//------------------------------// // Adagio // Story: All The Mares In The House Groove To Mozart // by Sanctae //------------------------------// Four hundred equestrian bits.  Four hundred equestrian bits … hmmm. Four hundred equestrian bits … worse. Four … hundredequestrianbits … tch. Oh, well, be fair; three hundred … andninetynine equestrian bits. ‘A penny saved was a penny earned’ dearest mama had always said. She narrowed her eyes at the receipt stapled to the glossy instruction manual. It was the strangest thing, really. Over the course of the walk back from the shop the number had somehow grown every time she’d looked at it until now it almost seemed like she’d spent a lot of money or something. She knew she’d got a great deal, that helpful young colt from the shop had assured her of that. Still … she just couldn’t stop herself noticing certain similarities between the number on the receipt and things like a holiday … or her rent. “Gimme that a second.” A minty green forehoof waved blindly from the darkness under Octavia’s hardwood desk. A similarly coloured, upside-down tail and butt also protruded from the depths amid a mass of cables, cable ties, and small, ripped plastic bags. She pressed the manual against the waving hoof until it grabbed its prize and shot back to whence it came. The butt waggled appreciatively. “Ffankff ‘Afi,” the voice said, presumably through either the screwdriver or the wire cutters. She turned to curl up on her office chair, resting her chin on her forehooves and watching the desk through half an eye. “You know,” she told the butt, “you have the amazing gift of being able to hold things in the air through sheer force of will and a happy evolutionary accident … maybe you could consider doing that from time to time?” There was a not particularly delicate ptchoo and a dull thump of something metal hitting a carpet. “Ah, young foal, you criticise that which you do not comprehend. Complete your studies and when you come to ask the question you will realise that it need not be asked at all.” “You just can’t multitask, can you?” “Who’s fixing whose electronics for free?” A back hoof waved menacingly in her general direction. “Noted, maestro.” “Which, if I may be so bold, could have been completely avoided in the first place.” The butt took on a more appraising tone. “Perhaps if you had brought somepony else along, maybe? Somepony who actually understands what she’s doing, even? One that could perhaps tell that a certain item does not have a power plug that will, oh I don’t know, actually fit in an Equestrian wall socket, for instance.” “Now hold on a minute.” She got off the chair and walked over the butt again. She always got a little fidgety about new gadgets; something about technology set on her edge, meant she couldn’t stay still. She nudged the butt with a hoof. “I gave you every opportunity to come help me pick something out and you said no.” “Wha-” There was a very solid sounding bang, the desk shook violently, and there was the sound of somepony releasing a breath through gritted teeth. The butt began to shake violently as its owner shuffled backwards from under the desk until a slightly dazed looking face appeared, propped up to stare accusingly at Octavia. “Allow me to indulge in a dramatic re-enactment.” Lyra cleared her throat and started making ring-ring noises before lifting a forehoof from the floor and bringing it cautiously to one ear. “Hello, Lyra the-best-friend-in-the-world-and-knowledgeable-music-mare-in-the-field-of-electro speaking. Who is calling? “Oh. Lyra, jolly good, just the mare I wanted to talk to. Oh-ho-ho, what japes!” “I do not sound li-” “Well, if it isn’t my very good friend Octavia, what a coincidence. Why, I was just thinking about how little you know about electronic music not thirty seconds before you phoned. What may I, your faithful comrade in arms, do for you?” Octavia’s expression was flat as the solos from that one filly in the Canterlot Under 6’s Recorder Club. “Well, my friend-whom-I-will-shortly-abuse-to-get-free-DIY-assistance-from, I was thinking I would take that terrible idea from last night and go drop a month's paycheck on it right this very afternoon by buying a bunch of things that I don’t know how to use! Doesn’t that sound simply spiffing?” “...it was only two and half weeks’ pay...” “Well, as a friend let me express my concern at such a rash decision and caution that expensive gear does not equate to having an easier time learning a new