Bardic matters

Bardic colleges have indoor performance halls, often soundproofed by magic or by being under¬ground and having long, “crazy dogleg” entry passages. The intent is to allow many bards to practice at once without disturbing anyone (ex¬cept perhaps their tutors or fellow performers). Many colleges have teaching rooms, lounges, liv¬ing quarters, meeting rooms, kitchen facilities and pantries, instrument storage rooms, a lone aboveground performance hall with galleries, and a radiating network of performance chambers belowground.
What is taught in bardic colleges varies from college to college, and from tutor to tutor. In general, the lower-order colleges concentrate on matters of pitch, timbre, and nuance. They do this by having students sing scales, practice pre¬cisely duplicating an overheard note or tune with the voice, and mimic other voices and bird and animal calls. Students also memorize a set of stock tunes and perfect them on a limited range of instruments (recorder, lute, harp) to the extent that they can transpose them into different keys. All students are taught to make and repair a par¬ticular sort of instrument.
Higher-order colleges add instruments and greatly expand the memorized repertoire. They also add versions of songs in other tongues, so that a graduate who doesn’t know a particular language can still perform a given song in that tongue with perfect pronunciation and articula¬tion. Students learn the histories of the tunes in their repertoire, and sometimes alternative lyrics—as well as why certain lands frown on, or approve of, specific wordings. As students progress, they are gradually taught how to in¬struct others, and guided through the steps of making and repairing an ever greater variety of instruments.
Only the newest students are taught in large, organized classes. The whole point of bardic col¬leges is that they offer a lot of one-on-one and small-group instruction. Additionally, senior stu¬dents are encouraged to improvise musically with younger ones, so they can learn by exploration.
Bardic colleges specialize in what they teach and what instruments they make, but these dif¬ferences depend on the individual instructors practicing at a college at a given time more than they do on college policy. As a result, nonbards won’t tend to rank, for example, a lute from one college as worth more or being finer than a lute from another college. They do rank “this lute by Tholomon Candras, from the time when he was at this college . . over “that lute by Andrath Melonder, repaired by diverse hands, from his early days at that other college . . .”
Bardic colleges in Faerun admit would-be members according to the following procedure. Someone shows up at the door of a bardic college who already makes a living by performing, and who might already be known—by reputation, at least—to the masters of the college (both genders are usually called “masters,” addressed specifi¬cally as “lord master” or “lady master”). However, any recognition of such notoriety would not be revealed. All would-be students are auditioned ... ending is missing