Music and storytelling - Iron Maiden's Dance of Death

As I’ve noted several times before in this blog, I love bards. Mainly because they use music and poetry to produce magical effects. Out of all the forms of magic used in fantasy RPGs, this is the most relatable one to me. Music is a very real thing, it causes people to feel a certain way, and in some cases, it also moves people to do things. It tells the tale of things that were, are and will be, and in the right hands, music can both silence millions and make those same millions erupt into a myriad of emotions.

Now, when it comes to storytelling through music, there are few artists as skilled as the respectable gentlemen from the heavy metal group, Iron Maiden. The storytelling they employ in most of their songs (often inspired by actual literary works) is truly inspiring. So, as promised in the title of this piece, here’s what I find so inspiring about Iron Maiden, and their storytelling through music.

*insert musical montage, lots of hair, spandex, spikes, and guitars but also bass… lots of bass and Nico on drums*

Iron Maiden is Heavy Metal. No offense to the many other bands that identify themselves with this type of music, but Iron Maiden pretty much defines the genre. Lots of guitar work, amazing vocal range, powerful rhythm sequences which combined produce songs that feel truly epic in their feel and composition. In the 42 years they have been active, they have produced a grand total of 16 (read: SIXTEEN) albums, and are still touring around the world, giving their fans some of the most exciting live concert experiences ever.

Having recorded sixteen albums means there are over a hundred songs to look at, and doing so would probably take years and make me eligible for a Ph.D. So instead of that, I’ll focus on one song that I think will be easy to use in order to get my point across. So I present to you, a step by step analisys of the title track of Iron Maiden's 2003 album, "Dance of Death. Here's the link to the song, so you can listen to it while you read.

Any good story has five parts: a hook, a buildup to a climax, the climax, the falling action, and conclusion. So, in that order...

"Let me tell you a story to chill the bones, about a thing that I saw...One night wandering in the everglades... I had one drink, but no more..."

The song starts with a slow, clean guitar riff that gives us the idea that what we're about to hear is both intriguing and mysterious, Bruce (the vocalist) matches this mood by almost whispering the first few lines of the song. You can imagine yourself listening to this nameless narrator, sitting around a campfire, having had more than one drink yourself... 50 seconds into the song and you have successfully been hooked into the story.

The buildup to the climax, or "rising action" has the narrator tell us how he was assailed by unknown figures in the forest, then led to a place where he was induced into a form of astral projection. His spirit is then lifted into the air, as he watches his own body dance with these figures, he now recognizes as Undead creatures "ascended from Hell". The music throughout this second part contains a steady drum beat, synthesizer generated string choruses that slowly take us away from that initial introductory guitar riff and build towards a halt in the music that leaves us wondering "wait, is that it? what happened then? did he survive?"

What comes next is an absolute explosion of rhythm and music when the song changes gears and dances (pun intended) wildly off into the climax of the story and song, by employing a melody that evokes images of pagan rituals and bonfires. Our narrator tells us how both he and his spirit were dancing wildly in, around and above a firepit until they were re-joined. He then keeps dancing and is joined by the others until he comes back to his senses, takes advantage of a small skirmish and makes a run for it.

In the falling action, there is very little to no text, however; it is in this part of the song that one hears Iron Maiden's iconic use of simple riffs that, when played live, results in thousands of fans singing along with the melody of the song. Gers, Smith, and Murray take their turns soloing while Harris lays the foundation of the song, taking us into another shift in rhythm, back to the slow paced crawl at the start of the song.

"To this day, I guess I'll never know, just why they let me go. But I'll never go dancing no more... 'till I dance with the dead..."

In the conclusion, our narrator finishes his enthralling story will a foreboding sense of doom for himself. He feels as if they could have kept him there just as easily as they caught him in the first place. And the experience has left him marked for life, so much so, that he knows that on the last day of his life, he will join the dance of death once again.

This song is an absolute thrill to listen to. It tells you a very exciting story and holds your attention with both sound and text, managing to transport your mind to a place where you've (probably... hopefully) never been. So many emotions are passed through the melody of the song. Fear, excitement, exhilaration, all of these in 8 minutes of a song that doesn't feel as long as that thanks to great storytelling.

Iron Maiden inspires me to write stories of my own. I hope you enjoyed reading while I gushed about one of my favorite bands of all time. If you feel like this is something you would enjoy listening to, there are sixteen albums to choose from, but my personal favorites are "Seventh Son of a Seventh Son", "Powerslave", and "Piece of Mind". "Seventh Son" is actually a whole album telling one overarching story. It is quite possibly the best Heavy Metal album ever written.

Thank you for reading, I look forward to telling you a story one of these days.

Pintas y Dados - El podcast

Una de las cosas más gratificantes de ser un Dungeon Master es ver como toda la preparación previa al juego resulta en una historia divertida y asombrosa a la hora de jugar. El proceso que cada DM sigue para prepararse y escribir la historia antes de contarla difiere de DM a DM. A algunos nos gusta improvisar, a otros nos gusta planear todos y cada uno de los puntos de la historia, otros lo planean pero dejan que la decisión dependa de una tirada de dados… En fin, todos tenemos nuestro “librito” que seguimos a la hora de correr nuestros juegos.

Por otro lado, una de las cosas más gratificantes de ser un jugador de DnD, es que tu Dungeon Master no te mate.

HAH!!

Pero no hay nada mejor que encontrarse con tus amigos luego de un juego y hablar sobre lo cool que fue el juego, o las diferentes formas en las que podemos correr otro juego la próxima vez que nos toque ser DM.