skill. I beg you, listen to me for I am wise and most definitely not being ‘silly and unhelpful’. “Oh-ho-ho, what an utterly barmy thing to say. I’m going to go do it anyway! Chocs away-tally-ho-jolly-hockey-sticks-wot-wot! “Wait, no! My good friend! H-Hello?” Lyra stared in confusion at her hoof, knocking it against the floor a few times before holding it up to her ear again. She turned to Octavia with an expression of utter confusion and disbelief as she put her hoof down. “She hung up.” Octavia winced. There was something about those piercing golden eyes that made arguing at them rather hard when they were glaring right back at you. “And then by the time I manage to get to your house you’re already unloading the boxes at the bottom of the stairs.” “Eheh,” she tugged self-consciously at her bow-tie. “Thanks for … um … helping with the stairs....” Lyra’s expression softened somewhat as she smiled and leaned forward to lightly bop her friend in the side of the head. “I’m not mad at’cha ‘Tavi, you just didn’t get the best deal. Some things are really good though. The converter for your antique mp3 player was a good call and something I wouldn't have thought to pick up.” She waved a hoof at the gramophone. Octavia bit her tongue. “Besides, what mare doesn’t love learning how to re-wire electrical plugs?” She disappeared under the table again, leaving ‘Tavi, as before, in the dubious company of her butt. ~~~ “But you have no idea what you’re doing. None. At all. Not even a little.” Octavia chuckled gently as she shooed Lyra towards the door. “Oh Lyra, you’ve already got me past the bit I don’t understand. I may not be good with all this technical stuff but I know my music.” Lyra was slowly backing towards the door, her teeth set in a horrified grimace as she cast around desperately for an argument. Her back hooves were already being forced over the threshold. “Do you even know what a ‘woofer’ is? What sampling is? What a freaking MIDI is? Do you even know how to save a file?” “Lyra!” The reprimand slipped out a little more forcefully than Octavia would have liked. She reached out an apologetic hoof and patted Lyra comfortingly on the shoulder to try and make up for it. “Look, I know I may not be as up to date with computing as you but the creation of musical art has nothing to do with understanding how many megaflops are in my cyber pipes.” Lyra let out a weird little squeak, like she’d just trodden on a mouse. “Come round tomorrow night, if you really must, and you can listen to the first few songs and we can discuss marketing strategy and so on.” Lyra was now standing out in the hall as Octavia slowly closed the door. A desperate, slack-jawed plea was etched into her face, one eyelid stuttering like a computer in the instant before a bluescreen. “Thank you for all your help.” Octavia could now only see a narrow strip of hallway and a terrified pair of eyes. “…Right … bye then...” Her front door creaked shut. There was a muffled scream from the hall, a sigh, and then the sounds of hoofsteps down the stairs. Tavi rubbed her hooves together. She was full of ideas. She was a veritable wellspring of inspiration, a font of skill and training. She giggled a little to herself as she dimmed the lights and picked up a cushion from the sofa on her way back to her work room. This was going to be a piece of cake. She placed the cushion on her desk chair and climbed up onto it, wriggling to get comfortably sat before she pulled the chair closer in to the music desk. There was a chorus of cracks and pops as she stretched luxuriously, bringing her front hooves high above her head and pushing her neck to the side. She reached down, pulling open a desk draw and extracting several leaves of musical manuscript and a pencil which she set on the desk in front of her. Her mind was beginning to settle in anticipation of the music; ideas and soundshapes were flowing freely between her ears, begging for release. She could see the limitless possibilities of tone and tempo laid out in the empty horizontal lines of the paper in front of her and, as she reached the centre of that calming inner silence, she could feel that she could craft it. With an expression of total and complete calm, her eyes drifted around the forge upon which she would work her magic. The black monolithic mixer was to her left with its blizzard of dials and switches, the computer was humming away with … something running on it, and her trusty gramophone was sitting at the back. The ghost