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Guitar Nerd · **06-04-2015, 01:21 PM**

I am fairly new to roleplaying, only been doing it since last October, and I'm looking for advice on rping out music. As a musician myself I like to have characters who are also musicians, but I find that I have trouble really describing the sounds very well and therefore it's not as fun for me, and I assume for the other players, as I would like it to be. So would any experience roleplayers have some suggestions on how to do it well, or maybe even leave an example of rping a song.

I'll also leave an example of my character's lute style and a song that she might do:

Lute style:Â [youtube]DqBVdl7EoXs[/youtube]

Song she might do, also an example of her singing voice:Â [youtube]xkPpBFeqrdU[/youtube]

And feel free to post other songs for examples of how to rp playing music.

Telluride · **06-04-2015, 01:32 PM**

We have a whole host of IC bards who do this same thing!

For myself, I will usually just describe the initial opening of a song, in terms of the music: "A rollicking beat", "A slow-tempoed plucking of the strings,", "A raucous medley", and then simply go to reciting the lyrics, using the musical note (ALT+1+3) to indicate that they are part of the song. For an ending, I might mention a crescendo, or a fading note, or the like. I find trying to use words to describe the music itself to be a bit tedious.

If you want to see some of us in action, there will be a performance event on June 14th:

Celebration of the Wanderer

I am even happy to do song RP myself at random occasions, as are a number of others; I won't be online much if at all tonight, though. RL, feh.

Mountie · **06-04-2015, 01:45 PM**

Sadly I do not have any advice to offer, but at the same point I would say if you can write songs like this it would be amazing. I actually catch myself humming this IRL and to my dog from time to time. Though I guess this might fall more under 'Singer' and to do the two together would be more of a 'Musical Artist.' Regardless, I need more catchy songs!

http://ffxiv-roleplayers.com/showthread.php?tid=10974

Marisa · **06-04-2015, 01:58 PM**

One of the things I kept suggesting when the game was relatively new was that they add instrument emotes, similar to what Aion and ESO have. Sadly, the idea never became very popular. Should would be great for rp, though.

ArmachiA · **06-04-2015, 03:40 PM**

Armi is a musician, though I don't get to use it much. To do that, I do something a little weird, but it works for me. I listen to a lot of Jpop, songs that most Westerners wouldn't hear (Since I don't really listen to anime songs), so I take the translation of those songs, then rewrite the songs into English (making the words still fit the melody, adding English song writing conventions like Rhyme, making them fit the world of Eorzea instead of our world, etc etc) and throw them somewhere so I always have them handy. Usually in her journal. Sometimes, if I feel the backtrack has a lot of guitar or piano, I'll even record new vocals for them.

Then, if it ever comes up in RP - making macros with those song lyrics help or even just having them handy to type up. If I'm around people I'm comfortable with, I'll post a link of my rerecorded version instead so people can hear it.

You can pretty much do this with anything. I just don't want to run around saying Armi wrote "Landslide" or anything, so I use lesser known music. It actually helps me a lot. You can also do this by just... writing your own lyrics without the need of a backing track. Just make sure you describe what kind of song it is.

Nebbs · **06-04-2015, 04:12 PM**

More for doing a set performance but this covers macros and things, the first is a one woman play and the second is a song.Â [Nebula one woman performances]

I have seen some people use descriptions of chords, tone, progressions etc.. as a musician you would probably get that, I'm not so I don't feel able to describe it much.

thesunalsorises · **06-04-2015, 06:37 PM**

Ophelie is a musician and dancer, and I imagine her playing renaissance/baroque music. She plays the harpsichord and clavichord, and both of them are instruments that are really tricky to describe because they're not exactly common. Though you actually do hear harpsichords in the game's sound tracks, specifically the music for Coerthas and in the new tracks for Ishgard. Most compositions that she would play are really complex, and I'm not even sure where to begin to describe it. I personally just keep it simple.

For example:

She also sings, but I'm no good with lyrics so I just avoid it.

Aduu Avagnar · **06-04-2015, 06:50 PM**

I did similar to Telluride, describe the tempo and rythm of the song, then recite the lyrics using song notes, typically a line or two at a time.

I also link the song using an OOC text (yell or the like) so that the people Nako is playing to can listen to it as well Big Grin

Jaliqai · **06-04-2015, 07:29 PM**

I can't speak much to the actual details of how to play a musician. While I've always loved the ideas, it's just never been a character concept that I think I could do well with. However, as someone who does really enjoy reading posts from the more musically-inclined types, I feel like there's one thing you should try to keep in mind:

Always be mindful of your surroundings and delivery.

Let me use a recent example of what I mean. In the Quicksand a few nights ago, during a pretty busy time, there was a musically-inclined character that was performing a song. The song itself was very nice, and the lyrics were well-written (or well-translated into an Eorzean context if it wasn't an original piece).

However, the song was rather long with a chorus repeated 3-4 times and it was put into /yell line by line in very short succession. Chat was already scrolling hard in the area, and when the song started, it became unfollowable for anything that wasn't /yell. Several people instantly started to complain in brackets about the chat spam, and I suspect many people either used /blist or turned off /yell entirely.

Context is everything. If that same instance had occurred perhaps in a much less crowded, active area or in a planned event, it may not as been as seemingly ill-received. Likewise, if the delivery of it had just been changed -- a few repeated choruses taken out, several lines of the song emoted at once instead of line by line, done in /em or /say as opposed to /yell, etc. -- then it may have went over better. As it was, I fear that it actually discouraged many people nearby from interacting or acknowledging it and potentially from the roleplayer themselves, if the people that used /blist to deal with the chatscroll never thought to remove them from it afterwards.

This isn't meant to be any kind of hate-posting towards musician types that actually type out the lyrics to their songs, of course. I actually really love it when people take the time to be creative and do these sorts of things. This is just an anecdote and spot of advice from the audience perspective of how it can be received sometimes if you're not careful.

Roleplaying a Musician Advice

RPC has moved! These pages have been kept for historical purposes