Bardic Songspeak - music as a language

[Greywander]

So I'm working on a bit of D&D 5e homebrew, and the relevant part is that the creatures in question would be both blind and mute, but have excellent hearing. Also possibly relevant is that they start off as normal humans, elves, etc. that undergo a ritual, so they only become blind/mute after the ritual. Also also possibly relevant is that they can "talk" to each other just fine (by sending tremors through the ground), it's the regular humans and such that they have trouble with.

I was thinking about ways of handling communication. Sign language of course immediately sprang to my mind (most likely learned before the ritual while they could still see). But I'm not sure how common sign language would be in a medieval fantasy world. So then I thought of another idea: using music to communicate. And thus the idea for Bardic Songspeak was born.

Now, I could just make Bardic Songspeak a single language, and honestly that's probably what I'll end up doing just to keep things simple. But I feel like the reality would be much more complicated, and I'm not very knowledgeable when it comes to music. Even if it's just one language as far as game mechanics, it would be nice to have some fluff/lore to go with it. I can see talented bards writing music that both sounds good and communicates something meaningful in songspeak.

The basic idea I have is that notes or chords would make up the phonemes of the language, much like consonants and vowels. One immediate problem that jumps out, though, is the different capabilities of different instruments. Some instruments aren't capable of producing chords, only singular notes, and some instruments have a more limited range than others. What I feel like this means is that there would be several different musical languages, one for each family of instruments according to what types of notes/chords they could produce.

Another thing is that, for most people, pitch (i.e. what note a note is) is relative. If I play a note, most people wouldn't be able to say, "That's a C." (A few extremely talented people would be able to do this.) But if I play a note and tell you it's a C, then play a second note, you would be able to say, "That's an E," because of it's relative pitch to the note I said was a C. This leads me to think that each "sentence" in songspeak will begin with a single note, probably a C, so that the listener knows what the other notes that follow are. Sort of like a period, but at the beginning of the sentence rather than the end.

This is about the limit of what I'm able to conceive of at the moment. I'm hoping someone more musically versed will be able to chime in and expand on what I've got here.

[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.)

[Max_Killjoy]

So I'm working on a bit of D&D 5e homebrew, and the relevant part is that the creatures in question would be both blind and mute, but have excellent hearing. Also possibly relevant is that they start off as normal humans, elves, etc. that undergo a ritual, so they only become blind/mute after the ritual. Also also possibly relevant is that they can "talk" to each other just fine (by sending tremors through the ground), it's the regular humans and such that they have trouble with.

I was thinking about ways of handling communication. Sign language of course immediately sprang to my mind (most likely learned before the ritual while they could still see). But I'm not sure how common sign language would be in a medieval fantasy world. So then I thought of another idea: using music to communicate. And thus the idea for Bardic Songspeak was born.

Now, I could just make Bardic Songspeak a single language, and honestly that's probably what I'll end up doing just to keep things simple. But I feel like the reality would be much more complicated, and I'm not very knowledgeable when it comes to music. Even if it's just one language as far as game mechanics, it would be nice to have some fluff/lore to go with it. I can see talented bards writing music that both sounds good and communicates something meaningful in songspeak.

The basic idea I have is that notes or chords would make up the phonemes of the language, much like consonants and vowels. One immediate problem that jumps out, though, is the different capabilities of different instruments. Some instruments aren't capable of producing chords, only singular notes, and some instruments have a more limited range than others. What I feel like this means is that there would be several different musical languages, one for each family of instruments according to what types of notes/chords they could produce.

Another thing is that, for most people, pitch (i.e. what note a note is) is relative. If I play a note, most people wouldn't be able to say, "That's a C." (A few extremely talented people would be able to do this.) But if I play a note and tell you it's a C, then play a second note, you would be able to say, "That's an E," because of it's relative pitch to the note I said was a C. This leads me to think that each "sentence" in songspeak will begin with a single note, probably a C, so that the listener knows what the other notes that follow are. Sort of like a period, but at the beginning of the sentence rather than the end.

This is about the limit of what I'm able to conceive of at the moment. I'm hoping someone more musically versed will be able to chime in and expand on what I've got here.

Despite a few years of music classes in middle school, the best I could ever tell you is "that's higher" or "that's lower", or arrange a series of notes in order -- I was never able to ID notes even when I had a starting point.

Two things I'd look at if I were trying to construct this.

Rhyming slang -- not copy-and-pasted, but just in the way that meaning could be hidden in rhyme.

Shakespearean verse.

[Draconi Redfir]

So, something like this then?

[Lvl 2 Expert]

People tried to do this for real. So I would take some inspiration from Solresol.

[Greywander]

People tried to do this for real. So I would take some inspiration from Solresol.

Late reply is late, but thank you, this is exactly the kind of thing I was looking for! I'll have to look more into it. It almost sounds like it isn't actually meant to be played as music, though, but rather the different notes are spoken, e.g. speaking "sol re sol" rather than playing the corresponding notes.