of a smile danced on her lips. The computer clock read half past one. It was time to begin. She reached up and spent a moment adjusting her hair so it wouldn’t get into her eyes as she worked. It was time to begin. She could do this any time. Just needed to let inspiration do its thing. She reached over the desk, tilting the monitor down a little to get rid of some glare. Just had to let her years of training guide her through … yeah. She tapped a hoof along the wooden table top. Time to make some music. The computer fan buzzed despondently from somewhere under the table. She cleared her throat and loosened her bowtie a little; there was no sense in being uncomfortable while being creative. The clock ticked over another minute. Well first she needed to have a plan. You couldn’t write music without a brief, silly filly. She needed a plan. She needed a list! She snatched up the pencil, licked the end, and began to write in the top corner of her manuscript. “1. Need a drum beat.” Yes. That was a good starting point. She needed a beat, a foundation to work from. She reached out a hoof towards the keyboard. The computer screen was filled with an dense, empty grid, like some hardcore variation of Battleships with tiny, inscrutable buttons sprinkled like confetti around the edges of the screen. There were buttons with letters, buttons containing pictures of smaller buttons that also had letters, buttons with letters - and sometimes even little squiggly arrows - next to them.... Her hoof paused, hovering a millimeter above the keys, wavered towards the mouse, and then returned to the keyboard again. She glanced over at the black box and its avalanche of dials and sliders. Her hoof retracted and moved up to stroke her chin. “Hmm.” She stared at the screen. The screen flickered back at her. The room was quiet save for the gentle hum of various cooling fans. “...Hmmmm.” The screen remained stubbornly blank. She narrowed her eyes. Tentatively, she reached out a hoof towards the mouse and slowly pushed the cursor around. ‘Samples’. Lyra had mentioned those. She moved her cursor over the menu and, grimacing like she was pulling the pin on a live grenade, clicked. There were several … somethings to click through. She just pressed enter until they all went away, leaving a series of dots on the screen at regular intervals. She stared at the dots. The dots flickered back at her. DrumLoop_Basic1.mp3. She pressed play. Unh tss unh tss unh tss unh tss unh tss Mechanical drum beats popped out of her newly connected speaker system at precisely 120 beats per minute. Biting her tongue in concentration she reached out again, shakily grasped the mouse, and, swallowing nervously, clicked stop. It stopped. There. Nothing to it! She took a deep breath and grinned to herself. It wasn’t that hard at all. She pencilled in a faint tick next to the first and only item on her list. The drum beat was basically covered; she could come back and polish it up … later. She saved the file - which she knew perfectly well how to do, thank you Lyra - and turned her attention back towards the list. She picked up the pencil again, twiddling the end round in her mouth for a moment before continuing. “2. Must be catchy.” She double underlined that one, tapping the pencil against the paper a few times. “3.” She looked around the room. The curtains weren’t straight. It was a little too warm, really. Maybe she should have turned the thermostat down. “3.” She got up, crossed the room and neatened the curtains. When she was happy, she sat down again. She traced over the ‘3’ a few times before giving an imperceptible shrug and writing- “3. Must be really good.” She stared at that one for a moment, chewing her bottom lip, before crossing out the ‘really’. Her eyes drifted, seemingly of their own accord, over to the clock. Twenty to two. She let the pencil drop to the table and pushed herself off the chair. It was basically lunch time and she knew as well as anypony that you couldn’t work on an empty stomach. She’d grab a bite to eat, settle her stomach and get the creative juices flowing. She trotted quickly into the kitchen leaving the computer, and its solitary drum line, to its own devices. It was quarter past three by the time she had finished the washing up. She dried off her hooves with a now damp floral tea towel, slinging it over the radiator as she meandered back into her ‘studio’ and collapsed into her chair. The screen still showed a single line of blue dots. The paper was