BY HASAN MURAT SÜMER (EE/IV)
hasan.sumer@ug.bilkent.edu.tr
Music sometimes has effects on people that seem too great to be caused by some auditory stimulus. Such events are sneaky: if you expect them, they won’t happen; instead, they catch you unprepared when your mind is in the right place. Due to their unpredictable nature, it’s proper to call them “random events.” A trivial example would be Average Joe suddenly crying during an emotional song. Here are a few others I can think of:
Little more than a year ago, a friend of mine had hallucinations and went through a brief identity crisis while listening to “Lullaby of Resembool,” a short piece from the soundtrack to the anime “Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood.” I’m very jealous of him because such a thing has never happened to me, and moreover the music was my recommendation to him; still, what a mind-blowing experience that must have been. You’re in a good mood, free from responsibilities; you listen to some music to relax even more. Your mind is free and ready to go wherever you push it, and then suddenly, out of nowhere, you’re outside both your mind and your body. It becomes an intense hypnotherapy session; but instead of a therapist, you have a composition by Akira Senju, which triggers the reminiscence-of-home-and-childhood neurons in the human brain. You enter the song’s fictional universe and replace everything there with whatever you find in your subconscious, then you witness sights that’ll make you jump out of your skin when you return to earth. Knowing something about the series must also have had an effect on how my friend’s consciousness was altered by the music; it’s a truly beautiful show with a story centered on the closeness of two brothers from Resembool and their common ambition to return to the time before everything was screwed up. The entire soundtrack is brilliant and, mostly, heartbreaking, but I find “Lullaby” especially successful in reflecting the atmosphere of the series. Thanks to the inclusion of multiple versions of the composition with differing instrumentation, it’s possible to hallucinate on a waltz, a hymn, a heart-shattering performance by a violinist, or an actual lullaby.
I was playing “Grand Theft Auto V” for the first time last summer. Being an idiot who wasn’t paying attention, I didn’t realize the in-game missions had music playing in the background until I was in one of the very late segments. I was playing a mission where you have to resque your friend Lamar from the enemy gang’s farm. Lamar is a hilarious and loveable character, and you get to use all of your protagonists to save him. So the design and scenario of this segment are exceptionally hyped up. During the gunfight part, I was enjoying the game to an unusual degree; and at some point, I noticed I had been humming the game music for some time, while simultaneously it was being played. Then I was like, “Wow, there’s music in this game, and it’s freakin’ epic.” Ignoring my ignorance, I was amazed at how much I was enjoying something I had been hearing unconsciously. The original song is credited to Tangerine Dream, Woody Jackson, The Alchemist, Oh No and DJ Shadow, and is titled “A Legitimate Business Man.” The game version is modified to make it repetitive and easily followed, and with all the menacing electronic sounds, the epic climax and the awesome little guitar solo, it’s the perfect tune 
to be played when whatever you’re interested in at the time involves action. For me, the “fight on, or they’ll kill your buddy” feeling in the music makes it a good listen while reading, writing, studying, driving, chilling, or doing pretty much anything; just like Guile’s theme, it goes with everything.
My father, who doesn’t speak a word of Spanish, once told me, when it happened to be playing on the radio, how he loves the song “Lady Laura” by Roberto Carlos. He added that in his younger days, he used to call one of his romantic interests “Lady Laura.” I think I shattered something inside him when I told him that the song was dedicated to the man’s mother, rather than to a lover. I’m out of bullets for this column.
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