book_guy wrote: ↑Fri Mar 08, 2019 8:49 pm
About the lack of beat-meters ...
Personal preference -- a cock hero style video must include some form of INSTRUCTION about how I "must" stroke. This is what distinguishes, in my personal mind, between a porn-music-video and a cock-hero. I enjoy both, for different occasions and desires, but I wouldn't necessarily want to watch a CH if it were nothing more than a PMV unless it excelled in terms of the PMV characteristics which I might prefer. In other words, if you claim something is a CH, you gotta (IMO) put in some explicit and attention-requiring instructions (not just "freestyle it baby" or "stroke to the music from now on"), or else it won't necessarily pique my interest. Instructional.
How to instruct? Well, personally (again), I can enjoy that instruction if it comes in the form of words stating "go this fast," or in the form of a beat-meter (though the visual implementation of some beat-meters is more distracting and therefore of negative impact than that of others), or in the form of a sound-cue. Or a mix of any or all of the above or any other creative elements you can work out. I understand that the creation of the beat-meter, the synchronizing its sounds with the music and with any on-screen visual indicators, is a major portion of the difficult task of creating a CH. I have great appreciation for the Stroker Ace series of videos, which do not (IIRC) present a visual beat meter, though they do offer visual text statements of what the next beat will be, and it does have a cow-bell indicator sound.
But text indications are problematic. I have mild problem with the visual text statements at any point in time (whether in "Stroker Ace" or not) because I never REALLY know what the author wants. "1 - 1" can be interpreted in a wide range of manners and it's frustrating to me that many creators don't really seem to think that their statement of a set of numbers is, in any manner, ambiguous, but it obviously is totally ambiguous. If you post only a text indication that contains some kind of numerical information, you are HIGHLY likely to be leaving a non-explicit instruction which can be interpreted in at least two manners, and therefore in at least one wrong manner. The sound indicator or the visual beat-meter generally serves to make explicit that which the text has failed to make explicit. Something other than the text, helps us choose between the two, three, or eleven possible valid interpretations of the otherwise ambiguous text. If you just say, "1 - 1" or "3 - 2 - 3 - 2" I don't know how fast your 1s, 2s, and 3s, will be at all. I can do those beats at any of about six rates, each rate true to the textual statement. That means, those instructions are pretty much inadequate.
I am pretty sure that most of us will encounter that problem (textual numbers being ambiguous) whenever the instructions are indicated solely by textual statements of numbers. The instructions, as intended by the creator, often CAN be figured out by the viewer, but it's ANNOYING to have to do so, because it implies that the creator seems to think that he has been clear when he, simply, has not. And yet the entire premise of INSTRUCTIONS, is that they are OVERTLY CLEAR. You can't tell someone "do something" without also making sure that the "something" is absolutely and fully defined. Otherwise all you're saying is, "do whatever you want," in which case you might as well say, "I don't give a shit, this isn't instructions," and thus your CH is actually PMV.
If you don't read music, I suggest you go to a Wikipedia page to learn the durations of the notes of standard Western art music notation, just to get an idea of what you're working against in this problem. Even if you master the notes (whole, half, quater, dotted, eighth, etc.) you can't really use those symbols on screen, either, since we don't know what your pulse-beat is (i.e., if you put up that we should stroke to quarter notes, are those occurring in the sounds at 120 beats per minute or 60?). It's not easy to indicate, and I don't mean to suggest that traditional Western art music notation should be used (it too would be ambiguous in its own ways), but I do mean to suggest that explicit instructions aren't explicit if they are ambiguous, and therefore they aren't even instructions.
BTW, IIRC, I haven't watched this particular video ("Symbol of Faith") yet, though I did download it. I'm thankful someone created it, with its excellent details, some of which may or may not be the beat instructions produced in any manner that I personally prefer.
And, finally ... plenty of other people have other opinions on the matter, and their preferences may or may not be more mainstream or general than mine, of course, etc., yadda yadda. Thanks fer yer time. :)
Symbol of Faith
