Image based on Moody intro window.

That's my interpretation of the situation. Next to all the other metadata from which to create playlists, Moody's 4x4 grid offers an intuitive and fast shortcut to selecting songs.

I have written about Moody before. In some weird way, the simple looking grid seems to demand low cognitive effort. More probably though, there is lots of cognition involved, which is lubricated by the emotional response to color. To locate the energy level of a song in terms of your emotional response, there is a vast and complex relationship at work.

Ludwig van Beethoven:

Musik ist höhere Offenbarung als alle Weisheit und Philosophie. Wem meine Musik sich verständlich macht, der muß frei werden von all dem Elend, womit sich die anderen schleppen.

In the context of Moody, I consider a good tag to be one that doesn't get in the way—one that doesn't obfuscate the colorspot I initialy choose. Of all the things that a color, say red, can stand for, it can be either more specific than a word, or more generic, and therefore more flexible. Music is too rich to be subsumable under a single, lowly, word. Yet, the words are essential, as if I wouldn't be able to pinpoint a feeling (or to ensure that one exists) without them. Our emotions are enslaved by our brain.

I feel orange.

Granted, shuffling music is not much different from going linearly through music. An array of songs is always consumed one by one, whether you are a careless shuffler, a frequent skipper, a gapless album fanatic, a 400+ playlists junky, a constant rewinder, a grouping expert, or a singer-songwriter yourself. There are simply various modes of listening, of progressing through audio, of wading through emotional airwaves. The terms conflate in meaning and the question simply becomes: How do people feel, when listening to music?

Song of the day.

Moody is to music what Shufflesome is to the Shuffle. Two ways to attach emotions. This comparison holds, when considering that the purpose of both a sticker and a color mood tag is to express thoughts. Thoughts are made from images. Images are linked to affect.

I am particularly excited about this beautiful little app, because my thesis, which i recently completed, deals with emotions and the measurement of them. So the multidimensional approach to capturing emotions is quiet vivid before my eyes. Moody lets you define a feeling as a combination of arousal (from calm to intense) and valence/pleasure (from sad to happy).

In scientific circles the distinction between positive/negative affect is unquestioned and often the basis for more sophisticated models of emotion-specific appraisal processes. Two dimensions however could easily miss to capture subtly different emotions. There is quiet some agreement that using three dimensions - dominance in addition to valence and arousal, gives you a framework wherein to locate any human emotion (google self assessment manikin for details)

Fear and anger for example score high in valence and arousal, but differ in dominance. A fearful person usually feels powerless or subjugated, whereas an angry person may feel influential. Dominance is the degree to which you feel in control or the degree to which something is brought about through your own involvement versus the situation.

Within your iTunes library, you could have two songs that are intense and positive, but differ in the degree to which they empower you or the degree to which you feel distant to that energy. In that sense I feel closer to Beautiful Day by U2 than to Give it Away by Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Are two dimensions enough to mood tag songs in iTunes? I actually feel that Moody’s 4 x 4 grid is challenging enough and that reducing it to a 3 x 3 grid (which you can do) is finetuned enough to get the gist out of your songs.

I rememberance of the tonal density and general flair, what are you doing with the rest of your life?

A sharp red streak in the sky marked the sun's retreat today. Already at 5 in the afternoon we are left with the dark gloom of winter days. I like it. A mix of christmassy warmth and downtempo melancholie curls through the air. Here are 3 songs from my Craig Armstrong Pandora station that match the mood:

1. Pasteur Peace by William A. Thompson Iv on Baghdad Music Journal
2. Niente by Craig Armstrong on As If To Nothing
3. Misadventures In Radiology by Andrew Morgan on Morpheus Calls

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