Short Stories from Beyond Time, Space, and Shadow

by ZeroCore

The Colt's Music

Music can come from strange places.

In the middle of Canterlot sat a rather old store, the quaint place of business specializing in musical instruments and records, as well as the repair of them. Inside this shop of sound was a colt who, even though his cutie mark was that of a record, always found himself a bit envious of those who could really get into music, not just those who could listen to a song and interpret meaning from it, but those who could make it, weave sounds into a new song or symphony. Admittedly he'd love to be able to write music, but no matter how hard he tried, even his best “pieces”, if one could call them that, wound up having all the appeal, grace, and melody of a cat scratching against a chalkboard, and that was on a good day.

“Hmmph...” he sighed, thinking about all the musicians, some famous, who appeared in his parent's shop from time to time. “If only...”

The small bell tied to the door suddenly rang—even the doorbell sounding melodic and tuned—as a pair of mares entered. The colt instantly recognized them; one had a gray coat with a black mane and tail, both well-kept and styled. The other had a white coat wild blue mane and tail, streaks of lighter blue in them in a somewhat haphazard fashion as if the mare's mane had lightning running through it.

“Yo, Pseudo Octave!” The white mare called, the DJ approaching the clerk's desk. “I hear your folks are gone for the day. You watching the shop for them?”

“Uh huh,” the colt replied, “that's right, Miss Scratch.”

“Psh, ah, come on,” Vinyl Scratch laughed, “Ya' know I prefer either Vinyl or DJ Pon3.”

“Really, Vinyl,” the DJ's companion replied with a grin, “you can't criticize the young colt for being polite.”

“Aw, cool it, Tavi,” Vinyl smiled back.

“Don't mind her, dear,” Octavia went on. “Anyway, young Mister Octave, do you have our supplies repaired?”

“I sure do!” the colt smiled, ducking back into the back room.

A few seconds passed, Pseudo Octave returning with a freshly polished and boxed set of records and a perfectly cleaned and varnished double bass.

“Everything is set and ready, Miss Octavia,” Octave said, “but to be honest, I still don't know how a double bass of yours managed to get so many scratches on it.”

“Ask Vinyl,” Octavia deadpanned.

The DJ just snickered to herself.

“Like I said, Tavi,” Vinyl said, signing the check and promptly making her way to the door, “you should let a DJ near a bass; you never know when it might drop!”

Both other ponies face-hoofed as Vinyl Scratch made her way outside, waiting for her more socially-refined friend to join her. The bassist pony just shook her head as she began to make her way outside.

“Thank you, and your parents, again for the superb job,” Octavia said, balancing Vinyl's records on her back as he slid her bass into its wheeled case, the instrument rolling along the floor after her.

“No problem,” Pseudo Octave replied, “have a nice day!”

“You too!” both mares said as they made their way down the road.

About half way down the street, Pseudo Octave thought he heard the sound of a mare yelling, no doubt Octavia complaining at something Vinyl did again.

“Heh, drop the bass,” he thought, remembering the DJ's rather obtuse pun.

He brought his attention back to the store again as he heard a wooden block hitting the floor, the simple rhythm instrument bouncing off the table as he leaned against it.

“Speaking of dropping,” he thought, trotting over to retrieve the block.

Pseudo Octave placed the block back on the table's edge, looking it over for any sign of damage. Pleased that the instrument survived intact and without a scratch, the colt went back behind the desk once more, eyes drifting back to a daydreaming state. He thought of how one day, he was sure, he'd finally find that instrument, that rhythm, and that state of mind that seemingly all musicians had. He'd write a song, a real song, that finally, finally, sounded nice. He didn't care about fame or fortune; all he wanted to do was write and play.

The colt sighed.

“Yeah, like that'll ever happen,” his ears drooped slightly. “The only reason I got this mark at all was from cleaning a record.”

Pseudo looked over the calendar, noticing that another job for Miss Octavia and Miss Vinyl was due to be picked up in a few hours after a pair of concerts the two had to perform. Trying to put his own problems out of mind for the moment, Pseudo Octave went into the shop's back room, inspecting the instruments that were due in a short time.

The shop's back room smelled of varnish and sawdust, the repair department always having odd materials around the area. The colt checked a few boxes containing the instruments, making sure they were in tip-top shape. He sneezed slightly, wiping dust from his muzzle as he pushed the box forward, trying to make sure that he was as gentle as possible.

The dust had a problem with that.

“A-ah choo!” he sneezed, nearly falling over.

The colt rocked backwards, bumping into the repair bench. Thankfully no instruments were present, but the small bits of pipe, tube, and bolts on the bench scattered around the room, landing in a few corners where the lantern's light didn't quite reach.

“Oh come on!” Pseudo complained. “Stupid dust!”

The colt sighed, focusing as he cast the one spell he knew how; a simple light sorcery that made his horn glow.

The faint yellow glow was enough for him to see, and so after a bit of scanning around, he found the nuts, bolts, tube, and such, placing them back on the table as neatly as he could. The issue with round tubes is that they tended to roll about, and, to his further annoyance, Pseudo Octave had to catch a few as they managed to fall off the table once more, resounding with a few hollow reverberations as they hit the floor.

