Are you a moth or a cat?
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Over the years, I’ve found that there are basically two types of film score fans, moths and cats:
A moth is attracted to light, and keeps coming back to that light source over and over again. It’s the fan that keeps obsessing over a few single items, to the extent they know every single nut and bolt in them. They spend their lifetime on this. I’m not going to name names or forums, but I’m sure we can all think of some. The benefit is that you acquire deep knowledge of one, or a few topics, but you lose overview and exposure to many other great things. It’s the allegory of the cave and all that.
A cat, meanwhile, is curious and explores its territory. These fans explore whatever the artform has to offer, across many different styles and periods. The benefit is that you get great overview, but will always lose out to the moth in the areas that the moth has specialized.
Most of us probably have a little bit of both in us. I do have SOME moth in me, especially in regards to my deep dive into the life and work of John Williams. But mostly, let’s say 90%, I’m a cat. I’m just in love with everything the artform has to offer, and will spend my lifetime exploring, I think.
When it comes to film music I am surely more a moth than a cat. But I would also say, I have no ambition to be any kind of specialist or expert in that area, neither as a cat nor a moth. But when it comes to opinion on stuff, I rather have a very strong personal opinion on a very limited musical scope.
My key to explore New kinds of music was rarely some kind of explorer spirit. Mostly I learned about new music by people. Or movies.
Yes, I went to record stores and tried out new records just by the cover and sometimes discovered new interesting things. But never had any ambition for completeness. Always just looking for stuff I like or what suites me. Because, let’s be honest, there were times in my life where the music I listened to was part of my personal image and appearance like my dress and my hairdo.So, discovering and enjoying music has never been a scientific project. It’s rather like the garden in front of my personality’s home, that I love to maintain, grow stuff, spend time in and enjoy.
I love your laidback attitude! 😀
You speak about ‘completists’, and I have to grudgingly admit I have some of that in relation to some artists. Completism is definitely moth behaviour.
But I try not to judge too much. Both moths and cats have their benefits.
I think I am more a cat but maybe with some small wings 🙂 I am not really a completist that I must have everything but I can sometimes be hooked by a composer’s work for a time. There re things that always get me but I try and am interested in getting a broad range overview – although that certainly failes in general due to amount of stuff available – of any kind of style. But there are some composers like of course Goldsmith I don’t mind to hear every obscure bit they composed at least once.
Btw, otherwise I am also an owl 😉
Clearly a moth. Film music is just a part of my music interest, I am also into pop/rock/house/electronic and so on. I have little interest in the “exploring” of all kinds of scores that some people do. I often find more joy in a studio album of instrumental music than in a film score with all the usual elements of irritation, LOL. (Short tracks, repetition and so on.)
I am clearly aware of the musical limitations of the film score album. I am also more of a reader and writer than listener these days anyway.
That said, if and when some of my “holy grails” are released, nothing is more fun than that, and I am willing to pay big bucks for it. 😅
I love your laidback attitude!
You speak about ‘completists’, and I have to grudgingly admit I have some of that in relation to some artists. Completism is definitely moth behaviour.
But I try not to judge too much. Both moths and cats have their benefits.
I absolutely admire you wide knowledge and experience in film music, Thor. But I cannot estimate how much of the effort you spent on your music explorations is driven by your personal desires and passion for it and how much of it are the constraints of your job. Listening to music that I dislike or I don’t care for can be really hard for me.
I don’t envy you that part of your work.That’s a very good point, Gerate. I can’t tell you how many hundreds of scores I listen to every year that are pure crap. But I tell myself it’s worth it when I find those dozens of hidden gems that have received no exposure whatsoever (whether they’re orchestral or electronic or whatever). They deserve to be highlighted. But for the time being, this process works. Now that 90% of my music enjoyment is killed (post-tinnitus-worsening), it’s gotten even easier to discard those I dislike and latch on to those I like.
I wish I weren’t so much a cat. I often wish I were more of a moth. That I could just listen over and over again to the music I fell in love with during my formative years, and that was it for the rest of my life. But that’s simply not how my brain works.
I loved your image of gardening up there. So peaceful and relaxed. Something to strive for, I suppose, as one gets older.
Mothcat here!
