Some of these thoughts will no doubt state the obvious, but I hope will also stimulate some discussion. I attempt to work backwards from what we as practitioners of the art and craft of music do instinctively or unconsciously, and try to shine a light on it as a conscious process. Rather it is a more anecdotal look at the experiences of composing music, and in particular about driving human emotions through music to enhance moving images and dialogue. This article is not intended to be in any way scientific. 10/15 Weekly Roundup: October 15 10/15 Hollywood Records Announces Rons Gone Wrong Soundtrack Album 10/15 Hollywood Records Announces The Last Duel Soundtrack Album 10/12 WaterTower Music Announces Scenes from a Marriage Soundtrack 10/8 Weekly Roundup: October 8 10/1 No Time to Die Soundtrack Released 10/1 Weekly Roundup: October 1 9/30 Ubisoft Music It is a privilege to be invited to contribute to Frontiers in Neuroscience on this most fascinating and nefarious of topics.
Vibration sense, sound sense, is ancient, visceral, and inextricably linked to old and deep emotional centers in the brain, a fact that allows composers to access and dialogue with their audience at a deep level.West African Song and Chants: Childrens Music from Ghana. Unlike eyes, ears can detect phenomena in any direction without having to be focused on it, giving distinct survival advantages throughout evolution (MPF, 2004). From casual listening at home, in a film or on TV, from an iPod as we move around or the sound of an ambulance racing by, a call to prayer, or just somebody at the door, music is there.
Jazz that open floodgate of intellectual freedom and abstraction, was famously outlawed by the Nazi Reichstag. In ancient shamanic traditions, it is a vehicle to travel into the deeper realms and heal a person (Harner, 1990). For the Sufis, music is a path to enlightenment, it is “food for the soul” 1. (Ghana - explore on map) What kind of voicingSuch is the influencing power of music, the brain states that it can induce that it is almost impossible not to get caught up.
Directors can even capitalize on the stark soullessness of a film without music. If you watch a film without the music, it becomes impersonal, its energy and movement undetermined. Before synchronized sound, there was always an accompanying instrument in the movie theater. As a veteran film composer once said: “In a film, the dialogue and action tell us what the characters are thinking and doing, but the music can tell us what they are feeling.” Music and movies have coexisted since film's beginning—there never really was a silent film. Yet despite the force of this influence, as Bob Marley said, “one good thing about music is when it hits you, you feel no pain” (lest the volume is too loud).What makes music for film (and media in general) particularly interesting to any examination of how music affects emotions, is that in film that is its main function.
My own first real foray into composing was triggered by the torn emotions of a painful breakup. Maybe the raw emotions of duress clarify the path from emotion to musical expression. Crisis and creativity are strange yet promiscuous bedfellows: perhaps it is because crisis demands a directness of experience.
Not to be stubborn, but to follow a whim, a creative hunch. The propensity for distraction, to go off at tangents, is a clear advantage to artists. Mozart is a great example of an instinctual purity and brilliance that seemed to defy his lack of emotional maturity.I think creativity embodies a kind of “constructive restlessness.” If not an attention deficit, then perhaps an attention brevity. Does it require a heightened emotional maturity? Probably not. To live in that paradoxical place where one can in an instant access the darkest of the dark to the lightest and most uplifting of emotions, leaves one determinedly exposed to “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.” It is a life lived intensely, and yet the experience is also intensely abstract.So what are the skills that a composer needs? Are we psychologists or empaths? Probably yes, quite a bit of both.
Can it be learnt? While tricks and techniques can be learnt, I feel the ability to convey emotion through music is more innate, more personal. A convergence of creativity and craft into a perfect harmony we know as Inspiration, and it is best found within one's work, not without. And we must take care to refill our well with new life adventures lest it run dry.I see composing not as a process but a space. We draw out these feelings from our well of experiences and influences, from what moves us. You catch an idea at the corner of your distraction, and you run with it.While most people possess the capacity to feel emotions and have them triggered or enhanced by musical cues, composers need to have a kind of open conduit between feeling and fingers, a channel to move a complex, wordless inner experience toward an outward expression.
The sensation of composing is often described as akin to “channeling,” perhaps from the unconscious to conscious mind, perhaps from somewhere more esoteric. I work with the information I have—chordal or modal structures that evoke the mood I need, a palette or rhythmic pace, and then the missing pieces become more conspicuous. Like many, I tend to improvise around ideas and begin to “hear what is not yet there, but should be.” A melody or harmony that is implied. If you set a place at the table, the Muse might come and join you.Not all composers write the same way: some hear a symphony all at once, some, a poignant motif, a hook.
Not so when we bring visuals before their accompanying sound—that feels nonsensical and the brain is confused.Much of the work of the film composer is a kind of musical alchemy, pouring rarified ingredients (and more than a drop of our own blood) into a bubbling cocktail of pitches, patterns, modes and memories. We are propelled forward with a prescience of what follows. One of my favorite examples of this bias is the recut trailer “ Scary Mary Poppins” (link below) 2, where the magically maternal Mary Poppins becomes an evil witch when underscored by creepy music.In film editing, there is a well-known rule: “Sound Before Picture.” You will often hear sound from the next scene coming in before the visual images, and the brain is able to make perfect sense of it. The immediacy with which we react to a film's soundtrack shows that at least emotionally, we are much more prejudiced to the sound than the images. But you need thousands of samples per second to fool the ear. It takes only 25 frames per second to fool the eyes, maybe less.
Steven Spielberg/Composer John Williams, 1975).
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