still blank, bar her list. The mixing thingy remained thoroughly inscrutable. Well, she’d just had a nice meal and that always made her a little sleepy. She nodded to herself. Yes, she hadn’t planned this terribly well. She’d have to take a little power nap and then throw herself, rejuvenated, into the process of making art. Yawning, she pulled herself off the chair again. The alarm went off at quarter past six and five minutes later Octavia was meandering her way out of bed. She’d had one or two pretty good ideas as she was dropping off to sleep and was looking forw- wait. She glanced up at the living room clock. Almost seven o’ clock. She’d completely forgot! It was an hour later by the time the latest episode of The Archers had run its course. By quarter past eight she had paired up all her loose socks, by twenty to nine she’d re-alphabetised her LP collection, and by nine fifteen the inside of the oven was sparkling clean. Now the birds were singing their way through their evening chorus and she was once again slouching in front of that blasted screen and the stupid sheet of blank paper, chewing her way through the remains of the end of her pencil. She was reaching the end of the Beethoven piano sonata to which she’d been listening. Now there was a pony who knew how to make something popular. She’d been aiming to get herself thinking a little more analytically, maybe borrow a few tips from the great stallion himself to fine tune her own efforts. Progress had been plentiful. “4. Piano sounds nice.” Also, the drums now went tss unh tss unh rather than unh tss unh tss. That had been a bit of a breakthrough, honestly. Her head rested blearily on her forehooves, half an eye staring glassily at that stupid screen with its stupid dots. Stupid program; it was just a bunch of lines and dots. How on earth was she meant to make music with silly little coloured lines and dots. Fisher-Price My First Music was what it was. Her gaze came to rest on a cut-glass decanter - a present from a foreign orchestra she’d played for - which sat, tucked away, on a small oak table in the corner of the room. She cocked her head to one side. Maybe she just needed to let go a little. Loosen up just a smidge. Let the old imagination out of its cage, so to speak. Besides, the glasses were right there and just yesterday she’d bought a bunch of fresh lemons. She even had the tonic bottles in her hoof now, had somehow been magically teleported over to the decanter, and somehow the stopper for the decanter had been mysteriously removed so frankly it would be silly not to have at least one. Maybe two. ~~~ “Public Service Announcment from the ofice of Canterlot Council: Classical sucks. You also suck. Both these things suck. :( Thanks for you attention.” Lyra regarded the notice in the way one might regard one of those nice gentlecolts with the sandwich boards that helpfully inform people that the end is nigh: with a fair degree of skepticism. She was pretty sure that the sign, clumsily but enthusiastically sellotaped to Octavia’s front door as it was, was not a real Council Directive. On the one hoof, she had to admit she could kinda see where the poster might be coming from, but the fact it was written in blue crayon on cardboard repurposed from a box of Hay Flakes, contained obvious spelling mistakes, and had a rather detailed unhappy face in it were probably signs it wasn’t real. That and the footnote of ‘seriously though, what the hay are you even listening to?’. She knocked again as she re-read it. The door creaked open an inch or two until a thin strip of darkness was visible, broken only by a single, furtive eye. It looked at her and frowned. “What? Why are you here? You said you’d come back tomorrow.” “It’s been three days ‘Tavi. I haven’t seen you for. Three. Days.” The eye narrowed in confusion. “Three...?” “I knocked. Repeatedly. I was on the verge of calling the police to begin the hunt for your corpse.” She leaned forwards towards the shadowed figure and peered at the bloodshot eye. “When was the last time you slept?” The eye stared wildly. “No time!” A hoof shot out from the darkness and in a flash had wrapped round her neck, dragged her through the doorway, and frogmarched her into the desk chair Lyra now found herself in. She almost recognised the room. It reminded her of Octavia’s study if a crazy person had coated the floor in manuscript paper and empty tumblers of - she sniffed - gin and ton-… well, mainly just gin. She also almost recognised