Trope Talk: Musical Numbers

I used to listen to undertale vocalized songs a lot, and one thing I realized is that they all kinda struggle with singing exactly in tune with the wordless music. You’d think this would be good, but I’ve found my favorites are ones that actually break the best and do their own thing. Music requires contrast just as much as it requires synchronicity

As somebody who has worked with music, but also is not on the forefront of writing it, you are totally valid because as an audience member at least analytical point of view of stories, this is a valuable video. I always like your videos, no matter what you’re put out because you don’t disappoint. This one is impressive though for the topic at hand for somebody who isn’t as immersed in the music world as you put it.

11:27

I will say, K-Pop Demon Hunters does the musical number thing a lot better than Disney does. And don't get me wrong, Disney made some bangers back in their heyday, but it feels like it's starting to become irrelevant nowadays, and any modern musical numbers Disney can try and make will probably just make me feel indifferent about it.

0:30 I JUST KEEP OM CATCHING STRAYS MAN

This technically isn't a musical, but I am fascinated by how many dramatic or horror based trailers use happy sunshine vintage music to give off an eerie tone, like the trailer for S1 Fallout. I wonder what the reverse of that would look & sound like?

I remeber when AMV were super common.

Quadrophenia. Into the Woods " , live on stage, starring Bernadette Peters, I believe.

I'm sure it's been mentioned somewhere, but the song from Inception is a HUGE thing. The whole movie is timed, INCLUDING THE CREDITS, to be exactly that song's length slowed down a certain amount, the thumping opening is the opening to the song at that exact speed, even the now infamous BWAHHH sound is from that song slowed down that far. And that's just the pacing, the meaning is also something big to the whole movie. I believe (It's in French, I don't speak it) that the song is about not knowing if you're awake or asleep, or something like that, and that's... just Inception's whole theme!

In Mockingjay Part I, “The Hanging Tree” actually moved between multiple categories without ever pausing; it started as an actual musical with Katniss singing it in District 12, shifted to pure background sound as the hovercraft departed, became a background track as the propo footage was reviewed in District 13, and then became an actual musical again as the scene shifted to the dam being blown up by rebels in District 5.

4:18 Shout out to my boy Flin Ryder for asking why everyones singing

For all the evils of TikTok, it does deserve some credit for bringing about the current resurrection of the AMV

Ok, so totally late and not the point of the video but Quicksilver saving everyone from the explosion by moving them FASTER THAN THE EXPLOSION drives me insane! THAT'S NOT HOW INERTIA WORKS! All those people are now paste.
In DC you can get away with it cause the speed force is basically magic, so whatever. But Quicksilver just moves super quick. That's fine for him, but unless he has some way of conferring his abilities onto others through touch, all of them just got accelerated from standing still to several times the speed of sound. The G forces would flatten them! The sudden jump in velocity from 0 to fast-as-fuck-boi would crush their bodies flat.
TL:DR: Quicksilver had an epic scene, but it broke my suspension of disbelief.

It's why I particularly love season 1 of arcane, because generally speaking the songs were created for the show, with the songwriters being given either the scene context or general vibes of what their song would be playing over, and the artist using that to create the songs. So the scene influenced the writing of the song that will in turn influence the emotion of the scene. I think that's why so much of the music feels a bit on the nose, because it is, and personally that doesn't make it suffer for me.

2:17 oh hi the motif that haunts all of Silksong

It sounds like the music being played during certain scenes in the Final Destination series fit the definition for one of the categories

Something I love about your videos is that you explain a lot of things that I’ve probably thought or noticed before, but in words that make the most sense to me.

That said, I think it’d be more fair to call the “AMV break” variation of this trope simply “MV break,” not to discredit AMVs as an art form itself, but because I feel like MTV-style music videos have a stronger influence. It’s the reason the term “MTV Style Editing” exists, after all (though that can also describe non-musical scenes).

Being Hard of Hearing, the problem with Suicide Squad was completely lost on me. From my perspective, the music was approximately what was going on, so I filtered it out.

This is why I like the Bridgerton songs. They pick very popular songs and there meanings are so on the nose, but because they do orchestra versions of them, they make the soundtrack so fun. Penelope's wedding soundtrack was Yellow by Coldplay, and she used to wear exclusively yellow dresses, but the meaning of that song is much deeper. I love songs that are both literal and deep. Bridgerton s4e1 featured DJs got us falling love again. Apt title to describe the situation but there's a line in that song "Ain't I seen you before? I think I remember those eyes" which, ages ago I was listening to that song and it reminded me of a line in A Cinderella Story where the popular prince charming tells the Cinderella "you'd think I'd remember those eyes".

