Stylistic Waves in Media Music

On a few occasions, I have been mentioning how essential it is for a media composer to not only study and practice the theoretical possibilities but also develop a strong sense for style and taste of media music.

To put it short: just because a certain musical device is theoretically possible doesn't mean that it would be appropriate to use it at the current time in a media music context.

Media music has become a subject to temporary styles way more than it used to be. Things that are now completely "in style" in that genre might be old fashioned in just a few years or maybe even months.

In a way, a common development from popular music where stylistic developments move rapidly in and out of fashion has transpired through to media music.

In popular music, we see certain devices come into fashion, explode for a while (and sometimes even cross genres) and then fade away to be taken over by something else.

For instance, a very common current phenomenon in popular music are certain 32th or tuplet hi-hat figures in trap beats which have become increasingly popular since maybe 2019. First they appeared in hip hop and its sub genres but since then have made their way into RnB and pop productions. With a popularity like this, it is relatively clear that it will not take long until this specific device vanishes again.

Media music used to follow longer cycles of development. We attribute roughly the 1920s-1950s to be the Golden Age, the 1950s-1960s to be the Silver Age etc. in which the stylistic changes within the genre were relatively small and either based on different composer's voices or different movie genres. In the 60s however, popular genres made their way more and more into the movies until the renaissance of symphonic scores in the late 70s which in the mainstream movie world persisted until roughly the mid 90s (more or less in line with the dominance of Williams, Goldsmith etc.) without drastic stylistic changes within that time. Sure, there are certain developments to be seen in each period (clearly the late 70s Williams sounds very different to the early 90s Williams) but we can't really make out waves that were briefly in fashion in media scoring and then went out of fashion again - at least not in the mainstream cinema).

Since the early 2000s however, things have changed to a more rapid pace in the media music world.

The year 1999/2000 has seen two movie scores that had a big influence on the genre and caused two of such "fashion waves". One was GLADIATOR by Hans Zimmer which launched a wave of excessive ethnic solo vocals in following years. The other on was THE MATRIX which caused a wave of hybrid orchestra action scores in odd meters. 

And for the following 20 years, we could say that these waves were almost always caused by Hans Zimmer and his latest blockbuster. One of the most well known one was of course the "Braaaams" from Inception.

For media composers, it is incredibly important these days to be up to date with these developments, especially when working in main stream genres. 

Additionally, some devices or sounds have been so overused in a certain period that they have become a cliché for that certain time and are so engrained into the collective memory that it is almost impossible to use them again without that connection.

Just think about the Pan Flute and its sound which was highly popular in the early 90s (as also can be seen and heard in film scoring (e.g. Far and Away by Williams from 1992)) but has been so excessively used in that time especially by the whole genre of "Ethno Pop" (e.g. Enigma) that any use of that colour immediately causes this connection. Same goes for the DX-7 E-Piano Sound and its imitators that shaped the sound of many songs from the 80s and early 90s and has been heard in the film score world as well (Bruce Broughton, Rescuers Down Under from 1990).

We see similar if not as extreme swings back and forth in film scoring. For instance, using a braam nowadays would not be considered as an absolute no go, but it would definitely feel "out of style". 

Being aware and staying up to date with these developments should be part of every media composer's work as clients tend to expect a certain "in style" sound very often these days and failing to deliver that due to a lack of stylistic awareness might have a considerable influence on your career and potential follow up work.