Soundtracks
Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2022 8:41 am
Eventually this is going to become a sub-section at some point but here I would like to establish the particular ideas that I had in mind - consider these not set in stone as they are standalone ideas that I have in mind and you can take or leave whatever you wish (and this post will be edited and updated up the whazoo so brace yourself).
Greek Chorus for Characters
The Greek Chorus is something from Greek theater and tragedies that often are lyrics to which foretell or observe the events of the story that are being dramatized to the audiences. They are often the things that tell the audience something coming to be or some moral or ethical lesson (or really any lesson) from the stories. Today the Greek chorus is something of subtle devices - as it highly depends on the subject matter and the type of program you're making (particularly on television). Sometimes the music is more like non-diegetic music (BGM characters can't hear) that could fit for a scene as merely mood music (consider a shitpost from Twitter here); pretty cool even with still images if the particular song fits. How to determine this takes things to consider that are almost part experience, part preference, and part embracing the sort of obvious visual and auditory cues that you'd find already in movies and television shows that are familiar to the particular target audience you know such images and music can fit together. As an artist you know this from an intuitive level.
So it's as such that we have to consider something like the 1989 Prince album for the 1989 Batman movie: the entire album was effectively a loose concept album based on characters in movie (Bruce Wayne/Batman, Vicki Vale, Joker). In the tape album version, you'll find not just the lyrics but a parenthesis under the title of the song with the reference of one of the three characters, meaning the song was conceptually meant to refer to them. I could be wrong with this assumption but I can't think of any other reason for those names to be there.
Similarly, I plan to for Eugene Talbot and his daughter (I really forget the name) Selena Talbot of which comprise of 10 tracks that describe the various aspects of the characters. I figure this would be a nice way to get the most of the kind of music, and a more intuitive insight that's emotional into the characters.
Music for setting
This is pretty as setting along with particular landscape, architecture, lighting, et al contribute to particular moods that can either have a non-diegetic quality that either reinforces focus on the setting or non-diegetic that instead reinforces the story mood setting.
For instance: in more relaxed scenes, usually diegetic music is going to be used allow audiences to be part of the relaxed scenery with the characters for scenes where things are intense, non-diegetic music is used to emphasize the focus of the character, their concerns and actions.
We have a few places like a bar of some sort (I'm thinking something akin to the bar in Bayonetta) where instead of going with the jazz music in Bayonetta, we have instead other kinds of music. And we don't have to overthink this because we've talked about music that's classic 1950s rock or adjacent. So we can add rockabilly, psychobilly, and something more closer to country than jazz and blues. So I'll be working on an album like that later on because it's not that important as working writing on character development for me.
Let's Not Get Too Into The Music
There's two reasons for this creative exercise: 1. Figuring out the characters and 2. Figuring out the kind of music that will be made for the characters in question. As we can't afford really any musical licensing and the musical styles are eclectic, there will have be some, more uniform musical language.
In video games, there's a particular selection of a single type of drama and sometimes a type of sets of themes that are adherently (albeit loosely) to certain genres for what is considered appropriate for the occasion.
To give an example: Bayonetta and Persona 5 have a penchant for calling back to Jazz-fusion (think Incognito and The Brand New Heavies) and thus Jazz-fusion musical style is the "theme" that which all musical melodies are going to revolve around and only deviate every so slightly so as to allow some form of non-diegetic continuity to the world that is of either Bayonetta or Persona 5. In Bayonetta there is some nods to choir vocal harmonies but the usage of them are to focus on what involves the ancient, the revealed mystery, or something that is to be highlighted as "serious"; but even then such tracks contain organ music that was earlier incorporated in the Jazz-fusion "fun" tracks for battle sequences in the game.
So when we put together these "musical" collages, let's not get into them and just finish them, step back and figure out "what common elements have we got here so we can make the economical choice of what kind of music and what kind of instrument drives the music that we can focus on?"
So far what I can see
I'm not a musical professional but what I can see is the use of stringed music - mostly electric guitar or acoustic guitar - driven music.
Lots of rock music of various forms and particular musical themes and tropes that surround a kind of production style that sort of reminds me
of whatever Rick Beato has produced. Some people call it "But Rock" but I would just rather call it "Naughtie Rock" because the production is of a kind of the early 2000s and late 1990s that's clean, very compressed, and sticks to a classic "wall of sound" that would later be rejected by the so-called "garage rock revival" bands like the Recontours that later on would be done also by hipster groups like the Decemberists; so Nu-Metal, alternative rock of the 1990s, and the like.
