What does music do in media?
Music in films, TV, adverts and games is written to serve the pictures. It can:
- set the place and time (a sitar for a village scene, a harpsichord for the 1700s);
- create mood (joy, fear, sadness, excitement);
- show what a character feels inside;
- link scenes and keep the story flowing;
- help a brand be remembered (a jingle or sound logo in an advert).
Diegetic and non-diegetic music
Diegetic music comes from inside the story world: a radio, a band at a wedding, a character singing. The characters can hear it.
Non-diegetic music (the underscore) is added for the audience only, such as an orchestra playing during a chase. Some scenes cleverly move from one to the other.
Composer techniques
- Leitmotif: a short tune linked to a character, place or idea. It can be changed (slower, minor, different instrument) to show how the character has changed.
- Hit points and mickey-mousing: music lands exactly on an action. Copying every movement is called mickey-mousing, common in cartoons.
- Ostinato: a short pattern repeated again and again to build energy or tension.
- Harmony: major often sounds bright; minor, dissonant chords (clashing notes) and chromatic lines sound sad or uneasy.
- Tempo, pitch and dynamics: fast and loud = excitement; slow and soft = calm or sadness; very low notes = danger.
- Timbre (instrument colour): brass for heroes, high tremolo strings for suspense, synthesisers for science fiction.
- Silence: stopping the music suddenly can be the most powerful moment.
Music for video games
A game does not know how long a player will stay in one place, so its music must be adaptive (interactive):
- Loops repeat smoothly without a clear ending.
- Layers (stems) fade in or out as danger rises or falls.
- Stingers are short sounds for events such as winning a level.
Early games had only a few sound channels, so composers wrote short, catchy melodies; today many games use full orchestras.
Composers to know
- Bernard Herrmann (USA, 20th century): worked with Alfred Hitchcock; short repeated motifs and unusual groups of instruments, such as stabbing strings-only music for a famous horror scene.
- Hans Zimmer (Germany/USA): blends orchestra with synthesisers; strong ostinatos and deep brass in action and science-fiction films.
- Michael Giacchino (USA): rich leitmotifs that return transformed, as in animated films about family and memory.
- Thomas Newman (USA): gentle textures with piano, marimba and unusual percussion, creating a dreamy, thoughtful mood.
- Nobuo Uematsu (Japan): famous game composer; memorable themes for role-playing games, written first for simple sound chips and later for orchestra.
- A. R. Rahman (India): fuses Indian melodies and instruments with electronic and orchestral sounds in Indian and international films.
Key formulas and definitions
- Key term: diegetic = music the characters can hear (inside the story)
- Key term: non-diegetic / underscore = music only the audience hears
- Key term: leitmotif = a short tune that stands for a character, place or idea
- Key term: hit point = a musical accent placed exactly on an on-screen action
- Key term: adaptive music = game music that changes with the player's actions
Worked examples
1. A wedding band plays on screen while two characters dance. Diegetic or non-diegetic?
Diegetic: the band is inside the story and the characters can hear it.
2. A hero's brass theme returns slow, soft and in a minor key on a solo piano near the end. What does this show?
The leitmotif has been transformed to show that the hero is now sad, tired or has lost something, while still reminding us it is the same person.
3. How would you score a scene where a thief creeps through a dark house?
Slow but steady pulse, very soft dynamics, low pizzicato (plucked) strings as an ostinato, high tremolo strings for suspense, dissonant chords, then silence just before a loud hit point when a dog barks.
Common mistakes
- Thinking all film music is background music. Diegetic music is part of the story world.
- Thinking a leitmotif must always sound the same. Composers change it to show change in the character.
- Saying major = happy and minor = sad every time. Tempo, instruments and context matter too.
- Forgetting that game music cannot have a fixed length; it must loop and adapt.