When Soundtracks Repeat
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- čas přidán 27. 09. 2018
- What happens when a film score gets stuck in your head?
/ sideways440
/ sideways440
/ sideways440
Links/Sources:
On Repeat: How Music Plays the Mind by Elizabeth Margulis
The Song Machine: Inside the Hit Factory by John Seabrook
Folding ideas: • The Art of Editing and...
Classical Nerd: • Musical Sudoku: Serial...
12tone: • Twelve Tone Composition
Vox: • Why we really really r...
Klavierstück op. 33a: • Schoenberg Klavierstüc...
In C: • Terry Riley: In C - Hudba
The implications this has for video game music is huge.
And it also kind of explains memes.
Game Score Fanfare it REALLY explains memes
As a self proclaimed Memologist and observer of memes, i can definately say this is very true
Then again, after being repeated for too long, memes start being considered unfunny again.... So I think it goes both ways- you see the meme repeated a few times, you start to think it's funny. A hundred times later, you're sick of it.
Also explains why a language is easier to learn while studying it in its country of origin! You hear it all the time without paying attention!
(this is a reply to Jonnathan)
tl;dr- I can see your point but don't think that's not always the case, also the fact that you see it only after a while shouldn't affect the "power of repeating" if it works for memes the same way it works for music.
Well, while I can see your point I think it's not always like that, for me at least. Like with the ssb ultimate meme that was really popular not too long ago (the one that replaces the characters with memes or youtubers or whatever) youtube recommended it to me, and the first few times I watched it I thought it was funny. Then youtube started recommending a shit ton of the same meme to me, and just a few days after the meme started it already became stale for me.
Another point is that the "power" of the repeating effect shouldn't stop after you haven't seen a meme for a while then you see it again, in fact in the video he describes this effect doing the exact opposite where it comes to music- if you hear a song once and don't even notice it, then after a while you hear it again, you're more likely to enjoy it more. While it works better if you don't remember you heard it before, it still works if you did (that is if I understood the video correctly).
"If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight.
Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all."
-John Cage
Try this with Meet Me Halfway by the Black Eyed Peas. I HATE that song. It was on repeat on the radio while I was volunteering for a charity shop. If you had to ask me what song I hate the most, try that one. I don't even hate all of black eyed peas music. But that song just grinds my gears.
if you've ever played jet set radio or its sequel, you probably got this with super brothers & birthday cake
@@Stettafire There’s just something spiritual about a certain song that is constantly on repeat at your workplace. Somehow your hatred of it permeates your soul in a way nothing else can.
@@maxwashere. ain't that the truth.
Oh geez, I haven't actually made a serialism video in a long time... Maybe I should revisit that.
I see what you did there
..... OHHHHHH, ahhhhhhhh, I see whatcha did there ;D
YEAH BOIIIIIIIIIIIII
Repeat?
even though Sideways misgenders you, his point is true, your channel is amazing, 12tone!
Why isn’t your channel called Leitmotif
GlorifiedPowerpointPresentationsOnLeitmotifs
agrrrrreeeeeee
made my day
Because his logo is a Sideways Tenor cle-
Oh wait... I just realized what you're saying. Nevermind.
Because I will patiently wait until he makes a Leitmotif for his channel when it opens.
2 minutes in, leitmotif shows up.... oh Sideways, never change
0:34 seconds in
Damn bro, you got the whole squad laughing with that one
NEVER EVER CHANGE!!!!!!
@@tsutsujiii So technically....him talking about leitmotif....is a leitmotif.
@@tsutsujiii Great minds, my friend. Great minds.
I used to think the first appearance of "You Say Run" in My Hero Academia was at the end of season 1, when All Might faces Nomu, and I thought it was awesome. Rewatched it, and it turns out it's fucking all over season 1, first appearing in episode 2 and cropping up constantly moving forward. I just didn't notice it because I was focused on the story, but once I heard it enough times, it's quality registered with me, right at the perfect moment for it to do so.
This is so fucking fascinating holy shit
John Williams talk about how he introduced the audience to E.T.'s main theme from the very beginning of the film but he made sure it was implied rather than outright stated, so by the time you listen to it in all of it's glory during the bike scene you are already familiar with it. So don't worry, repetition is just another tool composers use; as with everything, the key is using it effectively.
But I think you miss his point at the end of the video where it may not even matter what he wrote. Like it almost only matters that it repeats... is the possible truth he's mind blown by I think.
“Repetition legitimizes
Play it once, it’s a mistake, play it twice, it’s music”
~Adam Neely, literally every video
Repetition legitimizes
@@noidea42 repetition legitimizes
repetition legitimizes
repetition legitimizes
@@timscott6793 repetition legitimizes
repetition legitimizes
@@thelistener1268 repetition legitimizes
_repetition legitimizes_
*_repetition legitimizes_*
*_REPITION LEGITIMIZES_*
I’ll defend Infinity War using Rubberband Man to the ends of the Earth, that’s one of the best uses of licensed music I’ve seen in one
of these blockbusters. It introduces the Guardians themselves with this upbeat tune, and as you said, foreshadows the ending. It’s also able to show character progression subtly, like Gamora singing along.
You couldn’t do that effectively with the score.
I will also defend the use of take on me in. DP2. The original is in the scene where vanesa dies. In the heaven scene the acoustic version of take on me is used to show his growth maturity and him yearning vanessa..
Worth noting, too, that since GotG extensively uses 80s music in its score, to a much greater (and thematic) extent than any other Marvel superhero set, it made perfect sense to bring them into the Avengers-verse with an 80s anthem.
