Playing With My Heart: How I Fell in Love With DJ PON 3

Finally! After 20 minutes of arduous waiting, Margarita the Pizza Pegasus arrived with our pizza. She landed backstage where the two of us were practicing, and quickly realized who her customer was.

“Hold on, you’re DJ-P0N-3! You’re having that concert tonight, right?” Margarita says a bit startled that somepony as famous as her was Margarita’s patron today.

“Yup, and this is my coltfriend Rhythmia. He’s on stage with me tonight!” Vinyl says, using her magic to put a 100-bit coin into Margarita’s shirt pocket.

“Woah, I don’t ever get tips like this. Thanks!” She says, handing us our pizza and two sodas and flies off.

“Well, that was interesting,” I say, opening the pizza box and seeing the most delectable pizza I have ever laid my eyes upon.

“Enjoy!” Vinyl says, using her magic to take a slice of pizza and put it in her hooves. “Mmm, I love pizza.” Vinyl says, opening her can of Colta-Cola and downing it in one long gulp. I guess her tomboyish nature isn’t totally gone, yet?

I take a slice for myself as well and make sure that it isn’t too hot. The last thing anypony would want is for the pizza to burn your mouth! It happened to me once back on Earth, and I couldn’t eat anything right for FOUR DAYS.” Learned my lesson, though!

“You’re right, Vinyl! This pizza IS amazing!” I say, noticing that a few ponies were already lining up outside at the ticket booth, paying their fee to attend.

“What’s the capacity of this amphitheatre, anyways?” I ask Vinyl, who is already on her fourth slice of pizza, well before I finished my first.

“Uhh, 7,500 ponies, I think? I’ve performed here before, but I was still a filly in high school, so I didn’t have a full house like I am expecting tonight.” Vinyl says, unsure of the actual capacity of the amphitheatre. After a few more minutes, the entire pizza is finished (Vinyl had like 60% of it), and we put away our garbage and make the last preparations before the concert.

“Know anypony coming tonight, Rhythmia?” My marefriend asks me as she sees a few ponies she knows and waves to them.

“Uhh, not really. I mean, you and Tavi are basically my only friends here. I know that “Friendship is Magic” is the whole vibe here, but I was never that good at making friends.” I say bluntly, to which Vinyl kisses me and says. “You’ll get there, Rhythmia. Trust me. Tavi was my first friend, and it took me what, 15 years to find her? I have faith. I mean, you picked up this hot mare in eight weeks flat. You can’t be that boring!” She says, teleporting herself to the DJ booth and fixing up a few things.

“Curtain’s in 10. I have a surprise for you, Rhythmia.” Vinyl says as she uses a spell to bring something to me.

“A...A drum pad? For me?” I ask, confused.

“Uh, yeah! I wanted to give it to you for tonight, and I almost forgot, actually. I need a good percussive baseline for my beats tonight, that’s your job, Rhythmia!” Vinyl says, as I try and figure out how this particular model of drum pad works. It took me a few minutes, but I got the hang of it. There are 25 buttons on it, each with four permutations, so there are countless ways to play with this thing.

“Dude, five minutes left. Get set up!” Vinyl says quietly since she sees thousands of ponies with glow sticks sitting in the stands. I quickly fly up to the edge of the curtain, just to see if I know anypony here, and I see somepony I know.

“Uhh, Vinyl? Did you know ALL SIX Elements of Harmony are here tonight? I see Princess Twilight and her friends here!” I say, flying back down to my seat at the DJ table.

“No, I had no idea mate. I mean, I am not surprised, since Pinkie Pie usually comes to these sorts of things, but all six element bearers is something new. I must be getting to a new level of fame!” She says, even more determined to perform nicely today.

“Mares and Gentlecolts, the DJ-P0N-3 rave will begin in a few minutes. Could the unicorns in the audience please put their horns on vibrate? The magic could interfere with the quality of the performance. Thank you.” A voice over the PA system says. All the unicorns in the audience do as they are asked, to make sure everypony else can enjoy the show.

“I have to admit, I am a bit scared. I haven’t played in front of a crowd this large in my life, Scratchie.” I say sheepishly, to which Vinyl replies: “It’ll be fine. If you freak out, just pretend like you are in the studio with me and Tavi, that’s what I do!” Vinyl says honestly, putting me at ease. I see a sea of glowsticks and ponies ready to party.

I see somepony fly on stage, and I quickly realize who it is. “Uhh, did you know that Princess Luna is the master of ceremonies tonight?” I ask her, to which she simply nods.

“Well, DUH! It’s the Princess Luna Amphitheatre! Of course, she wants in on the fun!” Vinyl says, before hearing a tap on a mic.

“Mares and Gentlecolts. Princess Luna here. It is my humble honor and privilege to be the mistress of ceremonies tonight for a very special event. Ponyville’s own DJ-P0N-3 is gracing us with her beats tonight!”

The crowd began to cheer voraciously, even though we didn’t start yet.

“In fact, she brought a guest performer tonight! I hear they are very talented with percussion. Without further ado, I am pleased to present DJ-P0N-3 and her friend BPM!!”

“Alright, Scratchie. Time to put on the DJ-P0N-3 Face.” I hear her say quietly as she puts on her signature sunglasses and headphones. I put on a pair of headphones a well since I need to protect my ears from the excessive noise that 110 dB (Decibels) can create.

The crowd breaks out into sheer ecstasy, almost like it was a football game back on Earth. Before the curtain opens, I instinctively play a baseline drum beat to get the crowd moving.

“Good move, Rhythmia!” Vinyl gives me a hooves-up as the curtain opens.

“GOOD EVENING MANEHATTAN!” My marefriend says with a booming voice as the crowd cheers.

“IS EVERYPONY READY TO PARTY?!?” Vinyl says, to which the loud reply of “YES DJ!” is shouted in unison, with ponies clapping their hooves to the beat of my drumline.

“I bought something special today. Want to know what it is, everypony?” Vinyl asks, to which the antiphonal response was given with loud whooping and cheering. She casts a spell, revealing the massive bass booster cannon that the two of us built recently.

“Alright, let’s give a warm Manehattan welcome to my guest act for today, BPM!” Vinyl says, as the crowd cheers for me as I continue to play the bass drumline, waiting for my marefriend to decide what to do next.

“Okay, Rhythmia. Just follow my lead!” Vinyl says through my headset, which I assume is enchanted because the voice was in my head.

She played one of her classic hits: “Welcome to Equestria.” Which is eerily similar to Guns N’ Roses’ “Welcome to the Jungle” in terms of melody and syncopation. Maybe our two universes have more overlap than I thought. That was a fun thought experiment to have, to say the least.

The crowd loved the concert’s opener, and when that song was finished, she played a more EDM-oriented track called “Electrodome”. It was your typical club banger, with the usual chord progressions, buildup and bass drops, and the every useful Shepard’s tone (a Shepard tone is a sound consisting of a superposition of sine waves separated by octaves. When played with the bass pitch of the tone moving upward or downward, it is referred to as the Shepard scale). The crowd was eating this up, and they couldn’t wait for more. Everything was going even better than expected!

That is, until I hear a horrible din from across the amphitheatre. Must be mic feedback, I guess? Nope, just three humanoid teenagers having a jam session at the same time, working on something eerily similar to our bass booster cannon.

“Are they gonna hijack the concert?” I think to myself as the beat drops once more, and everypony is moving in rhythm to the music, glowsticks in hoof.

I sure as hay hope not!