Scootareader Looks Into: Music · 8:34am Nov 18th, 2017
So, a bit of backstory: At the time I wrote these editorials, I was an active user on Ponychan.net.
Ponychan was spawned out of the great pony purge of 4chan, back in October of 2011. The amount of My Little Pony memes on the /co/ board and, when it was banned from there, the /b/ board, eventually pushed the moderation team to outright blanket ban all My Little Pony content on the site. Considering how little stuff is outright banned on 4chan, usually just being put to a new board where it then dies in obscurity, this was seen as an extreme measure. Until the /mlp/ board was created, pony imageboard-style posting was relegated to sites like Ponychan.
Interestingly enough, even though it was an offshoot of 4chan with a My Little Pony theme, Ponychan was a massive hugbox. It wasn't cancerous like 4chan; it was a totally different kind of cancer. There was dumb user drama, the mods were debatably active, and everyone had a handle. Mine was Scootareader (Element of Editorial) !xScootXgyM. Here's a screenshot of me from a "raid" on /mlp/ not long after it was created.
I mostly frequented the /oat/ board back in 2012/2013 or so. I often spoke out against making Ponychan a hugbox, that feelers were meant to be triggered and people were meant to have their opinions challenged. I don't think I ever really got through to the greater user base, but I was quite well-known in my active years. Sometimes I miss it, though I haven't checked the site in quite some time.
What makes music a favorite? What different forms of music do people listen to? What makes this music so wonderful, to listen, to hear the sounds, and then, to find it audibly appealing that it can revolutionize a person's life?
Since before written history, there has been music. It may not have sounded the greatest, but it was there, and people enjoyed listening to it. It has been a large part of cultural heritage, fads, fashion statements, enlightenment, and, most of all, enjoyment. The number of instruments and the complexity of songs has changed constantly in every era, from composer to band to artist, souls constantly seeking something, anything more to express their deepest of emotions to the common folk and the privileged rich alike.
Bearing all this in mind, many of the readers of this article have a repository of pony music to listen to. What exactly composes pony music? Is it how it makes you feel? Is it the particular riffs that are used in songs from the show? Maybe the artist being a brony is all that's needed?
To simplify answering what may be pondered, let's lump pony music into three main categories: Core music, as in, directly from the show; remixes, which are core music with changes to the instruments being used and possibly different or added vocals; and original music, which is fully composed and created by a brony without a core song being directly added in. Core music is self-explanatory; this is music that was produced by Daniel Ingram for use in the show itself. This doesn't really need all that much expanding upon.
Remixes can be any number of things, as long as they contain most or all of a core song. There are a great number of remixes to each core song; simply looking up the name of any core song on Youtube will produce several pages of music, most of them remixes. They don't even need the original instruments; simply adding the vocals from a core song, a brony can substitute the original instrumentals with tons of wubs and bass and call it a remix. Despite how varied they tend to be, remixes still have to fit within the realm of being based on core music, at least for the purposes of this article. Remixes of original music do exist, and in large numbers, but let's not over-complicate things, shall we?
The third category is original music. This music doesn't necessarily follow any specific parameters; it can retain some portion of core music, but it must primarily be made by an independent musician who either creates it as an instrumental or adds in original vocals. The topic of such a song is limited to the brony's creativity; they can be so inspired by a song from the show that they want to create a sequel song with their voice, or they can feel so strongly about one of the background characters that they make a tribute instrumental that inspires thoughts of this obscure pony. Original music is easily given the most creative leeway, though it may be so far off that some bronies don't consider it pony music; this tends to differ depending on the brony.
Okay, enough of the technical facts. How about the music itself? Well, generally speaking, any music that a brony can listen to while in the mindset of “this is about ponies” and maintain this mental precedence could be considered brony music. This introduces a massive scope of creativity from all bronies in all parts of the world. Not good at singing? No problem! Just make an electronic with a killer beat, or a remix of a core song, and you'll get plenty of fans. Not interested in making music? Not a problem either! There's already countless hours of pony music available to download. You need just look for it, and you'll find it in droves.
For the bronies who do make music, there is a lot of support. Some of the more popular artists who regularly make remixes or original music are MandoPony, TheLivingTombstone, and JackleApp. Wow, brony artists must really not like spaces. There's also some who ask for a small donation for the music that they spent hours, possibly days, of their time creating; TAPS asks for a very small donation to download his songs that a dishonest brony could easily download for free if they wanted. The topics of songs vary greatly, from Pinkie Pie going crazy to Twilight writing letters to Princess Celestia to how Gilda felt after she left Ponyville. Each of these aspects has been explored within an incredible spread of genres, from rock to classic orchestral to rap; there are even a few bluegrass songs that have been released.
Now, it would be contrite to not mention the artists that produce songs under names of ponies from the series. There are several ponies in the show that are seen as music ponies, and two of them, Octavia and Vinyl Scratch (or, DJ Pon3, her stage name), are the most popular of these. Some bronies produce music, typically orchestral or electronic, under the name of Octavia or Vinyl Scratch, respectively. This shrouds whichever brony produces the music under anonymity; while most artists appreciate popularity as a boost to continue creating their product, these anonymous bronies who prefer hiding behind stage names simply want the world to hear great music, and don't necessarily care about being credited with creating a song.
With this pool of creativity, the established artists producing more songs and new artists producing completely different songs, the aspect of what ponies can mean to a simple human being is staggering. If you want to know and feel how Derpy Hooves feels, there's plenty of pony music to help you explore the life of this simple background pony. If you want the whole story on Trixie, the before, the during, and the after, there's plenty of songs released for this event, too.
This incredibly high amount of talent that is at the disposal of the average Internet user, either free of charge or for a very low fee, is lost on many. To those bronies who regularly listen to pony music, this has become a staple of their daily lives. Whether they mix it with other music they enjoy or listen to all pony and nothing else, it's obvious that the era of music is still omnipresent, and with plenty of support.
To those bronies who haven't delved into the realm of pony music yet, I highly recommend it. It is an indescribably unique journey, regardless of whether you like how a specific song sounds or not. Maybe your draw is background music from the show itself; maybe it's an unforgettable tune that you hum to yourself over and over again to get you through the day. Whatever holds you, there's a pretty good expectation that pony music has something for everyone.
Did you not see the irony of being a tripfag and calling others tripfags?
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That was the joke, tripfag.
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I don't think brony/pony music isn't nearly as big a phenomenon now as it used to be. Keep in mind that this is from back when the fandom was still decently young, and the big artists were still releasing albums, and people actually gave a shit about it.
My interest in the genre mostly died with the season 3 finale, honestly. My last time pulling pony fan music was when Racist Barn came out.
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You were from Ponychan, I can't be TOO sure. :^)
~Gale Maze!HEaRtDash3