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Can you enjoy film music if you don't connect to the film?

Nick1Ø66

By Nick1Ø66
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Can you enjoy film music if you don't connect to the film?  

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  1. 1. Can you enjoy film music if you don't connect to the film?

    • Yes! I love film music and can get into a score on its own even if I don't like the film.
      29
    • What kind of question is this? I love film music and of course can get into a score on its own even if I don't like the film.
      2

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Many many scores that I enjoy while not caring one way or another about the film.   Hell, you can't be a Goldsmith fan without that mentality!    

Not Mr. Big
Not Mr. Big

Spider-Man 3

Cerebral Cortex
Cerebral Cortex

Can you enjoy film music if you don't connect to the film? Absolutely. As Loert simply put it: "at the end of the day, music is sound," and if you're able to experience any sort of positive emotional

Unlucky Bastard

Unlucky Bastard 7,782

Posted
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7 minutes ago, Nick1066 said:

This is a family site, please take this kind of smut to FSM where it belongs. You should know better as a moderator.

 

Really Jay, what's next? Stories of how you think of Daisey Ridley whilst listening to Rey's Theme?

 

I don't know. 60, maybe 70 families. Do you mind?

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A24

A24 4,331

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21 minutes ago, Thor said:

 That being said, there are some films from 2016 that have received the lowest possible mark from me: CHI-RAQ, THE HOUSE, THE OTHER SIDE OF THE DOOR, SIERANEVADA, SLACK BAY, EDDIE THE EAGLE (not even Margeson's superb score can save this turkey), THE LAST KING, WARCRAFT: THE BEGINNING, THE FOREST and THE 5TH WAVE. Also -- slightly above those -- all the films from position 74-104 on this list were disappointments to me: https://mubi.com/lists/2016-films-ranked

 

 

Yeah, but those are truly the worst of the worst, Thor. I don't even bother with those. I'm kinda the opposite of you, Thor. Let's take the science fiction genre for a minute. Even though I'm sure that I love the genre as a concept, I'm actually very picky about it. In fact, I can't find enough good ones to compile a top 10. 

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Thor

Thor 7,490

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1 hour ago, Alexcremers said:

 

Yeah, but those are truly the worst of the worst, Thor. I don't even bother with those. I'm kinda the opposite of you, Thor. Let's take the science fiction genre for a minute. Even though I'm sure that I love the genre as a concept, I'm actually very picky about it. In fact, I can't find enough good ones to compile a top 10. 

 

I'm picky too, but I have different 'modes' with which I approach something. I don't approach a more intellectual film like EX MACHINA the same way I do TOMORROWLAND, for example. Or SOLARIS vs. INDEPENDENCE DAY. If you do, you quickly paint yourself into a corner. There is a certain value I can get from Tarkovskij that I don't get with Emmerich, and vice versa.

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Thor

Thor 7,490

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7 hours ago, Gnome in Plaid said:

Has Christopher Young ever actually scored a good movie?

 

What is this question in relation to, if I may ask? It seemed to come out of the blue.

 

But yeah -- sure he's done some good films. THE GRUDGE is probably the one that has the widest, universal acclaim (for me, it's probably the scariest film of all time) -- other good genre films, IMO, are HELLRAISER, THE DARK HALF, SPECIES (soft spot for that), HARD RAIN, THE CORE and SINISTER.

 

Among the more "normal" films, I've always liked Hallström's THE SHIPPING NEWS.

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Nick1Ø66

Nick1Ø66 4,710

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So now the results are in, and 100% of us can appreciate a film's score without appreciating the film. Thank you to all who participated for the, um, varied responses.

 

Now, sub question...     

------------------> HOW do you listen? What's your preferred way to get into the film score zone? High end headphones? Your home stereo/theatre? iPod & earbuds? In your car? Youtube over your crappy laptop speakers?

 

I've never really gotten into listening to film music in my car.  If I'm listening to a score, it's usually either with headphones on and deliberate listening, or on my iPod w/earbuds doing stuff around the house.  I rarely listen over my home theatre speakers, as it tends to generate complaints. :) 

 

Zimmer's (yes, Zimmer) fantastic and sublime Interstellar was a revelation on headphones.

 

 

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Thor

Thor 7,490

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Back in the day, I either listened on my home speakers or on my High End headphones. That changed after I got chronic tinnitus some 6-7 years ago. Now I can very rarely use headphones, and mostly have to use the home speakers/HiFi while simultaneously doing other things, like being online. If my brain focusses exclusively on the music, it also focusses on sound in general and hence the chronic tinnitus noise.

