Magic and Music: Intro and the Color Pie

Early in 2009, I made guild mix CDs for my Magic: the Gathering playgroup, and they turned out to be a hit. I’ve updated them a few times, and in the process learned a lot about how Magic translates into other fields. If you’re like me and fascinated by music theory as well as the Magic color pie, then you’ll enjoy this discussion; if not, you’ll wonder what in the world I’m talking about.

Before I get into specific CDs, it’s important to know where I’m coming from on how Magic colors relate to music. If you’ve seen one of those big fold-out things for new Magic players, where it discusses the philosophy of each color, then you’ll recognize me doing the same procedure for music.

While technically I didn’t start here – since my aim was Ravnica guild albums, I looked at their rare dual lands as the two-word encapsulations of their ideals – behind the best of my song inclusions was a nod to these color philosophies. This worked for my collection, which is about half rock and half electronica; depending on what you have, you may want to fit these ideas to your collection.

Without further ado:

WHITE

In Magic: White loves order and defense. Many of their emblems are sun/light related, with their concepts favoring good over evil.

In music: There are many sunny songs out there, and many of those are fairly well-ordered (i.e. opposed to chaos). So, white manifests itself in these ways:

Writing: Without a doubt, white composers plan their entire song before performing it. It’s written on sheet music to the last detail, with nary a stray note to be heard. To do less would grate on white’s sense of order. Everything is in its right place.

Arrangement: The most important thing to a white arranger is structure – cleanliness would be an appropriate term. They can tell you why a thing is where it is, and they hate the soundfield cluttered with random or too many sounds. This often applies to the beat especially, which is preferred crisp and predictable.

White is also a sucker for high strings and similar pads, as it reminds of ascension and triumph. The ethereal and angelic are highly prized, and a light touch in the arrangement can work wonders in making the white listener feel at home.

Performance: On simple songs, white may be fine with performing live, but sees the real creative entity as the song, an abstraction outside the creator. Once the perfect take is recorded, that’s the song forevermore. White sees no reason to deviate from perfection once attained, so live performances aren’t particularly exciting.

Why White isn’t the other colors:

Blue: White and blue share a love for order and pristine condition, but blue music is much more likely to experiment for its own academic sake (white finds that it messes with good things too often) and pursue technological advances at the risk of losing the song inside.
Black: White and black differ on the value of the ethereal, obviously. This is one of the easiest to understand in Magic, music, and all of life.
Red: Red’s love of passion and feeling swallow white’s ordered tendencies whole.
Green: White and green share a love of nature (nature is highly ordered, after all), but for green it is essential to be organic and show that you’re alive, whereas white tends to subvert feelings and expression somewhat. White also doesn’t know why green tends to shun modern development when it could express its ideas better with technology.

An example of a white artist: Dead Can Dance is the easiest example of a white music outlook. Trance is largely white-blue; English folk music is green-white.

BLUE

In Magic: Artifice. Intelligence. The academic. Isolation. Water.

In music: There is no blue rock music. (If there is, it’s heavily experimental stuff. Peter Gabriel, Tortoise, Wayne Coyne, and Kid A-era Radiohead are possible blue rockers, but even that’s up for debate.) Blue simply does not understand why rock artists would limit themselves to a few instruments; it does not compute.

Writing: The use of technology is understood as the only way to write. Why wouldn’t you lean on the best devices at your disposal? This lends a degree of academic experimentation to the proceedings; blue songwriters are the ones most likely to be considered “out there,” even if it makes perfect sense in their bizarre universe. Like white, blue has a tendency to lay everything out, but blue also has no problem following wherever the technology takes it, as the most creative works come out of the strangest places. Asymmetrical time signatures are favored as a means of exploring the complex and the unique.

Arrangement: Blue arrangements are the most technically proficient of any color, as the production is as or more important than the core song itself. (The other colors tend not to get this about blue.) Blue producers may layer parts countless times, or send the mix through a weird effect, or any number of seemingly leftfield things that become an intellectual triumph.

Performance: White doesn’t feel the need to do anything live because the composition’s there on paper or in the recording. For blue, the recording’s production values and quirky elements are of massive importance, so blue rarely performs either. Blue’s songs tend to have no point live, as the production’s gone.

