This is a response to So-Me’s excellent post about Nino Rota.

Peeps,

The subject of narration in music (and with music) is fascinating to me.

In that respect, the narrative structure of HBO series THE WIRE (especially season 1) is a very interesting example. If you watch carefully, the only music you’ll hear is “diegetic”, which means you’re hearing it because the characters in the scene are hearing it (with the exception of the opening theme). A car blasts a Mos Def track. There’s funeral music at a wake. A band plays in a bar. That’s it. There’s no soundtrack, no ‘overheard’ sounds, no illustration of a feeling, or of an atmosphere. It’s all, well, “real within the fiction”, indeed adding a realistic effect to what you’re seeing. No artifacts.

Which is, of course, the exact opposite of how music is often used in modern cinema, especially in MARTIN SCORSESE movies (I understand that I could find youtube clips to illustrate my point better). Usually, a director would use “non-diegetic” sounds to set a mood, or a time, in an economy of effects. Example: Gimme Shelter by THE STONES takes you immediately to 1968. Or, put the opening guitar chords of Sound Of Silence, and you instantly feel the disarray of Dustin Hoffman in THE GRADUATE. Even cheaper, use any rap track (or classical music theme) to step down (or up) a notch in the social class where the scene takes place.

Great movie composers understand this better than anyone else. In my opinion, that’s why it is such a different skill to write songs opposed to movie soundtracks. To that extent, it could be a possible explanation of why, say, a Paul Mc Cartney, or a Stevie Wonder were never notable movie composers – and why an Elfman, a Burwell, even a Morricone, didn’t make old rags in the pop-song field. And of course why I can’t wait to see: