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(These musings were triggered when I read @Nikhil’s thread on ‘YouTube Streaming’ this morning)
Music videos are a very potent and popular format of music dissemination today, but they can also be polarising. While some gorge on them, there may be others who shun them. I wanted to delve a bit into the subject to trigger a nuanced appreciation of the issue.
What essentially a music video does is it augments the music (which is the primary material being conveyed) by supporting it with visuals - whether of the actual performance or something else. What is happening here essentially is that along with our auditory sense, the music video also captures our visual sense. And gives a combined AV experience.
What could be the pro’s of such an approach to listening to music? I can think of:
1. Less external distraction as the eyes are engaged too. This will help capture the generally more distracted audience. Is that why teenagers get attracted to music videos? May be. But given that the distractedness world over has increased significantly over the last 20-30 years, music videos (or some form of AV) can engage the masses better.
2. Augment the story conveyed through the music by appropriate visuals (stationary or moving). Remember the popularity of ‘Chhayageet’ in the 70s-80s? It’s essentially this. The musical message gets reinforced by the visuals. In fact, in Indian culture, ‘Sangeet’ which is the common term for music, as definition stood for ‘gaayan’, ‘vaadan’ and ‘nritya’ - not just the former two. There was usually a visual element inbuilt into the music - whether classical or folk, especially folk.
In fact, before the 1920’s or so, that is before recorded music arrived, mankind consumed music always with the visuals - you could only listen to the music live - and saw the performers/performance as well. So, one can say we are kind of used to (programmed to?) AV listening.
Listening to music without any visual input is therefore a relatively recent phenomenon, not more than 100 years old, starting with the gramophone. But then, in these 100 odd years (and especially the first 60 odd till the 70’s before TV became mainstream), mankind listened to a lot of recorded music - in fact developed a keen interest and following of music in this period due to the accessibility provided by records/cassettes/CDs and the biggest of them all - the radio. At least three generations have developed their musical following primarily through music devoid of accompanying visual content.
So one could say, the last century, which in many ways inculcated the music listening habit could have in some way reversed the original conditioning of music with visuals (till 19th century). The new conditioning of ‘closing your eyes and meditating on the music’ must have got reinforced strongly in us.
That brings us to the possible contentions against music videos:
1. The main argument against is essentially the first pro above flipped. Many of us avid listeners, especially audiophiles might feel that it is very difficult, even impossible to focus intently on the musical content while being distracted by the visuals in the music video. With the brain’s reception and processing divided between two different sensory inputs, its capacity to focus on the nuances in both the musical as well as audio attributes reduces. This makes attentive and/or analytical listening difficult. Try listening to a Youtube musical video (vs an audio CD of the same performance) and you’d easily experience this challenge.
2. The other downside of music accompanied by video is that it doesn’t permit the imagination of the listener to create his/her own visualisation. It’s kind of like reading a novel vs. watching a movie made on the novel. The visuals in the music video will dominate, therefore creating an identical visual in each listener’s mind. And that visual or parts of it could carry over even when you are listening to just an audio playback of the music later.
So we see that there are two sides to the coin (as there always are to each coin) when it comes to music videos. And it’s not a question of what’s better, or which format should I listen to my music in. The answer will be contextual - to both the preference of the person as well as the purpose of listening.
So, like many younger music lovers find it, they prefer to explore new music on YouTube videos. And then follow up with keen repeated listening of the tracks/albums they like on pure audio music streaming services like Spotify or Gaana.
There are also some musical presentations that suit the AV format. For example orchestras - one friend I know loves watching YouTube videos of 40 piece (instruments) orchestras playing old Hindi songs. Because you get to not just hear, but also see the instrument being played or the singer’s expressions. In fact this can be generalised to most live music - Concerts for example. Remember MTV Unplugged? Or watched Queen’s live concerts on YouTube? You’d get what I mean. It’s not the same though with a Hindustani classical concert where the artists express exclusively/dominantly through their voice/instruments.
But when you are sitting in your lounger in the night winding down with a glass of drink, you are more likely to put on the vinyl or CD of your favourite artist and get lost in it.
(This is a musing and no way meant to be do/don’t advice. Each one of us is different and so will be our optimum choices. What’s your choice when it comes to listening to music - with video or without? And it won’t be as bipolar for most of us, so when/which music do you like to listen to as music video and when/which as pure audio? Share in your experiences and thoughts).
