I’ll change it later.’
‘Perhaps you shouldn’t,’ said Riff. ‘If humans can read their own meaning into the song, that might be a good thing.’
Keys nodded. ‘There might be something in that.’
Riff picked up a guitar and walked round to Keys’ side. ‘Show me the intro again,’ he said. Keys played out the notes carefully, making sure he didn’t obscure Riff’s view of the keyboard as he did so. Riff nodded along then picked out the same sequence on the guitar. He played it a few times then experimented with slight modifications. Keys joined in, underpinning the arpeggio with the keyboards, then Nutter picked up the beat and began to accompany them gently on the drums. Ben picked up his harmonica and was about to play when Riff shook his head.
‘Not really a harmonica song,’ he said.
‘Well I can’t just stand here,’ Ben objected.
‘It’s the way you stand,’ said Keys. ‘No, but seriously, I think Riff’s right, it’s not a good song for a harmonica part. Perhaps you should sing it?’
The rush this idea gave Ben dismissed his annoyance over the harmonica. ‘Are you sure?’ he asked.
‘It’ll add to the ambiguity,’ said Keys.
‘I’ll need the lyrics. Can you write them down for me?’
‘Shall we try an instrumental run through first? Then I’ll see if I can come up with a third verse before we write it down.’
‘Agreed,’ said Riff. ‘What are going to do for a solo?’
Keys considered this. ‘Just put it across the chords for the verse,’ he suggested. ‘We can always change it if we don’t like it.’
Vid picked up his bass guitar and began to experiment with a bass line. Keys listened for a moment. ‘Play that bit again,’ he suggested. Vid obliged.
‘I like that,’ said Keys. ‘What about for the middle eighth?’
Vid picked out a faster rhythm and Keys nodded along.
‘Sounds good,’ he said. ‘I think we’re ready to try one.’
Riff stopped playing his guitar and waited patiently as Nutter adjusted his position on his seat. They silent tableau held until Nutter realised that everyone was looking at him.
‘What?’ he asked.
‘Count us in,’ said Riff.
‘Why m-me? You c-can all c-count, can’t you?’
‘It’s traditional for the drummer to do it,’ said Riff.
Nutter shrugged. ‘Ok,’ he said. ‘How m-many do you w-want me to count?’
‘A hundred and then come and look for us,’ quipped Vid. ‘Just one two three four will be fine,’ he added, just in case.
Nutter paused again. ‘D-do you w-want me to d-drum whilst I’m c-counting?’ he asked.
‘Just count, then drum,’ said Keys, ‘and try to keep the same rhythm for the drumming as the counting.’
Nutter thought about this for a moment then tapped his sticks together to get a feel for the timing. ‘One, one n-nil, on-ne one, one nil n-nil,’ he began.
‘Base ten, if you don’t mind,’ said Riff. ‘It’s better for the timing.’
Nutter nodded, paused to remind himself of the appropriate numbers, then started to count again. ‘One and t-two and t-three and f-four and,’ he said, then he started to tap out a rhythm on the drum kit. Riff played the introduction, then Keys and Vid joined in. The robots played their way through the song several times, trying slightly different arrangements from verse to verse. Eventually, they settled on something they liked and played it through several times, finishing with Riff playing a slight variation on the intro. There was a brief moment where only the dying embers of the song could be heard as they resonated around the room then the room fell into a reverent silence.
Finally, Ben spoke. ‘Can you write the words down now?’ he asked.
8
The power of music to move a person emotionally is a well known, if little understood, phenomenon. Studies have demonstrated, but failed to explain, how the same tune, played to several different people, can have effects as diverse as crying and vomiting. They have also shown that these effects can vary according to when a tune is played, by whom, and even how often.
Whilst the studies have failed to produce a robust theory of the relationship between music and emotion, they have, however, produced some remarkable results. For example, it has been demonstrated that a power-ballad based on a popular classical piece is undeniably the most potent musical form. Interestingly, however, the form where it is sung by a man of modest vocal ability is considerably more potent than an identical arrangement performed by a woman with a great deal more vocal control, but a tendency to a high degree of tremolo. What makes this finding particularly interesting is that the relationship is reversed when the listener is single, female and owns a cat. Several universities have now awarded grants to researchers striving to establish a relationship between musical appreciation and pet ownership.
