Pinkie Discovers Jazz

by Crisis_Vyper

Day One

Chapter 13 – Day One

With Applejack spilling the beans about her drumming abilities, the others in the band are quick to ask Applejack to join them. Of course, Applejack said yes as she could not refuse them now but she does have some qualms about some things which she voiced out for all of them. For one, Applejack would prefer to not have the drumming thing to take a hold to what is more important to her (Apple sales, taking care of the Apple family, etc) Not to mention that Applejack would prefer to have a better understanding of what she's supposed to do and allow the others to get even more lessons or something before they do anything together. Everyone agreed to those terms and agreed that despite their apparent success during the snowstorm incident, they would need a whole lot of practice. Without much ado, they went on with assigning the mentor-student pairings; Spike will be with Octavia, Granny Smith will be tutoring her own granddaughter and Pinkie will be with the venerable zebra.

“So we will meet up in two weeks?” Spike asked everyone. Twilight is now seeing everypony off and after staying in her place, she is somewhat glad that now she would have the place to herself more or less again. Her expression of both relief and happiness is not lost on Octavia, and the cellist could only smile.

“Eeyup, good luck Spike.”Applejack tilts her hat, and then walked back home with her family to their farm. Of course, Granny will now have to make sure that Applejack drums with the proper equipment, and thus this will be arranged soon enough.
“I can’t wait to play with everypony else! It will be so exciting! I hope that we could blow up stuff again!” Pinkie’s hyperactivity is about to explode before Mr. Coltrane distracted the pink pony with a muffin. Suffice to say that muffin had a very messy demise. Mr. Coltrane then takes off his sunglasses and started to wipe them from any stains, showing his bright amber eyes.

“Pinkie, you and Ah will start now. We will go to your crib and practice.” Pinkie started talking with her mouth full and started hopping back with the Baby Cakes in tow. Mr. Coltrane then lunges his saxophone case and followed the pink pony towards Sugarcube Corner. Octavia is now looking at the purple dragon, a devilish smile is now on her face. Spike immediately recognizes that he is not going to escape this, especially with Twilight right next to him.

“Well Spike….I will make sure that I will make a stallion out of you.” Octavia’s words slowly seeps into the dragon’s head, and as he looks at Twilight with a pleading eye he hoped that the purple unicorn will help him out. But instead, all he got is a rather disinterested look followed by a yawn. Twilight then trots back into the library, heading off to bed. Feeling a sense of betrayal, the dragon now looks at his mentor with an uncertain smile. Octavia reciprocated his smile with an evil smirk of her own. Poor Spike, he might suffer a little during his training session.

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Pinkie is now in her own room, wondering what Mr Coltrane will be teaching her. She is a little nervous about this as she does not know what to expect from the old zebra, as her lessons with Granny involves a lot of fundamentals things that she managed to get somehow. What will the old jazz legend do? Instead to her surprise, he is just sitting on one of the beanie bags, with not a single care about anything.

“So….what are we doing Mr. Coltrane?” Pinkie finally musters the courage to ask.
“Well to be honest Pinkie, just lay the racket. I will just sit here and listen.”
“Ur…okie dokie lokie.” Pinkie was about to play with all three of her instruments before Mr. Coltrane interjects.
“Play each instrument individually Pinkie. It helps.” His sing-song accent is now rather authoritative, but also calm at the same time. Pinkie then decides to play with her trumpet first and starts playing a tune that she heard. As she plays on, she wonders what is it that the old zebra is looking for, and with every second she wonders if he will be teaching her anything at all. Soon enough, she went on from instrument to instrument until the old zebra stopped her.

Mr. Coltrane frowns a little after he has heard all three of Pinkie’s instrument of choice. Pinkie looks at Mr. Coltrane with a look that tells the old zebra that she does not comprehend. He then asked Pinkie to hand her instruments over to him and the pink pony complied. As he checked on her instruments, Pinkie wonders why is he paying so much attention on her instruments. Pinkie gives Mr. Coltrane an uncertain smile. Mr. Coltrane then adjusts Pinkie’s instruments save that of the harmonica, and hands her back the instruments.

“Alright Pinkie, now try playin’ them tunes.” Pinkie picks up her trumpet and wondered what Mr. Coltrane did with her instrument. Once she started playing however, she could see the big difference from her previous sound. The way that it sounds to Pinkie is that now it has some more soul into it, and she immediately stopped playing her instrument. Before the shocked Pinkie could even mutter a single sentence, the old zebra is now smiling at her. He then takes off his shades and he walks to his saxophone case and opens it. Pinkie could see that there is a certain edge on that old zebra, and could see that he is now much more serious and determined than before. His mannerism also changed a little which surprises Pinkie.

“Well Pinkie girl, now it’s time to lay down the racket.” Mr. Coltrane turns around and smiles enthusiastically.

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“Well Applejack take a look at this.” Big Macintosh said to his sister, pointing to the back of the cart. Big Macintosh was in town a few hours ago, and when he came back he is towing what looks like a drumset. Applejack was to help her brother to carry something into the house, but not a drum set. Applejack slowly walks towards the cart, marveling at the sight of her drum set. The shiny metallic chrome bracing complemented the bright but solid red of the drumsm while the cymbals is that of a faded bronze. Applejack then touches one of the cymbals, and as she does so she could hear a slight chime. But then something in her snaps her out of her fascination.

