> [!summary] > - Rating format: Aesthetics / Originality / Intellect / Bias > - Score is the sum of all ratings > - Grades are derived from the score > - Colors are derived from [Spectreview Color Rating System](https://tapedeckpodcast.com/the-spectreview-color-rating-system/) ## Criteria While doing some research on how people rate music in general, I found an interesting system by one **Rob Moura**, called the [Spectreview Color Rating System](https://tapedeckpodcast.com/the-spectreview-color-rating-system/). I thought it was a concise and thoughtful way of approaching the problem, and the coloring coding idea is really cool, so let's attempt to adapt it for *Mega Man* music: > [!quote] Rob Moura on **<font color="red">AESTHETICS (A)</font>** > Judging how the music sounds on a purely sonic level. This concerns everything from production quality to how effectively the artist conjures beauty or emotion in the music. Keywords: **quality** and **emotion**. Certain tracks conjure up a very distinct feeling, and those will score high. This concerns arrangement as well - some tracks have good melodies but don't really leverage the instrumentation (pitch bends, vibrato, etc.). > [!quote] Rob Moura on **<font color="jade">ORIGINALITY (O)</font>** > Judging the ambition of the music in being novel or trying something new relative to previous works … This category is meant to signify when an artist decides to break the mold, and it should be rewarded on its own terms. Keywords: **ambition** and **novelty**. Does it sound unique compared to other Mega Man tracks? Some tracks give us the standard formula, while others are clearly trying to do something different. > [!quote] Rob Moura on **<font color="slate">INTELLECT (I)</font>** > Judging the capacity of the music to stimulate the mind … even instrumental or ambient music has the capacity to be judged on an intellectual level if the music is contextually presented as such. Keywords: **stimulation** and **context**. This one is probably the hardest to put a number to, but I will be looking for things like compositional variety and how strongly it ties together an overarching theme or idea. ## Scoring and Ranking To give more of a score spread to deal with ties over a hundred plus rankings, we will add a criteria `B` for “bias”. This will make the rating for each track take the form of `A/O/I/B` representing our four criteria. With this, scoring goes as follows: 1. Rate each of the four criteria on a scale of (minRating::1) to (maxRating::5) (e.g., `5/2/3/3`). 2. Sum the ratings for a final score from (minScore::4) to (maxScore::20) (e.g., `13`). 3. Apply the following weight to the ratings to break ties within a score: 1. Remove the bias, sort descending, then re-apply (e.g., `5/3/2/3`) 2. Apply this as second order sorting (tracks with 5's beat 4's, etc.) > [!NOTE] > The fourth rating, “bias”, is used for a few things: > - Float tracks that I like > - Float tracks that are more quintessential to Mega Man, despite their rating > - Help break ties since there will be many, despite the weighting system. ### Score to Grade > [!info] > The minimum score is 4 since we don’t use 0’s. The max is 20. | 20 | 19 | 18 | 17 | 16 | 15 | 14 | 13 | 12 | 11 | 10 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 4 | | ----------- | ------------ | ----------- | ------------ | ----------- | ------------ | ----------- | ------------ | ----------- | ------------ | ------------ | ----------- | ------------ | ----------- | ------------ | ----------- | ----------- | | (grades::M) | (grades::S+) | (grades::S) | (grades::A+) | (grades::A) | (grades::B+) | (grades::B) | (grades::C+) | (grades::C) | (grades::C-) | (grades::D+) | (grades::D) | (grades::E+) | (grades::E) | (grades::F+) | (grades::F) | (grades::G) | >[!note] > - M stands for “Masterpiece” not “master”, you idiot. > - You’d think G is just a continuation of the alphabet, but it actually stands for “Gutsman”. ## “Spectreview” Coloring ### Rating to Color Level > [!info] > Spectreview maps `A/O/I` ratings to `R/G/B` colors, but it uses a `Low, Mid, High` score range to do this. We must convert to this from our 1–5 scale—not perfect but it works well enough! | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | | ------------------ | ------------------ | ------------------ | ------------------- | ------------------- | | (colorLevels::L)ow | (colorLevels::L)ow | (colorLevels::M)id | (colorLevels::H)igh | (colorLevels::H)igh | ### Color Level to Hex | Low | Mid | High | | ------------ | ------------ | ------------- | | (hexLow::22) | (hexMid::78) | (hexHigh::ee) | ### Moods From here, we batch the final colors into different “moods” to sum up the general feel of the track. This was mostly for fun, since being dominant in a certain category is self-explanatory, but for the mixed categories, how should we understand the result? Check the link below to see what I came up with. [[Spectreview Colors & Moods]]