The place of emotion in music

I've been willing to talking about this for a long time, but it always seemed like a foreboding task. It's not a complex argument, but it's difficult to deliver it the right way.

The topic of "Emotion" in music always baffled me, somehow. It might seem strange, since emotions are extremely intuitive, and everyone knows what they are. That's exactly the problem: everyone seems apt to talk about emotion in music, because they know emotions so well. But talking about emotions in PEOPLE is different from talking about emotions in music. "Emotions in people" are clear and intuitive because emotions are IN the people, they come from within them. Emotions are not IN music. Music has no emotions, they don't express emotions -- it's the ARTIST that uses music to express their emotion, if he wishes to. This line of reasoning may sound clear and obvious, but many, many people don't follow it.

Go out and see how many people talk about how "emotional" a particular song is. Go and read the opinions of who think someone's playing or singing is "emotional". I ask myself: how is a listener able to objectively detect that? That would imply that music can deliver distinct, unambiguous emotions by itself. So, that means we only need to find the correct combination of musical and sonic properties to deliver one specific emotion. That way, we effectively transform music into a language, free of ambiguity and obscurity. And... there are problems. Firstly, art doesn't have to be a form of one-way communication: it's not a lecture, not a lesson, it's not the artist telling the audience how it's supposed to react. Music, as well as any form of art, can be interpreted differently by different people, and in my opinion, THAT is what should be encouraged. The audience should fill in the gaps with their own perception, turning art into an almost interactive experience; yes, interactive, since the art "changes" as the audience changes their perception. So, making music an unambiguous language is an obstacle for that. Secondly, different cultures around the world have adopted different musical systems, which means that one musical piece would NOT be interpreted the same across those different cultures, even if the artist truly, really wanted that. So the "language" of music is a social construction; it is restrictive, alienated people outside that culture and diminishes the possibilities of innovation and originality. In short, it sucks.

Unfortunately, that's how music has been progressing since... well, forever. Certain combinations of chords and melodies are perceived as "emotional", and quickly they become clichés; tired, annoying, ineffective clichés. Is THAT what we want from music? Now you see why 20th century classical music sounds so "crazy"?

Oh, no, but I'm getting it wrong, right? Emotion in music does not come from certain notes or chords: it comes from the energy, the spontaneity, the "feeling" of the artist. Oh, well. Again, I could question how "energy" and "spontaneity" could be unambiguously detected by the listener, but actually I wouldn't have a very strong point. However, recorded music nowadays is NOT AT ALL what most people think it is. Any piece of music you hear nowadays most likely has been a product of painstaking, tiresome, cold and calculated studio work. Dozens of takes are recorded, lots of effects are applied, even complete takes are edited all the way to Hell and back, things are chopped, spliced together, and so on and on, to the point where there is hardly anything "spontaneous" going on. With that, it's hard to tell if an artist is truly "expressing" himself, because the bigger worry is with making the whole thing sound RIGHT. So, we have no way of telling whether one particular part of the performance is pure human emotion or pure fakery. The only way you can tell is by intuition. Either you know the artist well enough to recognise his habits and know what they mean, or you're most likely guessing.

And yet, even with all that effort going into making the recording sound "right", we enjoy those recordings. To us, it doesn't matter how many dozen edits there are, or how many dozen takes were recorded, or which instruments are playing in each track. Music, even almost completely drained of "spontaneity", is still enjoyable. How come?

The truth, as I see it, is: emotion is not in the music. Emotion comes from within YOURSELF. The music merely provokes you, and it's YOU who concocts those emotions. That's why music works differently in different people, to the point where certain pieces of music can cause wildly different effects and provoke radically different emotions in different people. And that, my friends, is one of the things I like THE MOST about music.

So, the next time you're talking about how "emotional" a song is, don't be surprised if I dismiss your opinion entirely -- it tells more about YOU, as a listener, than about the music, which is what I'm more concerned about.

Of Politics and Twitter stalking

This week I heard about an absolutely pathetic event regarding so called "celebrities" on Twitter. I'll briefly narrate it here. On one side, North-American actor Ashton Kutcher became a sort of celebrity in Brazil through Twitter, after the last football match between the USA and Brazil. On the other side, the Brazilian Senate is going through a very turbulent period, and its president is under pressure to leave his position. So, a group of "celebrities" started a campaign to get Kutcher to join the Twitter campaign against the president; the most notorious being a "humourist" (*snicker*), a "musician" (*pfft!*) and an "actor" (*choke*), here dubbed the Three Stooges. Yes, in case you didn't notice, those folks -- among others -- started bugging Mr. Kutcher PERSONALLY, on Twitter, to join a "campaign" against a politician he never heard about from a country that isn't his. I'll let you digest that for a while before I discuss it. But, suffice to say, after about half a dozen Twitter messages, Kutcher finally replies with an epic knock-out:

quote
Only U have the power 2 impeach your senator. It's YOUR country U have 2 stand 4 what you believe.
unquote

Fortunately the "campaign" died after that.

