Jekyll and Hyde and...Pianos?
So, who wants to hear one of my TGS headcanons as I procrastinate on my math homework and avoid thinking about how I'm ghosting a military scout for the third day in a row? You do? Great!
So, this headcanon is based off of a Hyde doodle that Sage made (it's in Volume I, but I first saw it posted somewhere on Tumblr). My headcanon is that Jekyll and Hyde are amazing at playing piano. But, while Jekyll is quite proud of his piano skills, Hyde will play as badly as he can to the point where the Lodgers try to ban him from playing. They're unsuccessful every time. He will play horribly at every party hosted within the Society, and not even dropping one of Helsby's fish tanks on the piano will stop him (where Hyde keeps getting new pianos nobody knows).
So, Jekyll and Hyde are great at piano, and Jekyll shows that talent off while Hyde hides it. That's all to the headcanon, right? Nope! Because I'm a music nerd, I have more to say about their individual skill sets. (BTW, since I'm not too sure what an average person knows about music, I've gone ahead and defined some terms to avoid confusion.) (I'm so sorry. This ended up a lot [and I mean a lot] longer than I thought it would be. Please bear with me.)
If you place Hyde in front of a piano and without music sheets, you'll find that (if he thinks you're not there) he can improv any song from the top of his head and still make music that would make the most stoic cry. Not only that, he can play many classics without music sheets, relying on muscle memory from years of practicing these pieces before they split their soul. However, if someone questioned how he knows how to play these songs, that would cause him to think too much about how he's playing the song and thus forget how to play it (I really hate when this happens to me, especially on parade days). Despite his skill with improv and muscle memory, Hyde is terrible at sight-reading and struggles a lot with learning new pieces. While trying to sight-read (which is playing a song for the first time ever while trying to be as accurate as possible, often in a band setting), Hyde will often panic at unfamiliar rhythms and spam a lot of random notes and lose count (if you can remember a drum playing a steady beat in a song, that's the drummer keeping beat; musicians have to keep count of the beats while playing to help them with rhythms and pacing). This often leads to him either being behind or jumping ahead several measures (if a song is a story, imagine that a measure is a paragraph, each word a musical note). So, he ends up finishing last or finishing first, and, considering how everyone playing is supposed to finish together, this is quite bad. Honestly, Hyde wouldn't enjoy playing with anyone else (there's an exception to this, but I'll talk about that later). Despite not having to sight-read new pieces, Hyde will still try to sight-read and refuses to break the music into sections (in music, there are sections either marked with numbers/letters for easier counting or for marking different song segments). He hates going slower to practice getting a rhythm down. He'd rather play it now and perfectly the first time. He does not have the patience to learn new songs and gets easily frustrated with it.
Unlike Hyde, Jekyll cannot play a song on muscle memory alone. He's already thinking too much about how he's playing the song, so his body never gets the chance to just do it. Similarly, Jekyll is not fond of attempting improv because he thinks too much about how the rhythms connect to each other and gets too stuck on a certain pattern that he's unwilling to switch between time signatures (beats per measure and how much each beat is worth, like 4/4 or 6/8) or key signatures (ups or lowers certain notes by half by displaying symbols known as flats [lower] and sharps [higher]). This results in very mediocre music that he's not proud of. However, Jekyll excels at learning new pieces. He actually has the patience to slow down his playing, so he can perfect rhythms and switching between notes (switching between notes on piano is difficult without practice; the first thing you learn about playing it is how to switch between notes, in fact). He's willing to set up a metronome (a device that ticks to the beat as a way to help musicians count, though I'm not sure if they were invented in this time period yet) while Hyde usually just guesses what the BPM (beats per measure) is. And, despite Hyde's ability to remember all the old pieces they've played, he can't memorize new pieces, which is another thing Jekyll is good at. He takes the time to play a section with music and then without music, doing this with every section and putting each memorized part together until he can play the entire song memorized. (As a pianist, I doubt he would often do this; memorization is usually for when music sheets are unavailable or unprofessional-looking, such as marching in parades...But, Jekyll's a smug bastard, so I wouldn't be surprised if he did this to impress people, especially at galas.) And, since he's better at breaking the music into easier chunks and analysing what the (music) piece requires, Jekyll is really good at sight-reading. For the sake of easy understanding, I'll explain this as a common sight-reading acronym: STARS.
