An Explanation

I suppose, since I didn't get to in class, that I should explain my video selection.

We were told to find videos that use electronic music, and also some how fits into our major. Since my major is psychology, that ain't easy.

With the MIDI animation videos, it's easy to see what the basic idea is. Different color dots coordinate with different MIDI voices, and the pitch of those voices is higher or lower as the dot is higher or lower on the animation plane. These dots are often times used to make little pictures. And, by some miracle, these pictures seem to make music that fits in with the rest of the song on first hearing.

This is where the psychology kicks in. Especially in the fourth one on the bar, the pictures are quite ornate and it seems that it's impossible that the notes that coordinate with each dot could be part of the song. That's because it is impossible. Especially the picture of the Choccobo (wierd bird looking thing.)

The pictures are made, most likely, without regard to the pitches that they will be creating. There are some exceptions, such as the line in the side of a campitalized "F". Those can easily be made into chords. But, the more complex pictures can't have any place in the music. It is made to sound as if they do by reducing the durration of the pitches. The notes in the pictures go by so fast that it's hard to keep track of them. Underneath the picture, or above it (or both) is the actual peice. By keeping the actual peice going, the mind focuses more on it's pitches and more on the pictures rather than on the sounds that the picture makes. The pictures are associated with the video game, and that games music is surrounding it, so the mind doesn't pay much attention to the picture's pitches and fills in the rest of the song so that it's hard to tell that something's missing.

This plays on a person's attention, and plays on the mind's automatic desire to fill in the gaps.