Talk:Unleash the Magic/@comment-10390252-20151116141352

Daniel Ingram is good but, with this one, he knocked the ball out of the park. It's easily the best one of his works I've heard since True, True Friend and Shine Like Rainbows.

The whole song does such a great job in building menace. The lyrics even follow the rules of using subconscious cues to build hysteria in crowds and individuals, as used so effectively by 20th Century tyrants.

It starts out so simply with Cinch complimenting Twilight and making unsubtle threats about her transfer to college. Cinch cannily doesn't even personally put much pressure on Twilight herself, leaving that to the Shadowbolts with their badgering of Twilight. Rather, she continually emphasises a positive 'spin' - the potential knowlege benefit to Twilight and everyone else. She then plays a victim card, claiming that they are being cheated by CHS and that all they want is 'what they deserve'.

By the end of the song, you can see Twilight is under massively increasing pressure. As she's led down what bordeers on a ritual processional of the chanting Shadowbolts and then thrust out onto the field with her supposed comrades standing at her back, chanting for her to 'unleash the magic', she's clearly coming apart, mentally and emotionally. When she starts singing her solo, you can see how effective Cinch's tactics have been - she's trying to convince herself that opening the Device is the right thing to do despite her prior reservations and fears.

The musical arrangement is also effective, starting light-hearted and Disney-like. However, as the song progresses, the addition of Vox Humanis and rock instruments build the sense of menace and of a driving force pushing Twilight down the road to her dark destiny, no longer even slightly in control of events or her own choices. The final verse, with the mournful, ritual-like Gregorian chanting is enormously powerful at grabbing you by the hind-brain and holding on. The final climactic chorus repeating over and over behind Twilight's solo again emphasises the huge external pressures that are now dominating her decision-making until the final demanding refrain.

Then the device is open and the music stops and you feel the shock of this sudden loss of direction to the soundtrack. It reflects the horror on the CPA kids and faculty's faces as they watch events unfold. For the next 90 or so seconds, there is no backing music, only the SFX as the magic goes berserk and drags out of her the friendless, unempathetic and intellectually-detached demon that Crystal Prep has taken years to unknowingly forge in her.