Musical Terminology:

Realizing this story relies heavily on musical terminology, I thought it might help to define some of the terms for clarity, in case anyone is interested.

- Sight-reading = reading and playing a piece of music you have never seen/had the chance to practice before.

- Bar = a segment of time defined as a given number of beats in a given duration. A score (sheet music showing the music for all parts and instruments at once) is made up of many bars.

- Tympani = a type of drum that can be tuned to different pitches.

- Crescendo = gradually growing louder.

- Vibrato = small fluctuations in pitch produced by the diaphragm, used as an expressive way to intensify a sound.

- Staccato = short, detached notes, played short and distinct.

- 32nd note/64th notes = VERY fast. For example, if a whole note is 4 beats in duration, a 32nd note is 1/32 of that and a 64th note 1/64 of that.

- Fermata = the prolongation of a tone or rest beyond its indicated time value.

Linguistic Terminology:

Since I also let my inner language geek out to play in this story, here are some linguistic definitions.

- Velar = a sound articulated with the back of the tongue touching or near the soft palate, such as /g/ or /k/ in English.

- Nasal = a sound articulated by allowing air to resonate in the nasal cavities and pass out the nose, such as /n/ or /m/ in English.

- Tonal language = a language in which different tones distinguish different meanings (Mandarin Chinese is a modern example).

- Glottal stop = a sound produced by a momentary complete closure of the glottis, followed by an explosive release. Often denoted by an apostrophe, it is similar to the pause in the middle of saying "uh oh."

- Sulu being comforted by syllabic names refers to Japanese being a language based on syllable structure (consecutive consonants are very rare).