 

As for platform, I play music almost exclusively from my iTunes on my laptop, as I've transferred all my CD's there. I play actual CDs extremely rarely.

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Wojo

Wojo 2,453

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2 hours ago, Nick1066 said:

So now the results are in, and 100% of us can appreciate a film's score without appreciating the film. Thank you to all who participated for the, um, varied responses.

 

 

 

Your range of choices was too restrictive. You only mention about liking the film. What about scores for movies you've never seen? That's different from liking it. 

 

 

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Will

Will 2,215

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On 10/18/2016 at 3:11 PM, Selina Kyle said:

No. You're wrong. How could you even say that?

 

Oh God, I can just hear Padme saying that and it's not a nice memory...

-------

 

Interesting thread, @Nick1066, like the others you've started. :)

 

I can absolutely enjoy themes from a film I haven't seen or even haven't particularly liked.

 

Enjoying a complete score though might be harder if I haven't seen the film. 

 

I listen to music though ear buds or a portable Bluetooth speaker. 

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Wojo

Wojo 2,453

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6 hours ago, Nick1066 said:

Obviously you can't connect to or like a film you haven't seen!

 

But I can connect to a score to a film I haven't seen, or never will. For those scores, the film is irrelevant, and the score is just a concept album of great music for my mind to tell the story. 

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Jay

Jay 37,339

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1 hour ago, Selina Kyle said:

Padme > Rey

 

Natalie Portman > Daisy Ridley, sure

 

But the characters from a writing standpoint? Not even close!

 

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Cerebral Cortex

Cerebral Cortex 3,357

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Can you enjoy film music if you don't connect to the film? Absolutely. As Loert simply put it: "at the end of the day, music is sound," and if you're able to experience any sort of positive emotional arousal whatsoever that stems strictly from it alone than you obvious don't need the visual accompaniment of film to aid in your enjoyment of said sound. There are numerous films that I have only heard the soundtracks to and, for better or worse, not seen the actual films themselves.

So, yes, you can enjoy a score if you yourself don't connect to a film. Additionally...

As was brought up several times a couple months ago in the thread Bad film, Brilliant Scores, many a bad film hath given rise to a multitude of incredible scores. Often times, the very enjoyment of these scores necessitates you having to separate the music from the film. In these instances, the film and music relationship is almost parasitic, in that a terrible film is leeching off of its great score in hopes of achieving a sort of illusion or semblance of quality within the picture. In some cases, the music is all a bad film has going for it. Goes back to what @Taikomochi said about how "Williams was compensating" during the scoring of the Star Wars prequel trilogy because the films themselves were (or at least have been deemed by most as being) incredibly poor. In AOTC, the relationship between Anakin and Padmè as portrayed on film is an atrocious attempt at trying to show the "romance" that exists between star-crossed lovers, and the film figuratively tries to leech off of the music, which actually does do a great job of portraying that kind of relationship, to help compensate for the visual deficiencies. I enjoy the scoring, but really have to separate myself from the film in order to reach maximum enjoyment. Thinking of the film alongside listening to the score only really just ends up killing the figurative phonic boner I was getting. Hey, look! I'm getting all long-winded. This is exciting. 

I say this because, while I feel you can have a bad film that doesn't affect your enjoyment of its score, a great film can undoubtedly permanently improve your enjoyment of a score. 

Take 0:22 to 0:55 or so of The Road Goes Ever Pt. I.


A phenomenal little musical moment. Heard solely without picture accompaniment, it is able to stand unwavering on its own as a simply fantastic and phenomenal musical moment. But, without picture, I can only hope to guess what the music is saying, what picture it is hoping to conjure in my mind. To some, I suppose trying to guess and theorize what the musical intent was on behalf of the composer might prove more enjoyable. But I myself like being a bit more certain. 

 


With the visuals firmly attached, context is established and what the music is trying to say becomes infinitely more clear. It's about a hero about to embark on a journey he doesn't by any means want to embark on, a journey which by all considerations will most likely cost him his life, but, with the help of his friend, he has chosen to take on regardless. Friendship, bravery, adventure. That's what the music was originally trying to say! Before I could only guess what it was trying to say, but now I am certain. And now that I have visuals I have the added benefit of being able to gauge how effectively the music was able to convey those themes. It goes without saying it even does. 

