When I started improvising the above track this morning, I knew that the opening, an ascending high-register arpeggiated figure, would just be a set-up. It wasn’t thematic, just kind of ambient. Sound for the joy of sound.
But sound for the joy of sound isn’t music. It is potential music. Something must emerge, some theme, something we can grab onto as a character in a story. That is the essential difference between sound design or ambient sounds—the sonic backdrop for narrative action—and music: ambiance vs. story.
I didn’t know what that theme was going to be at the beginning of this improvisation, but I knew that it would emerge out of musical necessity. If this was to be music at all, the raining (or raging?) arpeggios were going to be a backdrop, the landscape or scene in which the action was going to take place. In cinematic terms, in screenplay form, it might look something like this:
EXT. QUIET SUBURBAN STREET - MORNING
Dark clouds. Wind rages. Rain on the way. Peter rushes down the sidewalk, hands in pockets. No one else in sight.
Okay, so I’ve set the general scene. Perhaps you can picture it. But at this moment, it’s just a space, some weather, and a character going somewhere. There’s certainly some energy to the setting, what with the character’s hurried state. But where is he going? To do what?
Because, if all Peter does is continue on his rush down a windswept suburban street (even if the rain does come) there would be no story, no reason to keep watching. It’s just a guy going on a nervous walk. You may, for a few seconds, wonder why he is out walking on this crappy morning, but mostly you’re wondering what’s going to happen.
And then, right before you’re about to stop watching, something does happen—those four descending notes. Who, or what are they?
Well, I’m not inclined to intrude on Peter’s solitude with another person or car crash—the four-note theme certainly doesn’t seem to imply anything as dramatic as the latter. So I’m going to go with a voiceover:
PETER (V.O)
I didn't kill him.
Beat.
PETER (CONT'D.')
But I shoud have.
Whoa! Now you are paying attention. All sorts of questions are arising in your head. Didn’t kill who? When? Just now? Is that why he’s rushing down the sidewalk? And, most importantly, why should he have killed the person he didn’t? (Since this is a voiceover, i.e. internal dialogue, we can assume he’s not lying about his innocence.)
By the way, I purposely made each of those lines of dialogue four words long. If you listen closely to the music, there is a descending four-note motif about five seconds in, followed about 25 seconds later by an ascending motif of the same length. Musically speaking, that second motif is a kind of answer or response to the first. Just as Peter’s second line is a response to this first.
Of course, there is no direct correlation between abstract musical gestures and words. This is just an exercise, an attempt to equate musical drama with cinematic drama. The two forms have their own rules. But what they unquestionably share is this: a setting (sonic, visual, or both) is not a story.
A setting is interesting enough, perhaps, to draw you in for a few moments but not enough to keep you engaged for the long haul. For that, you need a story. You need themes, characters, motifs, plot, structure. Action.
I’m not going to continue with this musical-dramatic analysis—it’s not even a particularly interesting improvisation on my part. The point is that it is a musical story because my internal musical storytelling compass told me about five seconds in to come up with a theme. And the story unfolded from there.