to the people who complain about performance RP;
Forgive the mild rant, but I was a bit baffled by various complaints about performances, so I figured I’d shed some light on the ones I’ve heard lately.
“I can’t take it seriously when it’s electric guitar and synth in a high-fantasy world.”
But also, consider this. We’re looking for something that gets people on their feet, gets them interested in listening. Unfortunately, by today’s musical standards, a riveting baroque ballad on a lute doesn’t quite slap like it used to back in the 1600′s. Don’t get me wrong. They’re still beautiful pieces, but they don’t always convey the intended message to a crowd with modern conventional thinking.
Not only that, but there’s only so many studio-recorded covers of modern songs played on ancient instruments that exist on YouTube, believe me. Once upon a time, I thought I was going to exclusively play oud and lute pieces. I quickly realized how unrealistic that was.
Besides, most of us actually try pretty hard to make our instruments make sense in the XIV universe with things like magical amplification and sound distortion. Take a breath, put down the lore book and suspend your disbelief for three minutes at a time to simply listen. This is supposed to be fun.
Also, here’s a polite reminder that Allag exists.
“[Performer’s Name]’s songs are all the same.”
Alternatively, “Every performance I see feels the same.”
First of all, listen to yourself say that again and tell me that’s not incredibly callous to say about someone’s hard work. We put hours into agonizingly re-writing these songs to make them XIV-relevant, macro-ing them, and practicing them until our timing is flawless. Remember that, please.
Second, yes. This, in the real-world music industry, is called a “genre” and it’s generally where all songs of a similar style fit into. But sarcasm aside, performers often operate in the genres that they themselves enjoy. We apologize for not having the same taste as you in advance, and hope that instead of complaining, you’ll find something you like in the songs that we bring to you. Or you can just kindly mute until the next song comes on.
And because it takes us so long to prepare these songs and we’re not professional songwriters, nor paid to do this: Yes, you’re going to see some of the same songs over again while we work on new material. That’s probably because we, the performers, REALLY like them and are proud of our work enough to want to show it to everyone we possibly can. I’m not going to apologize for that. Not even sarcastically.
If every performance feels the same to you, perhaps you’re not looking very closely into the song and what it means to the performer. All of us performers hand-pick those songs to say something to the listener, or simply to bring you a good show.
If, after all of this, you’re still unhappy, maybe performance events are not for you.
Tick off /yell chat and stick to your RP, or simply RP elsewhere. We won’t mind. We’re here to tell a story. We’re here for the people that want to watch, mingle, and/or cheer us on.
But do us all a favor and keep the complaints to yourself.
