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*muses* I thought I'd explain about me and music. It's a thing I end up trying to explain to RL people fairly often, actually, because my music tastes in action are somewhat ... ecclectic, and don't seem to have a visible reason or rhyme.
The first thing you should understand is that I don't understand music at all. How it functions, what it's made of. That actually is important to me, I don't generally like things I don't understand. I am aware there is a structure to music, a rationale and a method of functioning behind it, but I can't discern it, which makes music something of a ... complicated issue for me.
I also can't hear a lot of it. When I say I can't discern a structure, I actually do mean that I can't hear it, a lot of the time. Um. For example, if anyone knows the game Myst? The puzzle game? I played it through, and passed everything on more or less the first round, but then I hit the music lock. Where you have to match the sounds you hear on one side of the room to the sounds you can make on the other. And I genuinely, honest-to-gods, could not pass it. I eventually called my dad, who is pretty good at music, over to look at what I was doing. The sounds playing on one side of the room turned out to be not remotely like the sounds I was playing on the other. Turns out I can't really hear the difference between notes -_-;
Well, sort of. I think. I can tell the difference between a bass and a soprano, for example. I can tell extreme highs and lows, or tell big differences in relation to each other. But everything in the middle is a slew of invisible gradation, and I can't rationalise anything out of it.
And I've no idea about the rest of what people talk about with music. Off key, I've no idea what that means (mostly because I've no idea what a 'key' is). Pitch and key and all that, I've no idea. I understand in an abstract way that they've something to do with the waveform of the sound, but that's about it. Music does not make sense to me. It is a language I do not speak, though I know enough to recognise that it is a language (much the same as math, really - I know the structure is there, I can sense the edges of it, but because I can't see it, it won't ever make sense to me, or be a language I speak).
Incidentally, I was actually in a choir in primary school. Which maybe has no bearing, except for an incident I remember, where the choir mistress stopped a number, and turned to the mid-alto section (me), and pointed to me. "Look at this student" sort of thing. I was starting to have a mild panic attack, shit, what did I do wrong, when she turned and said that the rest of them should copy me, because I was doing everything she said to do, and they should consider me an example.
This actually caused me to have a worse panic attack, as well as being, um, sort of funny. Because ... I can't hear notes? I can barely sing? I can't hear when I'm singing wrong? Seriously, I had no clue what the hell I was doing. Most of what I was trying to do as far as the actual singing part went was try to make my voice blend into invisibility with the ones around me, trying to make it not stand out, and then just doing what she said to do about things like standing a certain way, raising the head a bit, breathing in such a way. Like that. Out on my own, my voice does things, I don't even know what, I can't much hear, but people tend to wince. In the choir, basically I was trying to be invisible, vocally as well as physically, and using the other voices around me as a ... a kind of wall/shield/thing, and a reference point so that mine would hopefully do more or less the right thing.
And then she pointed right at me. And told people to copy me. And I actually could not sing another note for that session, mouthing along hoping no-one would realise that there wasn't actually a sound coming out of my mouth, because ... NO. No, do not look at me, don't follow me, I don't know what I'm doing. I was following you lot. I don't know up from down with this shit, seriously, don't follow me.
And it's worse, when someone says you're doing something perfectly, when you don't know what it is. Because if someone says you're doing something wrong, it's panic-making and embarrassing, but it makes sense. I mean, you don't know what you're doing, getting it wrong is kind of the logical consequence. When you've no idea what you're doing, and someone singles you out for doing it right, it's all ... Bduh? What? No. No, that doesn't make sense, what the hell? I'm doing this thing better than people who actually know what they're doing, that doesn't make sense. And for fuck's sake, do not tell them to copy me, what part of 'doesn't know what she's doing' did you miss?
It actually tended to happen to me rather a lot, actually. Because the way I understand things ... Um. I can understanding short-term processes really, really easily. As in, I can look at a system, tell you what it's doing, and often copy it, all in the immediate sense. Like, it's a thing that goes up and down, and if you do this in sequence, that makes it go up and down. I still don't know what the thing is, I don't know why it's going up and down, I don't know what it going up and down results in in the broader sense. I just know that it IS going up and down, and this is mechanically how it's doing that.
