Magic and Music

[DarkStar]

Hello once again for the first time on this forum, everypony!

Okay, so I've had this in my head for quite some time now. As you may have guessed, it revolves around the beautiful harmonic art in the form of various frequencies and pitches of vibrations that we know of as music. Mainly, around the instruments that are used to make such awesome sounds that would in fact exist in the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic series. A world in which is less dominated by technological advances, but having more or less a medieval feeling to it, what with the castles and villages that make up Equestria.

Because of the limited technological advancements of Equestria, there can't be anything like an electric guitar, let alone any gadgets used to modify the sounds of the instruments... however, as we know, the great world of Equestria is very well known for using magic! Which brought me an idea... since there is probably a very wide variety of magic spells, I thought, why can't there be any sort of sound modifying spells? You'll have to excuse such a question if the answer to it is obvious... I'm still sort of new to this whole thing, but I have a pretty good outlook on it. So, on to the interesting idea... for example, if a pony were to use an acoustic guitar, a unicorn to be exact, could they possibly use a sort of spell on their guitar? Maybe, so when they strum any string on the guitar, they could get a more distorted electric guitar sound?

What do you guys think? Could it be possible for magic to modify the sound of any instrument they choose to play, maybe a distorted harp? Hey, there's an idea...

[Kirby Krackle]

It's magic. And magic, in every fiction I've ever seen, turns reality to silly putty. So yes, I bet there are "Sound Filter" spells or "Wah pedal" spells or something. If the Unicorn can dream it, and it's their special talent, sky is the limit.

[Lerian]

It would be good to see how this is approached in the show and as someone who likes to see how shows/works interpret culture it would be extremely interesting to see if this turns out to be a show that does it well.

To explain/clarify/go off on one. We are human and only have ourselves to draw from so any music shown tends to based on a particular cultures music, especially when a fictional culture is already based on an existing (human) one. E.g. Minbari are 'East Asian/japanese', Centauri are 'Imperial English' and have similar (stereotyped?) music and musical tastes.

You then have the idea that violent/aggresive/strong races like loud music/yelling E.g. Klingon and Narn

Or you have 'futuristic' music which often sounds like synth pop (admittedly it tends to be 70's and 80's scifi that always ends up in a bar or disco with this sort of thing playing).

Which brings us to pony music. The shows makers are known for doing a fantastic level of research and preparation (E.g. Pinkie rolling in the grass, Zecora pawing at the ground, both things real animals do) so it wouldn't surprise me if they do come up with something that is unique and genuinely 'Equestrian'. Timing the music to fit in with a four-legged walk, trot, run? A greater emphasis on percussion as hooves and horseshoes make a different sound than soft human feet? Ponies are social animals, in the show and real life, so would their soothing music reflect/sound like the idea of (a) social gathering? (As opposed to much soothing human music which often reflects solitude).

Expanding on the idea of magical tuning...

Sound is air vibrations reaching our ears and instruments move the air in different ways. Could a unicorn use (a field of?) telekinesis to essentially 'play the air', either by focussing on a patch of air itself or using a held/hovering [item] to fix their eye on? What would be a purely unicorn 'instrument', one that can only exist in a fantasy world.