I’ve written and argued about this many times before, but my stance on music in movies has gotten more and more rigid as time goes on. I now firmly believe that movies would be better if there were absolutely no music whatsoever in them. Over-saturating a movie in music is a lazy attempt at forcing an emotion on you, makes it harder to suspend disbelief, and worsens the “noise pollution” of modern day sound tracks.
While there are certainly other varieties, I find that movie music tends to fall into three main categories: epic, drama, and comedy. All of which are equally awful, but lets first focus on comedy sound tracks. This type of music is the one that irritates me the most. The best way I can describe it is that a typical comedy score is like watching the movie with the director who has to point out all of the funny parts. It’s like he’s right there elbowing you in the side, smacking away at his big tub of popcorn with that stupid grin on his face, constantly calling out, “this is gonna be so funny! Watch this. Watch, are you watching!? Oooooh, that was so funny! Wasn’t that hilarious? That was hilarious!!”
Using comedic musical cues is a cheap trick to cover up the fact that the joke wasn’t funny to begin with. The same trick is used all the time in dramas. Lets say one of the film’s characters dies. Often I have no feelings whatsoever for the character, but if a little sad music is laid over the top of it, of course I’m going to feel emotional. It has nothing to do with the movie and everything to do with the psychology involved in composing sad music. If I’m really supposed to care about the character, make me care about her. Show me, through that characters actions, why I should care about her. Don’t try to trick me into being sad; I’m not stupid. If anything I’m a little upset that I’m being forced to feel sad about a character I don’t care about.
The same goes for epic, action music. I’m talking about the kind of music that is most prevalent in fantasy adventure and science fiction movies. The kind of music that is supposed to make you feel excited and inspired. The kind of music that is so incredibly relentless and overlays anything slightly epic at all. The same rule applies here; if the action is epic, the viewers will be excited, if it is not they will not be excited. Don’t try to fool people into being excited by cramming intense music down their throats. Movie music is not only annoying for attempting to force an emotion, it also detracts heavily from the experience.
If the idea behind watching a movie is to suspend your disbelief and let the experience wash over you, music makes that harder to achieve. In real life, music does not blare over some ominous speaker, providing a soundtrack to our life (as much as some people would enjoy that). And in some cases it’s just downright inappropriate. Take an action sequence for example. Lets say, for the sake of argument, that the characters in the movie hear the musical score. Don’t you think it would be a little distracting? If I’m trying to delicately scale a cliff-side, or stab some dragon in the face, the last thing I want to hear is some massive orchestra blaring away in my ear. Sometimes I almost expect the character to shout “Shut up! I’m trying to concentrate!”
There are only two times it is acceptable to have music in movies. 1) if it has an obvious source, and 2) it is played during a montage. If the scene takes place in a car, for example, it is okay to have underlying music because I can accept that the music is coming from the radio and most people listen to the radio while driving a car. If the main character is wearing headphones; let us hear what he’s listening to. But if two naked guys are standing in the middle of the desert, where the hell is the music coming from? and why aren’t they trying to find the source? and what kind of a movie features two naked guys in the middle of the desert? what a terrible example. Music is also acceptable during montages because a montage is so far removed from reality that you can do whatever you want with it. Plus montages generally lack any interesting audio, so go ahead and cover up the lack of sound with some music.
I think some of the movie music abuse can be attributed to covering up bad sound design. It’s easy to hide a lack luster Foley, sound effects, or dialogue track by smothering it with music. But this is, of course, not always the case. Big budget movies that had the time, money, and resources to develop stellar sound tracks still hide all that hard work behind awful musical scores. Probably the biggest contributor to the problem is the music editor. It’s unfortunate that the music editor generally gets the last tweak of the soundtrack. Each sound department thinks their work is the most important, so naturally they will try to make theirs the most prevalent. By giving the mix to the music guy last, you get a soundtrack with overbearing music and barely audible dialogue. This is what I mean by noise pollution in movies. There’s so much going on in the soundtrack, that often the really important parts (dialogue) are impossible to understand. The mix should be passed along like this: Foley–>sound effects–>dialogue. Obviously I’m oversimplifying the process, but the important part is that you fire the music guy. Just get rid of music entirely; it’s distracting, unwelcome, and annoying.
Now I know there are some nuts out there that actually like movie music, so here’s my suggestion. With the advances in digital video technology, it’s amazing we haven’t really started to innovate with home video formats. What I propose is a DVD Blu-Ray disc that allows you to choose which audio channels are played and at what volume. So people like me (all two of us) can turn off the music and crank up the dialogue. Make it happen, Hollywood.
I find this idea appalling. lol. Music is a huge part of movies for me — music SAVES bad movies for me. Transformers (and its sequel) have nothing going for them other than special effects and nicely orchestrated music; Yann Tiersen’s music (Amelie, Goodbye Lenin!) adds a layer of music to a film that is so good that the pieces can bring you to tears with or without the film there; Philip Glass, John Williams, Peter Gabriel, etc. all do magnificent pieces.
