to E is 10/9 or 1.11111... Even so, you can imagine how people who were playing around with sounds might notice, damn, these are nice even steps we have here. Though you might also notice places where, in this scheme, it's not completely even - for example G to A (ratio 10/9) is noticeably smaller than A to B (ratio 9/8).

We've obliquely approached the idea of dividing the octave up into 12 steps, where each step is about the size of the gap between E and F or B and C. We call each of these steps a 'semitone'. Two semitones make a 'whole tone'. We might fill in all the missing semitones in our scale here using whole-number ratios, which gives you the black keys on the piano. There are multiple schemes for doing this, and the ratios tend to get a bit uglier. In the system we've outlined so far, a 'semitone' is not a fixed ratio, even though it's always somewhere around 1.06.

The set of 12 semitones is called the 'chromatic scale'. It is something like the 'colour space' for Western music. When you compose a piece, you select some subset of the 12 semitones as your 'palette' - the 'scale of' a piece of music.

But we still have a problem here, which is the unevenness of the gaps we discussed above. This could be considered a feature, not a bug, since each scale would have its own 'character' - it's defined by a slightly different set of ratios. But it does add a lot of complication when moving between scales.

So let's say we take all this irregularity as a bug, and try to fix it. The solution is 'equal temperament', which is the idea that the semitone should always be the exact same ratio, allowing the instrument to play any scale you please without difficulty.

Posed like this, it's easy to work out what that ratio should be: if you want 12 equal steps to be an octave, each step must be the 12th root of 2. Which is an irrational number that is about 1.05946...

At this point you say, wait, Bryn, didn't you just start this all off by saying that the human ear likes to hear nice simple integer ratios of frequencies? And now you're telling me that we should actually use an irrational number, which can't be represented by any integer ratio? What gives? But it turns out the human ear isn't quite that picky. If you have a ratio of 7 semitones, or a ratio of 2^(7/12)=1.4983..., that's close enough to 1.5 to feel almost as good. And this brings a lot of huge advantages: you can easily move ('transpose') between different scales of the same type, and trust that all the relevant ratios will be the same.

Equal temperament was the eventual standard, but there was a gradual process of approaching it called stuff like 'well-tempered' or 'good temperament'. One of the major steps along the way was Bach's collection 'the well-tempered klavier', showing how a keyboard instrument with a suitable tuning could play music in every single established scale. Here's one of those pieces:

Although we're using these irrational numbers, inside the scale are certain intervals that are considered to have certain meanings - some that are 'consonant' and some that are 'dissonant'. We've already mentioned the 'fifth', which is the 'most consonant' ratio. The fifth consists of 7 semitones and it's roughly a 1.5 ratio in equal temperament. Its close cousin is the 'fourth', which consists of 5 semitones. Because it's so nice, the fifth is kind of 'neutral' - it's just there but it doesn't mean a lot on its own.

For the other important intervals we've got to introduce different types of scale.

The scale zoo

So, up above we introduced the 'major' scale. In semitones, the major scale is intervals of 2, 2, 1, 2, 2, 2, 1. This is also called a 'mode', specifically the 'Ionian mode'. There are seven different 'modes', representing different permutations of these intervals, which all have funky Greek names.

The major scale generally connotes "upbeat, happy, triumphant". There are 12 different major scales, taking the 12 different notes of the chromatic scale as the starting point for each one.

Next is the minor scale, which tends to feel more sad or mysterious. Actually there are a few different minor scales. The 'natural minor' goes 2, 1, 2, 2, 1, 2, 2. You might notice this is a cyclic permutation of the major scale! So in fact a natural minor scale is the same set of notes as a major scale. What makes it different?

Well, remember when we talked about tension and resolution? It's about how the notes are organised. Our starting note is the 'root' note of the scale, usually established early on in the piece of music - quite often the very first note of the piece. The way you move around that root note determines whether the piece 'feels' major or minor. So every major scale has a companion natural minor scale, and vice versa. The set of notes in a piece is enough to narrow it down to one minor and one major, but you have to look closer to figure out which one is most relevant.

The 'harmonic minor' is almost the same, but it raises the second-last note (the 7th) a semitone. So its semitone intervals are 2, 1, 2, 2, 1, 3, 1.

The 'melodic minor' raises both the 6th and 7th by one semitone, (edit: but usually only on the way up). So its semitone intervals are 2, 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 1. (edit: When you come back down you tend to use the natural minor.)

If you talk about a 'minor scale' unqualified, you mean the natural minor. It's also the 'Aeolian mode' in that system of funky Greek names I mentioned earlier.

So that leads to a set of 24 scales, a major and minor scale for every semitone. These are the most common scale types that almost all Western tonal music is written in.

But we ain't done. Because remember I said there were all those other "modes"? These are actually just cyclic permutations of the major scale. There's a really nerdy Youtube channel called '8-bit music theory' that has a bunch of videos analysing them in the context of videogame music which I'm going to watch at some point now I finally have enough background to understand wtf he's talking about.

And of top of that you have all sorts of other variants that come from shifting a note up or down a semitone.

The cast of intervals

OK, so we've established the idea of scales. Now let's talk intervals. As you might guess from the 'fifth', the intervals are named after their position in the scale.

Let me repeat the two most common scale modes, in terms of number of semitones relative to the root note:

position: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 major: 0, 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, 12 minor: 0, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 10, 12

So you can see the fourth and fifth are the same in both. But there's a difference in three places: the third, the sixth, and the seventh. In each case, the minor is down a semitone from the major.

The interval names are... not quite as simple as 'place in the scale', but that's mostly how it works. e.g. the 'major third' is four semitones and the 'minor third' is three.

The fourth and fifth, which are dual to each other (meaning going up a fifth takes you to the same note as going down a fourth, and vice versa) are called 'perfect'. The note right in between them, an interval of 6 semitones, is called the 'tritone'.

(You can also refer to these intervals as 'augmented' or 'diminished' versions of adjacent intervals. Just in case there wasn't enough terminology in the air. See the table for the names of every interval.)

So, with these names, what's the significance of each one? The thirds, sixths and sevenths are important, because they tell us whether we're in minor or major land when we're building chords. (More on that soon.)

The fifth and the octave are super consonant, as we've said. But the notes that are close to them, like the seventh, the second and even more so the tritone, are quite dissonant - they're near to a nice thing and ironically that leads to awkward ratios which feel uncomfy to our ears. So generally speaking, you use them to build tension and anticipation and set up for a resolution later. (Or don't, and deliberately leave them hanging.)

Of course all of these positions in the scale also have funky Latin names that describe their function.

There's a lot more complicated nuances that make the meaning of a particular interval very contextual, and I certainly couldn't claim to really understand in much depth, but that's basically what I understand about intervals so far.

Our goofy-ass musical notation system

So if semitones are the building block of everything, naturally the musical notation system we use in the modern 12TET era spaces everything out neatly in terms of semitones, right?

Right...?

Lmao no. Actually sheet music is written so that each row of the stave (or staff, the five lines you write notes on) represents a note of the C major scale. All the notes that aren't on the C major scale are represented with special symbols, namely ♯ (read 'sharp') which means 'go up a semitone', and ♭ (read 'flat') which means 'go down a semitone'. That means the same note can be notated in two different ways: A♯ and B♭ are the same note.

