blah-de-blah
Jan. 23rd, 2005 09:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lierdumoaI'm not vidding right now. Thanks to a dismally short attention span I don't think I can even read fic right now. Two TF&TF fic have crossed my flist that are just waiting to be read but, like, brain? Somewhere far away and laughing at me while I flail around with an empty head.
Anyway, in case anyone's curious, here's how I hear music, and how that translates into my vidding style:
Essentially I hear music like this -- first I notice beat, then I notice melody/harmony, then I notice lyrics.
Now when I say beat, I do not mean I hear the backbeat. I mean I hear the entire song in terms of beat. There are two general types of beat -- stress and pitch, either denoting a change in volume or by moving to a different note on the scale. A drum beat is a stress beat. Instruments like pianos provide beats that are both stress and pitch, as do voices. String instruments generally denote beat via pitch more than stress. This means that if I hear words, the first thing I notice is accented and unaccented syllables. I'll actually memorize the intonation of a word in a song before I memorize the word itself.
Overlapping my awareness of beat is my awareness of melody/harmony. My brain tends to divide up music into levels according to the different instruments and voices and beats, usually ranking the levels according to volume. (ETA: I would like to note here that I'm trying to explain logically things that I do instinctually. Some people in the comments seem to have gotten the impression that I do these things consciously, but in fact, it's all subconscious.) For example, sometimes when I'm singing along to a song I won't know whether to sing along to the harmony or the melody because I'm not hearing the cumulative effect of the harmony and melody, rather I'm hearing each part almost independently. I remember when I first heard "What's My Age Again" by Blink 182 I actually thought the harmony was the melody for a while because it sounded more distinctive to my ears for whatever reason. I don't know if maybe this has something to do with the fact that I played piano since I was five and depending on the song my left hand may or may not have known what my right hand was doing.
Of course, during all this listening to beat and tune, part of my brain is unconsciously processing mood. Most people can translate mood pretty well because music is designed to make the listener feel something. This conscious and unconscious awareness of the music is where I get my vidding instincts. I usually don't get the meaning of a song the first time I listen to it. Some songs I'll never get the meaning while listening and I'll have to go look up the lyrics and absorb them in written form before I can put together a workable vidbunny. I might need lyrics to get a vid idea, but lyrics are rarely what actually makes me want to vid a song.
Now![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
linzeems, for example, hears music and sees color. She describes herself as having a mild case of synesthesia. She has the most trouble vidding when the colors in her source don't match the colors she hears in the music. Maybe it's because I watched a buttload of hip hop music videos throughout childhood, but when I hear music, I instinctually translate it into dance. Where linzeems hears music and sees colors, I hear music and I feel it in my body, starting at the hips and working outward. Which probably explains all the various sexual metaphors I come up with to describe beat. Translate this to vidding and the thing I get most easily is movement. I've told permetaform I have a predator's eye for vidding. I can feel out movement in music, light flashes and dark space. I don't see colors, and my understanding of color is more logical than instinctual. I simply pick the colors that I feel amplify movement in the right way for the sound and mood of the music.
I was talking withlinzeems about our different vidding styles yesterday, and I started to notice a lot of things about the way I vid that I didn't really notice until I compared my vidding style to hers. She sees vids as moving collages. Her vids look like moving collages. The have an absolutely beautiful color sense and a very smooth flow. I, on the other hand, vid like I'm choreographing a dance. I compared her latest vid, Pet, to my TF&TF vid, TCBU, and noticed that she picked a cutting style and used it consistently throughout the vid, while my cutting differed noticeably between the intro, the choruses, the verses, the bridge, and the finale. My TF&TF vid is probably the best representation of my style because the source had so much movement and so many types of movement that I was able to make the vid do exactly what I wanted it to do.
linzeems told me her favorite vid is sockkpuppett's So Real, which pretty much embodies the idea of a moving collage. sockkpuppett has a very good color sense. My favorite vid, on the other hand, is permetaform's The Fragile. It captures the beat perfectly. I remember telling permetaform it was like she'd taken the waveform and translated it directly into visuals. She's perhaps the only vidder I know who hears beat the same way I do.
heres_luck's vids also move very well with the music she chooses, and she's one of my favorite vidders. I can certainly take great enjoyment in vids that are moving collages or other vidding styles different from mine. However, it's the vids that dance with the music, be it a slow ballet or a fast bump and grind, that make the most immediate sense to me.
