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It's normal to play the same song over and over again (2016)

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Re: It's normal to play the same song over and over again (2016)

#121

Post by JKCalhoun »

xg15 wrote: post #109

Everyone should be able to enjoy art in the way they like - but be considerate of the people around you. The article starts with the anecdote that his son was seriously annoyed by the song - and then goes on to counter him with basically "but it's such a great song, it would be a shame if I could only listen to it for 3 minutes!" That's the musical equivalent of getting out your Triple Onionator with extra garlic for…

There are some songs that I think I enjoy because of their brevity. I sort of look forward to the encounter, pine for the song again when it's over.

Rather than put it on repeat though I always shuffle, preferring to (impatiently) await our next visit. (My music library is such now that it can be a while before it comes along again.)

Re: It's normal to play the same song over and over again (2016)

#122

Post by steinuil »

Buttons840 wrote: post #12
pseudoramble wrote: post #6

I appreciate this. I’ve had days where at work I’ve played a new song I’ve gotten into at least 30 times, sometimes with a few songs to break it up, often not though. I’ve always assumed it was slightly strange, but also probably not that strange. I also relate to the authors explanation. I’ll get tired of a song eventually, for a while, but one day come back to it and get into another usually less intense loop. I do…

Once you sleep on the song once or twice the enjoyment fades. Like that favorite song from the radio, you listen 4 or 5 times over several days and the excitement is gone. So you mine as well enjoy it 40 times in a row on day one.

For me the enjoyment fades only if the song itself is not very good to begin with; I start to notice the flaws and after a while I start to hate it and wonder why I even liked it in the first place. Good songs tend to pass the test of being listened to on repeat for me.

Re: It's normal to play the same song over and over again (2016)

#123

Post by JKCalhoun »

snarfy wrote: post #114
joebob42 wrote: post #48

I'm terrified of this. I've no idea why, but if I hear a song too many times in a couple day period I have a night of fever dreaming where I wake up over and over again to the song in my head. It's like my brain has over conditioned the pathway for that song and as soon as it starts trying to dream it falls into it and the dream breaks and I wake up. It happens to me a couple times a year and when I hear any of the s…

I once had a song stuck in my head every day for over two years! It got to the point I would hear a note from the melody with every step. Walking up stairs was horrible. The worst part was I didn't know what the song was. I figured out the melody on the piano, and once I finally figured out the song, it eventually stopped. The song? A stupid commercial jingle. "Meow meow meow meow..."

There was a period in my life when a mantra(?) of sorts was stuck in my head. Just a short phrase or word (I think actually for a long stretch the number "256" was stuck in my head). For reasons unknown to me I would repeat the phrase in my mind or under my breath — seemingly as a way to either keep focus on some current thought or to derail the current thought. I don't remember which.

I think I was under a lot of stress then — I have worked on a team or two where the project (and management) were stressful. So likely that is it.

(Also a tell: I began to notice my handwriting when I signed checks was deteriorating to something scrawly, uncontrolled — when I switched teams and made other changes in my life to reduce stress I found my signature return to the more graceful strokes I was used to.)

Musically, there is (still) often a song stuck in my head. But I put music on in the background nearly every day, seems to keep the song in my head moving along to something new....

Re: It's normal to play the same song over and over again (2016)

#124

Post by JKCalhoun »

ehnto wrote: post #75
joebob42 wrote: post #48

I'm terrified of this. I've no idea why, but if I hear a song too many times in a couple day period I have a night of fever dreaming where I wake up over and over again to the song in my head. It's like my brain has over conditioned the pathway for that song and as soon as it starts trying to dream it falls into it and the dream breaks and I wake up. It happens to me a couple times a year and when I hear any of the s…

I hope you never have to work retail, they often have the same approved songs on repeat all day. I worked at a gym, and to this day, there are songs I don't even like that pop up in my head. 3 years of hearing them every day just about drove me spare.

Collectively, the U.S. as a country, I think, have heard Hotel California enough. Thank you.

Re: It's normal to play the same song over and over again (2016)

#125

Post by JKCalhoun »

Buttons840 wrote: post #12
pseudoramble wrote: post #6

I appreciate this. I’ve had days where at work I’ve played a new song I’ve gotten into at least 30 times, sometimes with a few songs to break it up, often not though. I’ve always assumed it was slightly strange, but also probably not that strange. I also relate to the authors explanation. I’ll get tired of a song eventually, for a while, but one day come back to it and get into another usually less intense loop. I do…

Once you sleep on the song once or twice the enjoyment fades. Like that favorite song from the radio, you listen 4 or 5 times over several days and the excitement is gone. So you mine as well enjoy it 40 times in a row on day one.

My experience with albums (LPs, remember?) was that a handful of songs would attract me fairly quickly, while other's were, meh.

It was good that there were songs that hooked me early because I would wait patiently through the less-appealing songs for those good ones.

Some months or so later, the tracks had flipped — burned out on the hooky songs, loving the once-meh songs.

(I can specifically remember this to be the case with both Murmur and Reckoning when they came out — yes, I am old.)