And because I now know what the music was trying to say, because I know the visual experience it was accompanying, I find now that my engagement, appreciation, and enjoyment for that bit of music has been significantly heightened. I didn't need the film to connect to it, but (since it was a good film) it definitely helped. 15+ years later, I am unable to separate the music from the film for this moment because the two have become so intrinsically linked to me that they have become a singular moment of enjoyment for me. The emotional core is shared between both the visuals and the audio, with both supporting one another to convey meaning. 

Perhaps all this is stupendously obvious, and I'm just stating what goes without saying. If that is the case, I apologize for wasting your time. 

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Incanus

Incanus 5,714

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Yes you most certainly can enjoy a film score without ever seeing the film. Music is music even if film music is often highly programmatic music with specific purpose to it.

 

And seeing a film and knowing the music's context can elevate the experience of the music and a perfect marriage of sound and image in a film can also transcend the mere auditory experience. Again bad film could tarnish even the best of scores but luckily in most cases such good scores tend to stand on their own in a way that they live comfortably outside the film and do not need any visual reference points from their movies. Take for example the latter half of James Newton Howard's collaborations with Shyamalan. Those films are awful but Howard found somewhere deep in the film something that sparked his imagination to create strong musical concepts that survive outside the dismal movies they were composed for. Jerry Goldsmith also made a career out of creating great music for often subpar films.

 

Something like The Lord of the Rings based on a rich literary work exists to my mind in a crossroads of film, novel and music where each component enriches the experience. Yes you can truly enjoy the music on its own, it is a powerful experience with emotional pull in itself but when you first add the audio-visual coupling which is so tight and so well-conceived it gives the music a whole new dimension and vice versa.

 

Add to that the knowledge of the novel and in this case the fact that the composer was drawing so much directly from the novel for his music and there is a huge subtextual network underneath the music which you can trace throughout that further elevates the experience if you bother to delve into it. It is certainly not mandatory for the enjoyment of the music but it opens a whole new complexity before your eyes (and ears). This perhaps makes it a bit less unlikely you disassociate the music from the coupling with the film (and the story of the novel) but all in all it is a greater experience than the music alone in a vacuum without any context, no matter how colorful and epic the score might be.

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Thor

Thor 7,490

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14 minutes ago, Incanus said:

And seeing a film and knowing the music's context can elevate the experience of the music and a perfect marriage of sound and image in a film can also transcend the mere auditory experience.

 

Doesn't really work that way for me. If I get a soundtrack to a film I haven't seen, and then see the film later on, it doesn't really have any impact on my listening -- regardless of how well it works in the film or not. I've taught myself to clearly separate between the two. I can enjoy an album AND marvel at how the score works in a film, but one very rarely has anything to do with the other. The first is exclusively part of my music interest, the second exclusively my film interest. I realize this is probably a unique approach in film music circles, but it works very well for me.

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Not Mr. Big

Not Mr. Big 4,639

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11 hours ago, Cerebral Cortex said:

Can you enjoy film music if you don't connect to the film? Absolutely. As Loert simply put it: "at the end of the day, music is sound," and if you're able to experience any sort of positive emotional arousal whatsoever that stems strictly from it alone than you obvious don't need the visual accompaniment of film to aid in your enjoyment of said sound. There are numerous films that I have only heard the soundtracks to and, for better or worse, not seen the actual films themselves.

So, yes, you can enjoy a score if you yourself don't connect to a film. Additionally...

As was brought up several times a couple months ago in the thread Bad film, Brilliant Scores, many a bad film hath given rise to a multitude of incredible scores. Often times, the very enjoyment of these scores necessitates you having to separate the music from the film. In these instances, the film and music relationship is almost parasitic, in that a terrible film is leeching off of its great score in hopes of achieving a sort of illusion or semblance of quality within the picture. In some cases, the music is all a bad film has going for it. Goes back to what @Taikomochi said about how "Williams was compensating" during the scoring of the Star Wars prequel trilogy because the films themselves were (or at least have been deemed by most as being) incredibly poor. In AOTC, the relationship between Anakin and Padmè as portrayed on film is an atrocious attempt at trying to show the "romance" that exists between star-crossed lovers, and the film figuratively tries to leech off of the music, which actually does do a great job of portraying that kind of relationship, to help compensate for the visual deficiencies. I enjoy the scoring, but really have to separate myself from the film in order to reach maximum enjoyment. Thinking of the film alongside listening to the score only really just ends up killing the figurative phonic boner I was getting. Hey, look! I'm getting all long-winded. This is exciting. 

