LΛMPLIGHT - Yxeni // Reaction & Analysis

Added: 2026-05-19

[00:00:00]Hey, what's up, everybody? Welcome back to another Plantlife reaction. I didn't expect to get two of these, but apparently, what should I call them today? What should I What should be the joke name for today?

[00:00:12]Paleontological enemy. That'll be the name of the requester today. We have a thing where I don't try to say what their name's actual pronunciation is.

[00:00:20]They won't tell me how to say it, so I just say whatever I want that's within the general vibe. Either way, speaking of general vibes, this is what I'm going to call Yanni? I'm not sure if that's how you say the title, either. It's got an X in it, that's always confusing. But apparently, this is kind of an extension of Catcafado, which I had heard last time, and it's like, okay, so I'm going to hear some microtonal stuff. I'm going to hear some conlangs. That's in the title of the video, so I know it's in there, but also 5D music, where they're going to just kind of approach this song kind of more as a practical application of the stuff they taught in Catcafado.

[00:00:53]So, this is going to be quite the journey, and I'm excited to hear it because I thought their approach to music last time was very [ __ ] cool.

[00:01:00]So, I'm going to hear this, and without further ado, let's go.

[00:01:04]>> [music] >> I love their visual style, too.

[00:01:14]It's both fun and informative.

[00:01:18]>> [music] [music] [music] [music] >> Oh, man.

[00:01:43]It's so weird hearing like standard progressions in microtones.

[00:01:50]>> [music] >> Because they're not standard anymore.

[00:02:04]>> [music] [music] >> I'm definitely hearing how they're like >> [music] >> applying it this time instead of stepping through it bit by bit.

[00:02:24]>> [music] >> That was quite the lift.

[00:02:31]>> [music] >> Microtones, man.

[00:02:40]They're so weird.

[00:02:43]In all of the best and worst ways, [music] every time.

[00:02:50]>> [music] [music] [music] >> I really do like this like Tetris approach to the visuals in the bottom.

[00:03:12]>> [music] [music] >> Ooh.

[00:03:25]Ooh, ooh.

[00:03:27]Now we're getting weird.

[00:03:29]As if it wasn't already.

[00:03:36]>> [music] >> Too like These are so cool, these like held out ones.

[00:03:51]>> [music] >> They let you kind of sit with the notes, so you don't get like too off-put. You start hearing how they connect.

[00:04:04]>> [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] >> Back to the hook.

[00:04:36]>> [music] [music] [music] >> The balance you have to hit in order to make this work at all is just so above me.

[00:05:02]>> [music] >> But there are people who can pull it off.

[00:05:05]And this is one of those people.

[00:05:08]For those listening who are new to this, you might be like, what the hell am I hearing?

[00:05:13]I'll explain.

[00:05:16]At least a little bit.

[00:05:19]Cuz I don't know everything, either. But >> [music] >> Mhm.

[00:05:31]From the layman's perspective, I always offer my thoughts in general on music.

[00:05:36]Even though I know a little bit about music theory, and I do know a little bit of how this works, obviously, this creator knows more, and they have like explanations of everything. So, if you're really curious, go to their channel, but I can explain through just the general eyes of the world why this kind of works and sometimes doesn't. So, this is a genre that is not for everybody, obviously. You're probably one of those people if you're hearing this. If you're somebody who enjoys this and you're watching this because you know who this was, or you just like the general idea of hearing something different, and you're like, wow, this actually sounds kind of cool. The reason why is very complex and leans a lot into the psychology of humans and their musical experience. A lot of us only have one exposure in a general sense to what music is, and that's what we've come to agree on as generally approved music theory and why all of that works.

[00:06:29]This kind of takes that, spits in its face, throws it on the floor, kind of stomps it into the dirt a little bit, and then does whatever the [ __ ] it wants to. And that's kind of the fun of it.

[00:06:40]It's taking the rules of sound and applying it to music. We have music theory, and that does follow those rules that are generally accepted, like I mentioned. But sound is so much more deeper than that. There's so much more to it. Like, every single time you listen to any sound, you're going to hear something in there, and you can listen to my voice and pick out one specific tone. The human voice, any sound you're hearing ever, has hundreds, if not thousands, of different little notes stacked together. And while you can definitely make sense out of that, if you start removing those frequencies, you will still get kind of a nonsensical random pattern if you don't do that. But if you don't do that, you'll get this nonsensical random squished sandwich pattern of just sound and noise. And all of this creates the noise that we hear.