The above image shows the chromatic scale, notated in two different ways. Every step is exactly one semitone.

Since a given scale might end up using one of these 'in between' notes that has to be marked sharp or flat, and you don't want to do that for every single time that note appears. Luckily, it turns out that each major/minor scale pair ends up defining a unique set of notes to be adjusted up or down a semitone, called the 'key signature'. So you can write the key signature at the beginning of the piece, and it lasts until you change key signature. For example, the key of 'A♭ major' ends up having four sharps:

There is a formula you can use to work out the set of sharps or flats to write for a given key. (That's about the point I checked out on musictheory.net.)

There is some advantage to this system, which is that it very clearly tells you when the composer intends to shift into a different scale, and it saves space since with the usual scales there are no wasted lines. But it's also annoyingly arbitrary. You just have to remember that B to C is only a semitone, and the same for E to F.

What are those weird squiggly symbols? Those are 'clefs'. Each one assigns notes to specific lines. The first one 𝄞 is the 'treble clef', the second one 𝄢 is the 'bass clef'. Well, actually these are the 'G-clef' and the 'F-clef', and where they go on the stave determines note assignment, but thankfully this has been standardised and you will only ever see them in one place. The treble clef declares the lines to be E G B D F and the bass clef G B D F A.

There is also a rarer 'C-clef' which looks like 𝄡. This is usually used as the 'Alto clef' which means F A C E G.

This notation system seems needlessly convoluted, but we're rather stuck with it, because most of the music has been written in it already. It's not uncommon for people to come up with alternative notations, though, such as 'tabs' for a stringed instrument which indicate which position should be played on each string. Nowadays on computers, a lot of DAWs will instead use a 'piano roll' presentation which is organised by semitone.

And then there's chords.

Chords! And arpeggios!

A chord is when you play 3 or more notes at the same time.

Simple enough right? But if you wanna talk about it, you gotta have a way to give them names. And that's where things get fucking nuts.

But the basic chord type is a 'triad', consisting of three notes, separated by certain intervals. There are two standard types, which you basically assemble by taking every other note of a scale. In terms of semitones, these are:

Major triad: 0 - 4 - 7 Minor triad: 0 - 3 - 7

Then there's a bunch of variations, for example:

Augmented: 0 - 4 - 8 Diminished: 0 - 3 - 6 Suspended: 0 - 2 - 7 (sus2) or 0 - 5 - 7 (sus4) Dominant seventh: 0 - 4 - 7 - 10 Power: 0 - 7

There is a notation scheme for chords in pop, jazz, rock, etc., which starts with a root note and then adds a bunch of superscripts to tell you about any special features of a chord. So 'C' means the C Major triad (namely C,E,G) and 'Cm' or 'c' means the C Minor triad (namely C,E♭,G).

In musical composition, you usually tend to surround the melody (single voice) with a 'chord progression' that both harmonises and creates a sense of 'movement' from one chord to another. Some instruments like guitar and piano are really good at playing chords. On instruments that can't play chords, they can still play 'arpeggios', which is what happens if you take a chord and unroll it into a sequence of notes. Or you play in an ensemble and harmonise with the other players to create a chord together. Awww.

Given a scale, you can construct a series of seven triad chords, starting from each note of the scale. These are generally given scale-specific Roman numerals corresponding to the position in the scale, and they're used to analyse the progression of chords in a song. I pretty much learned about this today while writing this post, so I can't tell you much more than that.

Right now, that's about as far as I've gotten with chords. On a violin, you can play just two strings at the same time after all - I never had much need to learn about them so it remains a huge hole in my understanding of music. I can't recognise chords by ear at all. So I gotta learn more about them.

As much as I wrote this for my own benefit... if you found this post interesting, let me know. I might write more if people find this style of presentation appealing. ^^'

[soysaucepastry]

SKY: COTL THEME LYRICS TRANSLATION.

Introduction

Sky: Children of the Light, just like most games, has its very own theme melody. A tune that is heard throughout the game in various events.

For those who aren't familiar with the theme, you may have heard it in the opening of Isle of Dawn or the Orbit scene after completing Eye of Eden.

(Search "Flight" on Vincent Diamente's music compositions, and you may recognise it!)

TGC collabed with famous singer Aurora. If you didn't know, Aurora has been the main vocals for the theme song. Besides the instrumental parts, she sings during Isle of Dawn and Orbit. The beginning and finishing lines of the game.

Relating to Auroras' participation, they released the full song of Sky's theme. Which was called "Constellation." Constellation was noticeably a lot longer, but also had its own lyrics.

Lyrics In a theme song usually relates itself to the subjects lore. This is an excellent opportunity for the Sky Theorist to formulate speculations to Sky's timeline using these lyrics. However, the only problem was...

THESE LYRICS ARE IN A MADE-UP LANGUAGE!

Translations

Sky has a fictional language used in the song. This was already a challenge for us because it required a lot of analysing. To our fortune, the lyrics were actually words taken from existing languages. Each syllable was from different languages, and some just had meaning.

Now, enough talking. Let's begin!

The first lines were: "Menori eno, foto fola."

Menori: Initially, I believed that "Menori" meant "Memory" since both words were somewhat similar. However, if you split the syllable into 2, it creates a different meaning.

It's difficult to find out what "men" means. Although, I decided that "men" just means person in general. "Ori" is interesting because it translates to "my light."

Mashing the words together, you get: "Person, my light." Otherwise known as "Child of Light"

Eno: "Eno" is the Latin verb of "swim out." However, not everything has to be accurate to its initial meaning. "Swim out" could be a metaphor for" "emerges", " "show," and "appear." I'll get to this later, but hopefully, you get the meaning.

Foto: Foto is an easy word to identify because it's "photo" with extra fancy spelling. In this case, like I've said before, not everything has to mean what it initially represents. Again, Foto could most likely be a kind of conjuction.

Fola: This word translates to "crazy, mad, and foolish." A word that best represents a person or individual. This highly relates itself to a specific character in the sky, too.

--

So let's squish together all the words.

"Child of light swims out, photograph foolish."

The sentence is grammatically incorrect. But that is OK! Since it's made-up language, we have the ability to imagine the sentence in a more grammatically correct and sky-related way. The way I interpret it is quite simple.

"A person of light appears, only to become a foolish king."

Clarifications:

Menori could be "Child of Light," or "Person of light." Synonyms are valid.

Eno doesn't necessarily mean "swim out." Again, it's basically like a metaphor for "emerge," "show," and "appear."

Foto could be a word that represents something. Like how a photograph represents something. It's not necessary to include it in the actual sentence!

The following line is: "Nisoro mahori eh lossora."

Nisoro: Typically, this word was the hardest to translate. It isn't as simple as searching "Nisoro" meaning. However, after a while of digging, I was able to conduct a translation.

"Ni" in Yoruba means "in." And "Soro" in Yoruba means "difficult."

Combining the words would be "In difficult." So, in short, it means: "Difficult times."

Mahori: Mahori is much more different than the rest of the words. In this case, Mahori is an existing word that takes part in human activity.

Mahori is a Thai classical music genre. Played by a group of musicians, performers, and actors for the genre. However, mahori is commonly played in royal courts or royal events. This is very related to Sky Lore. More on this later.

