Prelude - Dominic

It's 5 PM, Dominic James sits in the campus studio space. It's usually reserved for music majors and Sound Engineering is just an elective for him, but his professor has given him after hours access to the studio - he sees Dominic's passion, and thinks he has some interesting ideas.

Dominic has his textbooks - some required curriculum, some not - including the Kitab-al-Alcir arrayed around him.

The sound board is lit up.

His music lab software is open on the glowing computer screen, as well as his Discord channel for weirdo sound and music wonks...

There's this one person on the Discord right now - username NullSignal - that started following Dominic's YT stuff a couple days ago and they just sent him a link to a G Drive folder with a bunch of loops and samples.

//: thought you might enjoy these, do some playing and let me know what you think

As Dominic previews some of NullSignal's files, passages from the Kitab al Alcir perhaps pulse through his mind like a drum beat. Those words are his cadence.

Physics and sound are one, like the properties of the Ether and reality.

Music, like a war, can tear down the safe constant of our day to day reality. It envelopes us whether we want it to or not. It takes us where IT wants to go. That safe constant, faded beyond it's reach, is a lie. The only thing to do, the only way to live on is to MAKE the music.

You can see yourself in the brave scouts and hunters of Aretus!

It is your mandate to push the boundaries of this war. Test the limits of your science, where does reality and the Ether meet?

At first, the samples are intriguing, but slightly frustrating; many of them sound familiar-ish, as if they’re about to turn into a familiar chord, motif, or song, yet they don’t quite. This irks Dominic slightly; it’s as if he’s heard them before, but he’s fairly certain he hasn’t, at least not in their current form, and he can’t seem to place them.
He begins to suspect; is this what my music sounds like; samples, given a tweak or a twist, and recycled? Horrifying; I can do more than that! I know I can! I’m sure I do already!!
Don’t I?
Reflexively, Dominic continues to try and characterise the samples, including trying to recognise their sources. Then it dawns on him; there is a commonality between them. Nothing so obvious as a common tune or rhythm, but a series of common cadences, as if the samples were snippets of a conversation, or a series of linked songs; a feeling, like the similarities between the different works of a particular writer or composer.
A voice? Almost.
A symphony?
Hastily, Dominic begins assigning samples to parts of his programmatic band, trying to work out how to combine them, as he’s beginning to think he must.

As Dominic pieces together samples, incorporating them into his digital-band schema, making them his own, and bringing in pieces he's been developing, a polyrhythm begins to emerge.

At first it's a 2-against-3, over a 12:8 time signature, but something's off. Something is out of sync. He has to push it... to
3-against-4? Better, but he finds the... voice... the symphony... It's still coming off, 3 measures down...

Why did the time signature shift to 11:8 there? Did he do that? Who plays 11:8? He must adapt, that 11:8 is where it should be - he can feel that. He can feel the sound.

But he must build upon it to make it work.

Eleven-eight… time? Something in that…
Dominic kept working, taking the pieces and assembling them, listening to the product and adjusting. Sometimes the next step felt… right… before he’d even heard the next repetition. How could that be?
Even as the musician in him worked, the scientist in him pondered. Data does not come from nothing. Why should passages of music he has never heard seem suddenly familiar, even predictable?
I don’t believe in intuition.
I haven’t much regard for happenstance, either. What’d Albert say - God doesn’t play dice.
His eye lights upon the books piled around the computer.
What’d physics books have to do with music?
One of them isn’t a textbook. The Kitab al Alcir is partly written in verse.
Those passages have rhythm!
He’d read the thing, but the words were only part of the content.
He was recalling parts of that cadence.
The music was connected with the book. Which also raised more questions… but it gave him more to go on.
This book is never a libretto?!?
Not for these files alone,… not enough music, surely?
He connects his keytar to the computer, lets the files sync as h ebegins to play himself.
Calls up the part of the Kitab he’d started to digitise on the PC, starts configuring his AI assistant to extract the rhythm, and begin to predict a melody. The rhythm comes out alright, but the melody is incomplete, and sometimes just wrong.
Kind of expected that.
He’s beginning to anticipate the missing parts, correct the wrong parts as they happen. The keytar is an instrument he built himself, he knows every part of it, and he needs to, playing with increasing speed.
His rational mind too is racing.
The Kitab is supposed to be about the Ether, the underlying medium of the electromagnetic spectrum, and hence of a large part of physics.
How did anyone ever write a musical about the underlying nature of electromagnetic energy?
And if they could, why stop there?
Of course, they didn’t.
Eleven-eight time.
Superstring theory predicts eleven-dimensional spacetime.
Superstrings create the structure of subatomic particles by the ways in which they oscillate, in their eleven dimensions.
Subatomic particles make up matter, of all kinds.
Matter and Energy.
Conservation, duality, equivalence.
E=mc squared.
Oscillations are akin to sound. Sound is also energy. Eleven-dimensional energy, making up the structure of the physical universe.
Structure is composed of oscillation.
Sound is composed of oscillation.
Music is structured sound, given meaning.
So structure is the essence of energy and matter. And the essence of structure is ordered sound, hence music.
"Well done! Got the idea at last, have you?"

Who said that?
"I did, of course."

Dominic is vaguely aware that his computer dings as a message comes through the chat...

//: well what to my wondering eyes did appear... Omni I knew you were DEEP into this audio engineering stuff but holy shit

//: I uh don't think I can talk about that right now, I might be in some sort of trouble... I didn't know this would happen

//: I don't know how this stuff is supposed to work

There's a bit of a prolonged pause in the messaging, though you can see they are typing...

//: look I've gotta call someone

//: but I want to meet you... tomorrow... or as soon as possible

//: and... don't worry, if anything weird happens don't worry, it's normal for you

//: now

//: and we'll fix it tomorrow, look let's meet up at the San Pedro Branch library

//: can you do that tomorrow???