Like, in fourth year of secondary school, I had to take accounting again because fourth year is a funny, optional in-between year where you do a little bit of everything. So I ended up in accounting, having no idea what the hell I was doing or what the numbers meant. And in one test, I got a straight-up 100%, three percent better than a friend of mine who actually was a very good accountant, and actually knew what the hell she was doing. Because all the test was was manual operations involving balance sheets and stuff, and once I figured out where the numbers were supposed to go and what you were supposed to do with them, I could basically just run them off like I was a calculator/spread-sheet programme. I hadn't a bulls notion what the hell they were, and for all I knew I could have been absentmindedly laundering drug-money through a household budget for all I understood of where the money came from/went to/was for. But I did better than someone who actually knew what she was doing, all because when it comes to manual systems processing, I can do shit by rote like you wouldn't believe.
The same with people, too. I get the rote-ritual thingies you do, just in the sense that they are rote-ritual thingies you do. So ... Right. You know in Catholic mass, there's a bit where you're supposed to shake hands with everyone around you? It's a symbolic peace-wishing thingy, where you just randomly shake any passing hand and say 'peace be with you' (I know it's more than that, now anyway, I get the symbology behind it, but when I was regularly attending mass I was ... Okay. Younger. Child and teenager, mostly. And the rituals are sort of ... Um. I liked them, I actually liked mass a lot, because the physical rituals were basically just things you did, and you didn't have to understand them, and no-one else did either, and there was a whole reverence attached to doing things by rote that I sort of liked just for what it was).
There was one time (I was a teenager, I think) where there was a kid in the pew in front of us, who was excitable and upset and enthralled by the choir music in particular. He spent most of the mass reacting almost exclusively to the music, decrying them or delighting in them by turns. Which I considered not unreasonable, because the priest was one of the old-school ones who barely remembered what a microphone was, and consequently was barely audible at the best of times, but I'm really not the person you should ask about that sort of thing. He was getting funny looks, though. The kid, I mean.
But anyway, we came to the 'peace be with you' part, and everyone around was shaking hands, but the choir was doing one of those in-between songs to guide you over the bits of the mass with no speaking, and he was still reacting mostly to that. But you're supposed to shake hands with any hand that passes looking for it, so when his hand went sketching past, I took it for a second to shake it, and said 'peace be with you'. I'm not sure he actually even noticed.
After mass, my mam came over and said to me that that was really good of me. Which ... honestly made me panic again. What? What was good of me? It was mass, you don't do anything special in mass, you just copy what everyone else is doing, that's the point. It's like choir. I just did the ritual, what happened, what did I do different?
She said shaking hands with that kid when no-one else would. Which I hadn't actually noticed, but I figured it was mostly because he was still flailing a bit, and I was probably the only one who'd actually managed to catch his hand. Turned out, the kid was I think autistic? He was reacting exclusively to the music because the music was bascially the only bit of his surroundings that mattered to him. Possibly he wasn't actually aware that much of the people at all. Which everyone around him had apparently noticed before I did (I didn't know it was a thing you looked for), and that was why they were frowning and/or avoiding him. Which I hadn't noticed either, because ... Um. I didn't go to mass for the people. I was there for the ritual.
I shook his hand because the ritual said that you shook hands at that point. His hand was there, he didn't seem to object to having it shaken (or notice, really, but that was fair enough), he went back to the music afterwards without even a ripple. It had seemed fine to me. But apparently there was a thing beyond the ritual, some other thing I didn't get, that meant you weren't supposed to shake his hand. Or, were supposed to, but didn't because reasons, and I didn't get that, not in time, I didn't actually notice that at all.
It wasn't good of me, is my point. I mean, I wasn't doing it to be good, I didn't actually even have a comprehension that there were things you could do in that situation that could be good or bad. I was doing it because the part of the rules that I understood said you did it, so I did. I just missed the other bit of the rules that ... complicated the situation, and made there be good and bad things to do. And because I missed that, I was doing something that I thought was totally normal and the thing you were supposed to do in that situation, and everyone else thought I was doing something weird and exceptional which I didn't know I'd done.
Which is why I hate it more when people tell you you've done good for no reason you can understand. Telling you you did something wrong makes sense. It means the problem is right here, and it's you, and you've just not managed to do the thing put in front of you right. When people tell you you've done something excellently when you don't know how or why, it means ... That you've been doing something differently to how other people were doing it, but since you were just following the rules, and so were they, and you still ended up doing it differently, then either there's more rules in place that you don't know about, running against the spoken ones, or you've drawn attention to yourself for doing something you don't understand and probably can't explain or replicate, and people are probably going to hate you for it, because you've not actually done something right except by accident, but now they've got to match you at it. *rubs face* Let me get things honestly wrong, every time. It's ... so much better.
