Mood music. Music that describes your mood. What's that all about?
When you're bored and/or alone, you always want something to take your mind off the former. So, you turn to music. Then comes the difficult part. What kind of music should you listen to?
It's not as simple as playing upbeat music when you're down or playing energetic songs when you're already in a good state of mind. In fact, when you're in that depressive state where you're negative about everything, you usually want to listen to songs that reflect that. Your song choice will include songs that "tell the bitter truth" about life, the universe and everything. Songs like "Honesty" by Billy Joel or "All by Myself" by Eric Carmen are common examples.
Of course, there are more emotional states that exist than just "happy" and "sad," or "depressed" or "lonely." As a person, it is very likely that you will simply be waiting. You will be apathetic. You don't want to think, so you play music to think for you.
(Maybe there's something in the fact that most thinking states involving solitary contemplation involve the less positive emotions.)
But again, most of the music you can find or will want to listen to panders to the emotional extremes of life: a breakup you had, a great person you met, a terrible experience you ... experienced. That does not reflect the everyday humdrum of waiting in line or taking the bus.
How would you describe waiting in line, musically?
Would you say it deserves a guitar back beat? A non-hummable melody that just clicks in your head about the waiting experience? Or perhaps it merits a full string quartet that sits in the corner and plays quietly. A sort of jazz triage that just smooths out your steps and makes the experience more palatable.
Of course, what we're talking about now is not really mood music, the way that most people listen to their iPods while traveling from point A to point B.
We're talking about the soundtrack to your life.
(Some people would argue that those are the same thing.)
The music that you play in your head that if your life was a movie would be playing in the background, or depending on the movie, not be diagetic at all.
(Diagetic means part of the plot. In other words, you can't hear the music because its part of the soundtrack, and not actually in the story. Imagine in "Star Wars" if the characters could hear the theme songs. Bizarre, right?)
Sometimes that music doesn't even have to be "wordy." Sometimes you listen to a song not for the words but for the beat alone. We refer to this as "exercise music."
It's when you're so into something that you just listen to the rhythm and the beat and just forget about everything else, including the lyrics.
And that just about sums up your mood music.
