@Brightforge, this is the thing I keep coming back to, and a dumb free to play mobile game already solved it.
In My Singing Monsters, every monster on an island is not playing its own tune, it is playing one layer of the same track. One does percussion, one does a bassline, one hums a melody. All in the same key and tempo, so whichever ones you have, it always sounds like music. Add one and a new part joins in. Remove one and you hear the hole.
That is already what a bard does mechanically. We layer effects in a fixed cadence. It just makes no sound.
So rather than each song having its own separate effect, which is where the annoyance worry comes from, each song is a layer of one arrangement already in key and tempo with the zone music. Your instrument sets the timbre, so drums give percussion, flute a high line, lute something plucked underneath. Four songs twisting becomes a small arrangement built over the existing music instead of fighting it.
The part I really want is the failure sound. A guitar hero style scratch when a song drops. That makes audio into information instead of decoration. Being a good bard currently means watching a row of duration bars, which is a lot of why it feels like homework. If a drop made a noise you could play by ear, hear the hole in your own arrangement, and fill it without looking. That is a real accessibility win for anyone who struggles to track five timers visually.
Two bards in a group would also be layering over the same track, so you would be playing together rather than at each other.
The catch is it needs zone music in a consistent key and tempo to layer onto, which is not a small ask. But even a stripped down version, one stem per instrument family plus a scratch on a drop, would do most of the work. And keep the toggle, some people will hate it by the second dungeon.
Also adding my vote for Shoklen's dancing mez. A mob doing a little jig because you played at it is the most bard thing in this thread. I asked Zukan about mob dance animations and he said he wasn't sure they all have one. It would be great flavor. Might also be some real life in camps if they could all dance a jig together and laugh and stuff while the players planned how to break the camp.