Elizabeth Exactly. As soon as the music started playing, even before I saw the Guardians or their ship, I immediately knew who was about to appear and got excited. That kind of music is part of their movies' identity.
plus rubberband man is just a bop
@@keybladesrus it hit me when the title card "space" popped up and hoo boy my excitement shot through the roof. Gotg is an example of pop music used in movies, DONE RIGHT
This actually makes a lot of sense, because the same thing happens with other things that the human brain encounters. There's something called the "exposure effect," (I think that's what it's called), where the more often you hear certain facts or opinions, the more legitimate they seem to you, even if the logic or evidence behind them is garbage. Our brains are wired to respond to repetition this way, for whatever reason, so I can see why they would respond to music in much the same way.
You were close. it's called the "mere exposure" effect. It's actually mentioned in one of the quotations in the video haha
Hitler once said something along the lines of, if you tell a lie loudly and widely for long enough, eventually people will believe it as fact.
Cuz our brains are wired to trust things that are familiar
Like that gerbil story? SCREAM!
Right? The entire time I was just like ""I'm so sure we sort of covered this in one of my sociology classes"
Speaking of repeating, the "coffee shop" version of "Take On Me" actually does the same thing, where it plays very subtly at the beginning of the film when Vanessa is alive. Then, when you hear it again at the end (in the theatrical version) and focus more on it, it has the same effect as "Tomorrow". (14:37)
SPOILER ALERT FOR LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS, BOTH THE MUSICAL, AND THE DIRECTORS CUT OF THE 1986 MOVIE
This reminds me of the song Somewhere That's Green from Little Shop of Horrors (which might just be more foreshadowing than repeating)
In the song Audrey 1 sings about living the rest of her life with Seymour in the suburbs, which she describes as "somewhere that's green"
Later in the musical, after Seymour saves Audrey 1 from being killed by Audrey 2, Audrey 1 wants to be fed to the plant when she inevitably dies, and the song reprises itself, and she says that Seymour would be taking her somewhere that's green
The thing that makes it even sadder is that she says that if she's inside the plant, she becomes a part of the plant and will always be with Seymour. Later, Seymour jumps into the plant with a machete to avenge Audrey 1 and kill Audrey 2 before the salesman can get clippings of it.
They are forever together, somewhere that's green.
Didnt GOTG earn it? Like the pop music is intrinsically tied into Starlords character arc.
I think you can see that the music wasn't chosen to fit the scene, but rather the scenes are built with the song in mind.
Eh, it depends from scene to scene. "come and get your love" wasnt originally the opening song to v 1
@@The_Blazelighter Is that a bad thing though? Half of Quentin Tarantino's scenes feel like they were shot with a particular song in mind and it usually works perfectly with him.
Toad Taylor I don’t see how that’s a negative, especially as the sound score is tied directly to the character and how he see’s the world.
@@CameronM1138 , @Travis Caddie - Toad doesn't convey a negative sentiment. They agree that it's positive. Hence their comment.
The idea of Thematic Appropriation seems very reminiscent of Intertextual References, where a piece of media/entertainment references other pieces of media. Thematic Appropriation just seems to be the musical equivalent of this concept. Nerdwriter has a video on the topic, for anyone interested
czcams.com/video/QeAKX_0wZWY/video.html
Guess who's back
Back again
Sideways' back
Tell a friend
Guess who's back
Guess who's back
Guess who's back
Guess who's back
Oh!
come here little kiddies
Ah yes, the Eminem leitmotif
@@FlorissMusic ah yes, enslaved angst
@@jacksonohno on my lap, guess who's back with a brand new rap
Humans are *extremely* good at recognizing patterns. Hell, they’re too good for their own good in that regard. That’s why lifeless, bland, and repetitive pop music get exactly that response, or leitmotifs, or.. well.. anything that repeats. If you repeat something, you sound or look like you intend it.
What those two radio show hosts did 70 years ago was make the songs THEMSELVES the pattern. If you MAKE a pattern-heavy work a pattern in itself, it’s like a hard override for the brain on all different angles. It’s fractal mind control, and there can be so many goddamn layers it becomes nigh impossible to even remotely break from it.
Another thought to keep you up at night:
The fact that most of pop music is written by 2 guys is not a bug; it is a feature. The quirks of their songwriting styles are repeating in each new radio hit without most of its listeners knowing about this.
Disney does know that. They do it in Moana, just varying the same song a couple of times during the movie. Same music, different context. Second time I watched it, I was hooked from the beginning.
Had to return to note that they did that with multiple songs! The song she sings to the goddess at the end is in the soundtrack at the very beginning of the movie
same sort of thing with Remeber me in Coco
Isnt that in every Disney movie since ever?
Rostiger Rolf Is that just a filmmaking standard? Song and reprise?
Maybe, but that's mostly a musical narrative technique. Reprises draw connections between two moments or two states of being -- like the "one jump" reprise in Aladdin, where it contrasts how other people view Aladdin with how Aladdin wishes they saw him as. Or the "remember me" reprises, where the second one contrasts hector's heartfelt song with the emotionally bereft version Ernesto came up with, and then Miguel finally giving it back to Coco and giving a connection with her father again at the end. Like these songs have narrative significance, they aren't just to sell songs. Hell, reprises have been utilized in musical theatre since before the 50s.
Does this explain how I can listen to earrape versions of All Star and genuinely enjoy them?
maybe
That's how I got hooked on Mouth Sounds, Mouth Silence and Mouth Moods.
We all heard All Stars for so many times when we were kids that it would be hard to find a version that we wouldn't find ok
@@PlayerSlotAvailable Mtv, radio probably some commercials but I'm not sure
No, for that you need a psychiatrist to explain it.
at the same time though, what about when some hears a song too much and then can't enjoy it anymore? It has to be some kind of balancing act right?
