Bardic Songspeak - music as a language

[brian 333]

Language can be thought of as music already. It is nothing more than patterns of sound to which we attach meaning. Most of the time humans begin to figure these patterns out before their first birthday.

I would avoid describing exactly how it works unless you are a musician and a linguist. It is enough for your players to know that it works. If you must descsibe it keep it vague.

Further, I would suggest two ideas for your consideration:

Thieves' Cant is a secret language which can be used in front of others without their being aware a message was delivered. A Bardsong performance should be able to convey information without alerting the uniniated.

The iconic Chinese writing system was developed to create a single written language that could be used in any part of an empire which used at least a dozen languages. Like Chinese, Bardsong should express concepts that the hearer understands without needing a codebook or translator. (for example, if I write d o g, you know I'm speaking of a canine... if you speak English and read Roman. In Spanish, d o g doesn't mean canine at all, even though Spanish is written using the same Roman letters. In the Chinese system, the symbol for dog is the same no matter what language you speak.)