"Gah! Vinyl, what are you doing?!"
"Just looking at your cello, 'Tavi. I'm not doing anything with it or anything!"
The same conversation had happened once before, and the result of that had been said cello crashing to the ground and earning itself a dent for its involvement in the two roommates' shenanigans. The owner of the instrument was determined not to let it happen again.
"Stop fooling around, and put it back."
Vinyl lowered herself from where she had been leaning on the instrument with only two hooves on the ground, keeping the cello propped up with a flick of her magic. "Sheesh, you act like there's some sort of class or something for holding this, this… sledgehammer, or whatever it is."
"Just put it back…!"
"Fine, fine," Vinyl said, leaning the instrument back against the wall. "You know, I'm not an idiot; I can hold a cello without dropping it."
"I do not care about your confidence in handling my instrument," Octavia scoffed, moving to inspect the framework and strings for any possible damage. "I care about its well-being and your rough treatment."
"Hey, I'm not rough!"
"Oh, really? Then explain the five broken turntables you've had since last month."
"Th-that's different!" Vinyl argued, flushed. "I was just getting into the music! Don't tell me you've never broken a string because you were grooving!"
"I take good care of my strings, thank you very much." Vinyl chose not to answer. "If you would just calm down and approach your music in a sophisticated, controlled manner…"
"Yeah, wouldn't that be great for you; I know how much you hate my music," Vinyl snapped.
"I do not hate your music," Octavia calmly stated. "I only do not hold the same appreciation for it that you do. Much like how you refuse to listen to the very music that forms the foundations for your own."
"Well, that's just gonna have to be the way it's gonna be, because your stuff's boring! Ponies don't wanna hear stuffy classical, they wanna hear the new stuff!" Vinyl took the opportunity to stomp towards the door.
"You know, if you would just give it a chance…"
"Yeah? Well why don't you give my stuff a chance! It's not like it would hurt you either!"
"Well…" Octavia mused.
Vinyl stopped at the doorway, hesitating at Octavia's tone. She wasn't really planning to…?
"If you want, we could both try the other's music together."
"What? N-No!" Vinyl whipped around, flashing her shades back at the earth pony. "No way am I gonna listen to that junk! It's been dead since forever! Nopony listens to it, like, at all!"
Octavia regarded Vinyl, knowing full well she could finagle a win out of this argument. "I will listen to every single style of music you have to offer, if you will offer your time in return to listen to my own favorite works. Would this be acceptable?"
Vinyl paused. While she'd pay for it by having to listen to Octavia's less-than-interesting sound, it was a prime opportunity to show her how to really rock.
"You, of course, may go first with your music."
That sealed the deal. "Tch, sure, what the hay."
Octavia was now sitting in front of an audio system Vinyl set up. At Octavia's request, Vinyl had reluctantly kept the larger subwoofers in the closet, and was using a smaller quartet of speakers she generally reserved for when she wanted to play some quieter, mellower beats.
The DJ herself was skimming her records, pulling out various discs and placing them on the top of an upside-down box. The cases she brought from her room had loads of tunes stocked in them, and to start Vinyl pulled up a wide variety of music. If Octavia isn't interested in any of these, Vinyl thought, she really is one of the most uptight ponies I've ever known.
Placing her first LP onto the record player, Vinyl turned the rotation on before delicately lowering the needle onto a groove located in the outer-middle of the record. Checking its placement, Vinyl nodded to herself before taking a seat beside Octavia.
"So, what's this piece you're showing me first?" Octavia asked.
"Just some oldies. Not really in style too much any more, but it's got cool rhythms and stuff. I like it, anyway."
Octavia opened her mouth to comment once more, but the music had started with a guitar drop.
The music contained a fairly fast tempo, and hurried through a short intro before a gravelly voice began belting out sorrows for a mare he had met along his travels. Octavia perked her ears, listening closely to the upbeat laments for this lady.
After two verses and choruses, the bridge began, and after it was clear it wasn't going to end any time soon, Octavia turned to look at Vinyl. Her friend was currently on her back, slapping her front hooves together in time with the claps issuing from the speakers. Her dark glasses hid her eyes, but a smile graced her features. Octavia allowed herself a small grin before turning back to the record player, concentrating on the Latin-reminiscent groove once again.
Eventually the bridge ended, and the song faded out to the band repeating the title of the song. Shaking herself, the earth pony turned to her friend, seeing Vinyl rock herself back onto her stomach before getting up and removing the LP. "Who was the singer?"
