Music has the ability to immerse us into any forms of moving picture. It conveys emotion to any scene. Changing scenes from happy to sad, mysterious to funny and so on. Back when animation was at its early stages of life, music was at the centre of it all. Depicting what actions were being done on screen and pushing the narrative forward.
A fantastic example of this is the earliest Disney movies. Instruments were used to convey the emotions of a character, the actions the were doing and the pace of the scene being watched. As well as individual instruments conveying different connotations to the scene, the actual lyrics within the songs provoke meaning as well (Coyle, 2010).
“The songs are a major factor in communicating the uplifting elements of narratives that otherwise have the potential to be quite disturbing”
(Coyle, 2010, 25)
Composer of the animated film The Nightmare Before Christmas Danny Elfman made sure the narrative followed a light hearted yet sinister approach through the use of his music. ‘Music interprets the image pinpoints and channels the ‘correct narrative’ (Coyle, 2010, 30). By doing so, Elfman made sure that the majority of music score The Nightmare Before Christmas was in a minor key. In fact, only one of the songs performed in the film was in a major key.
For animation, music is also used to represent the diegetic sounds of what is seen on screen. This is what is called Source Music (Beauchamp, 2013, 54). For animation, the underscore plays beneath the sounds on the screen, playing along with the live action. By doing so, the music provides continuity with the action performed by characters, portraying the emotion and the tone of that certain scene. This is what is referred to as Cues (Beauchamp, 2013, 54). Cues also have the ability to add depth to dialogue. A simple way to look at it is the if the dialogue is sad, the music cue will kick in a minor key. A music monologue is a musical score that blends in with the narrative of the film, it is very subtle and fits into the emotion of the scene without being noticed.
The emotional signifier is the music cue that opens suggestions to the emotions a certain character is feeling (Sonnenschien, 2001). It pushes the narrative forward, helping us (the audience) understand the emotions within a scene.