The Soundtrack (Putting Music in Its Place).

Abstract

There are currently many books and journals on film music in print, most of which describe music as a separate activity from film, applied to images most often at the very end of the production process by composers normally resident outside the filmic world. This article endeavours to modify this practice by placing music within the larger notion of “the soundtrack”. This new model assumes that irrespective of industrial determinants, the soundtrack is perceived by an audience as such a unity; that music, dialogue, effects and atmospheres are heard as interdependent layers in the sonification of the film. We often can identify the individual sonic elements when they appear, but we are more aware of the blending they produce when sounding together, much as we are when we hear an orchestra.