I can’t even imagine watching some of the most epic scenes in Lord of the Rings without the music in the background, man. And what would Ultrachrist have been without that klezmer music?? lol.
I can see your point for wanting to focus on the dialogue, but I think that narrows down what a movie IS. Sometimes the dialogue is the weakest part of a movie. Or the production value is terrible, but the dialogue and music are great.
Maybe it’s b/c I am that dude going “WAIT. WATCH THIS. THIS IS GONNA BE HILARIOUS.” but *folds arms* music is the greatest.
It’s funny, while disagreeing with me, we totally agree. Yes music IS effective at making you feel emotions without the need for there to even be a movie. And yes, music does help cover up bad dialogue and poor production values. My point is, if they weren’t bad from the beginning, you wouldn’t need music to cover them up. And if the story is well written, well acted, and well staged, you should feel emotions because you genuinely care about the story and characters, not because the music is sad.
But your reaction is the same I get from nearly everyone I give this argument to. I think we’ve experienced movies with too much music for so long that we just think that’s how it has to be done. But if a movie is done right, you don’t need a lick of music in it. Lord of the rings, for example, would have been so much cooler without the appalling soundtrack. You could really focus on the intense sound effects and visuals and that would draw you into the fight even more.
Omg. Appalling soundtrack????
*dies*
I see we can never see eye to eye on this topic since that is your opinion. lol. A huge part of my iTunes library is OSTs, and I listen to the LotR one all the time. XD
I’m with Sammy on this one. I LOVE the music in movies. Life comes with songs…why shouldn’t movies?
But life doesn’t come with songs. I addressed this in the argument. If there is music in life it is coming from an obvious source. If there is a reason for the music to be playing in the movie, for example car radios or headphones, I’m ok with it. Otherwise it is not welcome.
C’mon, be reasonable. I think you need to see “The Invention of Lying” to see what life would be like if movies were as dry as you wanted them. XD
um… you’re not going to like this. I actually kind of enjoyed the invention of lying. Not loved it, just kind of liked it. But I’m not saying movies have to be dry, I’m just saying that I don’t like being forced to have emotions because of the musical score.
We had a discussion about music in films with a university professor once and she agreed with you: music is overused and sometimes just pointless. She went even further: she said the use of music today is a way to deprive it of its original meaning. Music is often used as background noise (most shops nowadays have music playing, but you barely pay attention to it) and people can’t appreciate silence anymore.
Also, the first films had no sounds at all, but people were amazed because they had never seen anything like that before. Then people added live music during projections, because total silence was unnatural. Now we’re simply so used to having music in films that consider it normal. I mean, if we see a theatre play, we don’t expect a soundtrack, do we?
I would like to watch a film with no soundtrack, I’m curious to know what it would be like.
I always notice when a movie doesn’t play music. It’s such a relief. Finally, a scene where I’m not being bombarded by sound! I know LotR had an epic, moving soundtrack, but when I watched those massive battles, I just wanted to get engrossed in the sounds of swords clanging against each other and people screaming and dying and getting trampled on. The included music actually took me out of the experience and reminded me, oh, hey, this is just a movie with an obnoxious soundtrack.
This reminds me of a chapter from Harpo Speaks. Harpo was talking about a friend, a composer, who went to meet with a movie director. The director talked about how he wanted to have a scene where a war was going on, planes were dropping bombs, a woman was in the middle of the battlefield giving birth, so on and so forth, and asked what kind of music they could play during this. The composer said, “If you have that much going on, you don’t need music,” and left.
But don’t most people watch movies to escape reality? So why try to make me think that a guy can time travel but that music cant just be there?
I agree with you about 70% but well placed music can make a movie go from good to great. It just needs to be scaled back and blended more naturally.
@ Sammy – perhaps appalling was the wrong word choice. I personally don’t like the LOTR soundtrack, but I can see that it has merit and I’m certainly not knocking anyone that likes it. But like Clark said, it’s too much. I’d rather just be a part of the action, hear all the clanging of metal and battle cries. That would draw me into the experience more than an epic sound track. Sound tracks draw attention to the fact that you are watching a movie. So..
@ Scott – absolutely movies are an escape from reality, but I would argue that the music makes it harder to really let your imagination become part of the experience. A relentless soundtrack is constant saying “Hey, you’re watching a movie!” It would be easier to be part of the action if it sounded like you were really there, not a passive viewer watching it from the inside of your car with the radio turned up. I know Hollywood (and movie goers for that matter) would never agree with my nut perspective of just axing music entirely, so I agree that it does need to be scaled way back.
@ Alex – I hadn’t considered the tradition of music in films coming from silent movies, that’s a very interesting theory. Movies with little or no music really stand out when I see them, though there aren’t many. So few I can’t even think of a good example. I remember Stranger Than Fiction being fairly light on music. It’s especially refreshing in comedies when you don’t have the composer treating you like an idiot with excessive musical cues.
That’s the number one reason why I don’t really like Scrubs. Joke. Musical cue. Joke. Musical cue.