[00:07:32]So, what microtonal does is basically take all of those in-between frequencies and plays with those, because they still do work. Noise is noise, and even though it'll sound wrong to the ear because we're so used to hearing that generally accepted sound of music theory, it's not wrong. Every sound is in everything. So, you can really do whatever you want with those and slide them together. There are still kind of rules as to what will and won't work, because even those frequencies have things that they will naturally resonate with harmonically, and sometimes they don't. A lot of microtonal stuff doesn't really follow that, and that's kind of the appeal of it. But there are good microtonal people out there, like this person, who properly and appropriately attribute all of that weirdness into a song, because it doesn't sound right, because we're hearing different things. But that's exactly why in this song, when those longer held out chords happened, they started to harmonize between, because suddenly, in that long exposure to what we're hearing, we start making sense of the notes that are seemingly at random placed together, and then it starts to kind of narrow our field of vision, and we're like, whoa, those do kind of work together. Why do those work together?

[00:08:47]And then the other times they don't, like when they're shorter notes, why does that feel worse? Because we're not getting that exposure time. We're not allowing our brains to process all of those individual frequencies to be able to make sense of all of that confusion in there. So, that's the cool part about microtonal. It's really something that is extremely experimental with the concept of sound, not the concept of music theory, which is usually everyone's generally accepted version of music. The I've said that like three or four times, but that's why I love that this exists. And like, of course, we have conlangs and everything in there. I love constructed languages. That's kind of something separate, though. I'm just focusing on the musical approach here.

[00:09:24]That is neat in and of itself. Just having the ideas of going, let's take sound and turn it into music, not let's take notes and make a song out of it.

[00:09:35]It's a completely different approach to the general idea of noise. And like I said earlier, this is not something that everyone will understand, like, and that is totally fine. It doesn't have to be.

[00:09:46]I'm not trying to say this to you to get you to come over to the dark side. I don't listen to microtonal stuff at all in my own free time. I've heard a little bit of it over my time in listening to music in general, but I haven't liked a lot of it because a lot of people don't do things properly. This is still on that fence of like, "Wow, this is done well as far as the genre goes, but like musically, I don't find myself listening to this to relax or anything." This is more something I would say is an analytical or academic approach for me when it comes to music. It's like I'm hearing this and going, "Damn, that's really interesting how it's applying basically math to sound instead of the music theory that we do know to noise.

[00:10:30]It's just cool." I I love that for that reason, and that's not everyone's cup of tea, and that is totally chill. You will not find many people who like microtonal stuff going, "Ooh, man, you don't like microtonal? Ugh, you just must be a noob. You just don't understand anything about noise." Because they get it, you know? They've had to unlearn themselves how these rules and approaches to music theory don't apply to this sound. And they have come to appreciate it for what it is, which is an interesting, very experimental look at the concept of sound. But that's kind of my general opinions on it. I just wanted to share those because that's kind of the point of what I do on the channel, and since it is microtonal, I don't have a lot to say about the actual music theory in it given what I just said about it. So, this is really cool to expose other people to. Hopefully, a few people who are watching this are new to the idea and have found this interesting enough to watch all the way through, but if not, again, I totally get it. Cannot blame you for that. But I'm done yapping here, so thank you all so very much for watching. Thank you to Pixy Stix and Cumberbatch for requesting this in my executive producers. And if you have anything you want me to get to, by all means, drop in the comments below. I will do my best as always to get to those. Or if you want to guarantee something, much like they did for this one, you can always go to my Patreon or my YouTube memberships where you can force me to listen to something. Doesn't matter what it's from, who it's by, if it's good or bad. None of that matters.

[00:11:49]That's why it's a guarantee. But if you don't want to do any of that, and you just want to follow me and support me for more stuff coming in the future, you know how to do all that, and I'll see all of you in the next video.

[00:11:58]Goodbye.

[00:12:00]>> [music] [music]