Rolling his eyes, Pseudo grabbed them again, standing them on-end on the table's surface.

“That'll show you,” he chastised the inanimate metal parts.

Before heading back out, Pseudo stopped for a moment, his mind noticing how the metal tubes hit the floor, and the noises they made.

“Huh,” he thought, remembering how each 'clang' they made had been different. “I wonder...”

The colt looked back to the workbench, pulling up a tall stool to sit on. Now in front of the bench, he looked down at the tubes, the thin brass cylinders reminding him of a pipe organ... and the fiasco his attempt at playing one had been. NEVER would he go into that chapel again, regardless of how much they were willing to pay to repair that thing.

He shivered a bit, putting the dreadful notes he'd managed to get the pipe organ to wheeze out away in the back of his mind.

“Yeesh, I'm not thinking about that,” he said to himself, “but... these aren't anywhere as loud... and they are just scrap metal...”

He tapped the top of one with his hoof. The tube gave out a low reverberation, the hollow noise faint and soft, sounding almost like a sort of dull “poof” or “huff”. Pseudo tried another, the slightly smaller tube giving off a lighter, yet still similar, sound. Now, as bad as he was at playing instruments, Pseudo Octave was no stranger to how they worked, and in the case of pipes the mechanism was obvious; the longer the tube, the lower the note.

“I wonder...” he said, placing the pipes in order of smallest to greatest.

He tapped each one, listening to the chaotic sounds as he tried to get the patterns right. Frustration build up in him, same as always, but the colt couldn't bring himself away from it. Unlike other instruments that were loud, and tended to scare him off as soon as he tried to play them, Pseudo felt rather comfortable with the soft, low sounds the pipes produced.

“Hmmmph, come on,” he thought...

A few taps here and there, a few more there and there...

Suddenly, Pseudo thought of something he'd never tried before. He'd noticed how some ponies had metronome devices or even a tapping hoof in the background when they played, that steady tick, tock, or tap, tap, always playing.

“Maybe that's why they do that,” he thought. “It keeps them steady!”

Pseudo tried tapping his hoof, doing his best to keep the beat steady. Tapping the tubes again, this time with the aid of his steady beat, the colt began to smile; a simple rhythm formed. His grin increasing, Pseudo started tapping away on the bits of brass, the colt soon forming the basis of a tune, HIS tune... the type he'd wanted to make for so long, the colt practically feeling creativity flowing through him as his simple song flowed through the back room.

The tune stopped as a new thought came to the colt. Pseudo hopped off the stool, grabbing a few bits of cardboard and plastic tubes from a nearby dust bin. Collecting up a few old, broken drum heads, a few wooden boards, nails, and screws, Pseudo Octave began work on a device that he knew would sound wonderful.

Bits of old plastic and cardboard were cut to length, each tuned by the pony's sensitive ears, and slid into special slots in the device. Scraping the last bits of varnish and paint out of emptied cans, Pseudo coated the entire frame in a dull brown coat of the protective chemicals, the entire piece looking less. Drum head were trimmed, and fastened tightly onto the edges of the tubes at an angle. Coats of laminate went over the tubes, the device looking less and less like a pile of tubes put in a box to a set of shiny, silver-painted pipes atop a well-build, seamless frame. Finally finished, the varnish and paint dried, the colt stood his device on end, the tubes facing sideways with the drum heads facing him on a slant. The instrument, HIS instrument, was finally done.

“Now to have some fun!” he smiled, the colt resuming his rhythmic song on the improvised percussion device.

The large, plastic and cardboard tubes resounded with a dry buzzing noise, each tuned specifically to different notes. Tapping a hoof and keeping in step, the colt had a percussion song complete in a surprising amount of time each and every note sounding, for once, like an actual song rather than just a cacophony of noise.

“Nice!” Pseudo said, overjoyed at his piece.

“I'll say!”

The colt immediately stopped, looking around to see where the voice had come from. Spotting the small room's door swinging open, Pseudo spotted the two musician mares from earlier. Apparently they'd stopped by for the rest of their gear.

“Aheh, sorry,” Pseudo apologized, the colt seeing how late it had gotten as he eyed the room's clock.

“Don't be!” Vinyl replied, the DJ breaking into a wide smile. “That was some of the best-sounding improv I've ever heard!”

“Très bien, indeed,” Octavia added, looking the collection of pipes over. “And look at the instrument itself. You managed to build this in such short time?”

Pseudo pridefully nodded.

“Whoa-ho-ho, not bad.” Vinyl went on. “It looks like you've got a bit of music in you, I see.”

“I guess so,” Pseudo smiled, feeling quite good inside, “I guess so!”

Author's Note:

BTW: Pseudo Octave's instrument was inspired by the real-life instrument known as a tubulum, an instrument made with PVC tubes all trimmed to different lengths to produce different sounds, a slanted drum head at the top of each tube for striking. The instrument was made popular by the famous Blue Man Group, who use these devices in most of their performances.