Music videos are a very potent and popular format of music dissemination today, but they can also be polarising. While some gorge on them, there may be others who shun them. I wanted to delve a bit into the subject to trigger a nuanced appreciation of the issue.
What essentially a music video does is it augments the music (which is the primary material being conveyed) by supporting it with visuals - whether of the actual performance or something else. What is happening here essentially is that along with our auditory sense, the music video also captures our visual sense. And gives a combined AV experience.
What could be the pro’s of such an approach to listening to music? I can think of:
1. Less external distraction as the eyes are engaged too. This will help capture the generally more distracted audience. Is that why teenagers get attracted to music videos? May be. But given that the distractedness world over has increased significantly over the last 20-30 years, music videos (or some form of AV) can engage the masses better.
2. Augment the story conveyed through the music by appropriate visuals (stationary or moving). Remember the popularity of ‘Chhayageet’ in the 70s-80s? It’s essentially this. The musical message gets reinforced by the visuals. In fact, in Indian culture, ‘Sangeet’ which is the common term for music, as definition stood for ‘gaayan’, ‘vaadan’ and ‘nritya’ - not just the former two. There was usually a visual element inbuilt into the music - whether classical or folk, especially folk.
In fact, before the 1920’s or so, that is before recorded music arrived, mankind consumed music always with the visuals - you could only listen to the music live - and saw the performers/performance as well. So, one can say we are kind of used to (programmed to?) AV listening.
Listening to music without any visual input is therefore a relatively recent phenomenon, not more than 100 years old, starting with the gramophone. But then, in these 100 odd years (and especially the first 60 odd till the 70’s before TV became mainstream), mankind listened to a lot of recorded music - in fact developed a keen interest and following of music in this period due to the accessibility provided by records/cassettes/CDs and the biggest of them all - the radio. At least three generations have developed their musical following primarily through music devoid of accompanying visual content.
So one could say, the last century, which in many ways inculcated the music listening habit could have in some way reversed the original conditioning of music with visuals (till 19th century). The new conditioning of ‘closing your eyes and meditating on the music’ must have got reinforced strongly in us.
That brings us to the possible contentions against music videos:
1. The main argument against is essentially the first pro above flipped. Many of us avid listeners, especially audiophiles might feel that it is very difficult, even impossible to focus intently on the musical content while being distracted by the visuals in the music video. With the brain’s reception and processing divided between two different sensory inputs, its capacity to focus on the nuances in both the musical as well as audio attributes reduces. This makes attentive and/or analytical listening difficult. Try listening to a Youtube musical video (vs an audio CD of the same performance) and you’d easily experience this challenge.
2. The other downside of music accompanied by video is that it doesn’t permit the imagination of the listener to create his/her own visualisation. It’s kind of like reading a novel vs. watching a movie made on the novel. The visuals in the music video will dominate, therefore creating an identical visual in each listener’s mind. And that visual or parts of it could carry over even when you are listening to just an audio playback of the music later.
So we see that there are two sides to the coin (as there always are to each coin) when it comes to music videos. And it’s not a question of what’s better, or which format should I listen to my music in. The answer will be contextual - to both the preference of the person as well as the purpose of listening.
So, like many younger music lovers find it, they prefer to explore new music on YouTube videos. And then follow up with keen repeated listening of the tracks/albums they like on pure audio music streaming services like Spotify or Gaana.
There are also some musical presentations that suit the AV format. For example orchestras - one friend I know loves watching YouTube videos of 40 piece (instruments) orchestras playing old Hindi songs. Because you get to not just hear, but also see the instrument being played or the singer’s expressions. In fact this can be generalised to most live music - Concerts for example. Remember MTV Unplugged? Or watched Queen’s live concerts on YouTube? You’d get what I mean. It’s not the same though with a Hindustani classical concert where the artists express exclusively/dominantly through their voice/instruments.
But when you are sitting in your lounger in the night winding down with a glass of drink, you are more likely to put on the vinyl or CD of your favourite artist and get lost in it.
(This is a musing and no way meant to be do/don’t advice. Each one of us is different and so will be our optimum choices. What’s your choice when it comes to listening to music - with video or without? And it won’t be as bipolar for most of us, so when/which music do you like to listen to as music video and when/which as pure audio? Share in your experiences and thoughts).
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