“Wait…this must have cost a fortune Big Mac. How…?” Applejack intentionally stops and waits for her brother's reply. Big Mac then smiled at her and points to Granny Smith who is now trying to ask some of the farm animals to carry the first of the drums into the house.

“Thanks to her stallion-friend, we could borrow this for as long as we want. Mr. Harpstrings must have fancied Granny a lot.” Applejack shudders at the memory of knowing that her grandmother and another old pony are in ‘that’ kind of relationship. Big Mac could only give a hearty laugh as he walks up to his sister and whispered to her ears.

“Took me by surprise when Ah first found out about it a while back too AJ.” Applejack now looks at her brother with both curiosity and surprise. The red stallion then beckons his sister to help out with carrying the drums into the house. Applejack will have to ask her sibling later how he knew of Granny's social life once they are done putting the drums in the house.

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“No Spike.” Octavia’s stern response to his piano playing is quite disheartening to the little dragon, as he is unsure as to what Octavia is looking for in his music. He tried playing it fast, he tried playing it slow, but all he gets from the mare is a resounding ‘no’. He have to admit that she is beautiful and he is lucky to get somepony that is pleasing to the eye instead of two old crones, but maybe in hindsight the other two would be a much more lenient mentor than Octavia. But then another emotion wells up within Spike, and that is frustration. Finally he voiced out his frustration.

“Octavia, if you do not tell me what I am supposed to do, how am I going to do what you ask for?” He tries to keep it civil, but he will not stand by this. As the ticking of the metronome echoes around the room, he wondered if he had gone too far. It was then that Octavia finally walks up to him and sits next to him.

“Well, you tend to go into a rather funny tune whenever you try to improvise. Like this.” Octavia then plays the tune, and Spike is surprised that Octavia managed to replicate his piano style exactly. But then, Spike hears an even better form of his sound immediately, and he could see that it does sound much better.

“What I want you to do is to keep your timing up as you improvise. If you lose your timing as you improvise, you can catch everyone off and they never like it when someone messes up. Music is funny that way. Now try again, and try to keep to the beat of the metronome.” Octavia gives the dragon a smile that instantly melts his heart. Spike could only think of one thing and one thing only; that smile’s hotter than any dragon flame. However what he says is something else entirely. It even caught the gray pony by surprise, wiping away the smile on her face immediately.

“You know Octavia, I noticed that you are here teaching me every day….wouldn’t the Royal Canterlot Symphony be mad at you leaving them for a few days?” Spike asked. Of course Spike’s question is an innocent one, but as we all know in chapter six, it is a very touchy subject for Octavia. Being the bright and perceptive little dragon that he is, he immediately noticed a change in the cellist.

“Well…um….I…” Octavia is now struggling to answer Spike as she does not really want anypony else to know about this. Spike could see that his mentor does not really want to talk about this, and he decides to play different card. From Octavia’s reaction, it seems that she had not told Vinyl about this particular situation and the little dragon managed to deduce the problem that Octavia is having.

“It’s okay, you can tell me about it when you feel like it. And I promise I will keep your secret for now.” Octavia looks at the little dragon with surprise, but followed quickly with a small smile.
“Thank you, Spike.”
“No problem. Besides, you have to teach me that technique that you showed me. How do you do that with your hooves? I mean, I have fingers and even I could not do what you do.” Octavia could only chuckle and she takes a seat beside the dragon, and telling him how to utilize syncopation in his play.

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“Ur Granny, why am Ah listening to these music records?” Applejack is now sitting right next to her grandmother listening to some jazz tunes on their gramophone. The old pony could only give her a warm smile and a pat on her granddaughter’s shoulder.
“Well like Pinkie, you got no real idea ‘bout jazz. Time to listen Jackie.” Her granddaughter could only nod and agree with her grandmother. She always heard her grandmother playing some jazz tune ever since she was a filly, but she never really understood the music. Now it is time to know what is jazz all about. Also in many ways, Applejack will know her grandmother a little more with this endeavor.

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“Pinkie, stop. Sharin’ is carin’ y’dig?”

The training of Pinkie is a little bit challenging for both Pinkie and Mr. Coltrane due to one simple fact; Pinkie loves to play instruments, but she tends to play them alone. This makes things harder as now the old zebra would have to teach puffy-maned pony to learn some constrain. Of course Pinkie is also struggling as restricting her happiness in playing music is very taxing on the pony, as she loves to go all out and being leashed like that is not doing any good to her.

“Okay…” Pinkie said sadly at the old Zebra.
“Ah know you like them loud Pinkie girl, but everypony needs the light y’dig? What if nopony wanted to share some cake with ya? Wouldn’t you be sad? And if ya had all the cake to yerself, wouldn’t that make everypony sad?” The zebra chose his metaphor very carefully in order to relate to Pinkie. Using his old metaphor of pearls would not work, as it will be like giving pearls to swine.
“You are right Mr. Coltrane. Nopony will be happy if there is no cake!” Her smile returns, and she is now back into it. Mr. Coltrane will always be amazed by how quickly the pink pony could get down from a sad mood to a happy one in a flash. With that they are back in their lesson. The old zebra will have to admit that Pinkie is an eager learner, if somewhat loony. He expects great things from her once she returns to her band and play with them.

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As music started to resonate in the air throughout Ponyville, the first day of training for each one of the band members began in earnest.

Comments

[Golden Sax]

I know that feel, Spike.

[Crisis_Vyper]

Heh, frustration from the opposite sex is always something we can always relate to.