And that was ... a very long diversion, my apologies -_-; I was actually talking about music. Sorry. Um. Right. I don't understand music. I don't know how it works, and I apparently can't hear part of it. Right, got it.
Now, arguably that shouldn't really impact my ability to listen/enjoy music, because you don't necessarily have to understand something to think it beautiful (trust me, this I know). Which is true, because there are a lot of pieces of music I like. They're just ... um. Sort of random, maybe? When I'm looking for music I like, it's not the music itself that I'm looking for. As in, I don't know if it's good or bad, as music. What I'm looking for are combinations of ... good sounds, basically? Things that just sound good to me, for whatever reason.
Which I gather is a lot of what people are looking for in music anyway, it just means that my particular likes may be ... oddly specific, in places?
Most of what I like for casual listening is instrumentals, jazz, and music that seems ... of a piece? I mean, where they're all the one thing, all the different parts of the piece, they're moving together. I tend not to like jangling things that have bits moving in opposition to each other, unless they do that thing where they come out from each other, come back, build up a thing between them. When they're just sort of fighting with each other, I don't like it.
I like things with no words, because they're closer to the structure, you're not splitting your focus trying to understand meaning, there's just the sound. Within that, I tend to like mellower things, or things that build very strongly and clearly, and things that seem whole. Internally, they can be as complex as they like, I know I'm probably missing a lot of how complicated things are inside, but I just like them to seem of a piece. As opposed to things that sound like a bunch of different pieces randomly thrown together, I mean. Instrument-wise, I like woodwind, the low strings, percussion (I love rhythm, it's the most rational part of music to me), some piano (not the harsher, jangly styles, I tend to prefer the smoother ones).
One slightly bizarre consequence of the way I listen to music is that ... With instrumentals, so long as they seem to be going somewhere more or less in unison, I don't actually mind how they get there. So I like things like freeform jazz, which apparently has a tendency to ramble all over the place and discontinue melody lines or what have you, most of which I can't actually hear happening (I don't know what a melody line is, and have never reliably been able to pick one out of a song), so I'm largely content to follow them along provided they don't do anything too harsh or sudden-sounding. Instruments drifting in and out is fine too, since ... well, all songs sound like they do that to me. This is only obvious in contrast to someone like my mother, who is very attached to the structure of music, and hates things that ramble off for what seems to her like no reason. Whereas me, none of it has any visible reason, so I don't mind so much so long as it still sounds good.
I also have a strong attachment to choral music, on this end. Again, it's the of-a-piece thing, the sectioned build. I like choirs because they're basically a controlled wall of sound, a unified whole. Plus, there's just something good about the sound. Gregorian chant, I love that too, and just choirs in general. There's a strong chance that I will favour instrumentals and pop songs that have a choir element over ones that don't. For example, I like the slow version of David Usher's Black Black Heart mostly for the music and the background singers, combined with his voice, despite the fact that the lyrics, when you focus on them, are sort of horrible. Justin Timberlake's Cry Me A River, too, almost entirely for the drifting voices in the background. Movie soundtracks that use the epic-choir thing to build awe are good to me too, despite the fact that it's often a cheap gimic. Choirs and choral backings just sound good to me.
Moving into songs with lyrics ... Okay. I actually don't really listen to lyrics, not for casual listening. I can focus on them if I have to, but they're not the first thing I'm listening for. The exception to that is story songs, songs that actually tell a story or part of a story (which, I know, is arguably most songs, but I mean specifically narrative songs, what do you call them, ballads!). Um. Think Chris de Burgh or Tom Waits, some of the Eagles, for the self-contained stories, and musicals for the parts of stories. I just usually don't focus on the meanings of words in songs unless they're part of a concrete narrative.
Which ... The musicals example also explains one of the other things. Which is that with most songs with lyrics, I usually like very specific versions of songs. I do NOT like songs with lyrics live. This is because when there are words, I need them to come exactly when I expect them to, for the exact duration I expect them to, in relation to the music. Otherwise the whole thing separates out into a mess in my head, words against music, and I can't do it.