Eh: Most likely a conjuction like: "and."

Lossora: Similar to the previous words, it requires breaking down each syllable.

Los means "the" in Spanish. (According to translator heh..) However, Los also means "Path they took along"

Sora means sky. This word is the smoking gun of this translation. Confirming that we're at least on the right track.

Combining the two, you end up with "Path they took in The Sky" (The Sky= the Sky kingdom. Aka, the main setting in Sky.)

--

So let's combine the words.

"Difficult times, Royal music and path they took in the sky"

Again, correctly repositioning the words together creates: "It was difficult to play music for our King, so they decided to take another path in The Sky."

Clarifications:

Nisoro could also represent the difficulties during the current time.

I included "King" (Our beloved Eden Elder) because of Mahori. Mahori is music for royal subjects.

The third line is: "Neyo neyoterra, foto men"

(This section of my Translations is much shorter, mainly because I don't have too much to discuss.)

Neyo: An easy word to translate. It simply means "New"

Neyoterra: This word includes the previous word, "Neyo."

This word is still quite easy to understand. "Terra" means: "Earth," "Place," or "World."

So, new (Neyo) + place (Terra) translates to: "New world," "New place," etc!

Foto: As I mentioned before, it means photograph.

Men: The word is harder to crack. However, I concluded that men most likely mean people in general.

--

All the words together create: "New, new world. Picturing new people."

There isn't much to clarify for this one. It's very simple, but I'm open to any questions.

The last line is: "Nikolo, nikomo sora."

Nikolo: The word nikolo is a name that means "Victor of People" or "Peoples Champion." However, it could also be a metaphor for people proclaiming victory.

Nikomo: Another word that requires breaking down of syllables.

Niko means smile in Japanese. A friend of mine helped me discover the countless meanings, but I affirmed that this is most likely the best choice. "Smile."

Omo means "short period of time." It's very self-explanatory.

Combining the words, Nikomo translates to "Smile for a short period of time." That's pretty depressing!

Sora: As stated before, Sora translates to "Sky."

--

The words all together create:

"The people proclaim victory. They smile only for it to be gone in a short period of time. Then creating Sky."

(Slightly unrelated, but this is a major help for Sky Theorists! This is potentially the biggest clue for the Sky War (I'll make a blog about the war too.))

Clarification(s)

Despite Nikolo meaning "Peoples Champion," which is different from what I translated, please keep in mind that we have the ability to interpret these meanings into something that'll fit for the sake of it fitting.

----

SO! We have finally translated this bad boy! From what I could tell, this is a MAJOR help for understanding the Sky Lore. Even a major help for giving clues about the Sky War! I was happy to know that these translations mirrored the actual Sky Lore, which really made me excited.

Now, to make this all cinematic and exciting, I prepared a video ~

I am incredibly excited for the future of Sky. I really hope my first blog was understandable, I'm aware it might be a little too long or boring aaaa.

And if you're wondering, you may use this as inspiration for your new sky theories! I don't mind. It would be nice if you gave credit just in case you want to use my Translations word for word, haha.

PEACE OUT!!

[firestorm09890]

rambling about the org xiii orchestra art

as someone in an orchestra for real

(from here)

I can’t tell what instrument Larxene has. I thought it was castanets and someone else suggested egg shakers but both are not traditional orchestra instruments so it’s really just weird

neat that both Xaldin and Lexaeus are playing the BIG percussion instruments, and both Axel and Saix are playing woodwinds (harp is a stringed instrument too so i make no comment on the strings)

There’s no [x]ylophone pun unfortunately because those huge tubes indicate that’s actually a marimba both Xion and Roxas are playing. There is however a pun in the fact that it’s a KEYboard instrument. also they’re just adorable

actually I just remembered that instrument names aren’t common knowledge, here they are:

Xemnas is the conductor/orchestra director; Xigbar on saxophone, Luxord on trumpet, and Marluxia on trombone (that’s our brass); Axel on flute and Saix on.... it’s hard to see but I think that’s an oboe (woodwinds); Xaldin on timpani, Lexaeus on bass drum, Larxene on... something??, and Roxas & Xion on marimba (percussion); and then Vexen on harp, Zexion on violin, and Demyx on double bass (strings)

Marluxia why are you holding a flower I know you have an aesthetic but you need both hands to play a trombone

There are 3 main instrument sections (kinda) that are the “obnoxious know-it-all” instruments, stereotyped as generally having a superiority complex over the other sections because they’re soooo important look at meeee carrying the melody: the trumpet for band, the 1st violin for orchestra, and the soprano for voice (and the secret 4th, the flute for woodwinds). With that said, of course Zexion would play violin

And following both that and his Mystery Gear in 358/2 Days, it would have made more sense thematically for Xigbar to be playing the trumpet. however the saxophone is the funny meme instrument so it still works

There is NO WAY Demyx is a double bass player. It’s the only instrument besides percussion that you have to stand up for (though some orchestras do have the bassists sit on stools), and it’s much more work to actually PLAY than the other string instruments, by virtue of being much bigger. they tend to play less than most other stringed instruments, sure, but if you want to be sitting around not doing much you’re best off picking a different instrument entirely, especially since string sections tend to require more unanimity in playing than the brass/woodwinds/percussion since there’s more people playing each part

harps are rare to include in compositions. they’re very nice and melodious though. idk what this says about Vexen

generally there’s not enough percussion players to cover every single instrument which means that Larxene is definitely running around to cover all the small parts (whatever she’s holding, it’s definitely percussion)... actually with Xaldin Lexaeus Roxas and Xion in percussion as well she might not have to but she is the speedy one so

--

I hope what Saix is holding is an oboe and not a clarinet because if it’s an oboe we get some more symbolism, as well as some very nice... dynamic between his instrument and Zexion’s :)

you see, the oboe is the instrument that tunes the entire rest of the orchestra. whatever the oboe’s A sounds like will be the A the ensemble matches. one could say it’s the most important instrument

HOWEVER, the first chair of 1st violin is nominally the most important instrument- that’s the “concertmaster”, and they get to walk on-stage after everyone else (but before the conductor, obviously). they’re also important for real- based on the repertoire they’re basically guaranteed to have at least one solo. they sit at the very front, right next to the conductor. in my orchestra the concertmaster has a little biography in the program along with the conductor’s

there’s actually multiple rounds of tuning- the first couple it’s the oboe doing their thing and the other non-string instruments matching, and then the last round the concermaster matches the oboe, and then the string instruments match the concertmaster.

and that’s all so very interesting, isn’t it

and finally

Xemnas is 100% a garbage conductor. To the audience he looks very cool, doing all his sweeping motions, but it’s impossible to follow as an orchestra member, so you’re really on your own because the conductor is not conducting properly and not giving helpful cues

[citrus-moonlight]

Danger Starts the Sharp Incline

Fandom: MCU - Age of Ultron, Black Panther Pairing: Demon!Klaue x Fem Scientist Reader Chapters: 1 of 1 Word count: 4.5K Rating: Explicit

Summary: At your scientific organization the study of demon energy output has become no less mundane than it would at any other research facility. That is until you find yourself trapped with the demon who has recently shifted in your thoughts from an idle curiosity to a distraction.

