I’m pretty fascinated by psychoacoustics -
- There are certain things that are perhaps ‘inherent within our humanity,’ and this also applies to music. Why do minor chords sound sad? Major chords happy? Why do we tap our feet to the beat? Repel in wretched horror to the nails on the chalkboard?[1] – but we have to distinguish between sound and music. Pitch is a naturally occurring thing – stuff vibrates. Time is natural as well – stuff happens, entropy takes place. Music, on the other hand, is a human phenomenon. We have both pitch and time nicely wrapped up in a single experience. Moreover, we manipulate pitch to create the maddeningly complex patterns within scales and chords in the vertical, timeless aspect, but also how chord progressions function, on both horizontal and vertical axes.
That is music, and perhaps there are specific things that evoke specific emotions. I remember I once came upon this chord and it instantly reminded me of snow. Not really just snow, but a very depressing, grey, slow snow. Coincidentally, it’s the same chord Al di Moela uses in the beginning of one of his songs titled “Snow…” [somethingorother].[2] Well, it’s probably not a coincidence. Thus we have a debate here: (1) the meaning-as-experience existed[3] before the music was created, that is to say a human emotion for “sad” existed, and then the minor chord was “invented” – thus our alignment and perceived connection. (2) The music existed before the meaning, that is to say the listener created the meaning him or herself, and there is no pre-existing meaning, nor abundance of meaning.
This music-only argument isn’t the topic at hand, however, and I’m going to get into that. While we have our own theoretical strife within the medium of music, what happens when it’s applied to a visual/video component? It boils down to this: is there only one music that can possibly accompany a given anime? Is Ken Muramatsu the only composer that could have scored Kure-nai? Would it have been possible for Naoki Satou to write the music – different music? – can we even conceive of Kure-nai with different music, pre hoc? When we ponder these things, we split the audio and the visual into autonomous things. We cannot do this, necessarily, as there are two sides of the argument here: (1) if the visual is created before the music is composed, it is like an empty bucket, just waiting to be filled with water [music]. (2) If the visual and audio are coextensively written and applied, we cannot separate them into autonomous things, as they are hermeneutically inseparable and constitute a semiotic singularity – one thing and one thing only. We may try to separate them, but they are forever entwined in a mutual relationship of meaning in which they will forever connote one another until infinity.[4]
However, going back to (1), do picture a music-less anime as an empty bucket, and a faceless music (music as but a concept, a thing to fulfill the unfulfilled, with no actual notes or sounds) as its water. We have the container, we need the content. But is this bucket more so like a puzzle? – and the music the piece that fits perfectly? – and is there only one piece to this puzzle? Is there only one possible music that can fit this anime? No, in the strictest sense, since really, any music “would do,” but what is it behind those magnetic connections we so often come upon? What is it behind Kure-nai’s music that makes the whole thing so aesthetically appealing?
Now reverse the scenario. Picture music as the bucket or puzzle and the visual as the water or puzzle piece. Is there only one visual that can fit the music? But I don’t want to make this seem like one or the other has a frightening gravity that sucks the other onto it. The entities in our scenario have no mass, thus no weight, thus no gravity, thus no force that attracts things to it. If there is no force that attracts music to visual or vice versa, what adheres the two? Well that’s just the hands of the physical industry of anime pulling two together; but the point is to demonstrate how the autonomous entity of music “floats” in a space just as the visual component does. They simply exist somewhere in the world – the power of politics and economy are the things that pull them together to create our finalized medium of anime.
So, back to our original question, having grasped [hopefully] all the necessary facets of the theory: which came first? The visual or the music? The scene, or the sound?
Did you expect me to answer the question?[5]
[1] Although I read somewhere it may be some primeval instinct that is reminiscent of the screech of a giant, pre-man-eating predator?
[2] I don’t remember which album/song.
[3] The difference between experience and analysis is crucial here, again.
[4] I’m writing under the first part, because, well, the second part nullifies any argument whatsoever.
[5] Yet
6 Comments
This reminds me of one of those math questions where you have to prove something is the solution to an equation and find out if it’s the ONLY solution.
Since my head’s hurting now, I’ll just say in blind faith that I can’t imagine it being so for visual + audio, had someone else handled the production of the music to go with the scene, you’d get something totally different, for better or worse.
Which comes first then (or should come first?), I don’t know either, but I do know that when there’s a particularly striking scene+music combination, listening to the music alone automatically generates the scene in my head, whereas watching the scene muted doesn’t really achieve the reverse. But that’s just me and my hurting head right now.
