New Song

Participants:

magnes_icon.gif sable_icon.gif

Scene Title New Song
Synopsis Magnes and Sable cross paths in a Greenwich Village music store, and Sable gets ahold of Magnes' digits. That's phone number, not fingers, by the way.
Date August 25, 2009

Greenwich Village

In a music store.


Choosing today to just… relax, at least until he has to meet his partner tonight, Magnes is exploring Greenwich on foot, wearing his tight black Batman t-shirt, comfortable blue jeans, and black sneakers. He spots a music store, eyeing the various keyboards on display.
Unable to help himself, he enters and walks straight to one of the keyboards with sheet music open, taking a few minutes to read as he gradually tests the keys. He takes a deep breath as the music comes to him, then begins to uneasily play Fantaisie-Impromptu by Chopin, his confident and, as a result, his performance gradually improving as he once more starts to become comfortable with the piano.

Window shopping is all you can afford when you live of dimes and dollar bills. Sable has come to Greenwich village on occasion to torture herself by ogling the beautiful electric guitars that stand, proud and erect, in the display windows. She usually doesn't go inside; doing so would tempt her to pick one of these noble axes up, and it would take officers of the law to make her put it down again after crossing /that/ threshold.
But this time there is something else, a sound, the careful tang-tang of key testing and then… the unmistakable dance of Chopin's notes. Sable's no classicist. Classic to her means 1960. But she recognizes musical beauty and musical talent in any style. She dares to peek inside, flinching as bells on the door announce her formerly discreet investigation. Her lips tug down as she sees Magnes at the keyboard. Young, wearing a comic book t-shirt… Sable cannot help but want to investigate. And while she may also want to own an electric guitar, /this/ is something she can afford to do. At this moment, she doesn't yet recognize Magnes outside the context of him floating in the Rock Cellar. For now it just feels like he has 'one of those faces'. She steps inside, slipping hands into her pockets and sidling over.

Magnes closes his eyes, barely paying attention to anything around him as he gets into his playing, his body suddenly feeling weightless as a breeze from a fan easily causes his clothing to sway from the lack of gravity. Of course he doesn't float, and this might not seem too strange to anyone who hasn't seen him do anything before. Of course, Sable has seen him do something before.

After he's gone through the slowed part of the song, the notes begin to quickly pick up, racing with far more confidence than the beginning. The notes start to slow again, gradually coming to a stop as he releases a deep sigh. "I wish I had one of these." is his first comment when the song ends. Someone claps, but then they get a weird look from the person with them.

Sable doesn't clap. Short of stage performance or obvious transcendent genius, she views any and all other musicians as fellow soldiers of fortune, individuals with whom she shares a common bond and a similarly common competition. Her arms cross over her chest in a way that says, to anyone intimately familiar with her body language, 'you're good, and that could mean trouble'. And half of this she actually expresses in words, the more polite, less effing crazy half.
"You're good," she says, her brain still processing the music and neglecting the weird gravitational effect, "Have I heard you somewhere before?" And then it clicks, "Holy shit," he arms uncross and she points a finger at Magnes, "You're that… whatever… floaty dude. From the CD launch? The Rock Cellar?"

"You haven't heard me before, I'm out of practice and I don't even own an instrument anymore." Magnes' clothes go back to normal before he can even notice, and as he starts to walk over to her, he's frozen in his tracks at the mention of being 'floaty dude'. "I uh, I'm sorry about that. I asked my friend to make me a drink I'd like, and she made me something I definitely couldn't handle. I barely remember what happened, I'm not used to drinking. Can we get out of here and talk about this?"

Sable lifts a brow, looking around, "Why, is this like… not a safe space?" Her smile is crooked, half smirking, "Comon'. I wanna hear something else from you. Can you do more than classic shit?" 'shit' used her more as an all-purpose pronoun than anything else, "Switch the sound on that thing, gimme the opening to 'Baba O'Riley'."

"Was just afraid of someone overhearing. And uh, I can try. Not totally up on my Who, or keyboard settings, but let's see…" Magnes starts pressing buttons and testing notes, definitely unfamiliar with this keyboard, but when he finds a sound he thinks fits, he inhales and exhales, cracking his knuckles. "Alright, let's go for it."

Once again he starts out slow, and it's a lower key than the original song, but he's got the melody and the pacing down. "Can you sing?" he asks over the music, which throws him off a bit, but he quickly gets back on track.

This will be worth it. Sable swoops over to a Gibson that looks well worn from floor use, picking it up and tuning it just in time to lift her arm in the classic windmill and slams out the notes. He answer comes in the form of song: "Out here in the fields, I fight for my meals! I put my back into my living!" There's something a little more punk about the way she growls through the lyrics, and this may be in part because she lacks the full vocal force of Roger Daltrey. But perhaps it's for the best, because volume that great might get them kicked out.

"Awesome." Magnes smiles, trying to stay in sync with her since he lacks any real band experience, but mostly he's just having fun. He bobs his head when the notes get faster, watching his fingers carefully. "I've never done this before, like a band!"

Sable fixes Magnes with a stern, considering look. "I've got a keyboardist," she says, flatly, "But he's got, like, no experience at all. I'm thinking… I dunno. Thinking of having him handle sound effects, distortions, synthetic drums and shit. Sampling," this is apropos something, surely. She points at Magnes, poking his upper arm with the tip of a finger, "Why don't you practice more? This a hobby for you?"

"When I was a kid my parents made me play, but when I started skating I just never got back into it. And even if I wanted to, I can't really afford something like this. Well, maybe I could, I mean, might not hurt…" Magnes seems to be considering, his playing stopping when her's does. "So, you have a band or something?"

"Fuckin' barely," Sable says, thumb running along the A-string idly, "One other guitarist and a guy I wanna try and teach keyboards even thought I don't know too much about it myself. She wrinkles her nose, "Listen, you got somethin'. That crazy shit you pulled at the Rock Cellar, that means something. You felt the moment, you seized it," she digs her her pocket, pulls out a tattered notepad and a pen with the end chewed to bits, "Gimme your number. Next time we practice, I'll give you a call, y'can come if you'd like."

"Sure, and even if I don't end up joining the band or anything, I can definitely try and teach your keyboardist so you have something to fall back on." Magnes offers, smiling and reaching into his pocket for a piece of paper, writing his number for her. "This should be fun, I'll definitely show up!"


Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License