After dinner, Jeb gave his lute one final tuning and went to sleep. The next morning, he rose and just stretched his fingers. It didn’t seem smart to tire his hands out before meeting with the Bard.
“How much is the Bard charging you for teaching?” his Aunt Esther asked at breakfast.
“He hasn’t mentioned a price,” Jeb replied.
“Jeb, we shouldn’t take advantage of people’s generosity. Here, give him this,” she handed Jeb a bottle of mead.
“Thank you Aunt Esther,” he replied. Hopefully the Bard liked mead.
Jeb walked into the Inn, noting that it was as empty as it had been the time before. The Bard was playing on the stage, but he and the Innkeeper were the only ones in the room. With how empty the room was, Jeb wasn’t surprised when the Bard noticed him immediately.
The Bard wrapped up his song with a flourish, and Jeb applauded. It sounded a little hollow in the room, and he stopped, feeling awkward.
“So then,” the Bard said, “show me what you’ve learned this week.”
Jeb took the lute out of the case and quickly stretched his fingers. The lute was thankfully still in tune, so he didn’t have to try tuning it while the Bard watched. He quickly ran through the scales and fingering patterns that the Bard had taught him. They were rougher than he remembered from the day before, but not significantly. It’s probably just nerves, Jeb thought.
The Bard nodded as he played. “Overall, nice work! Your scales are very well in tune, and you’re doing the picking patterns nicely. The major thing I think you need to work on right now is your tempo.”
Jeb looked at the Bard, lost.
“Sorry, I mean the rhythm of your playing. Right now you’re still playing the notes as you find them, rather than in time.” Seeing Jeb’s blank face, he tried again, “Here, let me demonstrate. I’ll tap the table. Every time I tap, play the next note in the scale. Listen for a few beats before you start playing.”
The Bard started tapping, and Jeb started to understand what he had meant. There was, at least as far as he could tell, exactly as much time between each tap. Jeb started playing a scale.
The second note he played before the second tap, because he was used to playing it just that quickly.
“Listen to the beat and then try again,” the Bard advised. Jeb listened for another few seconds before trying again. This time the first two were in time, but he played the third note late.
“Better! Let’s keep trying.” If the Bard hadn’t been so cheerful about it, Jeb would have felt bad for how slowly he was learning.
The third attempt he played the second note early again. On the fourth, Jeb played the first note off the beat, because his finger caught the string weirdly.
By the time Jeb’s fingers were starting to get sore, though, he could reliably play the scale up and down in time.
“Great job Jeb,” the Bard exclaimed. “Want to try the same thing with the picking patterns?” It was a similar story, though Jeb picked it up faster. Now that he was starting to internalize the concept of the beat, it was easier to play it.
“Now, before we keep going, I guess I should give you an option. My plan is to have you unlock Lute Playing and Singing to get the Synergy Skill for Music. Technically, you can unlock Music as a base Skill, but I would recommend against it, unless you’re really trying to limit the number of Skills you’re learning.”
“I’m not trying to limit them,” Jeb replied, “though I did have a question about that. The Magical Primer I’m reading recommends keeping the number of Skills you learn to a minimum, but my family keeps recommending that I learn more Skills. Is there some reason that one or the other is better?”
“That’s a great question,” the Bard replied. “There are two major camps in Theorycrafting. One side generally believes that having more Skills means that you are more fully expressing who you are to the System, and so you will end up with a better fitting high Tier Class. The other thinks that it’s better to focus your Skills only on what will build your Class the fastest, then explore when you reach Tenth Tier.”
“Why Tenth Tier?”
“Nearly every Class Progression stops aging at the Tenth Tier, so at that point you have the rest of your life to find out what you’re truly passionate about.”
“It really seems like the two choices aren’t equally valid.”
“I will confess to some bias. I personally don’t see the point in waiting to live your life until an unknown day in the future. Having more Skills has nearly no downside, and plenty of upsides.”
“Then I’ll trust your judgement on how best to unlock the Music Skill,” Jeb said.
“Perfect. Back to the lesson, then. Right now you’re picking each note without really paying attention to the dynamics-” the Bard caught himself. “Here, listen to the difference.” The Bard started playing his lute, plucking out a simple pattern.
Or, at least, it sounded like a simple pattern. The first time each note felt more or less the same as the notes before and after. Then the Bard stopped. “Now listen to how different this sounds.” The different notes were slightly louder and softer, and the volume differences made the pattern sound much better, for all that Jeb couldn’t describe why.
