Writing soundtrack reviews is hard

So, I made the foolish “promise” to the staff that I’d somehow write a soundtrack review for Death Note’s (awesome) OST. Soundtracks is a bizarre section we have on our site. It’s the most neglected and I’d say far and away the toughest section to maintain. The link between these two postulates is obvious. But, with most anime series seeing one, often two, sometimes even more complementary soundtracks released, a site of our size (which, I’d approximate, manages to cover six or seven anime each season within a few months of their release, which I’d say is pretty good coverage considering our size) would have to demand at least one soundtrack review a month out of every one of our staff before we could even think about covering the soundtrack industry with the same comprehensiveness with which we do with anime. That might not sound terribly difficult until one tries to sit down and actually write a soundtrack review. Man, they are not easy things to write.

For me, personally, there are lot of hurdles to overcome which add to the difficulty of writing soundtrack reviews. For one, The Nihon Review is close to the only anime soundtrack reviewing site I know of, and pretty much the only one I actually read. Which, sort of limits my sources and my exposure to the type of language used in standard soundtrack reviews. It’s a simple matter of fact that all writers base their style and formats to some extent on works they’ve been exposed to before. For anime reviews, we use a rather tried and true format that we’ve tweaked only very slightly to suit ourselves that we’re all familiar with and we’re all very comfortable with. But, with a general disinterest to actual critical analyses of anime soundtracks on the internet, there’s not much for someone like me to go by, as far as getting some actual exposure to the language is concerned. Second, my musical knowledge and training is rather limited. Sure, I know what I like as far as music is concerned. Saying “I like this” is easy. But, saying why I like it, in other words, separating the good in a piece of music from the bad and then articulating it is a completely different kettle of fish. In my younger days, I did study a few years of music classes in high school, and I did learn a musical instrument for a while (though I was never good at it), so I do have a foundation of music knowledge to base things on, but it’s been years since I’ve even thought of looking at music from an academic point of view, so my memory of technical terms and the like is very rusty to say the least.

I know for a fact that this is the sort of thing that can be remedied with a bit of time and effort. If I were to sit down and force myself to actually write some soundtrack reviews and force myself to read music reviews (and not just anime soundtracks) across the internet, eventually it will become significantly easier. I know this, because I was in the exact same position in regards to my knowledge of anime just a few years ago. I knew what I liked, but I struggled to express it. Reading anime review sites, hanging around on anime forums, exposing myself to anime-related literature and, of course, watching anime itself allowed me to learn the technical language as well as refine my taste and give me the ability to articulate my opinion so that the next step of actually sitting down and writing a review became a straightforward process. Arguably, learning how to write a soundtrack review (with ease) is much the same. The problem is that, people just aren’t talking about anime soundtracks as often or as much or to the same amount of depth as people talk about anime. And, for myself anyway, arguably the greater hurtle is the fact that, unlike watching anime, listening to music is a passive activity. You don’t have to think to enjoy music (although that’s not saying that brain-dead, inane music is just as enjoyable to listen as something with a given amount of complexity or uniqueness, since I certainly wouldn’t say that’s the case for myself… it’s just that such music doesn’t always require active thought to enjoy). However, a really outstanding anime with a compelling story or complicated themes will almost always demand some amount of active thought. This, I would say, is probably the greatest hurdle to overcome before I could even thinking about reaching a stage where writing about music is as easy as writing about anime. In the end, writing about anime at any stage, reviews or just general commentaries, is usually a case of just recalling the thoughts one has while actually watching the anime, and then sorting them into something coherent. Before I could do the same with music, I’d actually need to have thoughts to sort while listening to it, rather than being distracted by other things as I usually am while listening to music.