There's an asterisk at 15:36 regarding that 😊
oh thanks! I completely missed that lol 😅
Good composers understand this and are able to vary, disguise and re-use aspects of themes to provide an internally cohesive, relevant whole while not getting boring. Think of the fact that Williams', Mozart's, Beethoven's, etc music are all still being played in concert halls decades/centuries after they were written. These composers utilized repetition a great deal, but it's absolutely a fact that overly simply repetition burns out listeners. Anecdotally, have you ever wondered why a pop song will become extremely popular for a short period of time, only to be reviled by people months later and completely disappearing off the radio and out of people's minds? And yet the radio still plays Abba, Michael Jackson, The Beatles, etc. There's absolutely a balance.
Rohann van Rensburg Even songs from the early 2000s to the mid 2000s (and not much currently) I still hear sometimes if I’m listening to any local stations that play older music tend to have more alterations than pure repeats. It’s why I’m sick of Coldplay’s “Clocks” but not as much Muse’s “Knights of Cydonia.” (That also needs to be someone’s battle hymn in film, please film industry!)
@@GuiSmith Yeah there are songs from any era that have pure repeats and others than have alterations, I think it depends largely on genre. Coldplay builds songs off of mostly a few chords whereas Muse tends to keep things more interesting, hence why Coldplay found immense popularity but most people I know are sick of them.
The pinnacle of this ability, though, is in long form composing. Williams et all can pull off that theme-and-variation over the course of multiple films. That's really hard to do properly, considering his music is revered by composers and layperson audiences alike.
*Densiest*
*刀乇𠘨丂工乇丂丅*
り彡冂ら工彡ら丁
danciest
didn't expect to see you here
Drink cactus juice
It'll dense ya
Nothings densier
It's the densiest
I just love your work, and your channel is undoubtly one of the top 3 music channels on YT and a huge inspiration to me.
Props from Belgium
Yeah what’re the other two
Probably 12tone & Adam Neely ?
8bit music theory is a good one too
14:00 is this why sampling has been so hugely popular?
Dunno, a lot of sampling is of music that is not particularly popular/well known
Flowey's hot jamz Yeah, but it's still probably been heard by everyone enough to get the subliminal repetition effect.
Flowey's hot jamz that's not exactly true.
Originally people sampled things that weren't that popular AT THE TIME.
But they WERE at some point to some degree. Key difference.
Even if they faded from pupblic conciousness, they were/are still kinda there on a subconcious level.
Oh and one more thing. What do you think an artist will sample? Obviously something they've heard a lot/like.
Flowey's hot jamz Most sampling originally was snippets of forgotten recordings because it was an easy way to get a beat or riff you like, and it wasn't so obvious you were stealing their work (and it was legally grey if you were at all). As that became mainstream, sampling kind of mixed with the established art of covering other artists' songs and it became about putting your own spin or adding new context to well-known properties. As THAT became mainstream you got people just throwing in a song people already like so that by default they'll like this new one.
Sampling in hip hop specifically started with producers happening to find vinyls and using snippets to create new beats, so it was pretty random at that time.
This is scarily cool. This explains so much why I end up liking songs that I didn't initially enjoy or like when I first heard it, but after my college roommate played it again and again, I'm in love with it. This is like the freakiest thing to learn.
Me and my friends call certain genres or songs "acquired tastes" sometimes which basically (for us at least) just means "the first time i heard this i didn't like it at all but for some reason i listened to it again (by force or boredom or just because there was One Part of it that i liked the first time) and since then i've accidentally listened to it 10 more times and now i friggin LOVE it"
Which I guess ties into the "Papa Can You Hear Me" joke in DP2? Like, who watches Yentl on purpose? But it probably did add some extra punch to "Do You Want to Build a Snowman" for the adult audience.
This made me realize why I love some Sideways vids more than others. Apart from the insightful and intriguing analysis in all of the videos, the vids I favor give me the opportunity to re-listen to the music I got hooked on from the movies.
It’s so weird to hear you freaking out over repetition when you already had videos about how context, repetion, recognition, knowledge, previous experience and etc affect our understanding and likability of music. Like in video about universal music language. For me, after your videos and vox’s (plus article from my childhood explaining that anyone can be teached to enjoy classical music), likability of repetition isn’t a hack but a feature.
I think he is so freaked out about it because in the music industry, there is already a believe that even lazy, bad and uninteresting songs can be hits if you just repeat and advertise them to death. This is happening in pop right now, everything sounds the same, old and done. And now there is a study that states that regardless if you listen to a song by Sondheim or by Justin Bieber, if you listen to it enough you will like it, regardless of quality?
That's scary for composers and listeners.
Btw, I don't want to speak for him and if he actually meant something else, he or anyonen can of course correct me. This is just the reason it freaked me out a bit.
I think it was just the "how deep it goes" feeling. He knew repetition had an effect, but didn't knew how strong it was.
R E P E T I T I O N L E G I T I M I Z E S
R E P E T I T I O N L E G I T I M I Z E S
When you just watched some random video and you get the reference
The repetition part of the video was extremely fascinating but makes so much sense. I've listened to a 30-45 sec musical clip on repeat for hours before because I just enjoyed it and it allowed me to zone in in my art I was creating at the moment.
The good-guy leitmotif played during the Cable scene shows that Cable's trying to fix the future that he comes from
...Whoo! First video I've understood on the first go around. I've found that to "appreciate" an album or music that I am unfamiliar with I need to give it several go arounds and I've seen this belief echoed throughout the internet as well. Once I figured out what the video was about I was just waiting for the mere-exposure effect to be mentioned. The idea that people are inclined to like "things" they've been exposed to often enough and are familiar with is such a popular belief that in one week of learning psychology you will be taught this. This is an awesome video that pulls in a lot of other concepts you've talked about, thank you.