So, for example, with musicals I tend to favour one specific actor for each song (when I'm listening just for the music, rather than watching the story - that's different, that's about acting and story), because the way they sing it puts the words and the music in specific relations to each other. I scoured the internet for the version of 'Falcon in the Dive' (from Scarlet Pimpernel) done by Terrence Mann, not because I thought he was a better Chauvelin, or because he sang it better (I honestly can't tell), but because his version was the first version I heard, and I needed the big notes to come as I expected them to, regardless of how good or bad it might be in reference to other versions. Otherwise when I listen to it, there are gaps where I expect there to be notes, and long notes edging into place where I expected there to be gaps.
Um. Basically? I like music with lyrics to have the elements rigidly laid out in relation to each other. It doesn't matter in instrumentals, because there's nothing there that I can hang onto and separate out usually, so there's nothing catching on the edge of my consciousness as being out of place (because I don't know what 'out of place' would mean with raw music). But with lyrics, the words are a separate measure, something that is distinctly catching my notice, and I will hear it if the word is combined with a different set of sounds than usual. And then I won't like it, because it did a thing that I wasn't expecting for that song. *grins sheepishly* It's usually the first version I heard that I liked that sticks.
What songs I like, though, is likely to be somewhat arbitrary. I like certain sounds in combination, which tends to lead me to certain genres/eras.
I like a lot of the artificial sounds you got attached to things like 80s pop (but only the low-key ones, the unobtrusive synth sounds, not the random beepy, growly, klaxony things). I like chant/choir/background voices. I like strongly rhythmical songs. I like story songs, or songs with strange story elements. I like ... um. I think it's around the alto range, low for women, around midrange for men?
I actually like a lot of what is considered kind of old music, too (I like a lot of the crooners, for example, a lot of older musicals, I like some motown, soul, a lot of older rock - um, a lot of the era between the 40s and 80s, depending on genre). Someone once complained that my laptop playlist had nothing modern on it. Um. Possibly justified. There are modern songs (90s, oughties) that I like, they just tend to be eccletic and scattered. I like, for a random sampling, some songs by Poets of the Fall, some songs by Toni Braxton, I like 'Angel' by Massive Attack, 'Hero' by Nickleback, um, Audioslave ... Er. The problem is that I almost never like bands/artists, so much as single songs they did, which means I bounce all over the shop.
I don't like harsh, discordant things, things that scream at me or yell at me (so that's many, many genres of rock and most of metal out - I'll still like single songs from them for other reasons, though). I don't like things that basically just whine at me, either. Content-wise ... lets just say I prefer things like Queen's 'The Show Must Go On' to the five billion songs about boyfriends and girlfriends leaving each other (though, as I said earlier, a lot of them slip past me in phases where I'm not actually listening to the words, and even after I realise what they are, I'll play them for the background sounds/voices rather than the words). I kinda like music to be about ideas, not the last fight the singer had -_-;
Um. In essence? I tend to hear things, like something about them (often what would probably be considered a random element), something about the sound of them, and keep listening to them. Usually once-off songs, rather than artists or genres that I like.
*smiles faintly* I like things that are familiar, I like them for the sound of them more than the point of them, and I like them despite not understanding a damn thing about them.
The other thing I never understood about music was the social connotations of it. I mean, the way certain types of music are attached to certain groups of people. Why if you're in the wrong group, you can't admit to liking something attached to other groups. This may be mostly because I have a lot of trouble figuring out which type is attached to which group, why, and why the hell they bothered about it.
Ah. When I was in first year of secondary school (eleven/twelve years old), there was the thing where the teacher went around the class and had us introduce ourselves to each other, answering questions (you know, name, age, favourite colour, favourite music, stuff). When I got to the favourite music question, I said 'classical', because that was the word I knew for instrumentals at the time. It took me three years to figure out why the entire class burst out laughing at me (okay, no, tell a lie, I'm still not completely sure, but I think it's that classical music isn't supposed to be something you like until you're older?).
I also have the same problem with music that I have with books, which is that I can never remember author or title after a certain amount of time. With music, that meant that when people ask 'what's your favourite song', I tend to go ... the one with such and such a line in the chorus? The song with the thing, where the guy does the thing? Or, on the worse ends, when the song I'm currently obsessing with is one I'm listening to for nothing remotely related to the words at all ... And I can't even hum, because me and notes, remember? It's all just ... *wavey hands* I can't talk about music anyway, because I do not have the vocabulary or the structrual understanding, so the social thingumies attached to it are doubly confusing.