Why blue isn’t the other colors:

White: Blue and white can get together on several projects, but when blue starts talking all techy, white tunes out, talking to green about a more natural project or sympathizing with enemy red on how annoying blue’s technology jones is. White will work on the melody line while blue will create weird sounds from nowhere, and if they find the other’s work pointless, they can’t work together.
Black: Blue and black create many a dark, scary mood when they collaborate, but it’s that sense of mood that also drives them apart. Blue figures the mood will come from the production, while black is far too easily attracted by any dark object, according to blue at least. When blue is feeling especially academic, creating a dark mood is just too easy, and it’s here where the colors converge.
Red: Red is far too impatient to work with the methodical, experimental blue on a regular basis. Much like white’s problem with red, blue stares at red’s passion with bewilderment, wondering how red gets anything done with that impulsiveness. Red has a similar disdain.
Green: Green has this nature obsession and a love of the organic that blue feels went out with yesterday’s news. To blue, green can accomplish very little new with that mindset. Blue feels held back by green in a number of ways, and green sees no point getting together with a navel-gazing freak.

An example of a blue artist: Aphex Twin sometimes gets into other colors, but he’s about as blue as they come. His crazy stuff is more than blue, but if you consider his ambient works as well, he’s a blue songwriter to the core. Trance is white-blue, but sometimes blue-black depending on the artist. Many other electronic forms are blue-black because of their dark undertones, though if it’s too passionate it will be black-red.

BLACK

In Magic: Ambition, darkness, and a general pall over the proceedings.

In music: Dark music is plentiful, and black loves it all, no matter what else is going on.

Writing: Black may be orderly or chaotic, but it’s all to the end of creating something menacing and powerful. In general, power dominates whatever black is doing. Muscular riffs, relentless rhythms, and an overall growl work just fine for black.

Arrangement: Still about darkness, though this can manifest itself different ways. Like white, black loves strings, but the point is to create unease, not ethereal tones. Black is unsure of major keys and anything deemed reflective music, relenting on the latter only when blue convinces black the song’s dark enough.

Performance: When black is allowed to set the mood of the venue, then black has no problem performing – it’s all about mood, so the song can be performed if the mood is right, regardless of how it sounded on the album version. Do not expect black to play Selesnya’s outdoor festivals anytime soon – stupid hippies taking all the power out of music. (Seemingly every discussion among teenagers about metal gets to whether it’s dark enough; this is a discussion on the blackness of the music.)

Why black isn’t the other colors:

White: They disagree on mood almost all the time. White wants to add this high strings bit, and black hates it because it furthers the wrong mood. There is common ground here, but that ground is always in a bit of mood tension.
Blue: Blue has the technology to fuel black’s desires effortlessly, but black is too obsessed with the desires to let blue experiment too much. Blue also is sometimes a little bit too just-so for black’s tastes, at which point black asks red for some chaotic goodness.
Red: Black is passionate like red, which makes them a good match most of the time. However, red’s passion, like blue’s academia, trips over itself constantly, and at that point black is like white, seeing no value in things pursued as an end unto themselves. Much as white tries to express the ethereal, black tries to express the evil, and red wastes a lot of energy along the way to that expression.
Green: Green normally likes things alive, while black prefers them dead. Like blue, black sees no reason for green to continue in its nature fantasy land, preferring like blue to mold things for its own benefit.

An example of a black artist: Massive Attack’s Mezzanine is a top-notch exploration of the color black, with the first track “Angel” being one of the ultimate anthems of the color. Leftfield’s Rhythm and Stealth is similarly helpful. As you might guess, a lot of trip-hop is black. Dark drum’n’bass and trance can be blue-black, as is deep house a lot of times. Metal and hard rock ordinarily are black-red. (Progressive metal ordinarily is black-red-white.)

RED

In Magic: The Unglued card Burning Cinder Fury of Crimson Chaos Fire sums it up right in the name.

In music: It’s all about passion and feeling. Jam sessions, loud beats, rawkin’ – all of the heart of red. This is the color that casual music fans understand the easiest, because so much popular music is dedicated to love songs and the visceral.