"Guy from a band called 'Timberwolf,'" Vinyl coolly replied, sliding the record back into its case. "They had a couple of hits, but that one's my favorite."
Over the course of the next couple hours, Vinyl played dozens more songs from her favorite artists, spanning the years from a week ago to before Vinyl or Octavia were born: "White Roses," "Monarch," "Mic the Microphone," "Badlands," "Van Every," "Steel Filly," "Elysium…" The music continued on, switching styles almost every time the records changed, and Octavia had taken to writing notes about the pieces she was listening to. Finally, as the outro to "Sins Like Scarlet" by "Follow Silence" faded out, Vinyl exhaled and said, "Well, I think that's just about all the different kinds of stuff I like. What's your take?"
Octavia started; she hadn't expected such an abrupt ending, and shuffled through her several pages of scribbles and comments. "Well, your tastes are much more eclectic than I originally believed, but it all still falls within the past fifty years or so. I noticed you like electric guitar quite a bit in your music, and you seem to prefer more powerful drums and instrumentals than meaning in and personal connection with the vocals; at least, that is what I gathered."
"Yeah, yeah, that's all well and nice," Vinyl huffed, "but what do you think?"
"I think… I think I am only going to wind up analyzing it, Vinyl. I simply do not feel the same connection you do with this music, and while I can understand why you like it, I still cannot help but criticize when I'm listening. I'm sorry."
"Criticize?! What's wrong with it!?"
"Well," Octavia started, knowing she would have to tread carefully or risk an angry unicorn roommate (something she most certainly did not want after what had happened to her bathrobe), "your music is very loose compared to classical; it does not use many tools to change the song's tempo or chord progressions, nor is it nearly as long as a full orchestral composition most of the time. In addition, there are many amodal tones in some of the more recently released songs you played, and while nothing strikes me as 'poor,' in composition or in execution, the rough feel of it still does not sit well with me."
Vinyl sat there, deciding she'd just look at Octavia. Look at her, with a dumbfounded expression on her face, like she'd just been told that she was actually a pegasus all her life and that being a unicorn was just a genius ruse to prop up her ego. Look at her, with a stuttering, "but-but-but," hanging in the air.
Vinyl found it fun, somehow.
"Now," Octavia began, collecting the papers she had written on, "it is time for you to listen to my music."
"No, that's not fair!" Vinyl responded, ditching the mildly entertaining contest she was having of how long she could keep up her befuddled façade. "Maybe you didn't listen to enough!"
"Vinyl," Octavia gently urged, lifting the latest record off of the post and sliding it back into its folder, "you promised me you would listen to my music after I listened to yours. It is most certainly fair."
"But, how can you not like that?"
"It's not that I don't like it," Octavia said, looking Vinyl directly in the face, searching eyes tinted even more purple through the lenses of the DJ's glasses. "On the contrary, some of it is very enjoyable. However, I do not rate it superior to my brand of music, nor would I say that it carries a more potent message. It is only music. I would not be a cellist if I was not so sure of my love for classical, Vinyl."
Vinyl's remonstrations faded as her mental protests turned into empty gestures. "Well… I mean… darn it!"
Vinyl was now grouchily sitting in front of the record player, her own LPs replaced with a much more modest collection owned by Octavia. Vinyl snorted, not bothering to make eye contact as the earth pony slipped a much larger record than any of Vinyl's onto the player. Raising the needle, Octavia moved it to the outermost edge of the record, before sitting down next to the sullen DJ.
"I can't believe I let you get away with this," Vinyl muttered, before Octavia shushed her.
Octavia's first selection began with a buildup of stringed instruments, slow and somber, before falling away to a casual, cheerful tune. Vinyl considered interrupting with a snore, but withheld herself; Octavia had been silent when Vinyl was playing her music, and she shouldn't be mean to the earth pony.
The stringed accompaniment continued for a couple of minutes, segueing into a tense rhythm accompanied by flute accents. Octavia glanced at Vinyl, knowing full well the music would soon explode.
And explode it did. A deep brass instrument roared through orchestral falls, popping through vicious violins and joining crashing cymbals. Vinyl snapped out of her half-catatonic state, intrigued by the sudden shift in style as the instruments danced in a tempest of notes.
Eventually, the storm wound down, leading into a duet with a woodwind and flute, and Vinyl resumed her bored attitude, placing a hoof onto her cheek. Her glasses slipped slightly off her nose, and she magically shoved them back up, shaking herself from nodding off.
As the duet cooled down, leaving a simple three-note pattern for the clarinet to play, Octavia nudged Vinyl and whispered, "Are you ready?"