Just because it’s, um, Opposites Day or something, I’m going to be terribly reactionary and suggest an authorial intent approach to the original question. So, for example, apparently the director of Gundam SEED, Mitsuo Fukuda, has said that T.M. Revolution’s music directly inspired much of the tone of the show. Which does kind-of make sense when you watch it. So why not – hypothetically – sit the creative team behind Kurenai down round a table and ask them?
This is probably too pragmatic an answer.
Whilst various productions will differ, I like to imagine that what “came first” was simply a feeling for the show. That we shouldn’t think of individual elements as preceding the dramatic whole, but as coming out of an earlier imagined thing. i.e. there was a general idea of a series (which existed as a whole), then came the constituent elements each referring to that, finally there was the “whole” that we watched.
That makes me think that even if say, the scene actually came first in the production, it can only be understood with reference to the intended role of music, voice acting and so forth in achieving the idea. So rather than the process leading us in circles of interlaced meaning, we can just refer to an (imperceptible) pre-production series, and from there to the minds of creators, and from there to bloody anything. Basically, what came first was everything (now I come to think of it, much like in your earlier post on meaning).
Both came at the same time? XD
Well, I think that fusion between whether or not the scene or the sounds came first from our perspective comes from our experiences, like have we heard that specific pitch/time arrangement before, what we associate that with, and if the visuals fit that. Or vice versa, where the visuals remind of a certain situation, giving us the thought “this is what should be played at that scene”, and seeing if the music does the scene justice in our eyes. I think before the stimulus gets to us, the question isn’t as important?
issa-sa: Yeah, I was thinking about using some kind of math problem to explain this, but that didn’t work out. Aren’t those like where you have a quadratic (or something) then two possible other problems next to it, then you have to graph it and shade in certain areas and whatnot…that’s making my head hurt as well.
I too agree on the ‘music reminds me of the scene but not vice versa’ thing. Maybe music is more of an “anchor” as opposed to visuals. Supposedly the olfactory sense is the strongest, and I can concur with the few occasions where I smell something really reminiscent.
IKnight: No pragmatism allowed! But in any case, I don’t think asking Mr. Muramatsu would solve this broad question – it would only relieve ourselves of that small bit of distress. The Seed example is a good one because there was clearly an influence and we do have the intent of the author in mind (he’s not dead yet). But what of cases where there are neither prerequisites? 5cm per second was largely based off “One More Time, One More Chance,” and Rit-chan was saying how Tenmon or Shinkai used the popular song only because they knew everyone knew it, or something along those lines. Perhaps in that case the mood of the entire film would be different if the featured song were to be changed? But it’s pretty much impossible to test this kind of thing out, us having already been exposed to it and therefore liable to bias any new kind of opinion on a finalized product whose music has been switched around.
Coburn: You’re probably right – I was writing this insofar as we could separate music and visuals into autonomous things: however, an interesting case is FMA. Or so I’ve heard (no pun intended) that they insert classical pieces into various scenes. I haven’t seen the anime but that motion of insertion goes into that whole historical/cultural melting pot of madness we sorta discussed via Cowboy Bebop a while ago. And so in this case I think that our “scene or the sound” inquiry has an ‘urgent’ relevance in describing if FMA-minus-music were to actually be FMA-in-its-entirety before the music were to be actually applied. It takes into consideration the visuals of FMA, plus the “meaning” of the historical pieces they use, then the experience of the entire thing.
Blissmo: Perhaps…
TheBigN: That kind of reminds me an idiolectic “paradigmatic RAM” notion. I’m studying Spanish, but since I’m no good words don’t come easily. However, I’m starting to get a feel for the sound of the language and so when we have to conjugate verbs, there are some where I say “wait, does this have an e-i stem change or a e-ue stem change?” Most of the time you just feel it and so you get it right: I think it’s due to how we build phonologic libraries within our memories, and when we hear a word or are called upon to produce a word, we “search” these libraries for the corresponding answer – we don’t necessarily “produce” the sound of the word by ourselves, we just subconsiously search our databanks of sounds akin to how RAM works (I think). You’re right about it not being important until we experience it – but that’s exactly what this is; a questioning of the alignment of certain experiences, although I am splitting up “experience” here into “constituent” parts of visual/audio, much to the chagrin of the “CANNOT UNSE[E]PARATE!” line of thought.