Now, I'm one who thinks the president of the Senate, José Sarney, is the kind of politician that needs to disappear from this country, and he definitely needs to take a hike. The important thing to notice is, as much as it's important for people to make their voice heard about these issues, it's NOT my impeaching that guy that all our problems will be solved; that is nothing but a single tiny piece of a huge, monstrous machine of corruption. However, this whole "campaign" -- contrary to what you may be thinking -- does NOT leave the realms of Twitter and invade real life. No: that "campaign" consists of a handful of "celebrities" and a load of people who can't bother to get their asses off their seats and go out to the streets, and merely want the Internet to magically solve their problems. I know the Internet has been changing the whole social and political scenery of the world dramatically, but it's still NOT able to singlehandedly heal our problems; and those people either can't see that, or willingly DON'T see it. I think it's the latter, honestly.

And to make matters worse, those people were trying to enlist the help of a foreigner. We're not even talking about an influential leader or an outspoken personality; no, we're talking about an actor who happened to get into a -- massive, yes, but still -- harmless football joke on Twitter. It's sad to see our country is in the hands of corrupt leaders, yes, but it's even sadder to see the "personalities" opposing corruption are brainless slugs engulfed by the comfortable numbness of their luxurious apartments. And as great as Kutcher's response was, it will NOT help change their minds; it's easy to misread "only YOU have the power" as "you can't depend on me, so just give up".

Click here to see the story in further details -- the text is in Portuguese, but most of the original messages are in English.

Side note:
Review of Pure Guava may take a little longer to come out. This term isn't over yet...

Just in case...

... you bump into any old post in which I proclaim myself as an xkcd fan, PLEASE don't confuse me with the fanatical "forumites" which will go to the greatest lengths to proclaim ANY xkcd strip as comedic genius just to look cool and "in". In fact, I'm a fairly annoyingly and persistently vocal critic of the bad strips (which are becoming worryingly frequent recently), yet on the other hand I strongly oppose the highly illogical and inane rants from that xkcd: Overrated blog (yes, "blog", not "blag"; it's not funny anymore). So I'm sort of middle ground here: I'm not a very harsh critic of xkcd, and I usually enjoy the strips, but I definitely don't want to wear the "I'm an xkcd fan and that makes me insta-cool and I suck Randall Munroe's penis because that makes me awesome" card because, really, what the hell? Guys, you may think I'm exaggerating here, but, guys! Seriously, like, guys, really! Like, guys, like, really, seriously! Like, guys...

Things I like a lot less than I probably should, part 2

Led Zeppelin.

For a long time, I thought my tastes weren't quite "attuned" to this band, and even though I enjoyed a lot of what they did, I seemed to somewhat "force" myself into their material. Then, I think this sort of backfired, and I got to simply not being able to stand them at all. Led Zeppelin sort of became my nemesis -- just like some people hate the Beatles because they're oh-so-overrated and stuff, I... well, I didn't hate Led Zeppelin, but I simply wanted to stay as far from them as I humanly could.

Time passed, and I thought I might as well give them another chance -- after all, I'm a man of many tastes and I'm open to everything, and I don't want to simply stay away from a band because of oh they seem not to be all that good, and oh, they were such rip-offs and jerks (yeah, look at the Stereolab fan calling other people "rip-offs", even though I got into this band WAY after I put Led Zeppelin on my black list). So I put on their forth album, the one with no title, and... ... yeah, I don't like them very much, really. Of course, I'm not making judgements based on only ONE album -- I only have the first, second and fourth LPs on my collection, and I'm missing quite a lot of important stuff. Still? I really, really like several of their songs (off the top of me head I can name Communication Breakdown, What Is and What Should Never Be, Ramble On, Thank You, Immigrant Song, When the Levee Breaks, Over the Hills and Far Away and maybe a few others), but their albums are the primordial hit-and-miss affairs: one time you have an awesome song going on, next time you have one of the worst drum solos ever (Moby Dick, of course), next time Robert Plant is being the most obnoxious singer ever, next time they're doing whatever the hell they feel like doing and doing it wrong. And then there are the stupidly puffed up lyrical affairs (Tolkien references? Really?? And people make fun of Rush!) and, oh, did I mention Robert Plant being the most obnoxious singer ever?

