What's the most difficult emotion for you to express in your music? (Relevant poll included)

[robogone]

mixed feelings of embarrassment, glee, guilt, sorrow and a need to escape quickly when you accidentally fart on your partner.

I never have managed to catch that.

Yes, once they escape they're a bugger to put back in again.

[Doug1978]

Great post Hink - thanks

Jan and myself usually clash in other threads, but in fairness that's a very thoughtful and interesting post by Jan here.

And thank you Robmobius and werp!


Finally, just as an additional idea for people to maybe ponder here, if you had agreed to be paid a fair bit of money to create an EP based around, say, different emotions for five different tracks, how would YOU do it?
(And no this isn't an offer!).
Those emotions might be simple, subtle, bold, repressed, transient, multi-faceted etc: all depending onhow you interpret building music around an emotional theme.
It would certainly be an interesting mental and arrangement challenge - especially for those who feel that a listener's emotional response can not effectively be influenced by the original artist's mood.

Honestly Doug, if someone wanted to pay me for such an EP I would tell them they have the wrong person. There are a few issues, one being that I would be making promises I'm not sure I could keep and as a result I would feel as if I am not being true to the person offering to pay me and I'm not being true to myself or my passion. Money is not a good motivator for me, I honestly believe that far too many people put money above things that should be a priority (the irony being posting this on xmas eve when commercialism reaches it's yearly high).

I'm sure most people will see it quite different but but my music means more to me than money, it brings me gifts money cannot buy. I suppose if if I was suddenly popular and people were buying my music I would complain much as long as it's understood that what the customer is buying is the music they are buying and the are no promises for the future. But TBH for me that shipped has sailed, sank on the way out of the harbor, was brought back up, sailed and sank again over and over until I realized I was simply on the wrong boat.

There's no doubt to anyone I'm sure that I am a sensitive and emotional man and I am not afraid to show my emotions. Music can make me laugh, make me cry, piss me off and make me happy, but when it's my music doing any of those things that's what I call success. Money cannot buy that, if I have learned anything from my observations of 55 years on this marble is there are some things money cannot buy and often those are the best things in life.

Happy holidays

Hope you have a great holiday time too

[jancivil]

to be paid a fair bit of money to create an EP based around, say, different emotions for five different tracks, how would YOU do it?

How is it to be judged? I would try to make it easy on myself and rely on things I've seen responses to, and that means an existing model 'in the repertoire' or what I've done. To persuade everyone to feel a certain thing relies on history, a shared history and you have to cue that.

But look at things that have been known to work. When JFK was assassinated, a tribute a lot of people got on the radio was Samuel Barber 'Adagio for Strings'.
You can look at it methodically and notice certain harmonies have a certain pull. Melodically: Everybody pretty much has a profound kind of sad behind Zappa Watermelon in Easter Hay.
Somewhere Over the Rainbow conveys yearning. These latter two are major mode, btw!
What's a happy and sort of warm and fuzzy tune? 'Consider Yourself' by Lionel Bart.
You just fell in love? you just met a girl named Maria...

So I would lean on history.

[Doug1978]

^^ it's a good idea about approaching the challenge from your own repertoire, and cuing a shared history.
Also, an excellent point about certain harmonies having a particular pull in some songs.

Thanks

[Jace-BeOS]

It's difficult for me to express emotions I don't have much experience with. Such as satisfaction.

You're Mick Jagger and I claim my £5.

[Jace-BeOS]

I like Hink's response to the inquiry about taking on a paying job to create a set of tracks for emotional intent. I would be rather concerned about my ability to provide what was hired. I've done that for hire without money once, and the cinematographer was there with me at the time to help me provide the desired moods. The most musically complex piece I made for that project never got used in the film, and I felt kinda was about that (final project student film by my friend and his college mates).

Also, when I start a piece of music, I rarely plan an emotion. I find the emotion through being my own listener. I let the music tell me what the emotions are. When I finished "Vacant Lot" a few days back, it took me a few listens (just listening) to come up with a title based on how it made me feel (pleasant but not exactly happy; melancholy but not overtly sad).

https://m.soundcloud.com/dysamoria/vaca ... ec-20-2014

Sometimes I DO aim for a mood. When I made "The Game Of Nothing", I intended, as an exercise, to aim in the direction of the style/tone/sound of the NIN album "With_Teeth". I also was in a mindset of rejecting the corruption and rank capitalism of my country and how it rules our lives through compulsion, making true living difficult if not impossible (a theme of several of my tracks at this point, and I hope to continue that). So that was anger and resigned irritation by intent, and it was not hard at all to express. As I said, anger is too easy. The same is true in performance as an actor.

https://m.soundcloud.com/dysamoria/the- ... g-bounce-3

But that's rare for me. I rarely choose where I'm going with a song. I usually let it choose for me and then i embrace that path along the way, and therefore I rarely feel difficulty in whatever expression comes of it.

Sometimes that means responding to (and recording) something that pops into my head, but I don't consider that a plan, and those often sound terrible on first take. The most relevant example is "The Accused", which was a spontaneous recording based on things popping into my head while thinking about a miserable long distance relationship breakup. It was easy to express those emotions, but not easy to get it to sound GOOD. It was painfully embarrassing to listen back to and I finally, while porting projects to Logic from Sonar, rebuilt and re-sung the thing, which was an enormously challenging task with the weird lyrical structure I'd chosen when i originally recorded it, and I ended up with a much better and less embarrassing result:

https://m.soundcloud.com/dysamoria/the- ... 1-march-24

But I need to redo the first verse at the very least. The emotion is kind of there and correct, a kind of sarcastic unhappy wry bitterness, but I think I sang it poorly and the inflection and rhythm is poor.

I'm very fond of expressing social outrage and other powerful emotions, but I'm ... I don't sound as good singing that way. I'm better off singing more like Martin Gore or Michael Stipe

https://m.soundcloud.com/dysamoria/danc ... of-the-end

than like Trent Reznor or early Jeremy Enigk (though I did a trilogy of vocals for a band once that were totally my version of early Sunnyday Real Estate... https://m.soundcloud.com/dysamoria/red- ... -dysamoria & https://m.soundcloud.com/dysamoria/red- ... -dysamoria). I probably could eventually improve on the performances of such things, vocally, but I think the expression of that stuff comes super easily to me right away.

I'm also in agreement with the complaints about what it sounds like when intentionally writing happy. A bunch of my oldest music (tracker mod format) is somewhat embarrassingly naive and cheesy sounding. Though I did once write an instrumental theme song for a lost children organization back then; I aimed at a somewhat panicked melancholia and actually hit the mark pretty well. http://dysamoria.com/music/downloads/hi ... _short.zip

Overall, I'm a highly emotional individual, so emotion in music matters a lot to me.

Thanks for the interesting thread everyone.

[Biome_Digital]

Happiness for me, no surprise there then!