... And I think that a) this has been incredibly long and rambling, and only tangenitally related to music, and b) I'm starting to get increasingly incoherent. *smiles sheepishly* 'The thing with the thingummy', oi. This, I think, is the point where I shut up -_-;
I also can't hear a lot of it. When I say I can't discern a structure, I actually do mean that I can't hear it, a lot of the time. Um. For example, if anyone knows the game Myst? The puzzle game? I played it through, and passed everything on more or less the first round, but then I hit the music lock. Where you have to match the sounds you hear on one side of the room to the sounds you can make on the other. And I genuinely, honest-to-gods, could not pass it. I eventually called my dad, who is pretty good at music, over to look at what I was doing. The sounds playing on one side of the room turned out to be not remotely like the sounds I was playing on the other. Turns out I can't really hear the difference between notes -_-;
Well, sort of. I think. I can tell the difference between a bass and a soprano, for example. I can tell extreme highs and lows, or tell big differences in relation to each other. But everything in the middle is a slew of invisible gradation, and I can't rationalise anything out of it.
And I've no idea about the rest of what people talk about with music. Off key, I've no idea what that means (mostly because I've no idea what a 'key' is). Pitch and key and all that, I've no idea. I understand in an abstract way that they've something to do with the waveform of the sound, but that's about it. Music does not make sense to me. It is a language I do not speak, though I know enough to recognise that it is a language (much the same as math, really - I know the structure is there, I can sense the edges of it, but because I can't see it, it won't ever make sense to me, or be a language I speak).
Incidentally, I was actually in a choir in primary school. Which maybe has no bearing, except for an incident I remember, where the choir mistress stopped a number, and turned to the mid-alto section (me), and pointed to me. "Look at this student" sort of thing. I was starting to have a mild panic attack, shit, what did I do wrong, when she turned and said that the rest of them should copy me, because I was doing everything she said to do, and they should consider me an example.
This actually caused me to have a worse panic attack, as well as being, um, sort of funny. Because ... I can't hear notes? I can barely sing? I can't hear when I'm singing wrong? Seriously, I had no clue what the hell I was doing. Most of what I was trying to do as far as the actual singing part went was try to make my voice blend into invisibility with the ones around me, trying to make it not stand out, and then just doing what she said to do about things like standing a certain way, raising the head a bit, breathing in such a way. Like that. Out on my own, my voice does things, I don't even know what, I can't much hear, but people tend to wince. In the choir, basically I was trying to be invisible, vocally as well as physically, and using the other voices around me as a ... a kind of wall/shield/thing, and a reference point so that mine would hopefully do more or less the right thing.
And then she pointed right at me. And told people to copy me. And I actually could not sing another note for that session, mouthing along hoping no-one would realise that there wasn't actually a sound coming out of my mouth, because ... NO. No, do not look at me, don't follow me, I don't know what I'm doing. I was following you lot. I don't know up from down with this shit, seriously, don't follow me.
And it's worse, when someone says you're doing something perfectly, when you don't know what it is. Because if someone says you're doing something wrong, it's panic-making and embarrassing, but it makes sense. I mean, you don't know what you're doing, getting it wrong is kind of the logical consequence. When you've no idea what you're doing, and someone singles you out for doing it right, it's all ... Bduh? What? No. No, that doesn't make sense, what the hell? I'm doing this thing better than people who actually know what they're doing, that doesn't make sense. And for fuck's sake, do not tell them to copy me, what part of 'doesn't know what she's doing' did you miss?
It actually tended to happen to me rather a lot, actually. Because the way I understand things ... Um. I can understanding short-term processes really, really easily. As in, I can look at a system, tell you what it's doing, and often copy it, all in the immediate sense. Like, it's a thing that goes up and down, and if you do this in sequence, that makes it go up and down. I still don't know what the thing is, I don't know why it's going up and down, I don't know what it going up and down results in in the broader sense. I just know that it IS going up and down, and this is mechanically how it's doing that.
Like, in fourth year of secondary school, I had to take accounting again because fourth year is a funny, optional in-between year where you do a little bit of everything. So I ended up in accounting, having no idea what the hell I was doing or what the numbers meant. And in one test, I got a straight-up 100%, three percent better than a friend of mine who actually was a very good accountant, and actually knew what the hell she was doing. Because all the test was was manual operations involving balance sheets and stuff, and once I figured out where the numbers were supposed to go and what you were supposed to do with them, I could basically just run them off like I was a calculator/spread-sheet programme. I hadn't a bulls notion what the hell they were, and for all I knew I could have been absentmindedly laundering drug-money through a household budget for all I understood of where the money came from/went to/was for. But I did better than someone who actually knew what she was doing, all because when it comes to manual systems processing, I can do shit by rote like you wouldn't believe.
