Music and other things - a gentle ramble

Hello everyone

As many of you will know, one of my great pleasures in world is playing my flute. This is something I am utterly incapable of out there in the outside world, and I have always been envious of those who could pick up a musical instrument and play anytime they liked (yes, I know it takes a lot of work and practice to reach that stage, it's just that even with the practice I was as tuneful as a bucket of rocks rolling downhill!).

I certainly don't class myself as a musician, not like those wonderful live performers who so enrich our communities, but I was looking yesterday at the work I put in to bring just one tune into our world. First, I have to source the sheet music for the tune, checking that it is not too complex for the restrictions scripting puts on us - Wagner's Ring Cycle would have to be done in small chunks! Then, if the score goes outside the range of my flute, I have to transpose key (and boy, have I made some errors doing that!). The score has to be transcribed (each note changed from the musical notation to a code the script will recognise) by hand - sitting on the couch while doing this is my favorite, though I can not listen to music at the same time because the tunes get mixed up!

Once the score is ready, I copy it into the world in a notecard, thankfully no uploading fees! Then it I copy it into my flute's HUD, and it is ready for testing! This is when the real disasters show up, though I am getting better at it, and at tracking down my mis-encoded notes. Sometimes, if there are just too many notes in a tune, I get a "exceeds length, truncating at.." message, and the whole thing has to be junked. But usually, I reach a stage where I am reasonably happy with the results.

This is where the hard work really begins to pay off for me. I love just stopping somewhere and starting to play, watching other people stop and listen, until there is a small group clustered round. I guess this is the nearest to playing a real instrument I will ever get, and the feeling is wonderful! Even when there is no-one around I play, creating a mood around me by careful choice of what I am playing.

It's not an activity that brings in Linden, certainly not enough to cover the effort of bringing new tune in, and that is not why I do it. And I was looking round the world, at all the things we do and make, the beautiful locations that are built, the DJs who play the music we party to, the creators of the really useful gadgets or clothing we wear.... Except for a few, the effort that has to be put into what they are doing is always going to exceed the Linden that can be earned. So why do we do it? All I can imagine is that it's our individual love and appreciation of this marvelous world we have, that we want and are enthusiastic about contributing whatever skills we have to make the world a better place for all the people there.

That's what I hope is the case anyhow - what do you think?

Tepic