Conversational Japanese; Wednesday, Fourth Period [01/31].

[id_kill_him]

"Konnichiwa, minasa~an!" Yukari greeted the class brightly, looking incredibly pleased with a stack of papers in her arms; she slipped one off the top of the stack and brandished it proudly. "We're having a pop quiz today!"

Weren't you just so excited? Actually, some of you might actually be, because Yukari got some really nerdy vibes from some of you, but that was neither here nor there.

"So far, we've covered all sorts of things already, like greetings and table manners and social events, so that's plenty of material to go over again and reinforce with a test! And just so you know," Yukari continued, as she went around to pass out the tests to the students, "the questions were made for me by an old associate of mine back in Tokyo named Ishikawa. A lot of my students would complain about how much more challenging his questions were than mine, but since some of you are already pretty familiar with Japanese, I had to make sure they were good! So if you find them hard, don't blame me! Blame my former colleague or your fellow students who are throwing off the grading curve!"

Because, obviously, she was blameless! And, to further cushion her exempt status, she added, "I'll also be taking the quiz myself, so it's fair all around! Ganbatte ne, minasan! Kimi nara dekiru yo!"

Wilderness Survival; Wednesday, Second Period [01/31].

[sword_chocobro]

To say that Gladio was going to be a bit busy that Wednesday morning was a bit of an understatement. What he'd hoped would just be a really, really late night was turning out to be a whole lot more, and while he had a lot going on right now, he could at least spare a few moments to call Nell and update her on what was going on, and then text his students to let them know that they could definitely still show up for class, but he wasn't going to be there:

Hey, guys. Sorry for the late notice, but no class this week. Enjoy the time off.
Please pass this on to any of your classmates you know of that might not get this text, too.
Thanks. See you next week instead.
--Gladio

So enjoy at least a little slice of your Wednesday more free than usual! But you can still go run around in the woods and build fires if you want. There won't be any extra credit or anything, but your teacher would be very proud.

Music, Wednesday

[suitably_heroic]

“Today, we’re going to talk about chords.” Today’s Atton band shirt was Dream Theater, if anyone was keeping track. “Chords are combinations of two or more notes that, together, make a full sound. So full that punk bands only need about three of ‘em to string a whole song together.”

And that, class, was why the pianos and the guitars had gotten dragged out to the front today. “Chords are the foundation of most popular music on Earth today,” he said. “Every chord has a starting note, or root, and you build more of the sound on top of that note. In a basic major chord, you add what’s called a major third interval and a perfect fifth on top of that.”

He tapped a key on the piano in front of him. “So let’s say our root is C, then the third interval is four half-a-notes up, which gets us to E.” Another tap. “And the perfect fifth is three more semitones further down, which is… G.” Tap. “Major chords tend to sound pretty boisterous, maybe even a little cheerful. Their sadder, more emo little brother is the minor chord. That’s when instead of going four half-notes up, you go three.” He tapped the sequence again, but hit the E minor instead of the E. “See? I’m practically weeping already.”

"If you say so," Lana agreed. "Of course, this only applies to instruments that create notes, which doesn't include some percussion. Drums are rather major by default." Which wasn't even an intentional pun! "The piano is fairly easy to see how the notes relate and where there are half-notes, but for other instruments, you may have to figure it out." She could do her best to help, but her best was going to be mostly Google.

"There are different sorts of chords, of course," she continued, "some of them more pleasing than others, and each invoking a different sort of mood. So we've got some music here, short pieces in different keys with different sorts of chords. There are recordings of each that you can listen to and see how they make you feel, and then play them yourself."

She played the major key progression first, then the minor, and finally the modal.

Atton nodded along. "Finally, we've grabbed some easy punk songs for you guys to practice on," he said. "No percussion, though I'm not going to stop anyone who wants to get behind the drums. Let's make this a band for a day, huh?"