The same with people, too. I get the rote-ritual thingies you do, just in the sense that they are rote-ritual thingies you do. So ... Right. You know in Catholic mass, there's a bit where you're supposed to shake hands with everyone around you? It's a symbolic peace-wishing thingy, where you just randomly shake any passing hand and say 'peace be with you' (I know it's more than that, now anyway, I get the symbology behind it, but when I was regularly attending mass I was ... Okay. Younger. Child and teenager, mostly. And the rituals are sort of ... Um. I liked them, I actually liked mass a lot, because the physical rituals were basically just things you did, and you didn't have to understand them, and no-one else did either, and there was a whole reverence attached to doing things by rote that I sort of liked just for what it was).
There was one time (I was a teenager, I think) where there was a kid in the pew in front of us, who was excitable and upset and enthralled by the choir music in particular. He spent most of the mass reacting almost exclusively to the music, decrying them or delighting in them by turns. Which I considered not unreasonable, because the priest was one of the old-school ones who barely remembered what a microphone was, and consequently was barely audible at the best of times, but I'm really not the person you should ask about that sort of thing. He was getting funny looks, though. The kid, I mean.
But anyway, we came to the 'peace be with you' part, and everyone around was shaking hands, but the choir was doing one of those in-between songs to guide you over the bits of the mass with no speaking, and he was still reacting mostly to that. But you're supposed to shake hands with any hand that passes looking for it, so when his hand went sketching past, I took it for a second to shake it, and said 'peace be with you'. I'm not sure he actually even noticed.
After mass, my mam came over and said to me that that was really good of me. Which ... honestly made me panic again. What? What was good of me? It was mass, you don't do anything special in mass, you just copy what everyone else is doing, that's the point. It's like choir. I just did the ritual, what happened, what did I do different?
She said shaking hands with that kid when no-one else would. Which I hadn't actually noticed, but I figured it was mostly because he was still flailing a bit, and I was probably the only one who'd actually managed to catch his hand. Turned out, the kid was I think autistic? He was reacting exclusively to the music because the music was bascially the only bit of his surroundings that mattered to him. Possibly he wasn't actually aware that much of the people at all. Which everyone around him had apparently noticed before I did (I didn't know it was a thing you looked for), and that was why they were frowning and/or avoiding him. Which I hadn't noticed either, because ... Um. I didn't go to mass for the people. I was there for the ritual.
I shook his hand because the ritual said that you shook hands at that point. His hand was there, he didn't seem to object to having it shaken (or notice, really, but that was fair enough), he went back to the music afterwards without even a ripple. It had seemed fine to me. But apparently there was a thing beyond the ritual, some other thing I didn't get, that meant you weren't supposed to shake his hand. Or, were supposed to, but didn't because reasons, and I didn't get that, not in time, I didn't actually notice that at all.
It wasn't good of me, is my point. I mean, I wasn't doing it to be good, I didn't actually even have a comprehension that there were things you could do in that situation that could be good or bad. I was doing it because the part of the rules that I understood said you did it, so I did. I just missed the other bit of the rules that ... complicated the situation, and made there be good and bad things to do. And because I missed that, I was doing something that I thought was totally normal and the thing you were supposed to do in that situation, and everyone else thought I was doing something weird and exceptional which I didn't know I'd done.
Which is why I hate it more when people tell you you've done good for no reason you can understand. Telling you you did something wrong makes sense. It means the problem is right here, and it's you, and you've just not managed to do the thing put in front of you right. When people tell you you've done something excellently when you don't know how or why, it means ... That you've been doing something differently to how other people were doing it, but since you were just following the rules, and so were they, and you still ended up doing it differently, then either there's more rules in place that you don't know about, running against the spoken ones, or you've drawn attention to yourself for doing something you don't understand and probably can't explain or replicate, and people are probably going to hate you for it, because you've not actually done something right except by accident, but now they've got to match you at it. *rubs face* Let me get things honestly wrong, every time. It's ... so much better.