the pony wading through the sea of paper. It reminded her of Octavia if Octavia had taken to living in a hedge recently. “Okay, forget sleeping. When was the last time you ate?” She sniffed again. “Or shower-” With the subtle violence of a ringmaster cracking a whip, a hoof was suddenly quivering an inch from her muzzle, smelling faintly of gin, sweat, and desperation. Trying not to make any sudden moves or loud noises, Lyra ran her eyes up the hoof until she reached the shaking, distant eyes of her friend as she swayed drunkenly on the spot. She spoke with the husky voice of autumn leaves falling in the breeze. “Ssshhhhhh … it is done.” Slowly, and with reverential care, Octavia’s free hoof pressed a single key on her keyboard as she closed her eyes in ecstasy. When you got right down to it, the piece was quite simple, containing only three components: a classic, if somewhat simplistic, eighties drumline, an amount of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata that took the definition of ‘sample’ and threw it out the window, and the sound of one, possibly two, crying foals. This was delivered at roughly the volume of a jet aircraft coming in to land between Lyra’s ears. It took all … ALL … of Lyra’s limited willpower to keep a straight face as she desperately partitioned off a part of her brain to deal with the trauma later while reducing the outward signs of physical distress to a few spasming facial muscles and shaking limbs. As her vision started to blur, she managed to reach out, wrap a hoof around the speaker cable as it trailed across the floor, and pull. Hard. Silence. Massaging her temples and biting her lip, she looked at the pony responsible. She hadn’t moved since the sound had begun; her head was down, her eyes were closed, her hooves were hanging loosely in the air like a conductor waiting to lead in the orchestra. Lyra could barely tell she was breathing. “Tavi, I-” “Oh Celestia, it’s abysmal!” Looking down at her torso, Lyra found Octavia had crossed the space between them with surprising speed and was now kneeling on the floor with her forehooves wrapped around Lyra’s chest, wailing like a banshee and pounding her hoof on the chair arm. “Tavi, you-” “You’re right. I’m a hack. I’m a talentless waste of space. I should just cut my cello into kindling and cast myself into the sea. Call the orchestra, Lyra. Tell them I’m sorry. I’m sorry for letting them down. I’m sorry for letting my family down. And you, dear, sweet Lyra, I’ve let you down as we-” “Tavi, you haven-” “What would Mozart think? What would Beethoven think? They'd laugh, Lyra. Laugh, I say!” “I don’t think-” Octavia stared up desperately at the ceiling, forehooves clasped as if in prayer. “I’m sorry. Forgive me! FORGIVE ME!” She buried her chest in Lyra’s chest again. The wailing intensified. Lyra sighed. She’d been here before. Octavia had locked herself in her house for a week because she’d been unable to play a section from Berlioz in time with everypony else. Lyra had spent several hours trying to convince her that it was just a minor misprint in her copy of her part, watching her increasingly blunt explanations fall on increasingly melodramatic deaf ears. Eventually, she had been forced to come up with a solution. “All right. Lyra Emergency Three-Step Recovery Plan time.” Octavia pulled up short, twisting her panicked eyes upwards to look into Lyra’s face. “Woah, wait, come on now, be reasonab-" smack. “Step 1.” “Ow, that reall-glrk.” “Step 2.” The hoof that had just recently slapped her in the face now pulled her into a headlock as it dragged her through into her bathroom, pushed her through the pink shower curtain, and punched the cold water tap. Lyra leaned up against the sink, watching as the silhouette behind the shower curtain performed a very accurate and enthusiastic interpretation of the scene where Dorothy melts the Wicked Witch of the West. “So, clearly leaving you alone with this was a bad call on my part and, for that, I apologise. I won’t make that mistake again. This time I’m getting you some proper guidance so that you won’t create a … ‘collection of sounds’ that un-makes the fabric of reality. Again.” There was a violent, guttural hissing sound from the other side of the curtain. “You want Step 3?” There was a damp whimpering noise. Lyra crossed her hooves in front of her chest and allowed the merest hint of smile to cross her face; it wasn’t often she got to play at being the practical one. “Darn right you don't.”