According to my Libib record I only have 55 Shostakovich CDs, but these include sets. That’s all the symphonies, all the concertos, all the string quartets and trios and the quintet, Lady Macbeth and Cheryomushki and many of his film scores and a great number of other of his works. The ones I don’t have on disc I’ve probably hunted out on YouTube at one time or another. I also have 24 books on the life and times of Shostakovich, the dvd of Testimony (with a horribly miscast Ben Kingsley who almost gets away with it) and a framed pop art picture of Dmitri eviscerating Stalin with a beam of notes emanating from his eyes, a present from daughter number one. When I retire, I’ll be hinting at the gift of an original DDS signature to mark fifty years of fairly mediocre service to the insurance industry.
So moth.
But also cat for the breadth of the other scores, classical and “popular” music, the dozens if not hundreds of hours catching up online with composers I’d barely heard of or not at all. Not too many years ago I had to revise my “top five” composers, as Weinberg insinuated himself into the list thanks to a chance buy in HMV of his 12th symphony, written to commemorate the life of his great friend, um, Shostakovich…. Also, after years of shunning Mozart, I’m coming around to him, probably thanks to Classic FM (as I haven’t yet found Talk Sport on my car radio, must be there somewhere).
Regardless of whether I’m more cat or more moth, either way I do a lot of my listening in the early morning or in the evening, which makes me, like them, thoroughly crepuscular 🙂
Not sure how I would qualify myself. Like Tall Guy maybe… a mothcat…
I started my music collection step by step, and the very first albums I ever bought are still albums I love, cherish and turn to. But I accumulated a lot of music since then.
Some composers I know quite well, I have everything Gustav Mahler ever composed in several versions, have read books about him and his music.
Since I don’t get paid to do it, I only have to listen to music I enjoy. I don’t seek out new albums by listening to all that’s out there. However, I try our new music if it seems interesting, be it because of good reviews or recommendation, and I have bought new albums by artists/composers I don’t know on a whim. I listen.
Film music is just a part of the music I listen to. No doubt a big and important part, but just a part nevertheless.I said I wasn’t going to name names or forums, but a particular aspect of moth behaviour is one I witness on FSM and JWFAN. The extreme micro focus on micro issues within scores. For example, there could be a number of posts that go something like this:
“There’s a 2-second cymbal crash that appears as Luke Skywalker hits the ground inbetween the second-to-last tree if you freezeframe the Dantooine training sequence at 45:37 in THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. This was inexplicably left off both the first and second 1980 Empire edition. It was included in the Millennium Falcon Ultrabox release, but the sound waves were muffled to S2X as opposed to the proper S2Y. And let’s not forget the flute interlude for when Luke raises his eyebrows, inbetween the cymbals in the reissue on the Megaphone singles release in 1984….”
Stuff like that.
If you said to these people — “hey, instead of obsessing over that, why not sit back, have a glass of red wine and lounge out to Morricone’s COME IMPARAI AD AMARE LE DONNA?”, you would get a blank stare in return.
I find it amusing. But credit where credit is due — we need people who go so deeply into things, I suppose, even if it comes at the cost of exploring the big, dangerous world out there.
“There’s a 2-second cymbal crash that appears as Luke Skywalker hits the ground inbetween the second-to-last tree if you freezeframe the Dantooine training sequence at 45:37 in THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. This was inexplicably left off both the first and second 1977 Empire edition. It was included in the Millennium Falcon Ultrabox release, but the sound waves were muffled to S2X as opposed to the proper S2Y. And let’s not forget the flute interlude for when Luke raises his eyebrows, inbetween the cymbals in the reissue on the Megaphone singles release in 1984….”
😀
The fun is, you are not exaggerating one little bit.
He, he…yeah, if anything, I’m UNDERSTATING it.
But listen, I can make fun of this particular anorak moth behaviour all day long, but I don’t really want to make fun of ANALYSIS or research as such. That’s a very crucial thing, and an important tool to have. I remember when I wrote my thesis, I had to spend MONTHS deeply analyzing the music in E.T., EDWARD SCISSORHANDS and BLADE RUNNER, down to fucking time codes. It was excruciating grunt work, but it had to be done if I were to have anything meaningful to say about the works as a whole, what the music is trying to do, i.e. the fun part of analyzing something.