Warnings: Explicit Rating!, No Age Specified, PWP, One Shot, Smut, Let Me Be Clear: This Is Absolute Filth, Monster Fucking, Demon Fucking, Could be viewed as Dubcon, Implied Mind Manipulation, But to be clear reader is Into It, Pet Names, Touch Starved Demon, Oral Sex (Fem Receiving), Vaginal Fingering, Big Hands I Know You're the One, Unprotected PIV, Size Kink, Squirting, A Lot of Demon Cum, Like A Lot, Cum Marking, Creampie, Breeding Kink, Multiple Orgasms (both), Overstimulation, Possessiveness

A/N: Once again, this was supposed to be a quick little smutty thing that ended up getting very, very away from me. This honestly could have been even longer (it was over 5.5k and counting at one point!), but I managed to reign myself in, lol. I almost feel like I have enough for a part two, so who knows, perhaps I'll revisit this AU one day in the future!

This was inspired by the first bit of this absolutely incredible demon/scientist blurb* by @biscuitdragonwithastick, which you should definitely read first (thank you for the ok to go ahead with this!). It fully dug its claws (pun intended?) into my brain and refused let me go. I couldn't stop thinking about a Demon!Klaue AU, and thanks to some lovely encouragement, this is the result!

Please, please mind the tags, my dears, and thank you for reading!

*Demon's name has been changed here to fit the AU

Dividers by the lovely @saradika-graphics ❤️

UPDATING TO ADD PLEASE GO CHECK OUT THIS DEMON!KLAUE FANART BY MY INCREDIBLE LOVELY TALENTED FRIEND, truly I have not stopped screaming! 😍🥹💕

Work title is from "All Mine" by Portishead

AO3 Link

Make no mistake You shan't escape Tethered and tied There's nowhere to hide from me All mine You have to be

Klaw’s reaction continues to be noted by the higher-ups, and eventually it’s decided that they want to conduct an experiment, using you.

The next time you’re scheduled on the cleaning rotation they want to take the opportunity to determine if there’s a measurable difference in output and chemical composition - before and after you’ve been in the room with him.

“Just consider what it might mean to the future of energy research”, they’d said. “It could lead to the discovery of a demon-sensitive pheromone additive that boosts energy output across the board.”

Although you flush at the outward acknowledgement of what’s been happening, you can’t deny that it intrigues you.

Especially since you had started dreaming about him.

Since you’d stopped being able to control how wet you got when you observed him.

Since the self-consciousness you’d felt at the sidelong glances of your colleagues had started feeling like something else. 

Something like pride.

* * * * * *

Two days later you’re scheduled for the night shift alone, with not much else to do but make the occasional note in the shift log and wait for the alarm that indicates the mare’s collection tank is full. So you wait. 

And watch.

For the first time you have a chance to really just look at him, and you’re finding it difficult to pay attention to the instruments that you should be monitoring. Your eyes instead are continually drawn back to the observation window and the thick mop of black curls that falls across his forehead where his horns emerge, sharp features are framed by the scruff of a dark beard, and an intriguing mix of tattoos, brands and scars play across the planes and curves of his body.

Although his muscles aren’t as chiseled as many of the demons you've observed in this facility his shoulders and arms are thick, and you unconsciously lick your lips as your eyes follow the dark hair that covers his broad chest and abdomen down to where it meets the wiry hair at the base of his cock.

A slick warmth has been slowly pooling between your thighs since you settled into your chair at the beginning of the shift, but as you watch the bored pumping of his hips fall into a smoother, swaying rhythm, that warmth ignites.

Widening his stance, hooved feet brace on the floor as he pulls out further before thrusting back in, letting you watch his cock slide slowly back into the machine’s opening, burying himself with a jutting roll of his hips, over and over. Almost teasing. 

Almost taunting.

This could be you.

It’s only when Klaw drags his hands along the metal “body” of the mare that you notice it: The claws of the first three fingers of his right hand seem to be…gone? 

With a flicker of concern you flip a switch on the console, using the camera to zoom in. 

Ok, no, they’re not gone per se, but they’re definitely shorter, nearly down to the quick. Was it an accident? Did they break in a fervor as he fucked the contraption? 

Frowning at the screen your mind turns over the possibilities, but before you can think to add the peculiarity to your notes your thoughts fizzle away when you glance back up to the observation window and see that he’s watching you.

As soon as your eyes meet his the tease in his movements falls away and he’s bottoming out hard against the opening in a rough, stuttered rhythm as his eyes cloud over, and you know from past observation that he’s nearing the edge.

Your inner muscles clench and the ache that’s been building since you walked in here swells and overlaps with a flaring jealousy when Klaw shudders and growls, filling the receptacle with another thick load of his seed.

You don’t even realize that you stood up until you feel the cool glass of the observation window beneath your palms, your breath fogging the surface as you press yourself against the barrier.

There’s still a slow, uneven cadence to the demon’s thrusts following his climax, but his gaze swiftly sharpens on you again when one of your hands drifts idly across your stomach, then lower, fingers brushing over the top button of your pants-

-and then you jump when a shrill sound interrupts you, nearly growling at the surge of frustration.

The alarm is piercing and incessant and won’t stop until you enter the demon’s room, so you return to the control panel to activate the sigil that will keep him contained while you clean and recalibrate the machine - tests having shown that a laser projection of the correct wavelength of light is just as effective as a physical binding.

Once you’re through the airlock you quickly set to working through the checklist, unhooking the mechanism that feeds into tanks in the floor and connecting it to a fresh one. You move on to cleaning the unfeeling hole that the demon fucks into day in and day out, your breath going shallow at the jealousy that continues to singe your nerves. 

His gaze stays entirely focused on you as you move around, cock swaying heavily in front of  broad thighs - still hard, always hard - the still leaking head so dark it’s nearly purple. 

The slick between your thighs has only increased since you started to work, fairly certain that you’ve soaked through your panties at this point, and when you have to pass closer to his “cage” he leans forward, nearly pressing himself against the barrier as he follows your path.

Inhaling deeply his cock twitches, more cum dripping from the tip as he ruts at the air, and you can't help but wonder if he’s picking up your frustrated arousal.

“Hurry up.” you chide yourself. “Stop getting distracted. Just finish your shit and get out.”

Kneeling down behind the machine you open the access panel and flip through the menus until you find the one that will complete the calibration, and while you’re focused on watching it cycle you don’t notice the outer door open from the hall into the observation room. 

The intern who enters must not see you where you’re kneeling on the floor, and evidently thinking that the trap has been left on in error he flips the switch to deactivate it.

When the light from the beaming sigil goes dark you pop up in alarm, the face of the intern frozen in an almost comedic grimace of horror when he finally registers that you’re staring back at him from the wrong side of the glass. 

The man reaches for the switch again but Klaw’s reflexes are faster, and before the trap can be reactivated the demon rushes the door. Slamming his shoulder against it he jams it so thoroughly they'll need to bring in special equipment to get it open again, but at this time of night it'll be hours, if you’re lucky, before a crew gets here.

Then he rounds on you.

With an oddly warm sense of detachment you think that you should feel fear as you watch the slow grin spread across his face, but the only thing you feel is a surge of hot, aching desire. 