“Repetition legitimizes.”
So, repeat stuff, repeat stuff, repeat stuff?
Oh Hello Satan!
repeat stuff, repeat stuff, repeat stuff.
Repeat stuff repeat stuff repeat stuff
I just now realized why Bare: A Pop Opera is my favorite musical (besides the fact that I relate to the character’s stories). They basically wrote a leitmotif for each of the main characters, and ones for ideas like love and conflict and stuff, and just made an entire musical with almost exclusively those leitmotifs. Which also means that in the rare occasions where they use an entirely new piece of music in it makes it stand out so much more. Wow. Damon Interbartolo was a genius.
That also explains why hearing a show’s theme song during the series finale feels so great
This also explains why everyone now nostalgically loves rebecca black's Friday although it was considered musical junk at the time of release 🤔
I actually have a playlist of songs that I have been listening to for like 4 or 5 years now and I only update it with new songs, I don't really remove songs from it. I play it in a non repeating shuffle meaning that the whole playlist has to play in a random order before a song repeats.
I've found myself in a general trend to dislike the older songs as time goes on, with a few exceptions. The songs that I've always loved stay the same or at least I fatigue of them much slower than other songs. So in general I wouldn't say repetition is the be all end all.
As time goes on, I value the newer songs that Pop up on the playlist much more than others. I'm also starting to see that I seem to get tired of songs more quickly than I used to. Of course this is all to say that too much exposure has negative effects however there's more to it than that.
I couldn't help but notice that some songs fell out of my favour quicker than others, and some songs that I never liked from the start never grew on me. So I think that there has to be some sort of minimum quality the song has to achieve for it to grow on you. That's probably attained through exposure to other songs that sound similar but certain genres can have a negative association attached to them before you've even heard the songs maybe caused by the media or others.
Ohhhhhh
*You uploaded...*
"watch sideways have a mental breakdown and question his life choices for 16 minutes straight"
Does anyone hear adam neely in the background continuously going: "Repetition Legitimizes." over and over again?
YESSSSSS
I finally understand the function of notifications...
With how powerful music is, filmmakers can easily use it to subconsciously implant thoughts and ideas
I've been feeling this with listening to Bernstein's MASS on repeat (specifically Gloria in Excelsis) for the difficult rhythms that my violin section has to play. Hated it at the beginning, and with all the exposure to it... I quite like it now. I feel like you're opening my eyes to the sheer exposure effect, man. I'm scared now.
All this makes me feel good about myself, cause I mostly just listen to music I have not heard before and only come back to the very very special ones you find every 6 months. Aaaaahhh. Its nice to feel good about yourself, isn't it?
Without having read the books in question, it seems to me that repetition is a form of consonance. People are attracted to consonance, but you also need dissonance to create tension, to make the music emotionally dynamic. Without any repetition there is in analogy only dissonance, which has little tension (or tension, but no relief, if you prefer). It then feels natural that introducing some repetition creates more dynamic, and thus satisfying, music. Too much repetition can also have the same effect, but some quirks of perception reduces this. If the repetition is not exactly the same, the slight differences pop out from the repeating pattern and create interesting variations. And even if the music is exactly the same, as with a record, what you are doing or what the music is played to is not. The previous associations affect all future perception of the music. Repeating a similar association creates a stronger bond, a stronger consonance with that association. This consonance then works with what is happening around it, either in a movie or in your life, to create different emotional dynamics. All without changing the piece itself.
intro got me FOOLED
Re: your last question -- I think there's an endless, repetitive cycle to storytelling -- no real story is "new" and the stories we see in most media are presented with the same structure but in either refreshing or earnest ways.
Same deal with most popular music -- same / similar structures and patterns, but just new sounds (or even old sounds brought back as "new") and ways of presenting it. Hence, when a heroic theme like the Avengers plays over commercials, we clock that association subconsciously so that when heroic moments happen in the Avengers movie and that theme plays, we're doubly invested in the story. It's a thing most definitely intended by the writers of the music as a means of enhancing the story unfolding onscreen.
Great video man! :D
Everything is a remix
because here's the thing
to know how the song ends, and still begin to sing it
Can we talk more about the incredibly precise usage of "Tomorrow" some more? Like which sections of the song "Tomorrow" are being used for what scenes?
The flashback scenes use the bridge of the song, a part that not only has higher tension than the rest of the song (conveniently fading out before actually getting to the big resolution the chorus gives AFAIR), but also is applied literally as a "bridge" to emphasize the reason behind the duality of Cable's protagonistic-slash-antagonistic nature; one common element that defines two sides of his character arc.
Conversely, the Russel redemption scene that comes at the end of the movie starts from the very opening of the song, itself a vast contrast in its quietly hopeful nature compared to the flashback scenes, as DP heads into the line of fire. The moment DP takes the shot just as the bridge of the song lands gracefully (as gracefully as the movie can get), emphasizing the change of heart in Russel as it carries through into the bright, optimistic chorus of the song is both simultaneously the most subtle and most blatant appropriation of leitmotif ever. The framing of the entire scene around that song is just... surgical.
Let's also take a moment to relish just how beautifully silly it is for a superhero movie to have so many weighty, narrative-driven nods to a few of the most prolific women/female characters in music entertainment. "Tomorrow" from Annie; Celine Dion and "Ashes"; Barbara Streisand's performance from Yentl getting a callback towards the end of DP's ridiculously long death monologue. I'm sure there's plenty more that either I'm forgetting or didn't realize, enough to take it from a goofy trend into weird compulsion.
