Haha. I'm not actually a scientist by profession (I sort of wish I was), but I definitely would consider myself a scientist and artist by heart. Those are two very important parts of who I am (which is why I relate so well to Bjork's approach to music).
When it comes to musical analysis, or any other kind of analysis, I go through the process of learning and then un-learning. Once I've come up with a logical construct and really understand it in-depth, I kind of "forget" it and let it run in the background of my mind, so to speak. So when I listen to music, I can automatically categorize it loosely without much thought at all. Precision isn't as important to me as the overall idea.
It's like learning how to read or play an instrument; you learn all the letters or notes, look at how they're arranged and how they form words or music, and then once they're memorized, reading or playing music becomes second-nature.
Knowing these categories helps me to keep track of all my music at once. I rarely forget about an artist if I've tagged their music. It's like tying colored strings to a bundle of balloons and pulling them down when you need a certain color.
It also helps me to make playlists that go beyond the usual confines of genres or artists. I can pair songs with each other that create a cohesive feeling, and are in ways quite similar to each other, but that you might not expect to hear together.
I re-read my analysis, and you're absolutely right. I edited the Ultraviolet section because I accidentally switched the definition for Ultraviolet (air+fire) with Electricity (fire+air). Air music often includes Classical or soft instrumental music, usually in the Ultraviolet or Mist categories, even though some Ultraviolet music is electrical in instrumentation (like the example I shared, which I actually got right). Thanks for pointing that out!
It's comments like those that help me perfect the theory and get my thoughts straight/ errors sorted out. I think I should probably add on a mini-overview in the first Lab post for the sake of brevity.
I'm really laying all this out there so that when I make playlists in the future based on these categories, there will be some background/ explanation for them.
At the end of the day, these posts really show an important aspect of who I am as a person (the mad scientist aspect). So I'm glad that if it's not completely understood, at least my analytical self can be appreciated. So thanks for appreciating it.
