Have you ever watched Psycho without the music? It’s a terrible film – especially the shower scene. Google “Psycho without music” and see. Lacking Bernard Herrmann’s shrieking, stabbing strings, the murder looks like an awkward am-dram tussle. You barely believe Janet Leigh is dead. With the screeching violins, well, slasher music was born – and it’s been doing the heavy lifting in horror films ever since.
Indeed, many regard the unsung Herrmann as the godfather of soundtracks – back in the 1940s he pioneered the idea that music need not just reinforce what’s on screen … it can enhance and even change it.
Ennio Morricone’s desolate, windswept, echoing score for A Fistful of Dollars started with some tracks he’d already recorded. Director Sergio Leone loved the early samples so much, he extended many scenes in the film just to let the music play. The classic western’s languid wide shots and portrait-style close-ups linger longer as a result. Without the music, you’d literally have a whole different movie.
It’s taken a while for Hollywood to admit this. Steven Spielberg, for instance, now credits the Jaws soundtrack for “half of the success” of the film – and that’s quite some success. Jaws was the first film to take more than $100m and effectively created the summer blockbuster. But Spielberg was initially very wary of the main theme when composer John Williams first presented it, plonking away on his piano. A valuable lesson – you need to hear the soundtrack in all its glory to feel its power.
Of course the soundtrack is inspired by the movie. Legendary soundtracks, however, are often influenced by more than just what’s on screen. When composing the otherworldly score for Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin, for instance, Mica Levi – at that point better known for her experimental pop ensemble Micachu and the Shapes – took ideas from strip club music, euphoric dance, composer John Cage and the structure of a classic string quartet. Then she broke things up, slowed them down, warped and twisted them, until the thick dark score settled on Scarlet Johansson’s delicate shoulders, adding an epic weight to her distant alien.
Sometimes a score is so deeply embedded in its time and its culture that it transcends its parent movie. Clint Mansell, who has penned soundtracks for Moon and Requiem for a Dream, has received this compliment many times – a canny ear can hear his theme for Moon on the trailer for The Iron Lady and the computer game Aliens: Colonial Marines, while Requiem’s Lux Aetema theme has been used to score trailers for Lord of the Rings, The Da Vinci Code, Sunshine, the TV series Lost and even Top Gear.
Others who have received that nod include John Barry – whose James Bond theme has even made a ska track, and Vangelis – whose score for Blade Runner has been cribbed almost as many times as the Grateful Dead.
These soundtracks, of course, were composed for the cinema, which can have anything from 12 to 64 speakers spread throughout the room, plus a bass bin to make your seat shake. Your TV, on the other hand, probably has two thin speakers – often rear-facing, to ensure your slick widescreen look isn’t compromised, meaning sound is bounced off the wall. This is not a problem you’ll be likely to encounter with a Sonos Playbase, which is designed to fit directly under your TV, allowing you to enjoy your favourite movies with the same sound clarity as an orchestral recording at Abbey Road Studios.
What does this mean when you’re watching a film? Clarity. Whether it’s perfectly-scripted dialogue (because, let’s face it, life is too short for bad dialogue), the chest-rattling thud of deep bass sound effects or the soaring strings of the score, the Sonos Playbase renders it all to be heard as it was intended to be heard. Without it, you’re Steven Spielberg sitting in John Williams’s studio hearing him play two notes on the piano very slowly and telling you it’s scary. With the Playbase … well, how many years since you last hid behind the sofa?
