My opinion is that music arts are a bit stronger than normal arts in general because they have several disadvantages. For other arts it seems to be a fire and forget, but music arts seem to function fundamentally differently. In order to get the benefit, we need to keep playing, but they also can be kept up with out repaying the qi cost as long as you keep playing. However, it is easy to mess up the playing by dealing damage and getting up into the player's face.
So to me, music arts trade the more instantaneousness of other arts as well as the requirement of an instrument (making them more restrictive in fights) for a couple of benefits A) power, and B) Longer lasting effects. Of course, if FVM is different than other arts then it could be that other musical arts are fire and forget as well. Play a little diddy and something happens. However, I'm getting a gut feeling that this is not the case for music arts.
Music is about combining different tones with time and patterns in order to elicit an emotional reaction from a person, either passion, anger, melancholy, etc., and so I would think that fantasy music that affects the world itself through magic would require the same things. This means that it will take a time to set up and require a pattern in the music to bring out its full potential. A little diddy doesn't do that nearly as well as a good musical score.
This leads me to believe that music arts are focused on creating restrictions in a user (the time to play, the instrument to be used, and the concentration to keep playing) to bring forth a stronger effect at a possibly cheaper cost. However, the only example that I have to give is the masterwork of FVM, and a masterwork does not create a good analysis for what should be expected from a type of art.
Based on that, I would say that musical arts should also be pursued, I'm just worried about the action economy of a fight where we are using music. Although, our flute doesn't require that the only tune to be repeated is FVM, so any music art we get will also benefit from our flute. An interesting idea would be a fire/wind flute art for buffing people's damage and dodging ability. Fast to learn, very valuable in big team fights.
I might be jumping the gun by a lot with this question, but what would we want another musical art to do?
With our increasing Qi costs do we want it to be some kind of Vampiric drain art, similar to the thing Sun did but more acceptable? FVM sucks away Qi with the Elegy but does not siphon it to us, although that should have the
big potential caveat of "not yet" unless I am reading it wrong.
On the possibility this hypothetical vampiric art can stack Qi drain with FVM and they can
both feed us Qi that would be a little broken in my opinion, but very useful for knee capping all of those high Qi cost strategies.
Do we want it to buff our allies? This is
especially useful now that we have Turtle out and about. Getting him buffed will become a key part of our battle strategy. It can also synergize well with FVM, by letting FVM conceal the buffer(us) from harm and acting as metaphorical lantern in the dark for our buddies.
Do we want it to cause direct damage a la Kung Fu Hustle? This seems feasible to pull off, and would kinda mitigate that dragging out of fights we keep running into. It's also different than what we have been doing up to now, especially since the flute can auto play it we'd have a theoretically powerful DoT pounding away at people.
Do we want it to be more of a grab bag like FVM but approaching from a different direction? This creates versatility but really cuts with FVM as a cost.
And as a final one, do we think we could find a music art that lets us do
more actions in combat? I've been thinking that an art that gives Ling Qi more actions per turn, even just extra attacks, would be a godsend considering all the juggling we have to do.
Stuff to think about, as well as if we want that or want to focus more on what we already have.
