But Wait...There's More!

by McPoodle

15: Dun, dun, DUN-TUN...

But Wait...There’s More!

- 15: Dun, Dun, DUN-TUN... -

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Author’s Note: Sadly, I lack the skills to reproduce the music described in this chapter. Please accept the piece linked below as an emotional analogue of my intended result instead.

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Blue Bubble’s birthday party doubled as a celebration of Oars In Wells and the successful end of the season for RIAT. As expected, the ratings for the last episode were the best of the regular season, although nothing had approached the listenership figures for the pilot episode.

The Perturbs allowed Pinkie Pie to help run the party, “purely as an evaluation in case of future employment.” In other words, they were completely overwhelmed by the turnout, and they wanted to get away with not paying her. Of course, Pinkie would have done it for free even if every guest had been replaced by berserker clones of Sleipnir himself.

DJ Pon-3 had two tables for herself at the very back of the rented ballroom. It was not a very favorable spot, but she didn’t mind, because she was next to the table where Double Echo, the foley pony, was giving demonstrations on how she created the sound effects for the show. Other spots along the walls were taken up by over a dozen DJs, solo musicians, and a cappella singing groups. With a few poorly-received exceptions, all of them were using their moment in the limelight to play a unique rendition of the RIAT theme song.

Octavia was helping the DJ to set up her equipment, placing everything within easy reach. She then stepped around the table to judge the presentation. Although a CD player was prominently displayed on the right side, most of the two tables were taken up with three record players and their stacks of records.

Octavia sighed. “You know, to the outside observer, this looks a lot like selling out.”

“Tavi, you have to think of me as two ponies,” Pon-3 explained. “Vinyl Scratch the business pony lives and breathes on what everypony else thinks. But I’m also DJ Pon-3, and she has to express herself. I didn’t have the time to get all of these recordings burned to CDs (never mind the rights issues), and I’m still more comfortable mixing records than discs anyway. Tonight is for the music, not the cause.”

“Well I just hope they see that,” said Tavi. “I’ll be listening from right over here. And you better not mess up my arrangement!” That was Tavi-ese for “good luck”.

Pon-3 waited patiently for the eight-minute trance version of the RIAT theme to fade out from the other end of the ballroom. She heard the few ponies who were keeping track of the order of performances turn and walk in her direction. Then she calmly reached out and pressed the Loop Play button on the CD player.

The listeners were expecting one thing, and one thing only: Dun, dun, DUN-TUN! Instead, they got BOOM! Crash! Scrape...whine!

The same four deliberately-paced mechanical noises repeated, again and again, drawing a greater and greater crowd, although they kept their distance from the infamous machine emitting it.

“What is she up to?” Blue Bubbles whispered to Mr. Wells.

As soon as she overheard that, Pon-3 smiled to herself and dropped the needle on the first record player. This added four ominous rising notes to the mix which then proceeded to go into a loop of its own. This excerpt was originally the bridge from a pretentious pop song of the last decade; only this brief snip survived on a remix disk that Pon-3 had created near the beginning of her career. Every other DJ in the room recognized it, because most of them had used it themselves.

On top of this were added the sound of a stopwatch, and then a sped-up and pitch-shifted fanfare, played only once, and then that was replaced with a chase theme cobbled together from two radically different interpretations of Trottington’s Victory. More themes were added, and more, but always the base sound of the CD recording was heard underneath. Mechanical sounds of doom.

It gradually dawned on the audience what this was: the musical soundtrack to the factory chase sequence from the season finale, a soundtrack nopony to that point had realized that scene had so desperately needed. With a smile, Double Echo began adding in the sound effects from memory. It wasn’t hard—the DJ appeared to have the timing of the scene down better than she did. She made sure to keep her effects quiet enough that the magic of the performance would not be lost.

The music was steadily building to a crescendo of tension, just as the scene had done. When it had nearly become nerve-breaking, the DJ suddenly cut all sound to the speakers and pointed at Blue Bubbles, who instantly recognized her cue.

“SPRECHEN!!!” she screamed in character.

The music returned with a vengeance, driving fast and still faster, for the chase to the border. On a lone keyboard, Pon-3 played a simple theme, drowned out at first by all the other sounds, but growing and growing in volume. Every local pony listening suddenly got a lump in their throat: this was the national anthem of the old Kingdom of Canterlot, now being re-purposed as the theme of the Kingdom of Light. The distorted fanfare from earlier returned, representing the theme of the Kingdom of Darkness, in close pursuit. The DJ very much doubted that anypony other than herself and Tavi knew that this fanfare had been composed by Reznicek, would-be Emperor of all Dragons, from the Third Century.

The chase theme returned, and morphed into a disguised version of the Light theme. But the Dark fanfare was now overwhelming, and the tempo was nearly unsustainable. Tension once more built to the breaking point, until...

Dun, dun, DUN-TUN...

~ ~ ~

And with that, the music suddenly ceased, not even completing the well-known musical phrase, because it wasn’t needed. What DJ Pon-3 had just performed was everything that RIAT at its best stood for, while making the theme song practically redundant. And all this purely through mixing—outside of the CD recording Uncle Phil had made for her from the record factory, nothing musically new had been created for the performance.

The crowd erupted into rapturous applause, soon joined by Pon-3’s reluctant fellow DJs, as they grudgingly acknowledged that hers was the best performance of the night.

Comments

[djthomp]

That was pretty cool.

[LittleSallyDigby]

Grass grows. Birds fly. Sun shines. Background ponies play background music.

Was there ever any doubt?

[McPoodle]

1371525

Thanks for that. If there's one thing that my version of Vinyl Scratch is missing compared to everybody else's, it's much in the way of actual DJ'ing and mixing. I put this chapter in to make up for that.