But that’s also my point, really. You sometimes have to look UP and see how your analysis can be used. Otherwise, it’s just picking things apart and then stopping there, i.e. analysis in its original etymological meaning. We speak about “nuts and bolts”, but nuts and bolts are usually part of a construction. Sometimes you have to look up to see how these nuts and bolts fit into the construction. That’s what’s missing in many of these posts I see; they’re content with just breaking things apart.
As I said earlier, I do find myself “mothing out” on a few things. John Williams, the ALIEN films, stuff like that. Heck, even the long Antonioni article I just shared. But I try to remember and look UP now and then. I like Malte’s description earlier, a cat with tiny, flapping wings. Maybe that describes me as well.
For a longer time it was a hobby of mine to evaluate poems together with a group of hobby poets online.
This evaluation usually had three parts. A formal analysis, an interpretation including the previouly described formal aspects and third a critical comment.The interpretation part was usually the most interesting. Without that the formal analysis was hardly more than a finger exercise. Unless the Text was really interestingly structured.
But what yiu described, Thor, wasn’t even that. It was a comparison of what is audible in which mix of the recording.
In my eyes this shows a really weird, almost autistic view on the music. It is neither analytical in a musicological sense, nor enjoying.
Agreed. But it’s always fascinated me, as a hobby psychology/sociology buff. I think it’s super interesting.
On the other hand I find these musical analyses absolutely interesting. What function does that flute counter melody in that scene have? Is it the realization of the situation in the protagonist’s head that you see on his face? What is in general the function of certain instruments or musical figures in particular scores? These are questions worth exploring.
I don’t have the knowledge and the patience to analyse such things. But I find it super interesting when people write about them.On the other hand I find these musical analyses absolutely interesting. What function does that flute counter melody in that scene have? Is it the realization of the situation in the protagonist’s head that you see on his face? What is in general the function of certain instruments or musical figures in particular scores? These are questions worth exploring.
I don’t have the knowledge and the patience to analyse such things. But I find it super interesting when people write about them.Yes, that’s always interesting. That’s what I mean when I say you have to “look UP” and see how the bits and pieces work in context, for example. Interpretative analysis is great, like that poetry circle you attended (sounds delightfully anorak, but I was also in one such group as a teenager, LOL!). In fact, I wish more CD booklets had them, for example, but mostly, they — too — are content with describing the nuts and bolts of tracks. I believe we talked a little bit about that in the booklet thread.
“There’s a 2-second cymbal crash that appears as Luke Skywalker hits the ground inbetween the second-to-last tree if you freezeframe the Dantooine training sequence at 45:37 in THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. This was inexplicably left off both the first and second 1980 Empire edition. It was included in the Millennium Falcon Ultrabox release, but the sound waves were muffled to S2X as opposed to the proper S2Y. And let’s not forget the flute interlude for when Luke raises his eyebrows, inbetween the cymbals in the reissue on the Megaphone singles release in 1984….”
Stuff like that.
Yes, it’s great if people do that. I love it if some dig so deep for detail, I have a real appreciation for it.
I probably would not notice such things, it’s rare that I even listen to the same album more than once within a year, and indeed, I do sit back and enjoy listening, I’m not scanning with headphones in studio conditions for minute differences. That’s why I think it’s great others do.As with the “are we too critical?” thread, I wonder if this — too — is something that changes as we get older?
In this case, I think it stays the same. I was a cat as a youngster — nay, a SPONGE, even, who sucked up everything I could find that was remotely within my area of interest — and I’m still a cat, being thrilled with new and under-the-radar discoveries. The ‘moth’ business has always been a side venture, as related to Williams’ early years and that kind of stuff.
It does not really change but I find harder to fine the time and energy to really check our things like recommendations here… I mean I don’t even manage to listen to as much as I want to the stuff I already have 😉
I started off as a moth. Constantly playing the same few scores, reading and rereading any liner notes that were available, and watching the film on video again and again to familiarise myself with how the music fitted. On a few occasions I would write my own notes, doing a track-by-track analysis – and being frustrated when the edited together tracks would become apparent.
Then, as my collection grew, the ability to devote so much time to albums decreased and, at the same time, my curiousity to explore the genre grew and grew. Now I am very much a cat, trying to listen to as much as I can and getting a feel of as much new stuff as I can.
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