Film Music

Musical Features in Film Music

Leitmotif = short piece of music, motifs which represent characters or ideas/themes eg: love, hate, the hero, the villain.
Syncopation = creates tension, rhythms on the offbeat give a sense of urgency, danger or excitement.
Dissonance = two or more notes played at the same time purposefully chosen to clash. Can sound alien like. The sound can signify danger, hint at what’s to come, aliens, monsters etc.
Atonal = you can’t tell what key it is in. Used to create tension, horror, alien music.
Electronic Effects = such as reverb and echo, using computers to alter a sound to make it sound strange.
Repetition = a passage of music that it repeated again.
Imitation = this is contrapuntal. Where a melodic idea (phrase or bit of a tune) is copied by and played by another instrument, while the first part is continued.
Pedal = a sustained or repeated note which is sounded against changing harmony.
Homophony = a texture of music where one part has all the interesting melodies and the rest of the parts move together in chords.
Polyphony = a texture made up of two or more melodies sounding at the same time.