"Ready for what?" Vinyl asked back, at a much louder volume.
And as if the music the two were listening to had chosen to answer back, a blaring trumpet shattered the dim pizzicato, joined by its brethren in a triumphant fanfare that drew Vinyl's focus back to the music.
The syncopation was unlike anything in the piece before; the beat now was much lighter and more concentrated on keeping the music exciting. The cymbals and timpani joined in to give some form of rhyme and reason to the tempo, and Vinyl slowly found herself getting lost between the lines...
Melodic trumpets paved the way for Scratch of Arc, on a quest to rescue the damsel in distress Octavia from the foul clutches of the Shadows of War. Crusading through oppressed cities, Scratch ignored no mare, saving countless towns and freeing the prisoners the cruel Shadows had locked away. The Shadows really had no faces; there was just a black mass where a bad guy was, and they were all knocked back easily by Scratch's insanely awesome fighting skills. Some Shadows had even bowed before her, acknowledging her worth in battle before she sent them to their Maker.
There was no difficulty in defeating the beasts; she was the heroine, after all, and there was no stopping her iron will from saving Octavia. Not even armies of Shadows could stop her; the fights were epic, but there was no doubt Scratch would win, even when thousands of dark shapes converged on the lone white speck on the landscape. Every time the bands of darkness would seem like they were winning, Scratch would use her prowess of music and skillz-that-killz to annihilate entire platoons of the black soldiers, until they all fell to Scratch's powers. Ponies cheered her name in the streets, and several warriors joined her on her selfless quest to rescue the helpless Octavia from the clutches of evil. Although Scratch assigned no meaning to these ponies, as they were not of the ponies in danger and Scratch did all the awesome fighting anyway, they still stood as beacons for the futility of the Shadows of War.
The Master of Shadows himself, residing on the very top of a gnarled castle, proved a menacing presence. Towering over Scratch, the mighty beast rumbled in a demonic undertone about Scratch's inevitable loss. The noble knight caught a glimpse of Octavia behind the giant shape, tied around her waist to a hangman's post and dangling over a vat of boiling lava; the sight of her ultimate goal prompted Scratch to raise her fierce weaponry consisting of record shuriken and a biznasty set of hind legs. The other ponies with Scratch had bowed out, knowing this battle was between the two staring each other down.
Octavia smiled, watching her friend deliriously bob her head to the brass and strings emitting from the speakers. She knew playing "The Archer's Overture" was a good first choice; it had a magnificent finale that she was sure would reach Vinyl's tastes in catchy beats. Sometimes, it pays to go last, so you may see what your rival has planned before you play your own trump card. Octavia paused, then added an afterthought: Although I was somewhat surprised that Vinyl showed interest in the allegro section; I'd have thought Vinyl would see that as "cheap action," or some other ridiculous accusation.
Vinyl hadn't consciously noticed her own interest in the fanfare, but even if she had she wouldn't have cared. The music contained a startling amount of zest and energy, and even if it wasn't of instruments she was used to, Vinyl had immersed herself fully within the cadences.
The predictable rhythm disrupted for a new climax, and Vinyl's face stretched into a fierce grin as the music crescendoed into a rippling peak of action. The buildup seemed to never end, and Vinyl loved it, from its repetitions to its booming brass and blasting strings. I never thought violins could be this cool, Vinyl thought, no longer remembering she was supposed to be sulking about Octavia's "victory" over her own music.
The piece finally ended, and Vinyl let out a gasp she didn't know she was holding. As she continued to breathe, her mind pieced together the experience with her previous thoughts, and Vinyl immediately felt revolted that she had let herself go that much.
"So, did you enjoy that?" Octavia knew Vinyl wouldn't admit to it, not right away, but if she could get the DJ flustered then it would likely come out all the better.
"What? N-no, it was okay," Vinyl stuttered. "I mean, it's like what you said, about all of it being just, 'I'm not really feeling it,' you know? Yeah, kinda like that."
"Well, I suppose just one selection can hardly change your mind," Octavia sighed, switching her record with another. "But we are only getting started."
A plethora of songs rocketed through Vinyl's ears, things one part of her condemned as "classical junk" but another part enjoyed as "cool." Foreign-sounding names passed in and out of her mind like water as dramatic bleats and orchestrations played through the speakers of the little sound system Vinyl had set up. Despite her best efforts to hide any trace of enjoyment, a smile still snuck onto her face whenever she wasn't paying attention.