I don't care about the "sexual" aspect of it all. Whole Lotta Love executes its purpose very well, but I couldn't care less about the proposal. The lyrics are raunchy, and I tell them to shut up. Really, just shut up. Whether you're saying crap about giving someone his love, or saying crap about going to live in the misty mountains, or saying crap about anyone remembering laughter; just shut up, guys.

But either way, I still really like several of their songs.

Talkin' 'bout Flash Games (and how they can be the best thing ever AND the worst thing ever) Blues

Yes, since this is a blag about music and whatever else (and since nobody reads it), I take this place to talk about Flash games -- not as a programmer, mind. I never programmed in Flash and have no means to make a Flash game. No, sir: I talk as a PLAYER. I'm not your everyday Flash junkie, but I do have an account at Kongregate and I like to collect badges (erk). So, what's up with Flash games?

They can be the best thing ever because Flash put A LOT in the hands of extremely creative and talented people who always wanted to make and publish games in a way that wouldn't attract the attention of only hardcore gamers who're willing to download and run .EXE files. Flash games are immediately playable by pretty much anyone - many systems already have the Flash plug-in installed, and most of the others make it very easy to install. To play, you just follow a link and -- presto -- no more needed. They allow fancy graphics, the performance is halfway decent, and many websites collect hundreds of Flash games because each game is a single, (generally) small file. Flash is a moderately easy tool to handle, it makes things very easy and simple, and ActionScript allows quite a lot to be done. People with a lot of ideas and a lot of willingness to break the rules and explore new territory are finally able to do so, without too many hurdles.

They can be the worst thing ever because, well, Flash put a lot in the hands of people who seem to have NO IDEA of what makes a good game. Really: go out there and see. It can become frustrating, as many games have great concepts and premises, but the execution? ICK. Horrid. It's not a matter of "knowledge" or things you learn at school, and it's not a matter of me talking because I never actually went there and made a game to see how hard it is: it's merely a matter of COMMON SENSE. It's concepts even a child can grasp. They are easy, simple things that we many times fail to realise exactly BECAUSE they're so easy and simple. It's things we take for granted, but forget they have to be actually implemented.

One example: go out, take the games you play the most and see how much your performance depends on luck. I'm not telling you to see how many games use luck as a deciding factor: I'm telling you to see to which extent luck is necessary in those games. I'm not kidding you: many games I've played DEPEND on luck to ridiculous extremes, to the point where you're simply left with nothing to do to save your skin if you're unlucky. An actual example: the game Death Dice Overdose is a very simple action game in which your character has to move left and right and jump in order to avoid dice falling from the sky. Get hit and die, simple. But not only that: you need to pick up "pills" to keep your panic down. Your panic increases over time, and if it reaches a limit, you die. The pills appear randomly (yes, ABSOLUTELY randomly) all over the screen, and there's a lower limit, so you can't simply pick up pills at will.

Bottom line: you have a limited amount of time to eat a pill in order to keep alive. The smart readers realise that if the game does NOT give you a pill before the timer expires, you're hopelessly dead, and there's nothing you can do. The game has to ENSURE that the rate of pills are enough to keep you alive, and you should only die of panic if you fail to reach the pills in time because of his limited skills. Well, to put it bluntly, the author of the game wasn't that smart. Yep: you can DIE because the game is too randomly. It does not calculate the rate of pills, and it simply gives them away at will. If it "decides" to kill you, you die. See? When you play the game, you DO NOT have the guarantee that you'll only fail because your skills are too limited. You can die without committing any mistakes. So what's the point?

It seems like programmers think that adding a bias will make the game too "easy" and not challenging enough, and that it HAS to be random and luck-based in order to be challenging. First: challenge is worthless if there's no fun. Second: luck and luck ALONE is not fun. If it were, people wouldn't bluff in poker, and people wouldn't need to prospect of earning money to bet on horse races and slot machines. Many games do depend on randomness and chance, but PURE randomness and chance is no way to make a game. You know why?

People play games because they want to be good at it. Just ask your friends and see how many of them play games because they want to suck at it and lose. They don't. People play games because they want to beat them, they want to play them once, lose, learn with their mistakes, get better at it, slowly advance, learn new tricks and tips, and FINALLY beat the hell out of it, and then try again at a higher difficulty. For that, people need an INCENTIVE to play. People need to feel rewarded by the game. I'm not talking about promising free cookies if they beat the game, no sir: I'm talking about making the game show the players when they're doing good, and KEEPING them at it. Did the player make a mistake? Punish them and let THEM see what they did wrong by themselves. Let them learn what they shouldn't do, and let them try again. You don't need to pat the player's back and say you love him, no way! It's not about being "nice": it's about being fair and balanced. The player wants to know he's playing well and want to see the consequences of that. He doesn't want to hang by a little thread and be brutally, unexplainably killed at the slightest mistake, or worse, see all his efforts WASTED because the game was badly programmed and was unfair to him. Didn't you ever wonder why many Flash games allow you to earn money or experience and "upgrade" your player as you go? It's a simple concept, see! As simple and obvious as you can be. I'm not saying the Gospel and dictating how all games should be: there are exceptions, but mostly, the player should be compelled to play. If he loses, he should sit back, think carefully, review his strategy and try again. Instead, many games have the player tearing out his hair and running his keyboard into the monitor in anger and disgust. Why? Because THE GAME'S AUTHOR SUCKS, that's it. Plain and simple.