And that was ... a very long diversion, my apologies -_-; I was actually talking about music. Sorry. Um. Right. I don't understand music. I don't know how it works, and I apparently can't hear part of it. Right, got it.
Now, arguably that shouldn't really impact my ability to listen/enjoy music, because you don't necessarily have to understand something to think it beautiful (trust me, this I know). Which is true, because there are a lot of pieces of music I like. They're just ... um. Sort of random, maybe? When I'm looking for music I like, it's not the music itself that I'm looking for. As in, I don't know if it's good or bad, as music. What I'm looking for are combinations of ... good sounds, basically? Things that just sound good to me, for whatever reason.
Which I gather is a lot of what people are looking for in music anyway, it just means that my particular likes may be ... oddly specific, in places?
Most of what I like for casual listening is instrumentals, jazz, and music that seems ... of a piece? I mean, where they're all the one thing, all the different parts of the piece, they're moving together. I tend not to like jangling things that have bits moving in opposition to each other, unless they do that thing where they come out from each other, come back, build up a thing between them. When they're just sort of fighting with each other, I don't like it.
I like things with no words, because they're closer to the structure, you're not splitting your focus trying to understand meaning, there's just the sound. Within that, I tend to like mellower things, or things that build very strongly and clearly, and things that seem whole. Internally, they can be as complex as they like, I know I'm probably missing a lot of how complicated things are inside, but I just like them to seem of a piece. As opposed to things that sound like a bunch of different pieces randomly thrown together, I mean. Instrument-wise, I like woodwind, the low strings, percussion (I love rhythm, it's the most rational part of music to me), some piano (not the harsher, jangly styles, I tend to prefer the smoother ones).
One slightly bizarre consequence of the way I listen to music is that ... With instrumentals, so long as they seem to be going somewhere more or less in unison, I don't actually mind how they get there. So I like things like freeform jazz, which apparently has a tendency to ramble all over the place and discontinue melody lines or what have you, most of which I can't actually hear happening (I don't know what a melody line is, and have never reliably been able to pick one out of a song), so I'm largely content to follow them along provided they don't do anything too harsh or sudden-sounding. Instruments drifting in and out is fine too, since ... well, all songs sound like they do that to me. This is only obvious in contrast to someone like my mother, who is very attached to the structure of music, and hates things that ramble off for what seems to her like no reason. Whereas me, none of it has any visible reason, so I don't mind so much so long as it still sounds good.
I also have a strong attachment to choral music, on this end. Again, it's the of-a-piece thing, the sectioned build. I like choirs because they're basically a controlled wall of sound, a unified whole. Plus, there's just something good about the sound. Gregorian chant, I love that too, and just choirs in general. There's a strong chance that I will favour instrumentals and pop songs that have a choir element over ones that don't. For example, I like the slow version of David Usher's Black Black Heart mostly for the music and the background singers, combined with his voice, despite the fact that the lyrics, when you focus on them, are sort of horrible. Justin Timberlake's Cry Me A River, too, almost entirely for the drifting voices in the background. Movie soundtracks that use the epic-choir thing to build awe are good to me too, despite the fact that it's often a cheap gimic. Choirs and choral backings just sound good to me.
Moving into songs with lyrics ... Okay. I actually don't really listen to lyrics, not for casual listening. I can focus on them if I have to, but they're not the first thing I'm listening for. The exception to that is story songs, songs that actually tell a story or part of a story (which, I know, is arguably most songs, but I mean specifically narrative songs, what do you call them, ballads!). Um. Think Chris de Burgh or Tom Waits, some of the Eagles, for the self-contained stories, and musicals for the parts of stories. I just usually don't focus on the meanings of words in songs unless they're part of a concrete narrative.
Which ... The musicals example also explains one of the other things. Which is that with most songs with lyrics, I usually like very specific versions of songs. I do NOT like songs with lyrics live. This is because when there are words, I need them to come exactly when I expect them to, for the exact duration I expect them to, in relation to the music. Otherwise the whole thing separates out into a mess in my head, words against music, and I can't do it.
So, for example, with musicals I tend to favour one specific actor for each song (when I'm listening just for the music, rather than watching the story - that's different, that's about acting and story), because the way they sing it puts the words and the music in specific relations to each other. I scoured the internet for the version of 'Falcon in the Dive' (from Scarlet Pimpernel) done by Terrence Mann, not because I thought he was a better Chauvelin, or because he sang it better (I honestly can't tell), but because his version was the first version I heard, and I needed the big notes to come as I expected them to, regardless of how good or bad it might be in reference to other versions. Otherwise when I listen to it, there are gaps where I expect there to be notes, and long notes edging into place where I expected there to be gaps.