Why use the Star Trek one? The really goat for song defeating the baddie is that Hotel Transylvania sequel where they use Macarena to control the Kraken

Singing in the rain is one of my favourite movies and every song in it is diagetic in the way that these characters are performers and just having fun. Gene Kellys character gets funny looks from a cop in the titular song and he juat moves on. Theres no shift to song land except for the dream sequencey bit and i like that a lot.

So many video games would not be the same without their soundtrack, the silent hill and Hotline Miami series come to mind especially.

a Certain Game about Horse Girls comes to mind....

Ah, AMVs. Some day I'm going to try my hand again... though it's been literal decades since my last attempts...

15:17 so it probably would have worked better if the characters where like humming or whistling it as they do something in-between the plot

15:17 so it probably would have worked better if the characters where like humming or whistling it as they do something in-between the plot

Part of the point seems to be that it's more art than science. You literally have to feel it out because that's the only way to gauge the effect of how you/'re presenting the scene or audio.

Which I only say to help put words in the explanation because Red's been doing that for at least 13 years now.

HUNTRIX don’t miss how it’s done-done-DONE!

I think my favorite quote about musical numbers in media is "the character speaks until the emotion is too much, so they must sing until they dance." Or something like that. XD

I have... Rather bad memories of analyzing music in middle school. Our teacher was a straight-up bully, and I honestly straight-up didn't like music for a while after that

I find this situation interesting because as an autistic , both of my parents were against pain relievers for different reasons so my parents never took them b7t I also didn't grow up with them available so as an adult, I forget that they are an option when I'm sick or injured

There has to be a better term than AMV break. That just reminds me of how much an aging millennial I am. Also thanks Red for making realized why I loved those fight scenes in Arcane so much. They’re just AMV’s

As a Warframe player, it honestly surprises how much the game gets out of hitting you out of left field with an AMV break or an assault by leitmotifs. Many of the game's vocal tracks (and several of the non-vocal tracks) just hit you in the gut if you know the context behind them, but can even do great in isolated interaction.
As far as actual musical numbers, pretty much the two intro cutscenes related to Fortuna come to mind. The first, We All Lift Together, is a unified song of a community suffering hard times, yet shouldering on for a hopefully better tomorrow. The second, For Narmer... is not that.
Also extra call-outs for The Old Peace and it's new music number, Lullaby of the Manifold.

0:54 Reggie Couz’s song “Know Your Presidents” got me an A+ on an American History test in high school. Still remember them all in order to this day bc of it lol

5:07 in pseudo operas, like Hamilton, some parts have to be spoken because it has more impact without the music.

I HAAATE the “sabotage” bit from “Into Darkness” as a diegetic song because I work in the electronic warfare field and I was so psyched when they said they were going to jam the drone communication links and then I was immediately and violently ripped out of the story because That’s not how any of that works and I couldn’t enjoy the rest of the movie at all. It would have been fine as background music

I remember watching "Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island" as a kid and thinking it would be cool to go to a movie theater and have a live band play "It's Terror Time Again" during the movie. Glad to know I was just tuning into historical facts I didn't know regarding the cinema.

OMG IT WAS SOMETHING ROTTEN FOOTAGE!!!!!
It’s hard to be the bard inspired me to make an entire OC out of Shakespeare, so glad the “he can’t pee” song was mentioned.

I can't stand that they brought back the "Sabotage" moment in the Star Trek 09 sequel.

A favorite and unexpected AMV break of mine is Dr.Srangelove’s ending of real nuke footage being edited over “We’ll meet again” by Vera Lynn

I’m guessing that games like the Persona series are a bit beyond the scope of this video as it’s lyrical tracks can kinda count as musical numbers. I wish I had the chops to delve into lyrical tracks in video games in specific.

In all honesty, this 100% is making me think of none other than Fate/Grand Order, and the finale to the First Lostbelt in which Antonio Salieri is diagetically banging out the most rage fueled version of Dies Irae possible as the soundtrack for the entire rest of the battle, both in and out of gameplay.

Would this make many kick-ass fight scenes "AMV breaks?" I mean, there's nothing more badass than a fight scene choreographed with a song.

Why isn't there any story talk YouTubers that know anything about music but only do music