Yet some people fail to grasp it. There's a game called Amorphous+, which is extremely frustrating. The concept is great: with a top down view, you control a guy with a sword who has to kill blobs that kill you at the slightest touch and in annoyingly long and stupidly violent ways (I'm talking Family Guy style here -- folks, gross-out humour is OLD. GET OVER IT). Basically, one touch and you're dead. And the stages are LONG. So, all the time, you have to watch your back and be careful and follow your strategy tightly. But that's not all: the smallest deviation, one millisecond you lose, one thing you failed to see -- or worse -- a completely insane and stupid situation means you're dead, and you have to start ALL over again and play through the BORING, SLOW early stages in order to get to the hard part. What was the "incentive" to the player? Achievements. Yep, the most dishonest and lazy way to keep the players hooked. And I'm talking about illogical, time-wasting achievements, and even some that depend on "one-in-a-billion" situations that, in order to be reached, either the player was born when all planers in the Solar System were aligned, or he's sick enough to play for a billion years uninterrupted. Months later, a "clone", called Cell Warfare appeared. It has achievements, but WAY fewer and more logical ones. The gameplay is instantly recognisable, and this time, the player can take more than one hit before he dies, AND he recovers his health with power-ups. This means, FINALLY, the premise was made playable. And just to give you a hint: the toughest, hardest achievement on that game is equivalent to the LEAST Amorphous+ expects from the beginning players. Yep: beating the easiest level without being touched once is the "ultimate" achievement on Cell Warfare. Wonder why!

Amorphous+ was fun, but it was unforgiving. It didn't give you the space to grow and sharpen your skills: by having to go through the boring parts ALL the time, the player loses patience and interest, only to be mercilessly killed by the slightest, most subtle slip. It's not a rewarding game: you don't tell your skills are paying off, because the game just throws them out of the window at random times through the level. And so do many, MANY games. You know, I sometimes wonder if the game makers actually PLAY their own games. Maybe they get so attached to their "brainchild" that they somehow refuse to see its most gaping flaws, and disguise them as "challenge". But if a guy does that, he's not fit to be a game maker, an artist or anything. The guy must be able to look at his own efforts with a critical mind if he wants to go. A guy that gets stuck to his illusion of "perfection" in his works gets stuck. He doesn't evolve. And worse: he unleashes garbage into the unsuspecting world. Don't do that, people: if you make a game, play it like an actual player would. Revise your expectations. Be clear on what you want the game to demand from its players. Is it a skill-based game? Don't make it too random! DO keep the randomness, because it adds unpredictability and interest. But see, chance and luck should merely force the player to learn to adapt to new and surprising situations. The player should be compelled to explore all the possibilities and adapt quickly, change his strategy when needed, NOT to pray for his life and hope the game doesn't throw him into unavoidable death. Make the game fun.

And please, PLEASE. STOP THE TOWER DEFENCE GAMES. Really, there are billions of them already. The formula got old ages ago. Stop it.

Things I like a lot less than I probably should, part 1

Tangerine Dream.

The title of this post explains just what it's like: things I like less than I probably should, not certainly should. And I include Tangerine Dream here because, well, I hear so much positive stuff about this band, but I never could get into them. Maybe I've listened to too little stuff? I have tried their biggest works, including Phaedra, Atem and Rubycon, but I just can't see what's so good about it. To me, it sounds like a mish-mash of different trends of electronic music, but taking the WORST of each world. It's not quite dynamic enough to be captivating, it's not quite soothing enough to be pleasant, and the textures and movement suggest that there is nothing to suggest. I don't get it. I'm a big fan of Jean Michel Jarre, and I'm a big fan of Brian Eno, and I'm a big fan of Vangelis and so on -- and I know, Tangerine Dream is quite a different league, but still, it seems to me that they are too involved in doing something way beyond than simply music, but failing. Is it technically outstanding? Maybe, but so is Brian Eno's stuff. Is it evocative? Perhaps, but Jean Michel Jarre is so much more it's not even funny. Really, if ANYONE can point me out what's so good about them, I might try again.