It's surprising that this was surprising to Sideways. I remember listening to Despacito right before it blew up and being quite indifferent to the experience, but after listening to it more and more I grew to love it like everyone else. To a greater extent, I remember listening to Michael Jackson's Scream and disliking it; something kept me coming back to listen to it and now I love it. This idea is especially useful to be aware of when you DJ somewhere; even if you know a song that fits the genre you're playing, people do not want to hear it unless they already know it... so instead you just play Toxic, Low, and Yeah again
Do you think this applies to other forms of art as well? Like we see squares and triangles all the time throughout our day and maybe that’s why we tend to like simple repeating patterns of shapes in paintings or even just like a random carpet or backdrop?
And even how most books have essentially the same plot - the hero with 1000 faces - that could be partly just due to it being a story everyone knows and the repetition makes it good
Look up pavlov’s dogs experiment. That happens to US, too! It’s everywhere and we don’t notice it....
@@quacker__jack that's different type of association
Brain is a machine that consistently tries to make sense of the world, so it will be naturally drawn to familiarity. And the unconscious mind does most of the pattern recognition job for you, so it should be a similar mechanism being drawn to your familiar shapes or chords
Mairi Florence that’s because we love tropes! As humans we’re super into formulaic seeming/sounding ways of story telling. We find a formula that works, then continue using it. It’s sort of like math, there’s a common path you can take to get the “answer” and there are lesser paths you can take. Hope that makes sense... haha
great video!! I think you should test that theory, like choose some really bad music for your intro or outro and maybe after a while people will start asking what the songs name is because they start to enjoy it 🤔🤔
2:27 When I saw an SR-71 Blackbird stop and turn on a dime like a spaceship, my brain took a huge shit.
They literally animated it the way you play with toy planes as a kid. 'Oh, my arm can only go so far that way, time to do a perfect 180 :v'
This just reminded me of a paper I had to write for the single music class I've taken. I was supposed to write a review of a concert I attended, and I ended up at a showing of Quatuor Pour la Fin du Temps, which was not catchy in the slightest. But while writing the paper, I reviewed the pieces again and again, and I still get Danse de la Fureur stuck in my head on occasion after 2 years after the concert. I'm so glad there's an explanation for this and I'm not going crazy.
Well in the immortal words of Bo Burham, you can do it easily:
"Repeat stuff [8x]"
Is Anni some kind of classics in USA?
I wonder just how much people differ in enjoying references if they don't know the origin
It's a pretty classic musical, yeah. I don't know if your country is big on theatre (I'm not sure where you're from) but in America, we've had musical theatre plays be a big part of our culture for over a century now. Although not everyone listens to musicals, there are some pieces that are so iconic, many Americans may recognize them, like "I Feel Pretty" from "West Side Story" or "My Favourite Things" from "The Sound of Music." "Tomorrow" is one of those songs where it's very well-known in the country, even if not everyone knows "Annie."
Yes, as they said.
Repetition is also a huge part in the popularity of shows like Blue's Clues. Each week they showed the same episode five times. Seriously. It flew in the face of the educational models of shows like Sesame Street (i.e. steady unending stream of familiarity with a bit of a through line) but it worked. By breaking the fourth wall and bringing kids "into" the story, by the time Friday rolled around, they weren't just along for the ride, they were essentially directing the story, thereby learning on a deeper level.
Which ties in nicely to the enjoyment of music with repetition.
If you think about it, all of this makes perfect sense. In Fundamentals of Music Composition Schoenberg says:
"Intelligibility in music seems to be impossible without repetition." and if you look at a lot of music, from sonatas and rondos to pop music and film music, there's almost always repetition of a main theme, or a specific chord, or a harmony, or a bass line, etc. Repetition has always been key. Companies just use that on a gargantuan scale that's hard to fathom if you think about it too much.
Also thanks. This is just the kind of slightly terrifying music news I needed before my cello lesson. Love you channel; this was the first music channel I ever watched and it's my favorite one.
Does this mean all the 10 hour loops of songs I’ve been listening to are actually making me like them more?
I used to listen to Numa Numa on repeat for 8 hours a day during the really stressful season of work. I probably love the song more now than I did the first handful of times I heard it.
I didn't think you'd think repetetion being fundamental to music was surprising. Variation and repetition are the pillars of music. To quote Adam Neely; "repetition legitimizes". If something repeats too much it becomes boring and if you play a song too many times you 'overplay' it and get tired of it, so ofc theres a limit to this, which is why variation is good.
As for the subliminal thing, thats how advertising works. As long as youve seen a brand at some point, even if youve 'forgotten' about it or just heard it from 10 meters away makes you familiar with it. So when you're in the store and choosing between two brands, you're gonna pick the one you're more familiar with(on intuition).
I didn't think these concepts were so mindblowing to people, I feel like I learned some of this in school, at least the advertsiing stuff, the other thing I've just picked up on from various places. Subliminal stuff can be really cool, sometimes when I formulate a sentence I later look around the environment and see very similar wording in my surrounding. Like a paper lying nearby or once I saw graffiti that affected my choice of words. Lol idk.
"Repetition is the one key thing needed to enjoy music."
Sure explains why Philip Glass tops the charts.
Welp I'm about to stress over this for the rest of my life
"Alexa play Sounds of Silence"
*Hello Darkness my old friend...*
"Oh no now I'm doing it!"
"Hello, this song, my old friend..."
