Soundtracks

"Put me to sleep, evil angel..."-Breaking Benjamin, Evil Angel

Quote today in honor of Crisis Core...and now on to soundtracks and how they build characters!

I'm sure this kind of thing gets studied in a much more thorough and legitimate way in most film schools, but I'm going to share my opinions on it anyway, because it's something that often slips past me when I'm watching a movie or playing through a videogame.

When they're present, soundtracks build characters and soundtracks develop scenes. Sometimes, as much or more significantly than the action taking place. Think about it, would Jack Sparrow be as adventurous without the thunderous trumpets following his one-liners as he leaps into action? Would the love story in Titanic be as tragic without that blasted flute track in the background? Would Jurassic Park be as awe-inspiring without the cymbal crashes and trumpets? (damn those trumpets...they're everywhere)

So. How do we use this information?

...I have some ideas, but quite frankly I'm not going to share them until I see someone else do them first (and I'm confident someone will, because all my other "great" ideas have been turning up piece by piece over the last year. Internet book trailers? Yeah, I thought I was pretty clever with my plans for that. Rats! Foiled again!) on the off chance that no one else will think of them until I can use them for myself. Sorry, but rest assured that once I find someone else duplicating my ideas I'll share them.

And what does this information mean for the future of books?

Well, if you ask me, combine e-books with the undeniable power of soundtracks and you have a pretty obvious answer to that question. Sometime in the next ten years I think we'll see the first e-book that comes with a soundtrack. The technology will have to change to support it, but it will. I'm willing to bet it will start out as an option to store and play music on your e-reader, evolve into a way to control the song you're listening to as you read, move on to soundtracks embedded into the e-book files themselves that repeat tracks while you're on one page a la old videogames, eventually some clever person will find a way to track exactly what point your eyes are at on the page and cue the music that way, and before you know it e-books will be a collaborative creative process involving large budgets, composers, and symphony orchestras.

...and they'll provide something you won't be able to get from a paper copy. Whether and how it'll catch on, I can't predict, but I'm willing to bet large we'll see it happen.