The Music Theory

So I was listening to my playlist of illegally-downloaded perfectly legitimate songs while on the way home from taking a JLPT mock paper just three hour ago, and I thought about the songs and how I’d rank them.

I should have been thinking about the topic for the next lesson chapter or how I could make billions of dollars by setting up a multi-level marketing scheme targetted at helpless otaku hikikomori, but I spent the time thinking about anime songs instead. Man, I’m wasting my life away…

So anyway, after some deep dileberations, I noticed some patterns with regards to my poor music taste…

First of all, I have zero musical talents and I can’t tell do from mi. But we all know that, on the Internet, one doesn’t need to know anything whatsoever to be an expert in any field. That’s where we get wikipedia.

Please also note that my 3346-entry playlist consists of nothing but J-Pop and anime and game-related songs. So don’t even get started on Mozart and Beethoven unless Evangelion counts.

After some self-reflection, I believe that I classify songs into five levels.

ZOMG YES!!! – I can listen to the song all day and still like it.
Good – I listen to it.
Meh – Don’t mind listening.
Bad – I’ll skip it if I notice that it’s being played.
ZOMG KILL ME!!! – I’ll delete it from my playlist and hard disk ASAP.

In general, most songs after multiple listenings don’t end up in the same category as when they first start out in, and the further a song is from mediocre, the less likely its position will change, for better or worse.

Most songs start out in the “Meh” to “Good” region when I first listen to them. After a few runs, they usually move on to “Good”. Those that continue to sound “Meh” are usually forgotten in some remote parts of my playlist, like decomposed skeletons decorating lost tombs and booby-trapped dungeons… but nevertheless I keep them in my playlist.

The “Good” songs usually never proceed on to the highest level because there’s always something about them that bothers me, something missing. I can’t seem to ever identify what exactly is this mysterious missing element due to my severe musical retardation. Most anime songs seem to fall into this field of semi-good mediocrity and semi-mediocre goodness that keeps them on my playlist.

Both the OP and ED of Suzumiya Haruhi fall into the “Good” category. However, it took me a while to start liking them and even now I can’t stand looping these two songs because I always end up being distracted by a feeling of incompleteness. I think it has something to do with Aya Hirano’s voice… I get this same feeling from Miyuki Hashimoto. Maybe there’s something wrong with me.

The songs that I really like and really hate are usually very distinct right from the first time I hear them. When I first listened to “Ongaku” by Maaya Sakamoto, I knew that it was going to be one of my all-time favourites. The same applies to almost every song by FictionJunction YUUKA, except some of the ones from the album Destination. On the other hand, nearly all of Haruko Momoi’s songs end up in Recycle-kun within five seconds.

There are always a few exceptions. When I first heard “half pain”, the ED of Witch Hunter Robin, I never really thought much of it. A few months back, I came across it again while shuffling through my playlist as usual and it was not long before I named it as one of my favourite songs, a title that is worth increasingly less due to inflation. Nothing much changed since I last watched Robin, but somehow the song came across differently after being forgotten for some time. Songs enter my favourites in this manner from time to time.

And that is the main reason why I chose to create a long playlist consisting of a wide variety of songs ranging from bad to perfection, instead of a tiny playlist containing only my favourite songs. I leave my Winamp playing in the background all the time and I don’t usually pay much attention to the songs being played when I am doing things online. Therefore, it doesn’t really matter whether the songs are bad or mediocre, and there’s always a chance that I’ll find a hidden gem I’ve been missing out on. Only when I’m not going to do anything else but listen to music, will I then select and play the songs I like, the list of which is now richer thanks to my usual playlist of mostly mediocre songs.

Just now I mentioned that there is something about Aya’s songs that prevents them from becoming my favourites. Well there is one exception… and that is “God knows…”. In any other circumstances, this would have been merely a “Good” song like the rest, but that scene in episode 12 of Haruhi made all the difference. A song that is vocally imperfect (by my bias definitions) can sometimes overcome its defect if it is introduced in the right context. At least for me.

So what do you think? Do I sound like I really have half a clue about what I am talking about or do I sound like I am a sleep-deprived nutcase typing up useless blog entries 2am in the morning?

Note to self: no more caffeine.