I say this because, while I feel you can have a bad film that doesn't affect your enjoyment of its score, a great film can undoubtedly permanently improve your enjoyment of a score. 

Take 0:22 to 0:55 or so of The Road Goes Ever Pt. I.


A phenomenal little musical moment. Heard solely without picture accompaniment, it is able to stand unwavering on its own as a simply fantastic and phenomenal musical moment. But, without picture, I can only hope to guess what the music is saying, what picture it is hoping to conjure in my mind. To some, I suppose trying to guess and theorize what the musical intent was on behalf of the composer might prove more enjoyable. But I myself like being a bit more certain. 

 


With the visuals firmly attached, context is established and what the music is trying to say becomes infinitely more clear. It's about a hero about to embark on a journey he doesn't by any means want to embark on, a journey which by all considerations will most likely cost him his life, but, with the help of his friend, he has chosen to take on regardless. Friendship, bravery, adventure. That's what the music was originally trying to say! Before I could only guess what it was trying to say, but now I am certain. And now that I have visuals I have the added benefit of being able to gauge how effectively the music was able to convey those themes. It goes without saying it even does. 

And because I now know what the music was trying to say, because I know the visual experience it was accompanying, I find now that my engagement, appreciation, and enjoyment for that bit of music has been significantly heightened. I didn't need the film to connect to it, but (since it was a good film) it definitely helped. 15+ years later, I am unable to separate the music from the film for this moment because the two have become so intrinsically linked to me that they have become a singular moment of enjoyment for me. The emotional core is shared between both the visuals and the audio, with both supporting one another to convey meaning. 

Perhaps all this is stupendously obvious, and I'm just stating what goes without saying. If that is the case, I apologize for wasting your time. 

Agreed.

8 hours ago, Incanus said:

Yes you most certainly can enjoy a film score without ever seeing the film. Music is music even if film music is often highly programmatic music with specific purpose to it.

 

And seeing a film and knowing the music's context can elevate the experience of the music and a perfect marriage of sound and image in a film can also transcend the mere auditory experience. Again bad film could tarnish even the best of scores but luckily in most cases such good scores tend to stand on their own in a way that they live comfortably outside the film and do not need any visual reference points from their movies. Take for example the latter half of James Newton Howard's collaborations with Shyamalan. Those films are awful but Howard found somewhere deep in the film something that sparked his imagination to create strong musical concepts that survive outside the dismal movies they were composed for. Jerry Goldsmith also made a career out of creating great music for often subpar films.

 

Something like The Lord of the Rings based on a rich literary work exists to my mind in a crossroads of film, novel and music where each component enriches the experience. Yes you can truly enjoy the music on its own, it is a powerful experience with emotional pull in itself but when you first add the audio-visual coupling which is so tight and so well-conceived it gives the music a whole new dimension and vice versa.

 

Add to that the knowledge of the novel and in this case the fact that the composer was drawing so much directly from the novel for his music and there is a huge subtextual network underneath the music which you can trace throughout that further elevates the experience if you bother to delve into it. It is certainly not mandatory for the enjoyment of the music but it opens a whole new complexity before your eyes (and ears). This perhaps makes it a bit less unlikely you disassociate the music from the coupling with the film (and the story of the novel) but all in all it is a greater experience than the music alone in a vacuum without any context, no matter how colorful and epic the score might be.

Agreed.

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Gnome in Plaid

Gnome in Plaid 219

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On 10/19/2016 at 5:12 AM, Thor said:

 

What is this question in relation to, if I may ask? It seemed to come out of the blue.

 

But yeah -- sure he's done some good films. THE GRUDGE is probably the one that has the widest, universal acclaim (for me, it's probably the scariest film of all time) -- other good genre films, IMO, are HELLRAISER, THE DARK HALF, SPECIES (soft spot for that), HARD RAIN, THE CORE and SINISTER.

 

Among the more "normal" films, I've always liked Hallström's THE SHIPPING NEWS.

Not out of the blue at all.  I love a ton of his music, but I can't think of a single movie he's ever scored I would have any interest in re-watching.  I didn't care for any of the ones you've mentioned that I've seen (although I haven't seen The Grudge or The Dark Half.)

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Melange

Melange 446

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I think having seen the scene for which a particular part of a score was composed for perhaps adds another emotional dimension upon further listenings due to the associations of what was happening on the screen at the time but probably isn't essential for many scores. I'm sure pieces such as lighting the beacons in ROTK and the lightshow in CEO3K would be great listening on their own, but knowing the scenes they accompany must add more depth to the listening experience.

 

 

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