He rumbles something you don’t understand, though the rough texture of his words is still intoxicating, and before you realize what you’re doing you’re walking towards him, pulling your shirt over your head as you move. 

Because right now you find that you want - need - to bare yourself for him, the sensation of it intense that your skin feels like it’s going to scald if you don’t get your clothes off now, and your shoes, pants and underwear quickly join the discarded pile on the floor.

Stopping in front of him you reach back to unclasp your bra, but your arms pause mid-way when Klaw’s hand reaches out, your breath hitching when he hooks a large, clawed finger beneath your chin, tilting your head up so that your eyes meet his.

You’d always assumed that his eyes were black, but this close you realize that they’re actually an impossibly deep blue, a blue that only resides along the penumbra of light and shadow where the last rays of sun reach into the depths of the ocean

You stand mesmerized as his hand dips lower, leaving behind a trail of gooseflesh as a claw trails gently down the delicate skin of your neck and chest, and then with a flick of his wrist the last scrap of fabric covering you gives way, exposing your breasts to the cool air.  

You’ve barely shrugged off the ruined garment when suddenly you’re being picked up - so, so easily - and placed on a table, swiftly reminded of how much larger and stronger he is than you, and once again dimly aware that you should feel fear, or dread, or some instinct telling you to run.

Not of the shiver of anticipation that leaves your breath hitching in your chest. 

Definitely not the wild need blooming in your core as sharp teeth ghost along the place where your blood thrums, his breath hot and his skin hotter.

His mouth continues its path downward, pausing to lick at the soft swell of your breasts, taking a moment to pull and pluck at your nipples with his lips. A pleased growl vibrates against your skin when you lean back onto your hands with a moan, arching into the swirl of his tongue around your pebbled flesh. 

It’s not long, though, before he can no longer ignore the way this increases the heated musk between your thighs, leaving behind a wet trail of saliva as his mouth travels down, seeking the place where you’re already dripping for him.

The demon's hands nearly wrap entirely around your thighs yet his touch is almost cautious as he presses you open, mesmerized by the way you unfold for him like the petals of a flower, slick and shining.

HIs eyes are heavy lidded as thick fingers begin to tease through your folds, toying with your clit, surprising you with how softly he rolls it between thumb and forefinger, a grin curving the corner of his mouth when your hips buck into his touch.

Noting your reaction he repeats the motion, gently pinching and rolling the sensitive bud until your mouth drops open and your breath is coming in sharp gasps, his dark eyes staying fixed between your legs as thick fingers coax a warm, honeyed orgasm from you, leaving you keening and startled by the slow intensity of it.

You’ve barely caught your breath when you feel his mouth suddenly envelop your mound, lapping eagerly at your release as you whine and writhe beneath his tongue, overwhelmed at the stimulation.

It’s too much, all of this is too much, but as he continues licking and suckling at your sensitive flesh you find that you’re no longer fighting it, the hum of bliss that hadn’t yet faded already building to a fresh swell, and when his lips capture your clit with a sudden fluttering pressure your body stiffens as your second orgasm flares through you, sharper and brighter than the first. 

When he finally releases you he speaks again, but through the haze of afterglow it takes a moment for it to register that this time you think that you understand him, the word seeming to appear within your mind at the same time that you hear it from his glistening lips.

“Sweet.” 

With a start you look down at him and he pauses, head tilting, curiosity knitting his heavy brows. 

Not moving his eyes from yours, his voice is a low, tentative purr when he speaks again.

“Would your sweet cunt like..more?”

Holy fuck. You can understand him.

Your thoughts spin as the shock works its way through you, the analytical part of your mind attempting to parse what the fuck is happening. Is it the increased time in his proximity? The physical contact? Whatever the mechanism, you can suddenly hear- or perhaps more accurately feel - his words, somewhere deep in your conscience.

A firm nod, then, in answer to his question, a responding pull of his lips into a slow, pleased grin.

Dipping his head Klaw licks a broad, wet stripe up your cleft, and then he’s devouring you, slavering hungrily against your sex, drool mixing with your arousal as his lips and tongue work your aching bundle of nerves until you’re gasping shallow breaths, every muscle strung taught as you hover on the edge once more.

Seeking for an anchor your hands find his curved horns, warm and leathery beneath your scrabbling fingers, and then with a rasping cry you’re coming in long, surging waves, your entire body trembling as your hips chase every flutter of pleasure on the tip of his tongue. 

Dimly you think that he must be satisfied now, that you must be satisfied, yet it seems as though with every climax you only hunger more intensely for the next. 

Once your hands release his horns and fall limp at your sides Klaw straightens up, and then wrapping his hand around his cock he starts roughly stroking himself. 

Almost without thinking your legs fall open, shaky arms pulling your knees back to expose yourself to him, knowing he can see how your soaked cunt still clenches through the last waves of your orgasm, and it’s only a few more strokes before he’s coming with a rough jerk of his hips and you gasp at the heat, thick ropes of cum streaking across your slick folds and the insides of your thighs.  

Still breathing hard, the pumping of his fist gradually slows, a hand drifting along the curve of your inner thigh as his focus comes back to you. Gathering some of the sticky mess he left between your legs he drags it through your folds, and then suddenly a thick finger is sliding into you.

Even as you gasp at the intrusion you begin to understand that he had actually done it on purpose: Biting down those claws himself because, it seems, he had been thinking about this.

The realization that it was for you leaves your entire body humming, and as your hips cant up to meet the slow, almost teasing thrusts, there’s only one word that swells and ripens in your mind, uncertain whether it’s your word or his even as it falls from your lips.

“More.”

A knowing glint flashes in his eyes at your soft plea, and almost immediately you feel a second finger slipping against you. Just teasing his fingertips at your entrance at first he lets your juices slick them before pressing into you, both fingers together nearly as thick as a human cock.

You moan as he continues to slide them in and out of you, and just as you begin to sink into the ache of it, you moan low in your throat when suddenly he’s adding a third.

The heady pressure of him working three fingers into your already stretched hole is overwhelming, and you’re unsure whether you want to throw yourself towards the sensation or resist it, your body arching into him, yet tensing and pulling away at the same time.

But then he’s pressing you down onto the table, his hand nearly spanning the width of your chest to hold you in place as his fingers continue nudging deeper.

“Where are you going, little one? Going to have to take it if you want my cock." 

As if to emphasize his words he drags his erection against the inside of your thigh with a grunted sigh, a fresh streak of precum adding to the mess that he’s already left on you.

Because of course you do, and he knows it, has known it since you stopped being able to look away from his hunched form as he fucked into his mechanical mate, a warm curiosity growing into a distracting need.

And you know that he could have taken you at any time, could have forced himself into you as soon as your clothes were a forgotten pile on the floor. But instead, he’s been preparing you to take him properly, making you come until the only thing you know is his mouth and his fingers and you’re soft and trembling and ravenous.

“God yes.” You spread your legs wide again, giving him an obscene view of where his fingers are sinking into you, slick sounds filling the room as they pump faster now.

“There you go.” He croons above you. “Made for this, hmm?" 

