Hi-Fi Rush, the Heartsong, and Demons · 8:36pm Feb 19th, 2023

...Look, I promise that word salad makes sense.

I recently finished Hi-Fi Rush, an action game that's basically Devil May Cry mixed with Guitar Hero and a Saturday morning cartoon/comic book look and tone. The game has a licensed soundtrack of various rock songs and everything in the game happens to the beat of the soundtrack. Everything. Cutscenes, enemy attacks, platforming hazards, the main character's walking... and your fighting, if you time it correctly. Hitting enemies, parrying, or dodging on the beat gets you bonuses ranging from better damage to special combo attacks to more upgrade resources. It's a lot of fun! I had some trouble hitting enemies on the beat, but when it works, it works. This usually happened when the music was harder-hitting than usual; when a song like "Invaders Must Die" started blaring, I could rip through hordes of robots without a scratch perfectly on the beat.

And given the prevalence of music in MLP, this got me thinking.

Characters burst into song in times of high emotion, generally for self-expression. What if this could be exploited? Rather than the world shaping the songs, the songs shaped the world? Let's say that magic is a mental process. As ponies' emotions get more intense, magic slowly builds, through no conscious effort on their part; if the resonance harmonizes in the right way, that harmony slips back into the world, and we've got a musical number. The collective strength of the emotion determines the size of the song. Two lovers would get a duet on a good date, but in the overjoyed happiness of a proposal, they get a crowd song. Musical magic exploits this. By singing the right song at the right time, one can nudge ponies' emotions in the direction they want. When the words are enhanced by magic, a skilled singer can tweak the resulting magical overflow how they want, giving them a little bit of control over the resulting musical number -- and as reality slips to follow the tone of the song, by knowing the direction the song will take, they can get a vague idea of what's going to happen.

But, of course, there's more to songs than just lyrics. What about the instruments? In natural numbers, the magic supplies them based on ponies' on perceptions. In directed numbers, this is what makes them tricky, more than just singing. You need to lock the instrumentals in your mind to the point that they're practically still part of the song even though they're silent. And not vaguely, either; if you want to use "Hysteria" to rattle your enemies' morale, you can't just think, "that cool bassline from 'Hysteria'", you need to practically know it by heart. But you can get around this by picking the right song.

Why do you think "Don't Stop Me Now" goes so heavy on the vocals in the intro? So that you can get into the right headspace immediately and the spell can start working faster without too many instruments. Quicksilver really knew his stuff. One of the best musical mages of... ever, really.
What about "You Give Love a Bad Name"? Just a coincidence, or...?
Oh, the story behind that one is nuts. War, betrayal, double-crosses, love, heartbreak... It's a lot more specific because it was really only directed at one pony. You're gonna wanna take a seat...

But don't think you can game the system:

What if I started singing "Invaders Must Die"? It barely has any vocals, so I wouldn't need to sing much.
And that's the catch. The vocals barely mean anything in the context of the song. They're not where the power lies. You could probably get away with scat-singing the melody, though.
I guess "4'33" is also out, huh?
Unless you can get everyone to please be silent for a while.

There are limits, of course. If the tone of the song you pick isn't close enough to the tone of the reality you're trying to shape, you need to use a lot more magic to push it out and keep your mind under control; good luck trying to win a duel by singing "Livin' in the Sunlight, Lovin' in the Moonlight". You can't make specific things happen, since you're the composer and not the choreographer. And there's no guarantee that whatever happens during the musical number will stick. Still, it's a very potent form of magic, one most ponies don't even know they're affected by.

So, where do demons come into this? Well...

You know why demons come when you call them by their name? Because that's the way it works. It's in the nature of everything. Even you; if you're in a crowd and you hear me call your name, chances are you'll turn to look. Demons are creatures of energy and ideas, so they're even more constrained by this.
But there are deeper implications them being bound by "that's the way it works". Think of musicals. Look at the types of songs played when the hero is at a low point. Then look at the songs played when she's at a high point. If you swapped them, they wouldn't really work, would they? Because that's the way it works. You just can't have an energetic, bombastic song playing while the hero is losing. That's not the way it works.
So, remember this: if you get into a fight with a demon, starting singing "Don't Stop Me Now". There will literally be no way you can lose.

And then I got an idea where pop stars like Countess Coloratura, Sapphire Shores, or Songbird Serenade are potent forces in protecting Equestria from otherworldly forces because of the way their music has spread across the country. But then I remembered I don't have the skills in music needed to make it work and I made myself sad.

I have no clue where any of this came from.