Whilst the emotional power of music is, perhaps, an obvious field for research, what is less well known is that music also has the power to move people physically. Dr Hans Spuenbendre – a brilliant, if eccentric, physicist with a poor grasp of language – became briefly famous when, after a misunderstood conversation, he began to obsess with the idea of using music as a form of alternative fuel.
His early experiments in what he decided to call audiokinematics were both reasonable and orthodox: tests using very large speakers to propel air trolleys and relating the motion of the trolley to the type of music played were novel, but unremarkable. It was, however, for his last experiment that he gained a brief notoriety with the general public and a more enduring following with the more controversial members of the scientific community.
In his published work, Dr Spuenbendre had postulated that since certain types of instrument worked by storing kinetic energy in their strings, the energy they stored could somehow be trapped during the recording process. If this was so, he theorized, it should be possible to unleash this energy from the recorded medium and use it to propel a manned vehicle.
Conventional physicists were, of course, highly dubious about their colleague’s claims and expended a great deal of their own energy telling the Press how his experiments were damaging the good name of science and bringing their own projects into disrepute.
Undaunted by such criticism, Dr Spuenbendre decided to stage a public experiment. He would take the largest string section ever seen, assemble them on a soundstage and surrounded them with microphones. The performance from this group would be recorded, then played back through a bank of speakers, over which would be suspended a hot air balloon. Because the experiment was highly risky, the doctor himself would be seated in the balloon, prudently dressed in a spacesuit he had acquired from a government surplus store.
The experiment began well enough: the soothing chords of the first movement generated a small, but not insignificant amount of lift. The balloon rose slightly, but fell as the piece came to an end. The second movement, however, was more dramatic, both musically and experimentally. Several bars into the performance, several of the loudspeakers – already straining after the crescendo in the first movement – gave up and exploded, calling the concert to a premature end. When the smoke cleared, neither doctor nor balloon could be seen. In fact, no trace of the doctor was ever found, but his disciples firmly believe that he was hurled into space and that his experiment was a success. It is said that the good doctor will drift for eternity on a wave of music until he reaches the heavenly choir themselves. No doubt the choir will ask him to turn the volume down.
9
The room was dark, lonely, and thoroughly metaphorical. Ben sat, his face half-cast in shadow like an artistic photograph, playing the occasional staccato phrase on his harmonica. A week had passed him by, fluttering past like pages torn from a diary.
It hadn’t all been bad. Since Nutter had joined them, their sound had come together, making them sound more like a band than a collection of individuals who just happened to be playing at the same time. At that very m
oment, the robots were practising a new instrumental track in the main display room next door. Ben could hear strains of Riff’s guitar reverberating through the door. The robot seemed to be able to make a guitar scream and wail in ways that created a sound far too large for the instrument with which he played, and what was more annoying was that he also made it look easy. Fooled into thinking it couldn’t be too difficult, Ben had tried his own hand at the guitar, producing nothing more than a few flat sounding notes with a vague sense of order and tone. Obviously, if there was some magic to Riff’s playing, it was in Riff rather than the guitar itself.
He read over the latest sheet of lyrics, a dance track called She Was Standing Over There, which Vid had penned. Even Vid – personality-bot of the year – was becoming a musician, adding to what was now a reasonable repertoire.
Reasonable, that is, in terms of quantity. Ben’s harmonica had found a place in only two numbers. True, he was expected to sing on most of the rest, but it wasn’t the same – he wasn’t a fully-fledged musician.
He played the intro to I’m Online to himself. He’d insisted that Keys sang his own words for that song. Somehow he didn’t feel comfortable with them. Unlike their other material, it had lyrics that didn’t sound right with a human singing, the meaning clearly enunciated rather than couched in ambiguity. He’d had to insist on a harmonica part so that he had something to do.
The