Con esto en mente, dos amigos y yo nos pusimos de acuerdo para crear “Pintas y Dados”.

Pintas y dados, el podcast, es básicamente una ventana en la que Fernando, Moisés y yo les hablaremos sobre varios aspectos de nuestro hobby favorito: Los juegos de Rol. Hablaremos de Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, Fate, Numenera, Legend of the 5 rings, y muchos otros sistemas de juego, mientras comentamos sobre los monstruos, las reglas, las historias y las ideas que pasan por nuestras mentes a la hora de preparar una sesión de juego. Todo esto mientras nos tomamos una que otra pinta :) .

Además de esto, con la ayuda de nuestro grupo de amigos, grabamos varios juegos de rol que presentaremos como una historia en episodios. Así como cuando nuestros padres escuchaban radionovelas? bueno, así mismo solo que con nerdos, dados, sin guiones, y un humor mucho más cuestionable.

El día de mañana (29 de Junio) presentaremos nuestro primer episodio, gracias a nuestros amigos de Patacoins, ustedes, mis muy estimados lectores, podrán encontrar el podcast en el sitio de patacoinstv.com y así también en iTunes y cualquier aplicación de podcasts en Android (yo uso Podcast Republic, es gratis, soy pobre)

También si tienen alguna pregunta, o algún tema que les gustaría que comentemos en el podcast nos pueden escribir a pintasydados@gmail.com, o encontrarnos en twitter como @Pintas_y_Dados y en Instagram como pintasydados. En un futuro grabaremos un capítulo con sus preguntas y comentarios, asi que envíennos todas las ideas que quieran escuchar en el podcast!

Estamos muy entusiasmados con este proyecto y esperamos que les guste lo que tenemos preparado para ustedes.

Cheers!

Julio

G.I.F.T.E.D.

It started with an accident, as many of these stories do…

It was a rainy night and the bus was full of people. The driver had taken an extra shift, those new school books weren’t going to pay for themselves after all, so he needed to put in all the extra hours he could… He needed to provide, he had to give his son a proper education and make sure he’d never have to work graveyard shifts like his old man…

The truck hit him out of nowhere… in just a few seconds he wondered if he had passed a red light, had he fallen asleep on the wheel? or maybe the other driver had, he wasn’t sure. The horrified screams of his passengers mingled with his own as he thought about his son and his dog, who were the only family he had left. The bus bounced on its side and he felt one of his ribs crack under his own weight on the safety belt of his seat, it tumbled twice and just as it seemed it would hit the side of a building… it stopped.

It was as if all of the impulse behind the rolling bus had simply come to a halt, the driver, who was bracing himself for a big impact, slowly opened his eyes, and to his amazement, the bus seemed to be floating in midair, suspended by an eerie light that seemed to glow with a violet aura. Not only was the bus suspended in midair… but also the shattered glass, the passengers’ bags, and the passengers themselves were suspended as if gravity had sort of forgotten about them. The driver, now breathing heavily sat still for a moment, not knowing what to do, until he finally tried looking at his rearview mirror.

Floating amongst the debris and the injured passengers, a little girl with a bowl cut, a purple flower dress and mismatched sneakers was shaking and sobbing. Her eyes glowed with a light that matched the color of the energy that seemed to be holding up the bus and its passengers.

"W… wha… what’s happening? I… where’s my momma?”

The media were all over the news like rats on peanut butter, trying to find out who the girl was, where she lived, why her mom had taken her away from her father’s home that night, and how she had managed to develop what they were now calling a *gift*. After a few days of open harassment by the press and the public, the girl and her mom were accepted into a variation of the “witness protection program”. This government-appointed program was later dubbed the “Gifted Individuals Protection Service” or GIPS. As if acting on a chain reaction, many cases of “gifted” people, mostly children, began appearing in cities all over the country, seemingly without a clear reason and with abilities that ranged from the seemingly harmless to others that could constitute a sizable threat to the world’s population if left unchecked.

As time passed, these individuals and their families started asking for a chance to re-insert themselves into normal life. They weren’t asking for any type of special treatment, just a chance to have a life outside the walls of the pseudo-prison they were living in. After much deliberation the central government appointed a task force, dubbing it the Gifted Individuals Federal Training and Education Department, G.I.F.T.E.D. they would oversee the development of a network of facilities around the country, one in each major city, where they would train and supervise gifted people's actions so as to better assess a way in which these individuals could contribute to society's advancement.

As time passed the Department served to help these gifted individuals to find their place in society either by giving them jobs that suited their special abilities, or by helping law enforcement deal with others who used their powers to break the law. Not everyone who found themselves gifted with superhuman abilities accepted to be taken into G.I.F.T.E.D., and some of those who did not find themselves the recipient of a “gift” took up the vigilante mantle anyway, each having their own reasons to fight crime in their own way. Some of these “superior individuals” have been known to work alongside with the members of G.I.F.T.E.D. Their work, however, is not recognized as official.

As of today you find yourself assigned to the city of Westfall, a place where the police finds itself constantly outnumbered by street gangs and the gifted villains who run them. The city council finally agreed to approve a sizeable part of its budget in order to bring in some help from G.I.F.T.E.D. in hopes of lowering the city’s crime rate.

You now stand in front of the greatest challenge you've ever had in your entire life...

Will you make a name for yourself as one of the greatest heroes of all time? Or will you fail to leave your mark, like many others before you?

Roll the dice and see what FATE has in store for you!