It makes sense, when you think about it. Magic and music come from similar places, really. As mathematically rigorous as music is, how you order the numbers and operations, as it were, has a big effect on the emotional response it invokes. And magic, when performed by a skilled caster, has a similar echo across the spirit of the world. Because where music works in the hearts of people, magic works in the heart of the earth. And oh, how she does love her music.
I've been touring with a troubadour band for almost as long as I can remember, moving up from banging a tambourine as a lad of five to a steady drummer now at hmmm I think I'm about twenty-three now? And we would go wherever the money seemed to be, sometimes getting it a little wrong. But I've been practicing, learning new songs wherever I can and even picking up instruments - I can even compose a little on a guitar now, and it's great. Better still - with care you can thump a rhythm on the guitar even as you're playing, so it's like I'm still the drummer too.
Don't get paid twice as much for playing two instruments at the same time, ah well.
But then we picked up the wizard. She tells us to call her Wiz, so we do. It feels a little weird; she doesn't look like a Wiz. Or a wizard, for that matter. No beard. And she brought with her a wagon of instruments, including a flute that she plays, some big furniture looking thing that she called a pee-yunno and some other things. She played the flute to audition and was an immediate sign-on, when she played, every flower for about a hundred feet in every direction bloomed brightly while we were watching.
"I thought magic was, you know, spells." We kept it together while she played but honestly by the time she was done with the piece nobody was looking at her. Some of the flowers looked like they were straining to bloom bigger while we watched.
"Well, it is! But nobody ever said the spells had to be words like humans use."
So the wizard joined us and the take got better. WAY better, because when she played crops thrived, gentle rains fell, entire herds of ewes all quickened simultaneously, and it didn't take long for the villages we played for to be really glad to see us. And all these good things didn't happen because the wizard played - I mean, they DID - but because the wizard was playing with us.
"I think it might have something to do with harmonics. You know, how one sound sounds one way and another sound sounds another way, but when you play them together they kind of...mesh? Like gears in a mill? Either sound by itself is nice enough but when they're played together they're a lot more. So I've been looking for a group to join for years so I could really expand what I could do for people, but either their repertoire wasn't very good, or they weren't very good, or we didn't get along..."
"We know about players not getting along. You're our second flautist in two years. The last guy was kind of full of himself."
"That's silly. One flute by itself outdoors? The sound disappears. It absolutely has to have other instruments to give it more weight, make it carry. Your drums are crucial for that."
"That's part of why he's gone. He didn't want any kind of backup, he wanted solos."
"Oh, dear."
"So, magic music. Okay, that makes sense to me but...can anyone do it?"
Wiz made a face. "Sorry, sweetie. Lots of people - especially musicians - ask that, and that's part of why I'm gone from them. They can get kind of pushy, demanding to be shown how it works, you know. If they've learned how to play music and music makes magic, they want to make magic. It's not like that.
"It's like being born left-handed. Right-handers can learn to use the left hand the way left-handed people do, but it's a constant trial and it never becomes natural. You aren't left-handed, you're just using your left hand. Get it?"
"I sure do. I'm left-handed myself. I learned to play drums the way I do because a right-handed guy taught me and I never changed, but force me to eat right-handed and I'll probably stab myself in the eye. I feel my left hand more than I feel my right, does that make sense?"
"You're asking a wizard if that makes sense? Of course it makes sense."
"And I restrung the guitar so I could play it lefty."
"I had noticed. You stand on the opposite side of the group from most guitarists I see."
"So okay, that's that. Magic is a kind of left-handedness, either you are or you aren't and trying to practice magic doesn't make you magical. But like in so many things, teamwork makes magic stronger, even if the only one actually magical is you. Right?"
"Wow, I wish I could have had you in the school. You just skipped a year of minutiae but yeah, that's right."
"What is the big box thing, the pee-yanno. I've never seen one."
"A travelilng minstrel far from any city, I'm not surprised. It's a stringed instrument..."
"No way."
"Absolutely! Come look!" And she lifted the lid on the device, showing enough strings to make an entire village's worth of guitars. "It's a chore keeping the thing in tune on the road, I can tell you."
"How does it work?"
She showed me the keys and the little felt mallets. "Huh. Every note is, uh, distinct. No bending notes into and out of each other like with a guitar."
"True. A piano," and she pronounced the word carefully for me, "hits the exact note, the same way a flute does. But you can really make some big chords with this thing." She demonstrated, banging out a thunderous bar from one end of the row of keys. There was a wet pop as the watermelon on the lunch table exploded. "Oops."
"So what else have you got, Wiz? Anytime a minstrel can play more than one instrument, that's for the best. And you've got a lot here. What's...hey, a bugle."
"Not a bugle, a trumpet. Like a bugle how you blow into it, but it has keys for fingering to change the pitch length of the tube - a bit like bending your strings, but not as flexible. But you get a lot of flexibility back with the mouthpiece. The flute I like doesn't let you bend like a guitar does, but the piano doesn't bend at all. The trumpet lets you bend more than a flute does and when I cast with the trumpet, it really packs a punch."
I felt my eyebrows pop up. "How so?"
"The piano's distinct notes makes very precise music, very precise magic...but magic doesn't like being precise. Magic is a heartfelt experience and while you can be very expressive with the piano, it loses a bit of the artistry in the musician..
"The flute, being powered by my breath, is a lot more personal and the trumpet, with its greater input of nuance in the mouth - very intimate, you know? - is even more so. So the magic really responds to it."
"I think I get it. So a drummer might not be able to make much magic because the drum really only does a few things."
"Exactly. But it goes a long way to enhancing a spell that's underway, never forget. Magic, like music, has a beat, and the drum IS the beat."
I noticed a big misshapen heap of wrappings, carefully secured with a length of cord. "What's hiding under there?"
Wiz suddenly looked a little shifty. "Um...That's a tuba."
"Okay?"
"Like a trumpet. But bigger - way, way bigger."
"What does it sound like?"
"Honestly, it sounds like a whale orgy if you don't know what you're doing. But I know what I'm doing and I don't dare play it."
"How come?"
"You DO remember I'm a music-casting wizard, right? I don't think anybody hereabouts wants a new volcano."
-end-