_Thanks, now you've got the FFVII theme stuck in my head just from mentioning it, you soggy single tennis shoe._
_soggy single tennis shoe_
ouch. I'm hanging onto that one for later.
@@coffeestainedwreck Do it, you coward
When the FFVII logo showed up my brain shuffled through the songs in the game.
My favorite battle theme from a game is Dinosaur Boss Battle from Ocarina of Time. It only plays for the boss fight against King Dodongo and Volvagia, but I think because of that I associate that song with some sort of fire monster. Also that opening gets me everytime when it starts, like "oh shit! That's a dragon, I'm dead!"
I really miss learning these neat things about music theory in your videos and the way you relate them to soundtracks. Your love of soundtracks is something I relate vastly towards, and I love your unique humor you add to your videos which makes them all the more engaging & enjoyable
This was a good mental breakdown, though as a layman in music theory I can't help but feel that this seems right. The mere-exposure effect is so huge, it makes sense that it applies to music too. I mean, the whole video about the reward for anticipation revolves around the listener being familiar with the piece prior to listening.
The oldest piece of wisdom related to music was that line about how it "soothed the savage beast".
You know, when someone steps up to the plate and develops paleopsychology, these truths must be covered within that theory.
I've been watching your stuff for a little bit and this is one of my favorites! Keep up the amazing work!!
I totally knew about all of this. That's why I like listening to music I know, rather then music I dont know. And I always like the music more after I've heard it lots of times.
Just thought I'd mention, DP2 uses "Take On Me' during an earlier scene with Wade and Vanessa...
One challenge to overcome when producing/mixing music is repetition. The longer you spend on a song the less objective and critical you get. Your ears get fatigued and less sensitive to frequencies and as a result you make decisions you wouldn't normally make the first time you hear something. You also get attached to a certain performance, for instance a guitar solo that will never be recorded the same way twice or a vocal run that was just improvised on the spot. If you are ever given a different recording to replace it with you have a dismissive feeling with the new track because you had heard the original so many times.
Another example is seeing your favorite band live. You listen to their album over and over and then when you see the live show it's mixed differently, the room gives it a weird reverb, the vocalist may have had a cold, all the solos are different. Its never the same as that one recording you first heard.
The regular battle theme usually isn't the most popular piece of music from most games, though. Usually it's a special boss theme that doesn't play often, or a final boss theme, or some piece of non-battle music like an ending theme, area theme, etc. However, these themes usually use leitmotifs that have played throughout the game prior.
9:04 Repetition Legitimizes *Adam Neely's voice*
Watch and listen to enough Broadway and you'll realize that industry has the repetition of thematic bits of music through stories pretty much mastered. Hamilton alone has so many little musical call backs within later pieces of music scattered throughout their play that it's no wonder it became so popular so fast. And that's without considering the social implications of the show with its casting and portrayal of the characters.
Now i know why i like anime sountracks so much.
Also music from rpgs
I'm gonna say some random anime stuff since you mentioned it and assume you understand what I'm talking about.
Speaking of anime and leitmotifs(how do you even spell this), it's so satisfying when some anime uses their OP for the final act (like Konosuba did) even when I know it's sort of a lazy decision.
I know it would never happen, but I hope sideways explains how episode 19 from Demon Slayer works so well musically because I've seen many people claim that they cried in this scene when there's nothing visually or narratively sad. My personal theory is that it was possible because the soundtrack they used for this episode used the leitmotif of Tanjiro's theme present throughout the show. Not many people talk about music/soundtrack in anime :P
The thing about repetition actually got me thinking about songs that repeat the same melodic line, but constantly add more to it, building up into something epic from something simple.
Songs like You Are Not Alone from Final Fantasy IX, HOPES and DREAMS/SAVE the World from Undertale, Heaven's Tower from Final fantasy XI, Libera Me From Hell from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann...
They lift you up because they may be repeating, but they still get better.
“Repetition Legitimizes” - Adam Neely
Megalovania is everyone’s favorite track from Undertale (despite not even originally being from Untertale) not because it’s the best track but because sans is the hardest boss fight. (Also the track itself happens to be quite repetitive.) My favorite track happens to be Waterfall. Not even a battle theme. Not because I have some superiority complex and I actively chose to be atypical, but because I took myself from under 100g to over 1000g using only the ferry, so I was listening to that one quite a bit.
Quick reminder that Waterfall is the same song as Ruins.
The Happy Madman Same melody. Saying it’s the same song is a step too far in my opinion. But yeah, the fact that they are the same melody is relevant here. That could be part of why I enjoy waterfall so much but it I mean, I also listened more to waterfall than I ever did ruins.
@@TheHappyMadman *niko*
2:00
I believe you may be reading too much into the usage of "Rubberband Man" there.
Hey, just want to add a tidbit for the Page 113 mindbreaker:
In Daniel Kahnemann's book "Thinking - Fast and Slow", he mentions something similarly scary (at least it was for me): There was an experiment performed at a Coffee Shop where psychologists put a painting behind and above the counter where customers paid. On Odd days (day 1, day 3 etc), they would hang a random image. On Even days, they would hang an image of an eye, or of someone looking right at the counter.
What they found was that on the even days, people would be more likely to leave tips and the tips were larger. They explained this by theorizing that the customers had a subconscious feeling of being "watched" and "judged", so they left more money out of shame.
After reading that page, I couldn't walk normally down the street or in a shop, I'd just be looking for any piece of art or "marketing", for fear of being tricked into buying something that I didn't need or want. It seems silly in hindsight, but I was scared at the thought of not having agency in my own choice
I know I'm 2 years late, but I frggin' love the humor in this
I absolutely LOVE Jeremy Soule's soundtrack in Skyrim and other games. He and Trevor Morris have more unique approaches to fantasy games. Scince, I see you do too, maybe you could talk on what they do wright sometime?