Re: It's normal to play the same song over and over again (2016)

#126

Post by pseudoramble »

unsafecast wrote: post #108
Buttons840 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you sleep on the song once or twice the enjoyment fades. Like that favorite song from the radio, you listen 4 or 5 times over several days and the excitement is gone. So you mine as well enjoy it 40 times in a row on day one.

I'm the complete opposite. Playing music on repeat ruins it. But if I listen to a song/album relatively rarely, it feels just as good every time. I also notice new subtle details once in a while, and that makes it even better. I have songs that I absolutely love and have loved for years now. I just make sure not to overdo it.

Feel like this is probably a better way to manage it if I'm being honest. Actually, this is a bit of a similar way I'd listen to jam bands (Grateful Dead, Phish, Railroad Earth, etc.) Usually too long to listen to on repeat, but interesting enough to listen to many times and pick up on things.

Re: It's normal to play the same song over and over again (2016)

#127

Post by cypress66 »

frosted-flakes wrote: post #77
hiccuphippo wrote: post #60

And then there's this. People making 10 hour long videos of the same song on repeat: https://youtu.be/4T0QUdQu7RY https://youtu.be/xm3YgoEiEDc It must be a challenge or something.

I don't know why these exist, because YouTube does have a loop function.

Sometimes there are gaps at the beginning or end. These videos make the song loop perfectly.

Re: It's normal to play the same song over and over again (2016)

#128

Post by pseudoramble »

Buttons840 wrote: post #12
pseudoramble wrote: post #6

I appreciate this. I’ve had days where at work I’ve played a new song I’ve gotten into at least 30 times, sometimes with a few songs to break it up, often not though. I’ve always assumed it was slightly strange, but also probably not that strange. I also relate to the authors explanation. I’ll get tired of a song eventually, for a while, but one day come back to it and get into another usually less intense loop. I do…

Once you sleep on the song once or twice the enjoyment fades. Like that favorite song from the radio, you listen 4 or 5 times over several days and the excitement is gone. So you mine as well enjoy it 40 times in a row on day one.

For me, I think short term this is kinda how it works. Although a point I'd make is that is not that I enjoy it less often, it's just that I move onto other things.

Long term though, songs I loop like this can always return and restart their cycle. So it doesn't completely ruin it for me or anything after a few days.

Re: It's normal to play the same song over and over again (2016)

#129

Post by mgdlbp »

Reminds me of a cool hackathon project I saw a few years ago, The Infinite Jukebox. It finds pairs of beats in a song that sound alike and during playback has a chance at each beat with of jumping to its paired match, creating a seamlessly looped version of the song with added novelty from verses and choruses having varying order and length.

The original hack, done on song that works particularly well, is still up: http://infinitegangnamstyle.playlistmachinery.com

The playback code often gets stuck looping the first beat when loaded for the first time or when the tab loses focus, which is fixed by reloading.

It works quite well on songs with repetitive elements and instrumentation divided cleanly between beats. The original site for submitting arbitrary songs is broken, but a fork is hosted by someone else. Here with an instrumental piece it works well on: https://eternalbox.dev/jukebox_go.html?id=1LaCW0R8Q7oIY3tKtD...

An interesting series of posts on the creator's blog explains it works, how it interacts with the structure of pop songs, and how the parameters can be tuned for individual tracks.[1] And it's open source,[2] though the beat splitting is based on an API from (a company since purchased by) Spotify. It seems that once the initial processing is complete, the playback is purely client-side; this is probably why snapshots of the site at archive.org are fully functional, quite remarkably for such interactive content.[3]

There's also a variant where one playback 'needle' skips to similar parts of the track and one plays straight through, so that verses and choruses overlap as in a canon: https://eternalbox.dev/canonizer_go.html?id=7GhIk7Il098yCjg4...

[1] https://musicmachinery.com/2012/11/12/the-infinite-jukebox/

[2] https://github.com/UnderMybrella/EternalJukebox

[3] https://web.archive.org/web/2016/http://labs.echonest.com/Up...

Re: It's normal to play the same song over and over again (2016)

#130

Post by kazinator »

tkgally wrote: post #38
david927 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some composers are more repetitive than others. There’s an old joke: Knock knock Who’s there? Philip Glass Knock knock Who’s there? Philip Glass Knock knock Who’s there? Philip Glass

On the opposite end of the spectrum is Elliott Carter. He intentionally tried to avoid repetition in his works. I was into his string quartets for a while about forty-five years ago but haven’t heard them since. Maybe it’s time to listen to them again. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wse3ZoUXo5M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waQgZEGsUpw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6njANe60Evw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bi0…

> Maybe it’s time to listen to them again.

Elliott Carter would strongly disagree. :)

A lot of Baroque music is through-composed. For instance, the Prelude and Fugue forms that J. S. Bach composed some of his music in don't contain outright repetition, or not very much. Themes recur, of course, but in different settings: differently harmonized, in different keys and so on. The two-part form features repetition that may be omitted: while it's common to perform AABB, it can just be AAB, or AB. Sometimes there is a slightly alternative ending in B for when it is followed by A again. The Rondeau form has explicit repetition: AA BA CA ... XA.

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