Music is an art style relying on sound to interact with communicate to the perceiver. It distinguishes itself from general sounds or noise through the use of rhythm, melody, harmony and occasionally complemented with lyrics/vocals, assuming one counts those as “music”. The list of techniques used by artists throughout the times is endless and it would be pointless to list them all here, it should be said, though, that music is as diverse and multifaceted as any collection of languages. Where languages defined through rules create separation, music unites, as the rules of music and, fundamentally, sound waves are the same everywhere and cultural differences only dictate a person's perception.

Ever since the dawn of humanity music will have been an invaluable part of the human experience, from serving as a part of one's culture and belonging, as a means of bringing people together, as a pastime or to experience emotions, both just out of the box or by the means of music in association with emotional experiences. The earliest humans, incapable of speaking languages, will still have listened to and engaged in the creation of music, whatever they may have come up with.

In a way music is a language on its own, though organized much more loosely and based entirely on its human perception/interpretation. However, because music is based around our rather unpredictable interpretation of things, music has much fuzzier borders and rules which makes it easy to and encourages strong exploration and divergence. The same fuzziness is what makes it difficult for music to say things explicitly (unless literally saying “I love you” as part of the lyrics counts as “expressing a thing through music”), but makes it great for expressing concepts and especially emotions in general. There are so many ways in which to describe and express “love”, generally, through music, whereas English only has the literal word “love” and then some descriptions trying really hard to not just say the word.

Unfortunately I never learned to play, create or otherwise seriously interact with music. One could say I am a simple music consumer, although perhaps a bit more enthusiastic than most. I have spent hundreds of hours trying to learn how to get music I really like, ie. video game music extraction and spend a lot of time listening to, collecting, exploring, maintaining and archiving music, even to this day, probably even literally this day.

For my perspective music is relevant because of emotions. Despite my limited grasp on emotions, music has been an essential avenue to experiencing and reliving emotions - it is able to take me to times and places most analogous mediums cannot and make me feel things, at all. Apart from video games, music has let me delve into worlds and scenarios, experience people and emotions I otherwise couldn't even dream of - literally. It may very well be one of my only ways to ever get to feel what emotions are like. Naturally, the music I listen to will be extremely emotional (beyond just “good” or “bad”) and most of the time inspired by or from the video games I play(ed). Of less relevance to me are vocals or lyrics of all kind because that layer does not evoke any kind of feelings in me. Vocals are nice when used as an instrument or otherwise add to the melodic/instrumental/rhythmic nature of the track.

On this wiki I will be trying to document my experience with certain pieces of music, perhaps try to put into words the things music makes me feel and to give individuals context on what music I like and why I like it. It keeps happening to me that I introduce people to my vast music library, they find something they don't like and then end up getting a wrong or weird impression of my music tastes. The reality is that I have quite a lot of context for almost every piece of music I call my own, very specific tastes, usually only like 4 out of the 20 mp3's in a folder and of those 4 only specific sections within one track, for very specific and deliberate reasons I could explain in my sleep. Well, I do most things very deliberately, but that nuance is of particular importance when showing other people my music because one's impression of a person's music tastes is central and has been disastrous if “gotten wrong” (I end up looking weird for the, and I will admit that much, inarguably weird music that I have stored on my hard drive).