I know how to play the bass a little, owning one acoustic bass and one electric but for the life of me don’t know how to rp a character playing said instrument. Anyone have tips on how to write their character playing a instrument?
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/emote plays The Lick.
Just kidding.
It’s probably best to be pretty vague with the specifics of playing an instrument; anything approaching technical knowledge of music is going to go over most peoples’ heads. You’re better off describing the general mood of whatever your character is playing rather than long paragraphs describing specific movements in most circumstances, since doing that reflects the way that the music will be viewed IC most of the time - nice background sounds as window dressing for the thing they’re actually doing.
What you probably shouldn’t do is copypaste actual song lyrics line-by-line while just changing proper nouns to something Warcraft-themed. Doing that tends to get spammy very quickly and runs the risk of the other players recognizing the song you picked and drawing them out of the scene.
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You mean I shouldn’t be going to Darkmoon Faire?
Peacebloom, Sagefish, Earthroot, and Thyme?
Unless it’s a really unusual instrument just giving vague gestures will usually do the trick for the layman. A lot of people can’t play a guitar, but everyone knows you strum the strings to make the sound. Not everyone knows how to play a trumpet, but everyone knows you put the mouth to one end and the sound comes out the other. After that it’s like Ursola said, it’s the mood and the feelings that the music evokes that should be the star of the show, not the technical aspects of playing.
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Just be vague and focus on the emotions you want to impart. If you stop and describe every detail, people will glaze over and fall asleep. You sell the fantasy, not the reality.
Besides, no one here knows about anything they RP. You’re not an elf in real life.
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what
/10char
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She’s right.
We’re all Pandaren IRL.
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I definitely agree that you don’t have to explain every note you play in detail. I feel like most people are fine with something like, “/e strums their guitar” and then focus more on what kind of sound the audience should be hearing and the feeling you want it to evoke rather than describing the technical aspect of playing. It’s just like anything else in RP. I don’t know every technical aspect of fishing, but my toon does. I looked up just enough to make it sound like she knew what she was doing and left it at that. No one has given me crap for it.
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It’s only acceptable to go into detail if you RP out, note by note, every step of Eruption by Van Halen.
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I agree with Enekie here! All RP, but especially music and performance, should emphasize how the characters feel when they’re performing an action more than the technical details of the action!
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Raynelle is a bard that frequently hangs out with the Mead Hall, you can usually catch them on Fridays at 6pm at the Cask n Anvil or Sundays 6pm at Brewpub in Annvilmar.
They’re very creative, often writing songs on the spot for whatever drunken hijinks are happening. They usually focus on just lyrics but if I remember right, there’s usually a link in their profile to go to a webpage where you can actually listen to the actual music but I haven’t tried that yet (because I only realized it was something very recently lol). They use a few in game toys for playing music and recently started using some of the new Shadowlands instrument toy animations for their music playing emoting.
It’s very cool and fun and if you want to get an idea of how they manage it, just come out to either of the public events mentioned above.
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I guess I’m going to come in with the dissenting opinion here.
I like detail. Love it. In fact, if I don’t know the details on something, I’ll go look it up so I can give at least a passing description of what I’m doing. For instance, I was RPing a dwarven brewer for a split second and I looked up all the pieces of distillery equipment that would be involved, and how it was used. I had a cursory description of brewing that was at least enough so I didn’t just walk over to some generic thing and do some generic brewing thing and then get booze.
I did the same thing with learning palm reading for a tea house character I rolled in Conan Exiles. I looked up palm reading and reading tea leaves, so I understood and could talk about how it was done, what I was doing and what I thought my character could see. I also looked up cold reading.
I wrote a short story for a friend recently and his prompt was a picture of a destroyed opera house with instruments lying across the floor. I had my character pick up a cello and play. I do not play cello (I can read music but I’m very rusty even with that).
