Lord Vetinari, the supreme ruler of Ankh-Morpork, rather liked music.
People wondered what sort of music would appeal to such a man. Highly formalized chamber music, possibly, or thunder-and-lightning opera scores.
In fact the kind of music he really liked was the kind that never got played. It ruined music, in his opinion, to torment it by involving it on dried skins, bits of dead cat, and lumps of metal hammered into wires and tubes. It ought to stay written down, on the page, in rows of little dots and crotchets all neatly caught between lines. Only there was it pure. It was when people started doing things with it that the rot set in. Much better to sit quietly in a room and read the sheets, with nothing between yourself and the mind of the composer but a scribble of ink. Having it played by sweaty fat men and people with hair in their ears and spit dribbling out of the end of their oboe… well, the idea made him shudder. Although not much, because he never did anything to extremes.
Truly Lossless Music
Submitted 13 hours ago by ReedReads@lemmy.zip to [deleted]
https://lemmy.zip/pictrs/image/d0c89b79-25a1-4ae0-862d-742ada0a633b.webp
Comments
dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
ayyy@sh.itjust.works 9 hours ago
But remember, autism wasn’t invented until 10 years ago.
CarrierLost@infosec.pub 9 hours ago
You know this is an excerpt from a fiction story written by Terry Pratchett, right? This isn’t about a real person.
zaph@sh.itjust.works 7 hours ago
bits of dead cat
I feel like I’m missing a huge part of music lore.
NotASharkInAManSuit@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
Violin strings, and other bowed string instruments, were traditionally, and some still, made with livestock intestines. They’re called catgut strings, they’re not actually made from cat intestines, but the name has lead to the common belief that they are made from cats. I’ve been told by people who use them that they resonate better and they like the tone.
dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
Strings for stringed instruments were at one point traditionally made out of “catgut,” which is animal intestinal material. Though to my knowledge, pretty much never actually from cats.
underscores@lemmy.zip 12 hours ago
If anyone’s wondering why you would do this as a musician.
Obviously you can visualize how you’d play something, but skipping the obvious things…
You can do music theory analysis on pieces you’re interested on, it’s something that helps later with improvisation or composition
It also helps you understand the style you’re studying a bit more, it takes a lot of effort although with years of experience you can probably analyze a piece of music fairly fast, and on the bus even
expatriado@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
the picture is compressed to smush, but looks like a piano+voice piece, could be memorizing the lyrics + rhythm+ intervals, useful if you’re expected to sing by memory
BlueLineBae@midwest.social 10 hours ago
As a former singer I used to bring my sheet binder with me to do exactly this. Id memorize lyrics, work on pronunciation, rhythm, cues, etc. there’s a lot you can do to silently work on a piece of music.
aarRJaay@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
I knew a young guy who was very much on the spectrum and part of the church youth group took musical score to read at a camp we took them to. You could just tell he was hearing the music he was reading, even humming and tapping out the beat.
theangryseal@lemmy.world 5 minutes ago
My god. As a musician who really wishes someone had been interested enough in my talent as a kid to try to teach me how to actually do it, I envy those people so much.
I had people like Paul McCartney reassuring me, he and other musicians who couldn’t read music.
Now that I’m older, though, I really wish that I could just tune into it all. I’ve tried, but I just don’t fucking know where to start.
I come from a family full of musicians. My grandfather had one grandchild out of 17 grandkids who wasn’t a musician. He never played, bud he was always singing and whistling.
None of us read music.
CheerfulPassionFruit@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
A man of culture
saltesc@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
You know he can’t wait to get home and try that shit out.
So often,
“Pssh. As I thought.”
Sometimes,
“Oh, wow.”
grrgyle@slrpnk.net 3 hours ago
Lord Vetinari irl
IcedRaktajino@startrek.website 12 hours ago
The analogue method of playing a MIDI file.
gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
I thought he saving a PNG image
WR5@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
He also looks like John Williams from this angle.
Lumidaub@feddit.org 12 hours ago
Headcanon accepted. I choose to believe that John Williams spends his time on some bus in (what looks like, judging from the surrounding ten pixels) some central European city reading sheet music.
SugarCatDestroyer@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
You just have to stand out from the crowd a little and they will immediately take a photo of you and upload it to the Internet. Although if it is generation then everything is probably fine.
Lumidaub@feddit.org 12 hours ago
This is exactly like when we sat in the car on the way home from the shop, reading the manual of the video game we just bought, already practising in our heads the button presses.
WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
But sometimes you get it wrong, like when I read the manual for Super Mario Bros. 3 and thought that power-ups would be added to your inventory if you collected them twice rather than needing to get them from specific places like mushroom houses or princess letters.
ChicoSuave@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
I left the store as a willing and eager adventurer. I got home a zealot who understood the generational cycle of wisdom, power, and courage as well as my part to play in defending against the corruption that came with Power.