Ni is the hardest one for me to pin down musically. So if you use Ni and I missed something, I apologize. I am at least married to an Ni-dom (INTJ) and sourced her for understanding. But blame me if I didn’t get it right – she is innocent of my fumbling.
Ni generally
Ne likes to find patterns and draw conclusions as a diffuser; Ni likes to do it as a distiller. Ni is a kind of guiding star, or the gut feeling of inevitability, or eventually the “told you so” to those who don’t use Ni. In my wife’s screenwriting, it shows up most in understanding her characters quickly; she knows off just a little bit of writing how they’ll act by the end of the movie, because she knows how it will all play out. And when she is reading others’ scripts, their lack of that foresight bugs her.
What Ni values in music – Definition
But not what Ti means in terms of dictionary definitions. I mean being defined like muscles have definition (so I’m told). I mean having a unifying theme. I mean the song being whatever it is and doing it well.
Definition in this sense is the other end of the spectrum from Ne’s love of variety. Ne songs go everywhere and nowhere; Ni songs are going to a place (onewhere?). It could be any sort of place – a secluded place, a goofy place, whatever – but it really needs to be a place. This is presumably most obvious when paired with Te.
Lyrically, Ni might want everything to go into a unifying theme – again, the opposite of Ne. INFJ Joyce Meng has mentioned this on a panel: she likes to bring a central narrative even to songs that don’t have it. Whether musically or lyrically, Ni wants a vision to be laid down and paid off.
When Ni is too dominant
This one’s tough for me to suss out. In normal life, Ni might cram too many things into the vision, or stick with a vision to the exclusion of any adjustments or present data that might re-inform it. If we’re on a variety-definition spectrum musically with Ni, I’ll combine that with Ni life concerns to say that too-dominant Ni in music might lead to monotony; the vision is fully achieved, but the vision is not robust.
Some examples
Given Ni’s tendencies toward the future, it’s fair to label German electronic maestros Kraftwerk as frequent Ni users. They made instruments that tried to convey the sounds of the future, they wrote lyrics about technology all the time, and they embody what progress sounds like to a 1970s/1980s music listener.
I like Kraftwerk a lot. But their song “Neon Lights” is maybe unhealthy Ni. They absolutely get the vibe down that they intend, with strictly pulsating synths, a not-quite-theremin, and a rhythm that sounds like footsteps. But: there are only 15 words that get repeated a lot, and the song only has an A part and B part and is 8:55 long. I think there’s only one new sound that shows up in the last five minutes. It is absolutely effective at conveying what it means to. But it could have stood to go a few more places in the cityscape it builds for the listener.
Usually, Kraftwerk was much better at sprinkling just enough variety into the composition – a new sound effect here, a set of chords there – to change the feel of the song while keeping the vision intact. A lot of their best songs were conveying vehicle journeys – “Autobahn,” “Trans Europe Express/Metal on Metal,” and “Tour de France” – and they nail Ni on all of them. If you take in the first five songs of their Tour de France Soundtracks album – the playlist is here – it makes perfect sense as 19 minutes unfolding over five tracks. The sound of cycling has to predominate, but bits sprinkled here and there make the vision come alive.
Other German bands of similar vintage explored these themes as well. Motorik is a great genre for this: I recommend Neu!’s song “Fur Immer (Forever).”
Movie scores and other cinematic music can be good displays of Ni as well. When music is meant to go with a movie, it’s attaching to another existing vision, which tends to bolster its Ni credentials. Plus, the way movie cues work, there is often a sense of the foreboding or other kind of anticipation, and that fits Ni goals.
Next part: Se (Extroverted Sensing)
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