Gee. It’s two in the morning.

I have recently gotten my hands on the soundtrack from Spirited Away. Finally. I don’t know why it took me that long to get it.

Simply put, the soundtrack is brilliant. There are beautiful pieces. There are the atmosphere-giving pieces. There are the more sound-effect based pieces. Music makes a movie.

It has probably occurred to most of us before; that without a soundtrack, most, if not all movies, would be extremely dull. Imagine Mission Impossible without that theme. Imagine Indiana Jones without its themesong. Or Star Wars, or Lord of the Rings. It’s just simply not possible to have a nice movie without nice music behind it. It’d be like watching them on mute. Except that you can still hear the dialogue.

Without those swelling scores to accentuate moments of great happiness, or sadness, it just doesn’t feel right. When you watch the Makings of any movie, and they give you a short clip of the cast acting out a scene, you’ll notice that there isn’t any music being played for them. You’ll also notice a distinct lack of emotion and ironically, realness. It ends up looking a lot more like acting.

Now, there is one problem with getting the soundtracks to all the movies you love. After you listen to them a few times, you’d pretty much have them memorised to some degree. Take for example The Return of the King for me. After having had the soundtrack for several weeks, I decided to watch the movie again. During the movie, I could recognise each and every one of the scores being played. While it is rather cool to realise “Hey, that’s _____!”, I found that it sort of made the movie experience less immersive. Instead of being part of the atmosphere, the soundtrack became detached from the movie, like a counter-melody being played a little too far away from the band. I could still hear it and enjoy it, but it and the movie became two separate things.

This issue only really arises for movies which I have obtained almost the entire soundtrack to. For others, where all I have is the main theme, it’s completely different. For some reason, I have yet to procure the Jurassic Park soundtrack, and the movie is still great. I love it when the main theme plays. Bb F- C G, G A Bb Bb A F G.

Soundtracks that include vocals are something else entirely. In the classic, Phantom of the Opera, knowing the soundtrack makes the movie experience considerably more enjoyable. Because this time, instead of just listening to the voices, you can see the singer, and the context the songs are sung in. Better still, you’ll be able to hear all the words, since you’ve already been acquainted with them.

They need to make an instrumental medley of Sweeney Todd songs.

Doh. What am I doing posting at this hour.

-Joe

*Sorry guys, no picture yet. Using my laptop.