Any attempt at a response trails into a choked cry when he finds that soft, needy spot deep inside you, a fresh, pulsing heat spreading through your already exhausted body as he takes you apart once more. Still pinned beneath his hand you’re unable to do anything but allow it to wash through you, shaking and whimpering as he continues to drag firm, curling strokes against your clenching walls.

Leaning down Klaw presses his face into your heaving chest, and your nipples tighten and ache as he licks languorously between your breasts, his huffed breath is hot against your skin.

As your senses filter back in your hands slowly begin to move, exploring the corded muscles of his neck and shoulders, trembling fingers tugging and sliding through his hair, and then up and over his horns again.

Letting your eyes slip closed you take in the ridged curve of them, a velvety pleasure blooming in your chest when he inhales sharply, cock throbbing against your thigh when your fingers wrap around the base of them.

Finally pulling his fingers out of you he tugs you up, turning around and repositioning you so that you’re straddling his broad hips as best you can. Strong hands support you, encouraging you to slide your slick folds along his shaft, a giddy sort of panic stuttering in your chest at the sudden awareness of the size of him where he twitches between your thighs.

Desperate whines that may as well be prayers slide from your throat when he lifts you higher and you feel the thick, bulbous head of his cock nudging against your entrance, the only words falling from your lips a whispered litany of “Oh my god oh my god oh my god."

“I’m not your God, little one,” he growls softly, words distorted as if you're hearing them through a sediment of granite and blood. "But you will worship me."

“Yes. Yes..Oh fuck, please.” 

Beneath your lilting plea you dimly hear gritted curses and words of encouragement as you circle your hips, your arousal making a slick mess of his cock.

You can't help how eagerly your hips rock down, seeking more, so lost in the sensations that you're unprepared when a hard press of your hips matches his upward thrust, and the thick head of his cock suddenly ruts up into you, and when he slips past the tight ring of muscle the feral sound from deep in your chest nearly matches his.

Panting open mouthed you hold him there before rising up, slowly, slowly, letting him slip out of you before sinking down to take him back in. You feel weightless beneath the obsidian glint in his eyes as he watches you repeat the motion again, and again, his arms helping you move as you start to shake from the effort of riding just the head of his cock.

Even now there’s something warm and urgent drawing your hand lower, and you’re unable to help feeling pleased when his eyes go heavy as his gaze follows your fingers down to where they press against your clit.

“So..needy.” he rumbles. “Better than I imagined.”

“You..imagined?” You pant, attempting to sound coy, but your words are thick with lust as you continue to roll your hips, forcing yourself down further down his length. 

Your movements are becoming less controlled now, and when your fingers slip and brush against his shaft you whimper at how fucking big he feels where he's stretching you open, and how much of him is still outside of you.

You can feel every slick ridge and vein beneath your hand, and as you slide it along his length the muscles of his thighs tense and flex beneath you, his breathing going rough as your messy strokes continue.

“Look at you taking my cock,” Klaw grits, the demon’s hips beginning to stutter up in short, sharp thrusts. “Such a good little pet.” 

His words trail into a low growl that vibrates through your body as you feel a hard throb beneath your hand, and then heat.

You gasp, continuing to writhe as he spills into you, coating your inner walls with his thick seed, and almost you feel as though you could come again just from the heat of it.

Fuck, you need more of that.

Need it deeper.

Even as the pulsing beneath your fingers slows he doesn't stop moving, finally coming inside of you seeming only to have tipped his need to fevered desire. Holding you in place he thrusts up harder, dislodging your hand, and you can feel his spend leaking out of you, dripping down the insides of your thighs and slicking his still hard cock as he continues to drive deeper, no longer letting you set the pace. 

“This is what you wanted, wasn’t it?” He taunts, voice still a rough half-whisper after his orgasm. “Could feel it when you watched me. Wanted me to fill your little cunt, hmm?”

“Yes.” You let out a growled sob, jealous anger surging through you. ”That..thing, doesn’t fucking deserve it.”

A flame crackles in Klaw’s eyes at your heated words, and you wonder with a jolt of awareness whether he hasn’t been just as desperate for this as you have, longing for you as he remained trapped in the torment of a cold, unfeeling machine. Driven purely by instinct, chasing his release over and over again but never being truly satisfied.

The sudden realization that you could give that to him floods you with almost as much pleasure as the agony of being filled with his cock.

You’ve barely processed the thought when you suddenly find yourself with your back once again pressed against the cool metal of the table, Klaw only pulling out of you briefly before thrusting back in, harder.

He continues a slow, controlled rhythm, both of you panting hard as you feel yourself softening around him, becoming more pliant as your body relents to every stroke until with a final arching rock of his hips your cunt is completely stretched and full, everything so impossibly tight that you can’t even clench around him.

He's never felt anything quite like you, the achingly tight grip of your pussy leaving him nearly breathless as he holds himself as deep as he can, huffing and grunting like a bull while he watches you writhe and spasm beneath him.

Then he starts to fuck you.

He tries to keep his strokes firm and measured at first, but he can’t hold back anymore and it's not long before his chest is heaving, lips curled in a snarl, and it feels as though you're being split open as he pulls you back onto his cock in time to meet every thrust. 

A scarlet thread runs through every cell of your soft animal body, stringing tighter and tighter as pleasure builds to the edge of breaking but then surging higher, a fresh ecstasy building on every peak. 

The tightening grip around your waist signals the absolute loss of his control and when you hiss at the sudden piercing bite of his claws he moves his hands to brace on the table instead, his broad body forcing your legs back towards your shoulders as he leans down over you, driving his cock as deep as he can get into your willing heat until he’s grunting and drooling above you. 

A divine bliss slides through your veins as you lie beneath him, caught between the trammel of his arms, and as you watch his base instinct take over you begin to understand that only fools could believe that lust is a sin. 

And even if it was, even if you were offered perfect grace in this moment, you know with absolute certainty that you would refuse.

An infernal dam is finally swelling to breaking as you surrender to every relentless thrust of his cock, your wailed sobs the only sounds you can make as an impossible pressure ripples through your core, and with a deep throb you suddenly feel a drenching heat as your release washes over his cock and your thighs. 

“There you go.” Klaw growls. “Make a mess for me, little one.” 

This seems to be his final undoing, and as you continue to soak his cock his thrusting goes ragged until with rough groan he’s coming deep inside you, stilling himself to keep the head of his cock pressed against the deepest part of you, making sure that you feel every hot, throbbing pulse of his cum as it fills you.

Keeping himself seated deep he rocks slow grinding thrusts into the slippery mess he’s made of his you, the lust that’s had no real outlet finally finding satisfaction in the way your clenching cunt is milking his cock, in the gentle swell of your belly as he pumps you full of his seed.

You’re a sweaty, twitching mess beneath him, and as much as you wish you could you’re unable to take all of it, can’t help how it spills out around his cock where you’re stretched and sore, how his cum and yours drips down your swollen sex to pool beneath you on the table.

His hands don't stop moving over your body, cupping your breasts, grasping at you hips, sliding over the ripe swell of you where he can feel you filled with his cock and his cum. Vaguely aware of soft grunts mixed with mumbled praise, you don’t register what he’s saying at first through the haze of euphoria.

“Going to be mine.” he rumbles, between languorous strokes. ”My little queen.” 

“Mine.”

