LP:EQO Songbird Scroll

 Song Scroll dove towards the forest, and Blue Yonder followed. They flew just barely above the tops of the trees, avoiding the occasional branch.

"Seek!" Blue Yonder yelled, and rose violently up into the white puffy clouds. It was one of the last glorious warm days of Harvest Fall.

She flew in the clouds, trying to hide from Song Scroll while still heading towards Canterlot. Poking her head out from the bottom of the cloud, she saw Song Scroll approaching, and then they crashed, tumbling through the damp cloud.

She recovered, descending to watch as a hill slowly rose up out of the forest until it ended at a mighty cliff face. 

"Speed," Song Scroll shouted back at her and they were racing again.

They descended closer to the ground as they approached Canterlot and then landed and approached the shopping district on foot.

"There's a couple of stores that sell music players. Maybe we should look at the Electronics hobby shops too if you want to modify something to make your karaoke."

"You seem pretty excited," she commented.

"I kinda became the default electronics girl in town because the studio needed so much stuff. And we watch movies at my shop too, so I had to do more electronics stuff to support that. I don't mind but it's not my favorite. Having someone else who enjoys this stuff, that's cool."

"Hobby electronics was kinda behind the times in the before. Only a true wizard would chose that kind of thing. Everything was already ready made, but here, I mean I guess karaoke could just be a start."

At the music electronics store, Song Scroll showed her the square discs songs could be stored on. Song Scroll put 6 to 8 songs on her discs, but it depended on how long the songs were.

"I might need your help recording some songs -- songs that don't exist here. I want to make Hobby bluffs versions of them of course," she said, amused.

"That's my kind of jam!" Song Scroll shouted. 

The musician was more excited after that, coming up with thoughts about translating songs and helping with building Yonder's first equipment setup.

♫Talking about my Ho-b-by-thon♫

"Not quite right, but close," Song Scroll said. "Let me try another one."

"This one's my favorite," Scroll replied.

♫I said, "Yep, what a concept, I could use a little fuel myself
And we could all use a little change"♫

"Yeah All-Star is pretty cool, there's a few of the verses I haven't sang yet that need changing, but mostly it just fits."

I took a simple cheat tablet from the Device store, and then added peripherals to feed the audio from the tablet to the new speakers that I'd bought. But the main thing I needed to make it all work, was software. I also wanted to do some kind of cool lighting that would flash and change with the song, plus it gave me more excuses to learn electronics hobby stuff. I had to have the books I would need sent by mail, because we already had to much to carry back.

All in all, I had to take out a 2000 bit loan, which had me all nervous, because I knew what loans did to people in the before. and I didn't want too much pressure, even though I was excited now.

Song Scroll talked me down. 

"Remember this part of All Star?"

I had been singing new parts of the song as we waited for the Pony express, and Song Scroll sang her favorite.

So, what's wrong with taking the backstreets?
You'll never know if you don't go (go!)
You'll never shine if you don't glow

"Who do I talk to if I can't make a payment, and what's the interest rate?" I asked. Honestly Song Scroll probably didn't know but she could put me in the right direction.

"Celestia runs all the loans, so she'll keep in touch with you about your progress. But if it doesn't work, you just return the items you purchased, what's left of them at least. There's no payments until you're ready to pay off the whole loan. I paid off mine last year, and it was 15000 bits," Scroll said.

The Pony express was a quiet train, I was able to store my new purchases in an unused train car, and they were off.

"I think All Star is the first song I want to record, Ponies are going to love this! You'll never shine if you don't glow, that's like the Pony anthem right there! Thanks Blue!"

"No problem Scroll. Let's see what I can figure out. Maybe in 3 weeks I'll have a really clunky goofy setup, but we can try it. If you see Joy or White Rose before me, bring up the idea of having a testing night."

* * 

"Hey Mayor!" Song Scroll said as she entered his office, practicing hopping and gliding every other step. She finished the apple fritter and wiped her mouth.

"Hey, you're pretty happy. What's up?"

"I've got some new songs I want to record. I'm really excited about one of them, but I want to give a writing credit to Blue Yonder on them. Can you do that Copyright magic again. Once I'm done in the studio."

"Sure thing Scroll. So our newcomer's got more of an artistic bent than I thought."

"You'll see. Just wait."

* *

Joy Thespian tended to be louder than most ponies, but every thespian knew that when the play started, it was time to be silent. She ran the recording equipment in silence, watching Songbird Scroll sing the new Hobby Bluffs smash hit.

She liked to help scroll wherever she could. She added in the piano accompaniment, while Scroll wrote the vocal part and the drums.

They didn't have any live piano or drums, it was all electronically created by the software Scroll had purchased and tweaked.

Mixing songs was a new skill for her, and she and Scroll would probably go back and forth on how to do it.