So, I went to learn how one starts to play a cello. I learned the names of the different parts of the cello. How the musician sits. The name of a high end cello manufacturer. I learned how the cello produces sound. I wanted enough detail to sound authentic, to add to the flavor of the story. I even went as far as to decide what piece was being played ( Bach’s Cello Suite Number One). Then I did my description. It did not include specifics in reading the music, but it did include all the details I just named off in this paragraph.
Bring those kinds of details in. And if you perform to play a specific song that matches a tune IRL, mention it in OOC. Flavor it as necessary, but don’t be afraid to use details.
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I think there’s a lot of middle ground between being so vague that it’s unclear whether you’ve ever seen an instrument/sword/horse/beer keg in real life before, vs writing such meticulously detailed descriptions of your characters’ actions that most of the audience starts skipping past your posts. What part of that middle ground you like best is something that each of us, and each of the people we’re playing with, will have slightly different preferences about. One has to do some experimenting to find the point that makes oneself and those one plays with happiest.
There are also going to be different optimal levels of detail depending on what you’re portraying and in front of whom, because you are not just describing your character’s actions, you are also narrating other characters’ experience.
If you are dancing, people are (probably) watching you. You might want more in the way of visually descriptive detail in this case, because it’s reasonable to assume that people would be noticing what parts of your body are moving, how fast, the way you’re handling any dancing props you have, etc.
If you’re playing music, most people in a live audience would not be paying attention to where on the instrument your fingers are. Many of them might not even be close enough to tell, and depending on the context (playing a concert vs as background music in a bar where people are also talking to each other), they might never even look at you. The way the music sounds and the feelings conveyed or evoked by the music are what’s relevant here – unless your audience is largely comprised of fellow bards who would reasonably perceive the details of your technique.
I do personally think that a little bit of detail here and there about a performer’s posture and/or some correct terminology about the instrument is helpful in setting the tone. But that is, again, personal preference. Other people have other preferences. Your personal preference around how much you enjoy including detail also matters a lot.
I do also think that it’s valuable to know a lot more details than you necessarily include in your descriptions, but this is mostly so that you can avoid saying anything that’s just completely inaccurate. For instance, I have horses. I don’t mind when people say very little about their horses or the way they ride in RP, but I do get annoyed when I read RP or other fiction where horses are presumed to be able to gallop all day without rest and then barely need to eat anything.
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I’ve seen one of those, worst or possibly best Swiss army knife on the market.
Anyways, I am also in the camp of “know enough details to not get stuff outright wrong, but don’t word vomit them forth when it’s unnecessary in the context.” If someone wants to inspect what you’re doing further, that’s when you want to delve a little more.
For the purposes of RPing music, one thing I’ve done is think of some songs similar to what I’m looking to portray and look up some music reviews, then borrow some terms from the pros to describe how the sound feels.
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Bring the music ringing from your chest and not your nose
While you sing your scales and your arpeggios
(No joke this song from the Aristocats is legitimately good advice for music students)
Now, it might be because I’m so kind-hearted and accommodating, but I don’t see them as exclusive. Writing of any kind is just convincing the reader to see things your way, after all.
If you like details and they make you happy, then I would argue that emotion would carry over into your RP. Some people are emotive, some people are practical, but it’s a joy to see either of them play.
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Saw some really good points in here, just want to thank you guys for being there to help out, been eating away at me 4 days now and this really helps out! 
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Alternatively, you can also use an addon called “Musician” which allows you to upload midi files, or it has a keyboard option that allows you to play live.
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Musician is an amazing addon. I’m seeing more and more RPers with it, so it’s great! It really adds to the RP if your character plays music!
It’s great as an RP hook as well, whether your character is the one playing the music OR if your character just happens to hear music being played nearby!
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I’m David Lee Wrath and I ka-ka-ka-ka love anima!
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If you wanna RP Rock & Roll but your first post isn’t
/em takes those old records off the shelf.
Then your music just ain’t got the same soul.
Not like that old time rock and roll.
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