* * * * * * *

The room is warm and flickering, silken sheets decadent beneath your fingers, your body thrumming with a heated anticipation that never seems to fade, now.

Rough hands lift your hips as your demon mounts you from behind, a hand placed firmly between your shoulder blades, pressing you down into the mattress.

A panting whine slides from your throat as he spreads you open, the thick head of his cock prodding your entrance, pleased to see you’re still dripping with his seed from the last time he filled you. And he doesn’t like leaving you empty for very long.

“Say it again, little one.” Klaw growls softly, holding himself still. Waiting.

“Yours.” 

You sigh, a smile curling around the word as he pushes into you.

“I’m yours.”

A/N: As ever, thank you for reading! This was definitely a bit outside my comfort zone, but I hope you enjoyed this filthy little foray into monster fuckery. 😊

[mindutme]

Sdefa Sdaturday #14

Here’s a new Sdefa translation!

If you haven’t seen my previous posts, Sdefa is a constructed language which is played on musical instruments rather than spoken or signed. So this is both a translation of a poem and also a piece of music for solo piano!

There’s a lot of flexibility built into how the language works, so it’s as much a compositional tool as a means of communication—the same text could be conveyed in many different ways, as the rhythms, chords, dynamics, instrument(s), and even some of the melody notes can be changed without changing the meaning.

This a translation of a poem from The Fellowship of the Ring, written by Bilbo and recited at the Council of Elrond. Here’s the original poem:

All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken, A light from the shadows shall spring; Renewed shall be blade that was broken, The crownless again shall be king.

There are a number of new words in this translation. Like other Sdefa words, they’re all 4- or 5-note references to other pieces of music. One of the new words here is D A D E, “shadow” or “darkness,” which is based on a fragment of the song that Pippin sings in The Return of the King movie! There’s another LotR reference in the language, though not used in this piece: F A G E♭, meaning “horse,” comes from Shadowfax’s theme in The Two Towers. That was actually one of the first words I made for the language!

[bisnes-socks]

alright welcome to my ted talk about the drums on šbj

like when the song first starts and the guitars come in playing the main riff, an experienced listener would expect the drums to make space for the guitars. for the guitars to be the lead in that section and drums to kinda blend in to let the guitar riff shine. so you'd expect a relatively simple beat with a lil closed hi-hat action on the offbeats to make it groove. 

but seriously like i'm no expert, i'm not a drummer, so maybe someone who actually knows drumming very well or understands music theory etc could word this all better, my music education is all from early childhood and/or absorbed from being the child of a musician lmao. but really i'm just a lifetime enthusiastic listener of all music and spent all of covid years watching music analysis videos lmao, okay so like yeah i'm just rambling BUT the choices jure has made on this song are just so unexpected and cool.

but NO!! he plays over the guitars (but the guitars still lead! they still shine!) and the hi-hat is open (could be a different cymbal..? but sounds like an open hi-hat to me, i'll have to find live footage to check how he plays it) so it crashes quite loud and on the beat and then a quick lil pattern on the hi-hat more closed and then bam, open one more time, like it's just super unexpected in a section like that? 

and like. in rock music, hi-hats on the beat are usually on the 1 and the 3. well, if i counted right, he plays it on the 1 and the 3 on the first bar, but the second bar the quick lil pattern syncopates the bar and the second louder open hi-hat is on the 4, a beat later than you'd expect! and then it comes back for the next bar on the 1 and the 3, but then on the last bar of the cycle, it's on the 1, 3 AND 4. which works VERY well with the whine on the guitar. just brilliant composition.

and the hi-hat being open and ringing out the way it does makes the section quite heavy, like it's... stomping. (i think i saw someone else say the song makes them want to kick things and that's probably one of the reasons why. bc it stomps. severely.) while also being very groovy. and that's super cool and odd and amazing. oh and the minor key of the song also emphasises the sort of.. downward feeling of the stomp? but at the same time the whole thing is just.. dancable. that's amazing, that's skill.

and then in the chorus (?) bit (a ja samo čekam...) he's like switching between a more on the beat focused basic type rhythm, but with a very hard rock or even metal inspired naaasty snare drum sound, and then a more groovy beat, the exact one you'd expect in the beginning, where the hi-hat is grooving on the offbeat. like stoooop showing off (never stop).

and then towards the end, when the whole different instrumental section kicks in, i swear that part as a whole gives me like queens of the stone age, them crooked vultures etc. vibes, but the drums in particular, like it's giving dave grohl type energy, like he's going ooooffff. just very purposeful, massive drive, but suuuper tight.

like i've always liked his drumming bc you can tell he can very confidently just sort of ride any beat, easy, decorate it as he pleases, or he can go off with a lot of purpose and drive. and like. he just does all of the above in this one song. amazing.

and like don't get me wrong i could give a ted talk on every instrument on this song (nace i fucking see you i hear you) but jure is my star of the song <3

[wildwren]

Okay favorite new themes after first listen:

Estrid - Definitely at the top of the list, the Hardanger fiddle is so heart-wrenching and the way the tune plays with scales offers a slightly sinister edge to an otherwise tender and romantic composition. The way it ends (on a more sinister note) makes me particularly curious but I love love love, all in all one of the most musically interesting tracks to me on Season 2.

Concerning Stoors - OH I love this so much! Bear's Harfoot theme has always been my least favorite from Season One, mostly because of how viscerally it reminds me of his work on Outlander, but Concerning Stoors is much more musically distinct to me, while still calling back to the textural vibes of the Harfoot theme. Really love the tune here, it evokes a whole new world. The hammered dulcimer sound is *chef's kiss*.

Rhûn - this track is SO sick. The children's choir adds such a unique texture -- polyphonic singing is so underused and it immediately evokes a different vibe from anything else Bear has written for Middle Earth. I love the way the folk instrumentation is layered with more orchestral sounds and how percussion-forward the track is. Also love the way these sounds combine with the Stranger's theme in Sandstorm at the Well.

Forgiveness Takes an Age - I'm basically assuming this is the Ent theme, as we heard an Entwife utter "Forgiveness takes an age," in the trailer. This track also includes Arondir's theme, which makes sense because we know Arondir will be with the Ents. The Last March of the Ents is in my top 3 orchestral themes from the Jackson trilogy, and this is definitely a different vibe but still holds some of that beauty and epic-ness. I really really love the texture in the first section, where the voices and the drums combine in a way we haven't heard before on the soundtrack, and when it opens up into more epic strings, it makes me want to cry!!!

The Last Ballad of Damrod - I wouldn't call this a new theme, but I have a lot to say about it. I know a lot of people weren't super into the vibe when it was first released, but I think this track fucking SLAPS. I also actually really appreciate it in the context of the full soundtrack, it fits perfectly between "Army of Orcs" and "Battle of Eregion," deepening and turning up the volume on the raw energy of the "Nampat" theme. The orchestration underneath also reminds me a lot of the "For the Southlands" theme from Season One, evoking Arondir's fight with the Big Orc. This make sense as we know that Arondir will be facing off with Damrod. Can't wait to have a heart attack! SNAP! GO THE! BOOOOOOOONES!

