Composing : Atmospheric vs. Melodically Driven Music by Brandi Thomas

Hi Brandi, you and I may have similar musical rearings. Melody is a predominant player for me too. Say a little more about 'atmospheric'. While I think I get what you're saying, cannot music be both melodic and atmospheric at the same time?

Hi Linwood - thanks for your response. I do not have Omnispere or Alchemy. Great point about approaching it from an interval relationship!

Hi Craig! I think that melodically driven music has more forward motion, where atmospheric music is a little more stagnant and tells less of a story (main function is to add color). Does that make sense?

Thank you so much! Here's to hoping I can get student discounts, haha.

Interestingly, just this past week I performed in an entirely improvised concert. (Not jazz). We had a special guest percussionist with us and she has many exotic instruments such as gongs, singing bowls, ocean drums. When playing her untuned instruments, the improvisation that naturally unfolded was more atmospheric and pattern based in its approach. It was a miraculous experience both sonically and creatively. I'm sharing this because you might discover that introducing some sounds less familiar and untuned into the mix might free you from the pull of directional melodic writing.

I've got some wacky ideas up my sleeve... :)

Think emotion when it comes to film writing. Melodic or atmospheric, simply rhythmic or environmental sounds; in any case if you are writing to some form of picture, you are enhancing/bringing out and showing the audience an emotion. Atmosphere can come from whatever moves you and sounds like the picture looks or feels; and perhaps seams like it was already there. The rapid string runs behind the horn melody in Harry Potter enhances the magic and busy-ness of Hogwarts. Thick hollow sound design pads give us the feel of ominous emptiness on the Event Horizon. Omnisphere is great and exploring new sounds will be very useful, just keep in mind your end goal. Atmosphere in a Cafe in Paris May not always be best created with synth sounds. Your instrumental palette can change with any scene depending on what is appropriate.

Movies to look at for atmospheric music: The Thing (John Carpenter's version, not the new one); Solaris (both versions for different reasons); No Country for Old Men. The main thing for atmosphere is to avoid punctuating the emotion of a scene. John Williams, in some ways (and he can be a fantastic film composer, I love the old version of Star Wars and its soundtrack) is my least favorite composer, because of his need to tell you how to feel about a scene, rather than allowing the actors to convey the emotion - to me, it's really annoying. Amistad, a generally wonderful film with great performances, has a scene where Anthony Hopkins makes a speech, and suddenly the soundtrack is this patriotic, trumpet-in-the-background, wash of American piety/liberty/FREEEEEDOOOOOM. Pulled me right out of the movie. Same thing in several of Kenneth Branagh's Shakespeare movies, starting with Henry V. The soundtrack is always there, ready to let you know how to feel at a given moment. No Country is one of those rare movies that lets you determine what to feel and when, based entirely on what's happening, and who it's happening to. Almost zero soundtrack.

Hi Sten, some interesting comments you made. May I ask, how do you feel a soundtrack should function? Just curious.

Hi Alle, thanks for taking the time to respond. I feel that I should re-phrase my question. I'm not asking how to compose music for film in general. What I'm saying is that I am used to composing music with form and structure. What I would like to know is, what are some things I should consider when asked to write atmospheric music (that is, music without or with significantly less obvious form/structure/a given melody). Hope this makes sense. I'm realizing now that this is kind of a wacky topic.

I understand what Sten is saying, I guess I was just "raised on" the notion that film music is intended to bring out different aspects of a scene (either emotions/events on screen, or off screen depending on which is more appropriate).

Alle, you're right, and both Spielberg and Branagh tend to prefer a very manipulative score, perhaps not trusting their own abilities as filmmakers to convey the emotion emphatically enough, without a sweeping musical score to make sure the audience knows exactly what's expected of them. Brandi, my personal tastes for soundtracks is that they can be there, or not. There are films that function well with their particular soundtracks, and others where the director allowed the composer to go nuts, and then put the finished product in the film. Ladyhawke is a wonderful movie, except for the horribly cheesy electronic soundtrack. I have heard complaints that the Blair Witch Project didn't have a soundtrack, and so you didn't know what to feel. In Branagh's Henry V, one of the characters starts singing a mass, and you think, "how moving, a lone soldier on the battlefield singing for the countless dead around him." Then more voices join in, then the orchestra, and pretty soon you're watching Song of the South. Conversely, you can have the fantastic percussive score of the Bourne Supremacy, which stops only during a major fight scene, and suddenly the music is fists & feet - brilliantly simple idea. Atmospheric music can mean a lot of things. Are you reflecting the weather? the mood of the film? With the director, try to find the heart of the film, the theme, and atmospheric music can enhance that feeling, that theme, without having an apparent melody. Popol Vuh's soundtracks for Werner Herzog's films (Aguirre, Nosferatu) have both melodic elements and ambient elements. Form & structure are always elements in music - even if that music takes a long time to make clear its structure. If you listen to most ambient music sped up, you can hear it. The music in Inception (the blasting trombones) are a slowed down version of the trumpets in the musical theme, "Non, je ne regrette rien" by Edith Piaf. Lots of ways to skin a cat.

In terms of ‘atmospheric’ music, you might want to have a listen to ‘Under an Ancient Sun’ from Jeremy Soule’s score for Skyrim. He starts off alternating between just 2 notes high up on the Violins, which keep repeating through the whole track (with a couple of exceptions, like 1:32). The rest of the track is built up by gradually adding and removing parts underneath those notes, and slowly shifting the harmony, but it’s the alternating Violin part that holds it all together structurally. It’s a nice example of how you can take a very small musical figure and develop a longer, more complex piece from it. It’s also useful to note how Soule created this atmosphere (still and peaceful) by deliberately using ‘weaker’ harmonic progressions (and weakening the progression even more by using passing dissonances) – if he’d used any stronger movements, it would have altered the effect completely! In terms of my own approach, when I’m tackling atmospheric underscore sections, I still tend to use themes, but in very subtle ways. Sometimes it might only be a couple of notes from a theme, or it might be a longer section, but altered so that it’s less obvious. Using themes like this gives me a good basis to build the rest of the cue on. For example, I composed a sort of “soundscape-type-thing” over a slow, sustained bass line, which was a character’s theme stretched out over the length of the cue. This gave me a sort of structure to build on, and also subtly linked the music with the character responsible for the situation in the scene. Another trick I’ve used in the past was to compose a sort of counterpoint around a sustained synth note – as with the example from Skyrim, the lack of a clear ‘chord progression’ was what gave the cue the right sound and feel for the scene. Hope at least some of that was helpful and gave you some ideas to experiment with. Have fun :)

I feel that "atmospheric music" relies so much on pads (Native Instruments has some nice ones and ways to make/adjust them). So if you can find (or make!) and cool sounding pad, you can make aleatoric overlays (which can have melodies) with other instruments. This is obviously just one person's opinion. But just trust your instincts! :-)

I'm considering experimenting with kitchenware...