To be more specific
It's my opinion that if there was one band to make a music soundtrack style after, it would be that of The Stone Temple Pilots and even more specific, the 1999 album "No. 4" here's the playlist to the entire album
Greek Chorus for Characters
The Greek Chorus is something from Greek theater and tragedies that often are lyrics to which foretell or observe the events of the story that are being dramatized to the audiences. They are often the things that tell the audience something coming to be or some moral or ethical lesson (or really any lesson) from the stories. Today the Greek chorus is something of subtle devices - as it highly depends on the subject matter and the type of program you're making (particularly on television). Sometimes the music is more like non-diegetic music (BGM characters can't hear) that could fit for a scene as merely mood music (consider a shitpost from Twitter here); pretty cool even with still images if the particular song fits. How to determine this takes things to consider that are almost part experience, part preference, and part embracing the sort of obvious visual and auditory cues that you'd find already in movies and television shows that are familiar to the particular target audience you know such images and music can fit together. As an artist you know this from an intuitive level.
So it's as such that we have to consider something like the 1989 Prince album for the 1989 Batman movie: the entire album was effectively a loose concept album based on characters in movie (Bruce Wayne/Batman, Vicki Vale, Joker). In the tape album version, you'll find not just the lyrics but a parenthesis under the title of the song with the reference of one of the three characters, meaning the song was conceptually meant to refer to them. I could be wrong with this assumption but I can't think of any other reason for those names to be there.
Similarly, I plan to for Eugene Talbot and his daughter (I really forget the name) Selena Talbot of which comprise of 10 tracks that describe the various aspects of the characters. I figure this would be a nice way to get the most of the kind of music, and a more intuitive insight that's emotional into the characters.
Music for setting
This is pretty as setting along with particular landscape, architecture, lighting, et al contribute to particular moods that can either have a non-diegetic quality that either reinforces focus on the setting or non-diegetic that instead reinforces the story mood setting.
For instance: in more relaxed scenes, usually diegetic music is going to be used allow audiences to be part of the relaxed scenery with the characters for scenes where things are intense, non-diegetic music is used to emphasize the focus of the character, their concerns and actions.
We have a few places like a bar of some sort (I'm thinking something akin to the bar in Bayonetta) where instead of going with the jazz music in Bayonetta, we have instead other kinds of music. And we don't have to overthink this because we've talked about music that's classic 1950s rock or adjacent. So we can add rockabilly, psychobilly, and something more closer to country than jazz and blues. So I'll be working on an album like that later on because it's not that important as working writing on character development for me.
Let's Not Get Too Into The Music
There's two reasons for this creative exercise: 1. Figuring out the characters and 2. Figuring out the kind of music that will be made for the characters in question. As we can't afford really any musical licensing and the musical styles are eclectic, there will have be some, more uniform musical language.
In video games, there's a particular selection of a single type of drama and sometimes a type of sets of themes that are adherently (albeit loosely) to certain genres for what is considered appropriate for the occasion.
To give an example: Bayonetta and Persona 5 have a penchant for calling back to Jazz-fusion (think Incognito and The Brand New Heavies) and thus Jazz-fusion musical style is the "theme" that which all musical melodies are going to revolve around and only deviate every so slightly so as to allow some form of non-diegetic continuity to the world that is of either Bayonetta or Persona 5. In Bayonetta there is some nods to choir vocal harmonies but the usage of them are to focus on what involves the ancient, the revealed mystery, or something that is to be highlighted as "serious"; but even then such tracks contain organ music that was earlier incorporated in the Jazz-fusion "fun" tracks for battle sequences in the game.
So when we put together these "musical" collages, let's not get into them and just finish them, step back and figure out "what common elements have we got here so we can make the economical choice of what kind of music and what kind of instrument drives the music that we can focus on?"
So far what I can see
I'm not a musical professional but what I can see is the use of stringed music - mostly electric guitar or acoustic guitar - driven music.
Lots of rock music of various forms and particular musical themes and tropes that surround a kind of production style that sort of reminds me
of whatever Rick Beato has produced. Some people call it "But Rock" but I would just rather call it "Naughtie Rock" because the production is of a kind of the early 2000s and late 1990s that's clean, very compressed, and sticks to a classic "wall of sound" that would later be rejected by the so-called "garage rock revival" bands like the Recontours that later on would be done also by hipster groups like the Decemberists; so Nu-Metal, alternative rock of the 1990s, and the like.
To be more specific
It's my opinion that if there was one band to make a music soundtrack style after, it would be that of The Stone Temple Pilots and even more specific, the 1999 album "No. 4" here's the playlist to the entire album