A little music... [Closed]

[toariversodeep.livejournal.com]

Roxie is feeling a little anxious about her meeting with Allen. It's not enough to keep her from coming, though—the faint unhappy tickle down her back of her sinuses isn't nearly as bad as some of the panic she's worked her way through before. So, at 16:00 exactly, not as much as a minute early or late, she steps into the Sensoriums. She has her overlarge denim jacket, hanging awkwardly on her little frame and half-buttoned, and a little silver bell hangs on a chain around her neck, but she doesn't have anything else with her, and her hands are in two of the jacket's many, many pockets.

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[twelvevoltman.livejournal.com]

Allen is a little late. Hey, he has two demanding jobs. He's allowed an extra minute or two on his way through Stacy's humid halls.

When he enters the Sensorium, he spots Roxie quickly and ambles over. At 6'6'', "ambling" is about an accurate description of his usual gait.

"I'm gonna assume you're Roxie. I'm Allen. Hey. Is that your real jacket, or a sim?"

His plantsuit is covered by a hologram of cargo jeans and a no longer spatially appropriate (http://www.thinkgeek.com/images/products/zoom/you_are_here.jpg) t-shirt. He eyes her jacket with some possible envy.

[toariversodeep.livejournal.com]

"Real," Roxie says, looking up at him. Quite a bit up—she's 4'11" or so, easily small enough to seem more like 12 or 13 instead of her actual 14 years of age. "It's where I keep my stuff." She does seem to have enough pockets on there to equip a small squad of people, and the bulky fit suggests that most or all of them are filled.

"We aren't there anymore," she comments, glancing back down at Allen's shirt.

[twelvevoltman.livejournal.com]

"No we are not. Sharp kid. I'd ruffle your hair, but we just met and that would be an inappropriate breach of contact."

He raises his eyebrow. "Lucky. I'm still trying to find my pants. Which sounds way worse than it should."

He puts his hands into his holographic pockets. "So, you mentioned a cool mbira-thing?"

Interesting new musical instruments, gimme gimme.

[toariversodeep.livejournal.com]

Those sharp little eyebrows shift. "It would," Roxie says, and then adds to herself: "Somewhere to sit..."

And she sits. It's fortunate that the Sensorium has the good timing to conjure a simple wooden chair under her before the motion makes her fall over backwards.

A hand goes up to pull the bell and chain from her neck—the chain parts smoothly, without as much as the indication of a magnetic catch in the back. As her hands touch along the little bell, it lets out a momentary, crystal-clear tone in the key of C—and then that cuts out as the silver visibly shifts, blooming out like a flower, growing into a wealth of finger-plucked keys and strangely-layered resonators and other mechanisms of unclear usage...

[twelvevoltman.livejournal.com]

Ooh. Neat. Allen leans in, monitoring the shifting object as it changes. "Magic or tech? Or some combo?"

[toariversodeep.livejournal.com]

"Magic," Roxie says as she carefully guides the blooming-unfolding motion of the instrument, pulling here and pushing there to change how it sprouts its finger-keys and weird layerings. Finally it slows to a stop, leaving a complex mess of keys and resonators and overlapping plates on her lap, all crafted out of pure silver and as finely and elegantly worked as if by a master jeweler.

She takes a soft breath to center herself, and Roxie's hand play scross the keys--and the first handful of notes to Stairway to Heaven resonate out of the thing, sounding for all the world like it was played on Jimmy Page's own guitar and amp.

[twelvevoltman.livejournal.com]

"Dude."

That is wicked awesome. That is SO wicked awesome, Allen has to take a moment to think about how properly to phrase how wicked awesome that is.

"I am vastly impressed. Vastly."

The deadpan might suggest otherwise, but he means it.

[toariversodeep.livejournal.com]

Roxie's fingers pluck along the keys, continuing the theme for another few measures before she stops. It seems like a one-to-one matching with the notes, Allen will be able to tell, though how her other little twitchy hand movements and touches against the instrument are affecting things won't be too clear without more context. It's almost like watching a steel guitar player, though, little flicks of rhythm on the instrument itself attached to the rest of the music.

"I can only do one or two parts at a time, but I should be able to manage more eventually." She says 'eventually' as though it's never going to actually happen. "I've had to mostly teach myself."

[twelvevoltman.livejournal.com]

He pays close attention to her fingerwork, to the way the instrument vibrates and the channels along which the sound passes.

"Not gonna lie, that's pretty sweet. Are there any effects?"

[toariversodeep.livejournal.com]

It's warping still, softly—each pluck makes the metal change, just a little, beyond just the vibration, twisting through echo chambers and down filter channels that shouldn't even be able to physically do what they do, funneling through shimmering half-hidden internals...

It's like watching some madman's conception of a guitar folded into a piano layered with a harmonica and woodwinds—it's quite bluntly impossible by all sane standards. Not that that's keeping it from working.

"I can manage almost anything if I can conceptualize it well enough. It's—hard to explain."

Her hands play across the instrument, twisting sections here and changing sliders there, and then one hand starts plucking again, the other sliding against sections of the thing in ways that seem to be somehow affecting the music, and the first bit of what may well be a familiar guitar instrumental come out (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jn5Y45vNp5I)...