Um. Basically? I like music with lyrics to have the elements rigidly laid out in relation to each other. It doesn't matter in instrumentals, because there's nothing there that I can hang onto and separate out usually, so there's nothing catching on the edge of my consciousness as being out of place (because I don't know what 'out of place' would mean with raw music). But with lyrics, the words are a separate measure, something that is distinctly catching my notice, and I will hear it if the word is combined with a different set of sounds than usual. And then I won't like it, because it did a thing that I wasn't expecting for that song. *grins sheepishly* It's usually the first version I heard that I liked that sticks.
What songs I like, though, is likely to be somewhat arbitrary. I like certain sounds in combination, which tends to lead me to certain genres/eras.
I like a lot of the artificial sounds you got attached to things like 80s pop (but only the low-key ones, the unobtrusive synth sounds, not the random beepy, growly, klaxony things). I like chant/choir/background voices. I like strongly rhythmical songs. I like story songs, or songs with strange story elements. I like ... um. I think it's around the alto range, low for women, around midrange for men?
I actually like a lot of what is considered kind of old music, too (I like a lot of the crooners, for example, a lot of older musicals, I like some motown, soul, a lot of older rock - um, a lot of the era between the 40s and 80s, depending on genre). Someone once complained that my laptop playlist had nothing modern on it. Um. Possibly justified. There are modern songs (90s, oughties) that I like, they just tend to be eccletic and scattered. I like, for a random sampling, some songs by Poets of the Fall, some songs by Toni Braxton, I like 'Angel' by Massive Attack, 'Hero' by Nickleback, um, Audioslave ... Er. The problem is that I almost never like bands/artists, so much as single songs they did, which means I bounce all over the shop.
I don't like harsh, discordant things, things that scream at me or yell at me (so that's many, many genres of rock and most of metal out - I'll still like single songs from them for other reasons, though). I don't like things that basically just whine at me, either. Content-wise ... lets just say I prefer things like Queen's 'The Show Must Go On' to the five billion songs about boyfriends and girlfriends leaving each other (though, as I said earlier, a lot of them slip past me in phases where I'm not actually listening to the words, and even after I realise what they are, I'll play them for the background sounds/voices rather than the words). I kinda like music to be about ideas, not the last fight the singer had -_-;
Um. In essence? I tend to hear things, like something about them (often what would probably be considered a random element), something about the sound of them, and keep listening to them. Usually once-off songs, rather than artists or genres that I like.
*smiles faintly* I like things that are familiar, I like them for the sound of them more than the point of them, and I like them despite not understanding a damn thing about them.
The other thing I never understood about music was the social connotations of it. I mean, the way certain types of music are attached to certain groups of people. Why if you're in the wrong group, you can't admit to liking something attached to other groups. This may be mostly because I have a lot of trouble figuring out which type is attached to which group, why, and why the hell they bothered about it.
Ah. When I was in first year of secondary school (eleven/twelve years old), there was the thing where the teacher went around the class and had us introduce ourselves to each other, answering questions (you know, name, age, favourite colour, favourite music, stuff). When I got to the favourite music question, I said 'classical', because that was the word I knew for instrumentals at the time. It took me three years to figure out why the entire class burst out laughing at me (okay, no, tell a lie, I'm still not completely sure, but I think it's that classical music isn't supposed to be something you like until you're older?).
I also have the same problem with music that I have with books, which is that I can never remember author or title after a certain amount of time. With music, that meant that when people ask 'what's your favourite song', I tend to go ... the one with such and such a line in the chorus? The song with the thing, where the guy does the thing? Or, on the worse ends, when the song I'm currently obsessing with is one I'm listening to for nothing remotely related to the words at all ... And I can't even hum, because me and notes, remember? It's all just ... *wavey hands* I can't talk about music anyway, because I do not have the vocabulary or the structrual understanding, so the social thingumies attached to it are doubly confusing.
... And I think that a) this has been incredibly long and rambling, and only tangenitally related to music, and b) I'm starting to get increasingly incoherent. *smiles sheepishly* 'The thing with the thingummy', oi. This, I think, is the point where I shut up -_-;
