Songs

[Seidl]

I've been working on getting typed up some period martial and drinking songs for martel to sing, and I've got a couple of questions for those that have done this more than I.

First, if there any good way to do a chorus? Repeating it between each verse makes the song LONG. And it seems like its hard to do a sing along anyway, just with the game works. Ideas?

I guess the rest are more general. What's a good length for a Marrach song? Since its text instead of vocal.

How many lines/verses per command? I jcould put the whole thing into one giant command, but it would be really long. But one verse per line means it would take a while to get out. One verse and a chorus?

Just trying to ask inspiration from the people who have done this before.

-=- Matt aka. Martel

[Aeriale]

I dunno about all that, but I do know a kinna cool French one (in French) that I may still have from long, long ago, when I took French (I'm a pack-rat). The chorus goes:

"Oui, oui, oui!
"Non, non, non!"

I think that's it. I could be wrong. I'll look it up for you, if you want.

Aeriale

[stealthkat]

Although Katherine is the leader of the Poets' Brotherhood, I trust you won't take my word as the end-all-be-all here. This is just my opinion...and, so far, the feedback I've received from my audiences (both IC and OOC)

So, my first suggestion is to figure who your target audience is. Then, what is the occasion. Are you intending to be 'singing' in a bar room full of fidgeting and talking people? Or are you performing for a quiet, attentive audience at a Convocation?

I generally try to keep my stuff short. For example, the song I wrote for the Giving Day dance was all of three verses sandwiched between the chorus. I performed this song for some OOC feedback prior to the dance as I feared it would be too long to keep that many people's attention. So what I did was have the song typed up in Word with the Marrach commands all set, so all I had to do was cut and paste each verse/chorus at a time. The time it took me to cut and paste was the time it took people to comfortably read the lines...so the feedback told me. Whether or not that worked well at the dance, I do not know for sure.

I hope that helps a little. If Martel, or you, like, you could send one or two of the questionable songs to me and I can help you out...or I can email you my song so you can see what I did. But it's pretty straightforward if I explained it well enough.

By the way, Katherine asked me to ask you to ask Martel (follow all that?) if Ser Martel would be interested in joining the Poets' Brotherhood since he is interested in filling the role of a bard.

Kathy ~ Katherine

PS. I did write an ode which I feel, so far, has been too long to perform in Marrach. When Katherine discussed the presentation of this piece with Punzel, she suggested that I present it in parts like a serial episode. I don't think this would necessarily work for a song, but perhaps you could break the verses into logical groupings to still keep the chorus, and perform sections of the song at differing times. I hope I've helped instead of confused you! :O

[Seidl]

I;ll try to get a few songs more clearly Marrach'ed up, and look for a good time to present. I have to admit, most of what I've tracked down is um ... not something I'd want to recite in front of Punzel. http://www.skotos.net/ubb/smile.gif

The biggest problem I'm having is some songs like Mad Tom of Bedlam where the chorus is as long as each verse, and is supposed to be sung by everyone. I guess I'll collapse it into the verse before for now.

As for joining the poet's brotherhood (sisterhood?), I'm afraid that for now Martel will decline. The songs he knows are but things learned in a past life, nothing he's created. And He would not feel right taking a place amoung the august brotherhood till he could pen something that the other felt was worthy.

-=- Matt aka. Martel

[ChristopherA]

We have spec'ed out some changes to the 'recite', 'sing', etc. verbs so that if you put semicolon at the end verse lines in the text, it will be displayed in a very nice fashion, with the lines indented and separated out nicely.

However, these features require some changes in both the ActiveX and Java client, and both are currently behind schedule due to some unforeseen problems in other areas.

Our next beta Alice ActiveX client crashes on refreshes on Windows 98 and does not work with Windows 95 (but works great on Win2k) and Matt's new Java client doesn't work on Macintoshes yet. Hopefully both soon though -- then we can work on some enhancements in the clients like recite, sing and macros.

Meanwhile, if you are using the Alice ActiveX client, you can actually paste in multiple lines at once. For instances:

start joyously "Roses are red"
continue "Violets are blue"
pause briefly
continue "You thought I was going to
finish genially "play the poet's fool."

For longer poems, paste 6 or 8 lines at once, wait for people to react, then paste the next 6 to 8 lines.

Unfortunately, the current Java client doesn't respond well to pasting of multiple lines of commands, so they have to be pasted one line at a time.

BTW, I want to heartily compliment all the poets for their work. I always wanted poetry and authorship to be an important component of Castle culture, but didn't expect that there would be such overwhelming support of it so soon. I am quite pleased http://www.skotos.net/ubb/wink.gif

-- Christopher Allen

[Seidl]

Well, I can hack the semi-colen thing in if you tell me exactly what behavior you want. Just email me.

And I'm working on the multiple command paste. The biggest rpoblem I've had so fare isn't the client end, its the server. Since you need a time delay between commands (or you're still busy doing the previous one). Will sing/recite/pause not have this? Let me know. I've actually added the ability to paste in multiple lines and have it treated as one to make some things easier for me.

What I've been doing is setting up macro's for my songs. So I can do:

bedlam1
bedlam2
bedlam3
etc.

And have the right lines come out. I'm hoping to at least do a windows/unix client release RSN as well, and the mac is being worked on.

Comments and request for jave client features, as always, are nice. Please, either post them or email them to me.

-=- Matt aka. Martel

[stealthkat]

Matt, in the interest of experiencing first-hand how songs and poems are currently handled by the players, mainly the Poets' Brotherhood, why don't you consider having Martel attend the Poets' next meeting. It is this coming Sunday, yes the day after the Winter Ball, at seven bells by the fireplace in the Dining Hall. I have been assured that several members will be attending to both listen and present.

As for the concern of presenting original work, not all of the members do so. I myself, in a pinch, RP'd remembering a favorite song of my sister's from pre-Castle time. Others 'claim' the song as their own IC, but do an OOC to say who wrote the lyrics or poem to give proper credit to the author.

Don't worry about Katherine wheedling Martel into joining the Brotherhood. She'll only ask once, and if Martel refuses she is confident that Punzel will wear down his defenses till he joins. http://www.skotos.net/ubb/wink.gif

Kathy ~ Katherine

[Seidl]

Originally posted by stealthkat:
Matt, in the interest of experiencing first-hand how songs and poems are currently handled by the players, mainly the Poets' Brotherhood, why don't you consider having Martel attend the Poets' next meeting. It is this coming Sunday, yes the day after the Winter Ball, at seven bells by the fireplace in the Dining Hall.

I'll try to make it, but I'm expecting Sunday to be crazy with Winter Ball fall out. http://www.skotos.net/ubb/smile.gif

Is anyone keeping logs that are either web accessable or could be emailed? If not, I may try to throw a logging client character into the room at least, even if I can't attend myself. Will lett me see how it works.

Also, as Martel has done a few songs for other people, if anyone has comments on presentation, please feel free to post them here, email me, or just ooc in the game. I'm really enjoying digging up period songs, and I'd like to make them as easy to read as possible.

-=- Matt aka. Martel