A great crash of horns ended the final riff of "Sacrificial Rack," and no new music replaced it. Vinyl shook herself once again from her stupor, looking at Octavia as she silently put away the record and began shoving the small box back into her room. "Hey, wait, where are you going?!"
Octavia smiled. "I've played for you all of my songs, Vinyl; I don't have as many records as you do."
Vinyl scrambled to her hooves, blocking Octavia's path to her door. "Hey,wait, you're not telling me we listened to all the music? There's gotta be something else." Vinyl tried keeping her voice level, not wanting to give any indication she wanted to keep going. Octavia knew full well Vinyl's intent, but her statement had been truthful; she'd played everything she owned.
"Sorry Vinyl, but I've showed you all I have. By the way, what did you think of it?"
"Um," Vinyl intelligently responded. "Well, it was… like you, about how it was nice and had some cool parts, a little bit. But it's not something I'd ever be interested in."
"Hmm," Octavia purred. She's hooked.
--
"Come on, Vinyl! Need I remind you that this is not a bathroom for your exclusive use!"
There was no answer. Octavia placed a hoof on her forehead, attempting desperately to massage the headache out of herself. It wasn't working.
"Da… da da… da da… da da… da dat-dat-dat-dat-dat-dat-dat-dat-dat-dat-dat-dat-dat-dat-dat-dat-da! Da-da-daaa…!"
Octavia froze. Although it was Vinyl's voice, she had just hummed the final crescendo to Dobbininov's Piano Concerto No. 2. Slowly, a smile made its way onto Octavia's face. She knocked again, quietly.
There was a shuffling and brief cursing, before Vinyl answered through the door, "Yeah, whaddya want?"
"Please, the bathroom is not your sole property," Octavia said. There was a sigh, and in a few moments the door was opened, and Vinyl hurried away, the headphones on her head plugged into something.
Octavia said nothing, closing the door behind her as she prepared for a shower. A thought ran through her head before she drowned it in a warm spray.
I don't have that song in my collection.
--
After several weeks of similar occurrences where Vinyl seemed particularly bothered by Octavia's presence, the earth pony had finally decided to put it to rest in a way Vinyl would find least damaging to her ego, massive as it may be.
"I'm going out for some things, Vinyl," Octavia shouted, receiving a tad-too-enthusiastic "Bye!" before stepping outside. Octavia walked away to the nearest street sign, waiting for a small amount of time, before returning to their place of residence. Octavia had kept a key with her so she could open the door in case Vinyl locked it, and as it turned out it was a wise decision, as indeed the deadbolt had been secured. Octavia entered quietly, immediately hearing a quartet of strings play. Smirking to herself, she opened the door quietly, adopting an expression of innocence. Seeing Vinyl entranced in the lead violins' soli, Octavia asked, in an unoffending tone, "What are you listening to?"
Vinyl yelped, turning wildly to stare at Octavia with shock and bumping the needle off the record with a jolt of magic. She couldn't have been back from shopping so quick…! "What are you doing back so soon?!"
"I forgot something," Octavia lied simply. It was a small price if she could get her friend over her groundless guilt concerning classical music. "I like the music, but I don't remember it being in my collection. Where did you get it?"
"I… I… Oh, Celestia buck it!" Vinyl swore, pounding the floor. "I like classical, okay? Happy?"
"Not if you're angry about it," Octavia replied gently, moving into the room and sitting next to her friend. Vinyl balked, brooding, before muttering, "It's Vaultaldi's Winter's End Allegro. I bought it and a couple of other records at the store. Said they were for you." Vinyl refused to make eye contact, and after a few moments sighed. "I'm so hopeless."
"No, you're not," Octavia admonished, though with no tone of scolding in her voice. "Somepony can like two things. It doesn't have to be a battle, Vinyl; I don't mind if you like classical, and you're still the same party pony I know, just with expanded horizons."
Vinyl turned around, regarding Octavia with a slight bit of fear. "But, what if I start hating everything but classical?"
The earth pony rolled her eyes. "I think the odds of that happening are so low that the streets in Equestria would turn into checkerboard first. Besides, I know you'll never lose your appreciation for all the music you like. The mark on your flank tells me that." Octavia caught the mare glancing at her cutie mark furtively before returning her attention.
"I… I guess," Vinyl muttered.
The two sat in silence for a while, neither saying anything, until Octavia spoke: "That record you have in the player right now; have you finished listening to it?
"No, that was just, like, the first bit of it," Vinyl replied.
Octavia grinned. "Want to listen to it together?"
Vinyl kept a poker face for a few seconds, before matching her friend's expression.
"Tch, sure, what the hay."