Special mention of the Where the Shadows Lie/True Creation Requires Sacrifice theme, which is not on its own track anywhere on Season 2, but which comes into play on several tracks, including "Last Temptation," "Emissary at the Forge," and "Cirdan's Perfection," all of which makes sense. I just think it's really cool that ROP introduced this theme in the very last moments of Season One, incorporating it into the Ring Poem, and now have woven it through the entirety of Season Two. Musical storytelling at its best!

okay i need to dive deeper into the new songs, especially Disa's and Gil-Galad's, but these are just my first listen thoughts.

[miss-conjayniality]

sitarist jay (drabble)

genre: fluff

pairing: jay x gn south asian!reader

word count: 610

warnings: none

A/N: in honor of all the holidays coming up (holi, vaisakhi, ramadan/eid, etc.), AND also my srk x jay post that sparked desi enha discourse, this one goes out to all my desi engenes!!!! 🫶�� happy holi!!!! happy vaisakhi a month in advance. and a ramadan mubarak to those who celebrate.

soft desi engene hours. could u just IMAGINE sitarist!jay and dholi!you!?!??? 🥺

jay is grateful to have a lover who hails from such a gorgeous, rich culture that spans millennia. and as any connoisseur of culture would say - music isn’t just part of culture….it is culture. he’s been playing guitar for many years now. and he wants to venture out into other stringed instruments. and what better way than learning the sitar?

jay enjoys the calming, soulful, and twangy sound of the sitar. it sends him into a trance and he feels completely immersed in a different world. despite it being “different” from what he’s done before, he believes that the language of music is universal - one felt within the heart first and foremost.

he holds a deep reverence for south asian music. be it nusrat fateh ali khan, kishore kumar, mohammed rafi, noor jehan, or asha bhosle, he feels the timeless, evergreen spirit of such compositions pulse within his soul.

watching him learn the sitar is an endearing sight. ethereal even! seeing the level of dedication he has towards mastering such an art form warms your heart. he wants to learn bhajans, shabads, and ghazals for you. all he wants in life is to express his love for you through music. just chillin’ in his kurtas with the sleeves rolled up and his sitar by his side, showing you the ravi shankar songs he’s learned so far.

on the other hand, he too admires you for your passion for percussion. jay loves your appreciation towards the different types of dhol. he fawns over the euphoric feeling you get when hitting every thappi and tiparu and the way you chant your DHAs and DHINs while doing so. jay also appreciates the way you treat your dagga and tilli sticks like they’re your babies. he loves the swingy sound of dhol beats and the swagger you exude while you play.

jay sometimes gets annoyed when you pester him with the sound of your loud ass dhol while he’s peacefully and calmly practicing his sitar. but he knows it’s out of love and good fun. it’s the desi equivalent of the percussionist kids in band disrupting the ones who play the wind and brass instruments. antics aside, jay appreciates the lively spirit and camaraderie that comes with these musical clashes, cherishing the shared moments of cultural exchange and musical banter.

in the end, these musical escapades become cherished memories, shaping jay’s musical journey with a touch of spontaneity and joy. the blend of dhol and sitar, once seemingly contrasting, transforms into a celebration of diversity within your shared love for music. as the two of you continue your artistic pursuits, jay realizes that the moments of lighthearted banter and cultural exchange have added a special rhythm to the soundtrack of your relationship - one of seismic adoration.

with each note played and every shared laugh echoing in the air, jay acknowledges that your artistic pursuits have not only strengthened your musical connection with each other, but have also deepened your bond with him. the rhythm of seismic adoration encompasses the highs and lows, much like the crescendos and decrescendos in your collaborative performances. through the language of music, your relationship thrives, creating a symphony of understanding, support, and shared passion that resonates far beyond the notes of your instruments.

[mikrokosmos]

J.S. Bach - Contrapunctus XIV from The Art of Fugue, BWV 1080

On this day 274 years ago, J.S. Bach passed away and his death was treated as the official end of an entire era. It is cliche to crown him the Best Composer of All Time, but it's hard not to be intimidated in his shadow for how influential he would become in the grand narrative of European music. And maybe it's Fate which brought me back into listening to a lot of Bach lately. At least my ears had been itching to revisit his great organ fugues, and different performances of the Well Tempered Clavier. So I thought I would commemorate his death day anniversary with the "last piece he ever wrote" (citation needed). The Art of Fugue is a collection of fugal exercises based on one theme, each fugue showing different potentials inherent in the theme. Like the WTC, this piece is more of a pedagogical work, originally not scored for any specific instruments so possibly written to be studied more than performed. But there's no reason why even a music theory exercise by Bach shouldn't be played for an audience, or by a musician for their own personal enjoyment.

The beautiful moment here is the last fugue in the set, Contrapunctus 14, which starts as a fugue on a completely different subject than the main theme that ties the rest of the pieces together. Instead, a solemn and contemplative fugue develops from this first theme, and in the middle a new subject emerges with shorter note values and moves forward quickly, bringing back the first subject and then develops as a double fugue. Then, another new subject comes in... so in German notation, they refer to the pitch B as H, and the pitch Bb is called B instead. I don't know why this is, but conveniently it allows Bach to sign his name in notes. But the motif Bb-A-C-B is chromatic and so close together, it doesn't sound like something that would work well for a baroque style fugue (at least, the later B-A-C-H pieces [i'm thinking by Liszt and Reger for example] are much more fitting for Romantic angst and drama). But Bach surprises us with his genius in writing a coherent and harmonically "correct"/"functioning" fugue around this complicated subject. And after the BACH fugue develops, the other two subjects join in and the piece re-introduces itself as a triple fugue.

Or at least, it promises to, but Bach stopped writing at this very moment. It is assumed that had he finished the work, he would have finally brought back the main fugue theme from the other contrupunctus pieces in the set and end with a developed quadruple fugue. And as someone who has tried and constantly failed at writing a decent sounding basic fugue for one subject, the dream of what could have been boggles my mind. Why did Bach stop? The score notes at the very end "While working on this fugue, which introduces the name BACH in the countersubject, the composer died." in CPE Bach's handwriting (one of Bach's many musically gifted sons, nicknamed "the Berlin Bach") but historians believe the manuscript is from a year or two earlier, before his deteriorating vision kept him from finishing. It's also a Romantic notion to imagine that Bach intentionally stopped there, letting the BACH fugue be his personal farewell to life, to composition, to music...a way to wrap up his lifelong work of trying to use difficult and contrapuntally dense music to reflect the glory of God and the intangible heavenly kingdom.

Whether he meant to or not, it's impossible not to feel this profound sense of farewell listening to this work trail off with the last threads hanging loose, as if such anticipated perfection of the quadruple fugue can only be heard in the life beyond our lives on earth. I first heard this piece in high school, and despite being young and naive and stupid in a lot of ways, the final unfinished fugue immediately hit my soul in a way nothing else had at that point, and I listened to it over and over, on piano, on organ, on guitar, as it was written along with different completions by other musicians or musicologists...

and I remember some question on some old web forum asking users "if the world was ending, what's the last song you'd want to hear". Of course I choose this one, and because of the question, any time I listen to Contrapunctus 14, I imagine myself as an astronaut, the last human alive, somehow detached from the ship and floating off into the cold and infinite abyss of the universe, listening to this piece as my oxygen runs out and I lose consciousness looking at the glittering stars, following the remains of the music into oblivion.