What exactly is "unique" about Soule's music? I agree that it's great, but I don't see what he is doing that others aren't
@@Brabbel93 I feel like he doesn't take a over powerful or grand approach to his soundtracks. He makes it quiet and beautiful in a way that still conveys the same power.
@@Aethrin Agreed. He "wraps" the gameplay and exploration inside a comfy blanket that you almost don't feel is there but you will definitely miss it when it's not. In Skyrim in particular the music holds the environments together and transports you into the game seamlessly. I recall his KOTOR stuff was a little more obviously cinematic, but Skyrim actually feels intimate, as if it's the player who's humming the music as the games progresses.
So, the reason I initially fell in love with the movie The Perks of Being a Wallflower is because I recognized "Come on Eileen" from my millions of rewatches of the movie Tommy Boy. I realized this pretty quickly in the theatre and my guard just dropped. So it was repetition, but not unawareness. It came more from Tommy Boy than from Come on Eileen itself (the first time). So, how would that factor into this?
Also, I love your channel. Thank you
Love your videos so much. Always eye opening!
I've been binging your videos today. You've given me some new appreciation for musics role in film and games. Not that I can judge it myself further than the poppy "I like this", but hearing you talk about it has shown me that it goes a lot deeper than I thought.
Id reccomend rewatching your 4 chord video in pair with this one, i think it works well as a related exploration into the same topic.
To give my own uneducated 2 cents, Music is language without established words, and things like repetition, genre, or even general cultural conventions help establish a base line to build upon. Its sorta like how a video game has to establish its rules before it lets you play.
Without it we have nothing to compare it too, repetition is neccesary for effective communication. I think in the Hall of the Mountain King works as a good example. We understand the story told through its repeating motif, not based on the motif itself, but on the changes that happen to it.
I think its fine to enjoy a well written song because of repetition, its like the movie The Prestige, with each subseqant viewing you understand it better, and can appreciate how it is building towards its climax.
In your 4 chords video you mention how the classic music has a greater payoff than the popsong as it invest more time into the build up. But first it establishes what is resolved and then takes that away from you. Its still operating on the same instinct as the repetition, instead using its absence to make us tense, and its return as a resolution.
I think this also happens outside the song as well, by associating what we were doing at the time with the song itself, so that with repetition it reinforces a meaning to the listener thats entirely outside the song itself.
I dont think you need to be scared of repition, as it is first in service of establishing and then communicating meaning.
Just rewatched your Watchmen video. Your discusion of minimalism there also works. Similar to how minimalism isnt about a story its, about immersion in a mood or theme, id argue the simplicity and repetiton of pop music are about immersing you in a general mood.
Yes. Great points. Few compositions have no repetition in them. If you had a composition with no repeating parts, you would at least have to listen to it many times before you could "get" what it's trying to say. Repetition is why things like sonata form and rondo form are so common in classical music - even if the composition is quite complex, it still comes back to something that's familiar (and if you are familiar with the music style, you already kind of exist certain basic structures before you have even heard the composition, so it's also repetition in that sense). And this actually happens even in some serialist compositions (not really familiar with that style of music, but we had to analyze a couple of pieces with 12 tone rows at a music analysis course, and even they had a structure that made sense). Just because you have to play all of the 12 notes before you can repeat any of them doesn't mean the structure of the song doesn't have any repetition.
Because the serialist "melodies" sound pretty nonsensical, it's a lot more difficult to hear the repetition. And this is actually why some music is more "demanding" to listen to. In order for the piece to "make sense" to the listener, there needs to be something familiar with it. You can't just introduce random themes and then throw them away - that just doesn't make sense to the listener and it sounds like the composer has no idea of what they want to achieve. You need a structure, and a structure usually implies some repetition. Can anything even sound structured if there is absolutely no repetition?
I really like this part of your post:
_"Music is language without established words, and things like repetition, genre, or even general cultural conventions help establish a base line to build upon. Its sorta like how a video game has to establish its rules before it lets you play."_
Without any kind of repetition you can't really find any kind of patterns. And we like patterns. That's how we make sense of something, even of things that don't necessarily have patterns. This is also why people usually like a certain genre of music. You have music that uses similar patterns, and when enough songs are based on similar elements, they become a genre of music. Nobody would say they like rock music if they didn't have any idea of what to expect from a rock song.
I'm starting to become that dog who returned from Nam:
My teachers love experimental music with very little repetition, if you could call it repetition. Thus "if you want to make pop music repete as you like, but if you want to be academically accepted you have to be original and change your musical ideas often throughout your piece / work".
Personally, although I like leitmotifs, I found a problem in them, which is mentioned by I don´t remember who, but explains that in early Wagner's operas the concept of leitomotifs was very pale and wouldn´t actually connect with people, even more if it was a very short melody - I found that problem myself while composing. Later romantics such as Bruckner, Mahler, Strauss and Korngold actually solved that problem better by extendind their motifs into long melody lines.
I'm available to discuss this.
Really great video! I love how thorough it is. Definitely subscribed now. Thanks for making!
Loved this video. I don't think any other youtuber out there can transition from movie score review to eldritch revelation so seamlessly.
I had a friend invited to my house, not a music knowledgeable person, he was watching a talent show video that featured the Game Of Thrones music in there. He had expressed to me before that, his apathy for orchestral music. He listens chillout edm mostly. So it was a surprise, when this theme played, when he turned to me and he said: Why don't you make music like this? This is awesome!