S - [Key] Signature (flats and sharps).
A - Accidentals and other signs (such as flats and sharps -- flats and sharps show up in certain measures that go against the key signature [this includes accidentals, which signify that, while in a different key signature, the regular note is played).
S - Signs (different from the key signature -- refers to dynamic markings, articulations, and repeats [dynamics - loud, soft, crescendos, decrescendos; articulations - how the note is played]).
Basically, these are all the things that a musician needs to look at in a piece before they play it for the first time. Jekyll takes the time to look at all these different elements of the piece while Hyde would only give them a cursory glance. Jekyll would also tap out rhythms with his pencil and sizzle along to the beat. (For contest, bands are tested for their sight-reading ability. They are not allowed to play the music or else they will be disqualified. Band directors will "conduct" the piece and players will either tap along with their pencils [every practicing musician requires a pencil for writing in notes and circling parts to remember] or sizzle [sizzling is like making a "ch" sound in the place of tapping by keeping your teeth together and blowing out air] to practice the rhythms.) While Hyde would just try to play it almost immediately, Jekyll takes mental notes of what notes he's supposed to play and how the music is supposed to sound like. So, he often doesn't panic while sight-reading. While I don't think Jekyll would really play with other people, except for Lanyon, he would be better at listening to audio cues and making sure that he's not playing over anyone else.
Speaking of Lanyon, let's talk about their playing preferences (is my math homework ever going to get done?)
Hyde prefers pieces with faster tempos with unusual rhythms or that include a D.S. al coda (a specific type of repeating that would take me too long to repeat here). (I haven't played a place with one in forever.) He likes pieces that are fun and very odd (he would absolutely love Randy Standy if he was in this era [I really want to play Randall Standridge's song "Rubber Chicken"; an amazing composer, well-known (to me) for his songs "Santa the Barbarian" (the first song I've ever played from him for my first ever Christmas concert) and "Spring" where he found a way to mimic the sound of rain with fading snaps, who uses a rubber chicken as part of one of his most recent songs (and he's part of the LGBTQ+)]) Jekyll would prefer slower and more elegant pieces, though he prefers pieces with harder rhythms and very subtle but effective dynamics. While both Jekyll and Hyde don't often play with other people, they both love playing with Robert, who is trying to reconnect with his love for playing violin.
I came up with this headcanon (er, headcanons?) months ago, but I was expanding more on it as I was coming up with more lore of one of my AUs (that I'm not currently writing). Basically, I gave Hyde more mental health problems in a swap AU (as one does) where Hyde is the "original" but the potion was supposed to give the "good half" the original body. It did not do that, and Hyde's having a terrible time comparing himself to his "good" half. Hyde often spirals into self-loathing, but Lanyon has found that playing violin and having Hyde play along helps calm his roiling emotions. (Not a perfect solution, of course. But, sometimes coping is all we can do.) ...Yeah, sorry for rambling about that AU, but, if you've read this far, you kinda asked for it at this point. But, yeah, I thought that was cute, and I really wanted to share these headcanons (though, I'm so sorry about the term-heaviness of this entire post; I truly didn't realized I was this much of a music nerd). I'm sure that, if I had more experience as a pianist rather than only a semester's worth, these headcanons would be more accurate. I was mostly thinking of this from a clarinetist point of view.
But, if you actually read all of this, I hope these headcanons at the very least made sense. Sorry for the ramble, but thank you for reading it. (...I'm kinda screwed on my math homework, but it's fine. I usually wake up early for last-minute homework, anyways.)
