But a topic I have only recently began to appreciate is the subject of narration in music, and to a lesser degree narration with music, in film and television.

Take for example the hugely popular HBO series the Wire. Despite having quite a strong soundtrack, the only music you ever hear, with the exception of the opening theme, is that of a diegetic nature, meaning your’e hearing it only because the characters in the scene are hearing it. This is quite different, from say the majority of modern cinema, in that it does not create any illusion of a feeling, conveying a very raw atmosphere, akin the show itself.

This is in stark stark contrast to most of today’s cinema in that music is used non-diegetically to purposefully create and set moods, or even place the viewer in a specific time periods etc. The use of classical music in a scene to step up in social classing or the use of hip hop / ‘street’ sounds to express grittiness.

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Mix-Blog: A bit like a mix-tape but with blogs instead. Read more from the series here.