A song turns up in more mysteries than it has any right to: the tune the drowned girl was humming, the hymn nobody will sing past the fourth verse, the page of music that is really a cipher. Handing the players the music itself lets them read it, hum it and argue about it.
The melody is written note by note: a pitch from the A below middle C to the A above the staff, a length from a semibreve to a semiquaver, sharps, flats and naturals, ties, bar lines and repeats, and a syllable of the lyric under each note. The notes lay themselves out along the staves bar after bar, so a staff breaks where the bars fill it, and the clef and key signature open every line. Chord names or dynamics go above the staff. The title, the dedication, the words-and-music line, the tempo, further verses and the publisher’s line are all yours to write.
Four hands: a 1920s song sheet with the chords over the tune, a bard’s ballad copied on vellum, a hymn from a starship’s chapel, and a photocopied choir part with somebody’s pencil marks on it. The page is A4 at 300 DPI. The book the song was copied out of is a Mythos Tome, and the note tucked inside it is a Message.