Writing: Red will bang on instruments for awhile and build a song off it. Red sees very little need for sheet music or forethought – you just have to catch the flow at the right moment. Like blue, red loves asymmetrical time signatures; but where blue loves them as academic exercises, red loves them because sometimes they just feel right. Did putting the jam in 7/8 speed up the song over 4/4? Then it was worth it. That said, red is suspicious of things getting too complex, preferring simple, direct statements at all times (hence its love of drums).

Arrangement: Loud is good. Sometimes the song can become subverted through loudness for its own sake; in this way it shares with blue a fascination of certain things for their own sake. Red is uncertain of modern instruments and technology, but will use them if someone can use them passionately.

Performance: It’s almost all about the performance; that’s where the pathos happens. In popular music culture, red music does the best job of promoting itself as a result. (If you’ve been to any coffeehouse live acoustic gigs, you’ve been attending a red-green performance.)

Why red isn’t the other colors:

White: One hides feelings; the other consists of feelings. That doesn’t bode well for a collaboration.
Blue: Red finds blue awfully chilly and detached. Why would anyone do that to themselves? With both enemy colors, red can’t stand that reserved sense it gets and moves on.
Black: Black has a definite passion, which red can get behind, but black’s passion is for darkness, and that can be expressed many ways, several of which red doesn’t like. As much as black loves showing its dominance externally (a very red way to do it), it also loves messing with the mind (a very blue way to do it), and red has to jump ship at that point.
Green: Simply, when nature is passionate and living large (large beasts and smashing things), red and green have a raucous jam. When nature is more reflective (small elves and growing things), red stands there puzzled why green would hang out with such fey partners as white.

An example of a red artist: Most items on the radio, any jam band, or percussion ensemble Stomp. Rock as a whole is red. Phish and its ilk are red-green. Nortec, the Mexican techno genre, surprisingly is red-green. It’s dance music, but the drum choices are usually organic, and most of the interesting elements are traditional Mexican instruments.

GREEN

In Magic: Nature and life in its many forms, be they small like Saprolings are large like Beasts. Green celebrates living and shuns the artifice that might hold that life back.

In music: Fairly well the same thing as in Magic. Not a whole lot of difference there.

Writing: Green’s style is straightforward – get outside, get inspired, and write. It’s a simple process. In contrast to black, green favors major keys, as they just sound happier.

Arrangement: The more natural the production sounds, the better. Acoustic instruments are preferred strongly, though green is appreciative of field recording and nature sampling. This also gets into red’s territory of liking drums, as drums can be played just about anywhere; tribal rhythms and percussion are always green. (If they’re fast, they’re also red.)

Performance: Get outside, get inspired, and play. Campfire sing-alongs are green. Also straightforward.

Why green isn’t the other colors:

White: White tends to hide itself every once and again, and its love of order sometimes makes its world too civilized and advanced for green’s simple, heartfelt tastes. If White could just get back to basics, it and green could hang out more often.
Blue: Blue’s love of knowledge and progress usually does so at the expense of green’s world. To green, blue appreciates nothing of the real world. How can it improve on the already beautiful?
Black: Like blue, black is too concerned with itself to appreciate anything good in life. Nature is meant to be loved and lived, not holed up for ambition. Black’s motivations are all wrong.
Red: The circle of life type of outlook gives green balance and harmony – traits that red abandons at the drop of a hat. Green and red get along well, but the chaos unnerves green severely.

An example of a green artist: Susumu Yokota allies freely with the other colors, but his core is green; the Love or Die album is green in every song. As you’d guess off Yokota, the organic side of ambient music is green; folk music is often green. The Canterbury progressive scene of the early ‘70s was green-white, much like the slower short pieces on Steve Hackett’s Voyage of the Acolyte. Yes drummer’s Bill Bruford’s distaste for the “twinkly bits” of prog would be the green-white sections. (He had tons of red in him, obviously.)

Hopefully, the foregoing has been clear enough to do the music color pie justice. In the next segment, I’ll cover a specific album, one entry at a time, until all 20 are done.