It was like Christmas in Spooky Fall. She never would have guessed Blue Yonder would have joined their little performance night or become good friends with Scroll so quickly. She obviously had her own specialty, they all did, but still enjoyed helping out and getting excited about the same stuff she and Songbird Scroll got excited about. 

"How was that take?" Scroll asked.

"I like it. I liked all of them," Joy said. "I think that would is one of the best. Do you want to have Blue perform the song too and compare your performances?"

"I'll see if Blue's done with her work today."

Blue Yonder had rented a shop on 2nd street, just a block away from the studio.

Scroll took off her headphones and stepped away from the recording area. "I'll send her a Pear text."

Pear Computers were used all over the place in Equestria, although some people liked the Robo-social brand.

** 

Silver Metal was a young stallion with skills in metallurgy and welding.

He watched me like a hawk as I carefully welded the two circuit boards together. I wouldn't be doing any heavy duty welding, just light electronics stuff, so I didn't need some of the more advanced training, but I now had my goggles and lab coat just to keep me safe. 

I had to go back and get a full audio-production set of a equipment. I don't think Scroll realized I needed to take in the singer's audio input and then process it together with the non-vocal tracks of the song, that was in addition to getting the lyrics so I could display them on the tablet.

There would be a lot of settings to adjust in the audio in part of the device. This would not be a portable karaoke device, not for now. It would be something I could carry with a hand cart.

When I got done welding the extra logic board to the primary board, I put away my goggles and looked over to my Pear pad. There was a flashing message alert.

Something from Songbird Scroll.

I turned back to Silver Metal. He hadn't got his cutiemark yet, but he was sure to get it soon, I thought.

"How did I do?"

"Great job Blue, I'll come back tomorrow and you can practice a bit more."

Although the Karaoke machine was my major project and would keep me busy for a while, I decided to make my shop broader than that. I would get bored of just doing music all the time. 

I spent all morning studying my Audio Production and Signals Processing textbooks, and yesterday I spent a few hours reading some more Fundaments of E&M: Equestrian edition.

Some of physics was a bit different here, but a lot of the high level stuff was the same, the building blocks Celestia used were different. There was no quantum mechanics here, the high level reality of E&M was recreated through a different mechanism. I guess that would be in the later textbooks.

It was already 1 o'clock and I hadn't even had breakfast other than a quick bagel. There was so much to do and learn, and I really wanted to get a prototype of the Karaoke machine done, but I still wanted the backing tracks together with voice, so that meant more difficulty for my first project.

I decided to go meet Scroll and Joy at Scroll's studio and record a version of All Star. Might as well take a break anyway.

My head was still so full of project details that I forgot where I was going for a while and I had to turn around when I almost went back to the apartments on accident.

And then I bumped into Saber Artist.

* *

What the heck had happened to Blue Yonder, in the past few days. He had seen Songbird Scroll and some of the other ponies get obsessed with a new project, but Blue took it to a new level. 

She was still thinking about the project and not where she was walking he guessed. 

She was carrying two textbooks and didn't even really realize it, when they crashed. Blue had veered off, not realizing she passed Scroll's studio, and then wham, we crashed.

"Oh, high Saber. Uh, I've been really busy and my brain is just still moving even when I step out of the office. I have dreams at night where I think I've left a programmable board in a half-configured state, like I forgot to set half of the pins. Then I wake up and realize I'm having vivid dreams about my work again."

"You don't have to get everything done by some deadline, Blue. This is the time of year to slow down, take a deep breath. We've got some funny stuff planned for Halloween, don't stress."

"Well, I was going to record a song. Scroll's already done her version but she wanted to hear mine to compare. I don't know if she wants anyone else to hear it yet, but I can see."

"Let me ask Songbird Scroll, if she doesn't mind sure."

After Songbird Scroll said it was OK, Saber followed Blue Yonder inside. He hadn't seen Scroll's studio since it was being built. There were some locals that tried to steal Scroll's supplies.

Not the townspeople, but some pesky raccoons. Scroll had done a lot of upgrades.

Blue nervously talked to Joy and Scroll for a few minutes and then went into the recording booth.

Working nights did have it's privileges, as when the three mares wanted to go out for drinks to relax and try again tomorrow, he could come along. Of course, Hopricot was practically the place to be for the musically inclined. They had just opened when he followed Yonder, Scroll and Joy inside.

"I just took the words to the song, Blue gave them to me, I should have had her give me the notes too, the eighth notes and all that threw it off. That's OK though, I thought the song couldn't get any better. It's even catchier now."

Joy responded, "The way we say things is always key. Can't wait till we can all try it with karaoke."

"I'm so excited to make that happen, but I'm taking a break from the project this afternoon. I got a little overboard between reading my textbooks and working through lunch with Silver Metal."