I just want to take a moment to appreciate the truly amazing soundtracks out there. The past several weeks I have ditched my normal genres of music that I listen to and have just been immersing myself in the great tunes of soundtracks. I was having a hard time studying for finals that were coming up, my normal choice of background noise for studying is classical music but for some reason, it just wasn’t cutting it. I had an idea pop in my head to listen to instrumental music from my favorite video game. I created a station dedicated to it on Pandora and since then I have listened to nothing else but soundtracks from video games, TV shows, movies, everything.
It has given me a real appreciation for how important a soundtrack is. I discovered a common theme to my favorite entertainment, it was that the songs could stir intense emotions for me. The music that brings out the most feelings for me is instrumental scores, at least when it comes to entertainment like movies and video games.
Most of my favorite movies have songs that threw me into their universe. Think how different past movies would have been with different music. Take the well-known Jaws theme song, it is so iconic that it has become prevalent in everyday conversation all you have to say is ba-dump and people know what you are referencing.
After I created the Pandora station for video game music I discovered most of the nostalgia I feel comes from hearing the music. Anyone who is familiar with getting nostalgic knows it is a powerful influence. I can see an image from a past game I have played and just remember ‘oh yeah, I played that’. It is when I hear the music that the memories of playing it and how I felt while I was playing it come rushing back.
The music and soundtracks we hear greatly influence the way we feel and direct our thought process. Take a documentary about sharks for example, if it showed the video of a shark swimming they could put music to it that has a deep bass and low frequency to intimidate you and put you on the edge of your seat, or they could put soft smooth music to relax you and make the shark seem graceful. I also think it is fascinating how the power of the music can cause one person to fall in love with something like a movie while that same music can cause another person to hate it.
The soundtrack is always in the back of our minds when we hear something great while we are watching or playing something but our attention is not fully on it. Now is the time to throw your whole self into those sounds to truly appreciate the power of them. I highly encourage you to go back and listen to music from a TV show, movie, or whatever it is that you really loved and let yourself be taken over by it.