“Now you try. For now, alternate one loud and one soft note, like this.” The Bard played the simplest pattern that Jeb had learned, clearly exaggerating the difference between the two volumes.
Jeb tried, and after a few false starts, managed to get the alternating volumes. The Bard nodded. “Now, do you think that you could do that in rhythm?”
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“There’s only one way to find out,” Jeb replied, and the Bard started tapping the table.
“If you make a mistake with volume, just keep going,” the Bard said, “and try to get back into the alternation.”
Jeb started playing, and immediately fell out of rhythm. It was somehow so much harder than he had thought it would be. Each attempt felt like it was getting worse.
“Take a deep breath,” the Bard advised, “it’s completely ok to make mistakes right now. That’s the way we learn.”
Jeb stopped for a moment, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath. Throughout that, the Bard kept tapping on the table. Feeling as though the tapping was burrowing into his mind, Jeb started playing again. This time, he just started by playing the notes in time.
It started to feel almost second nature, so he started making every other note louder. That was hard, but still maintainable. Once that became slightly easier, Jeb started playing the other note softer, trying to be as exaggerated in his playing as the Bard had been.
“Now that you’ve got that,” the Bard said, stopping his tapping, “let’s try something a little harder. The second pattern I taught you is in three, so every third beat is loud. It should sound something like this.” The Bard played the pattern that Jeb knew. It sounded so much better when it was accented.
“Now you try,” he said, resuming tapping.
It felt wrong at first to make the notes loud in groups of three. As he started to fall apart, though, Jeb took a deep breath and focused on just playing the notes. Listening closely, he could hear where the pattern made one note seem more important even without his actively trying, and so he just emphasized it more.
“Now then, the last general beat pattern is in four. It’s like the first one you learned, but ever so slightly different. Rather than just going loud soft, in four you go loud soft medium soft.” Jeb was beginning to worry that he was missing some sort of background that the Bard needed for him to learn. “I’m sorry, I’m still not totally used to being outside of the Academy. I mostly worked with second and third year students, so I keep having to remember that not everyone has taken theory courses. That’s in no way a reflection of you as a student, just me as a teacher.”
As nice as that was to hear, Jeb wasn’t sure he believed it. The Bard started playing the rhythm, though, and Jeb understood what he meant.
This new pattern was the easiest one for Jeb to learn. Partially, it was because it was like the version in two, but Jeb was also getting better at hearing the way that the notes he was picking seemed to want to be different volumes.
“That’s great! I’d say keep working on those patterns until you unlock the Skill. If you don’t get it in the next week, though, come back here and we can figure out what’s going wrong. Make sure to practice playing in time.”
“How can I practice that?”
“Oh, right,” the Bard rifled through his bag, “take this.” It was a strange box, but the Bard showed Jeb how to make it beat in rhythm. “Please try to avoid breaking this, it would be hard to replace here.”
“Oh, before I go!” Jeb said, noticing that there was a bottle in his bag, “my aunt told me that I should give you this. I wanted to say thank you for teaching me.”
The Bard looked at the bottle. “This logo seems familiar, where’s it from?”
“My aunt, sir,” Jeb replied, “she makes it.”
The Bard paused for a moment, clearly considering something. Then, shaking his head, he responded. “Well, thank you for the mead, Jeb. I hope to see you soon with a new Skill.”
Jeb’s Status Sheet at End of Chapter:
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Jeb Human Age: 16 Class: Least Mud Initiate Level: 1 Experience: 619/100
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Total Statistic Load: 126 Physical Load: 59 Strength: 15 Dexterity: 8 Endurance: 17 Vitality: 15 Presence: 4
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Mental Load: 67 Intelligence: 21 Willpower: 20 Magic Affinity: 15 Mana Depth: 3 Charisma: 8
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Mana: 260
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Glyph Attunement: 8 Least Conjure Water Tier 1 Spell Least Shape Earth Tier 1 Spell Least Hold Earth Tier 1 Spell Least Create Earth Tier 1 Spell Least Destroy Earth Tier 1 Spell Least Shape Earth - Efficient Tier 3 Spell Least Move Air Tier 1 Spell Least Create Fire Tier 1 Spell
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Skills: Least Mud Magic Meditation Mana Manipulation Spell Glyphing Improved Glyph Groking Gift of Gab Running Identify Soil Savvy Animal Handling Fertilizing Lifting Athletics
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Achievements: Focused Meditator Student of Magic
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Quests: Major: Slay the Dragon of the West (Progressive)
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