Anyway, in case anyone's curious, here's how I hear music, and how that translates into my vidding style:
Essentially I hear music like this -- first I notice beat, then I notice melody/harmony, then I notice lyrics.
Now when I say beat, I do not mean I hear the backbeat. I mean I hear the entire song in terms of beat. There are two general types of beat -- stress and pitch, either denoting a change in volume or by moving to a different note on the scale. A drum beat is a stress beat. Instruments like pianos provide beats that are both stress and pitch, as do voices. String instruments generally denote beat via pitch more than stress. This means that if I hear words, the first thing I notice is accented and unaccented syllables. I'll actually memorize the intonation of a word in a song before I memorize the word itself.
Overlapping my awareness of beat is my awareness of melody/harmony. My brain tends to divide up music into levels according to the different instruments and voices and beats, usually ranking the levels according to volume. (ETA: I would like to note here that I'm trying to explain logically things that I do instinctually. Some people in the comments seem to have gotten the impression that I do these things consciously, but in fact, it's all subconscious.) For example, sometimes when I'm singing along to a song I won't know whether to sing along to the harmony or the melody because I'm not hearing the cumulative effect of the harmony and melody, rather I'm hearing each part almost independently. I remember when I first heard "What's My Age Again" by Blink 182 I actually thought the harmony was the melody for a while because it sounded more distinctive to my ears for whatever reason. I don't know if maybe this has something to do with the fact that I played piano since I was five and depending on the song my left hand may or may not have known what my right hand was doing.
Of course, during all this listening to beat and tune, part of my brain is unconsciously processing mood. Most people can translate mood pretty well because music is designed to make the listener feel something. This conscious and unconscious awareness of the music is where I get my vidding instincts. I usually don't get the meaning of a song the first time I listen to it. Some songs I'll never get the meaning while listening and I'll have to go look up the lyrics and absorb them in written form before I can put together a workable vidbunny. I might need lyrics to get a vid idea, but lyrics are rarely what actually makes me want to vid a song.
Now
linzeems, for example, hears music and sees color. She describes herself as having a mild case of synesthesia. She has the most trouble vidding when the colors in her source don't match the colors she hears in the music. Maybe it's because I watched a buttload of hip hop music videos throughout childhood, but when I hear music, I instinctually translate it into dance. Where linzeems hears music and sees colors, I hear music and I feel it in my body, starting at the hips and working outward. Which probably explains all the various sexual metaphors I come up with to describe beat. Translate this to vidding and the thing I get most easily is movement. I've told permetaform I have a predator's eye for vidding. I can feel out movement in music, light flashes and dark space. I don't see colors, and my understanding of color is more logical than instinctual. I simply pick the colors that I feel amplify movement in the right way for the sound and mood of the music.I was talking with
linzeems about our different vidding styles yesterday, and I started to notice a lot of things about the way I vid that I didn't really notice until I compared my vidding style to hers. She sees vids as moving collages. Her vids look like moving collages. The have an absolutely beautiful color sense and a very smooth flow. I, on the other hand, vid like I'm choreographing a dance. I compared her latest vid, Pet, to my TF&TF vid, TCBU, and noticed that she picked a cutting style and used it consistently throughout the vid, while my cutting differed noticeably between the intro, the choruses, the verses, the bridge, and the finale. My TF&TF vid is probably the best representation of my style because the source had so much movement and so many types of movement that I was able to make the vid do exactly what I wanted it to do. linzeems told me her favorite vid is sockkpuppett's So Real, which pretty much embodies the idea of a moving collage. sockkpuppett has a very good color sense. My favorite vid, on the other hand, is permetaform's The Fragile. It captures the beat perfectly. I remember telling permetaform it was like she'd taken the waveform and translated it directly into visuals. She's perhaps the only vidder I know who hears beat the same way I do.heres_luck's vids also move very well with the music she chooses, and she's one of my favorite vidders. I can certainly take great enjoyment in vids that are moving collages or other vidding styles different from mine. However, it's the vids that dance with the music, be it a slow ballet or a fast bump and grind, that make the most immediate sense to me.
