Cinematic Music: The Wide Screen In Your Head

Someone asked me what I mean by the term “cinematic”music.  It has nothing to do with films on a screen.  It’s about films in your mind. Music that creates scenarios in your head. Music that takes you to distinct places that create mind movies.  Cartoons were brilliant at this. You could listen to  Carl Stalling track to an early Warner Bros. Cartoon and literally see it without a picture   Powerful stuff…It’s the best way to travel

This is highly personal.  Here are just a few of my  examples and where I go…often an extension of the song title itself….what are yours?

Desolation Row: Bob Dylan
A psychedelic skid row where lawlessness, debauchery and scum prevail

Starship Trooper/Yes
A soaring and spiritual journey through the  majesty of interstellar travel

Giant Steps/John Coltrane
The raw urban landscape of nighttime in a buzzy but battered city

Harlem Nocturne/ King Curtis or The Viscounts
Harlem at 3am in 1954

Ferry Cross the Mersey/Gerry and Pacemakers
The romance of a windy fall day on a melancholy ferry ride

Shake for Me/Howlin’ Wolf
The bad ass South Side of Chicago

World of Pain/Cream
Concrete and solitude

Metropolis/The Motors
An over stimulated city of the future

Wichita Lineman/Glen Campbell
The sprawling openness of the great Midwest

Orinoco Flow/Enya
A beach.  Orinoco beach of course

Polovtsian Dances/ Many versions but prefer Pittsburgh Symphony
A perception of the color of Russia many many years ago

Friends of Mr Cairo/Jon and Vangelis
A movie about prohibition … in sound.  Who needs pictures with sound images like this?

Night Boat to Cairo/Madness 
A foreigner amongst the crazed bustle of a middle eastern market

Tuesday Afternoon/Moody Blues
A cloudy,  sad but the hopeful solitude of a fall afternoon

America/Simon and Garfunkel
An audio travelogue of the American landscape

Invisible Sun/Police
Cold Urbania

Rapid Transit/Rotary Connection
A rush hour commuter train ride

Love on a Real Train/Tangerine Dream
A 3am commuter train ride

Danger Money/UK
British spy scenes. Cold War style

Long Gone Lonesome Blues/Hank Williams
Wails of a distant Am station in 1955 from some hick town somewhere

Heartbreak Hotel/Elvis
Loneliness.  Solitude

Flying/Beatles
As a pilot this is the take of a long peaceful flight home

Sirius/Alan Parsons Project
A Bulls game of course

Ok, just a few of many and  as I said these are highly personal perceptions,  but are as vivid as a film.   An amazing tool for evolving the sonic vibe of tv and audio mediums.  Creating sound pictures to transport viewers and listeners.   

Can be a potent tool in the creative arsenal.