It took me a few seconds, to make a response out of spite, i remembered all the times we encountered listening to this theme. I put the pieces together, and i responded with a hypothesis that was exactly as the book said: unconscious listening over multiple times, can have great appreciation effect of a music piece, after one conscious listening.
This is especially interesting because I find that the opposite sensation applies to me; I tend not to enjoy especially repetitive music much, but beyond that, listening to something too much, anything really, makes me tired of it, for very long periods of time. Even a 50 song playlist for me has to be changed after hearing each song enough, perhaps a dozen times in a month. There are songs I like more than others, of course, and I've noticed I get least tired of the least repetitive songs, things without choruses or having very different sections mainly.
Perhaps as a result of this, I most enjoy any song the first time, or perhaps the first few times, that I ever hear it. Once I know every note after hearing it a lot, it becomes more mundane, more predictable, more simple for me. I lose interest somewhat. There are songs that I listen to sometimes now that I love more for having not heard them in a decade, or other songs I just discovered recently. I found out about The Protomen and they became one of my favorite bands instantly, but even with all the inventive music, I don't want to listen to them a lot anymore because I know most of their songs now.
I get the sense from all this music theory that I might represent an anomaly here, which would be supported by how consistently most people seem to listen to the same music. My fiancee has 1 playlist of tracks she likes to listen to in almost any situation, she adds things but never removes things, it just expands, and she barely ever creates any new playlists or listens to entirely different sets of music. This is very interesting to me. If anybody reads all this, please respond and share your perspective, I'm very curious.
I suppose some brains are wired a little differently from others. Generally, I have a similar response but to a lesser degree. Regardless of whether or not I like a song, repetition can plant a song in my memory, but overplay can kill any feelings I have for a song, particularly if I was already "meh" to "mildly stimulated positive/negative" about a song to begin with. The sole exception to this rule for me is if I hate a song, in which overplay tends to make my hatred for a song skyrocket (Example: I have always hated Lewis Capaldi's hits. Aesthetically speaking, I am not into that kind of song. The constant playing of "Someone you Loved" and "Before you Go" has only served to sharpen my disgust for these songs.) With songs I adore, while overplay will never make me dislike them, a song that I like that is overplayed will begin to lose most of my interest (Example: Very few songs could enthrall me like King Crimson's "21st Century Schizoid Man" did on my first listen. I could imagine the song's storyline, a tragic tale of a man losing his sanity to the horrors of war. The music was all I could hope for aesthetically, even if it can be a rough listen, but that just served to strike my fancies even more so. However, subsequent listens have begun to feel noticeably dry of the passion I first felt for the song. I'll still listen to it, but I need to take breaks from my favorite song to fully enjoy it like I did the first time.)
Of course, this can apply to particular segments of songs, too. This may be why I am not as quick to fall head over heels for the "70's revival" trend in pop music. Seeing as 1975-85 disco is an incredibly repetitive genre, this particular style is one I would not normally care about.
Of course, the "wired differently" part comes into play when explaining why people like myself react this way. In my later school years, some teachers and social workers thought that I may be somewhat autistic, specifically on the line of Asperger's Syndrome. Perhaps my brain chemicals perceive music in a different way due to an inborn thing, or perhaps my brain is fine, I just have different standards for what is acceptable in music.
In my experience, when I am learning a new piece of music the more familiar it feels to me the more jarring it is when a note goes the opposite direction than I am anticipating and my brain dislikes it. It often takes many times of singing it through to break my brain's initial resistance to those note directions and now I have a way to hack that, thank you.
My brain just got hijacked. It makes so much sense.
Keep up the amazing work sideways! Always incredible videos
This is like a sort of confirmation bias. Crazy.
I realized most of this a few years back and realized it explained everything about my musical tastes. I tend to really like videogame music, I also really like meme music, I also really like remixes of songs, I like song mashups, I really love leitmotifs. What do all of those have in common? It's listening something you already know. It repeats.
Like I think the only reason I like senbonzakura is because I came across it in a compilation and convinced myself I'd heard it before, I played it over and over again trying to remember where I'd heard it, and slowly I began loving it more and more. Had I heard it before? Or did it just feel familiar from playing over so many times? I have no idea, I just know it led me down the weeb music rabbit hole
Really really good video, definitely one of my favorites of yours in a while.
Love your videos, super engaging and always interesting! Keep it up!
Megalovania from Undertale must have been so popular because of how much people had to hear it in game.
Megalovania was also in his ROMhack that he made before Undertale so I bet a lot of fans have been hearing Megalovania way before they decided to become a murderous psychopath.
Listening to all those remixes, motif switches, etc from the community still has the same effect though
Great video, great explanations but I'm eh on the whole mind-blowing thing.
Like, I enjoy some art by feel (and that's probably largely 'cause of repetition), and some art by thought (through analysis). I think it augments my enjoyment in the first way (liking it through feel), if analysis is particularly thought-provoking and/or clever.
Wow....Your work is absolutely amazing
My brain is in shock and you just added two books to my immediate reading list. So many things about repetitive music suddenly make so much more sense. Brilliant video!
As a person who knows about music theory, and also enjoys minimal techno, all that repetition stuff made intuitive sense to me. Also the "track getting deeper thing," haven't you felt that before? You haven't been deeply satisfied by a piece of music that you've heard a thousand times, BECAUSE you've heard it a thousand times? The "planted in your head thing" isn't terrifying either, that's just how getting into a genre works. If I learn the conventions of a particular genre, then I can anticipate certain elements of a piece in that genre without ever having heard it before, and be more satisfied. I think I've just thought a lot about this in the process of going from strictly classical musician to electronic music producer.
Songs of particular genres reward their respective fans for expecting what comes in the song