From separation to integration

In today’s scoring practice the boundaries between “music” and “sound effects” have become thinner and overlapping. This practice has been favoured by innovations in sound technology and by the digitalisation of the post-production processes. Once all the ingredients were created not only in separate departments but through separate technological procedures, while now everything converges into digital processing. Hans Zimmer has been a pioneer of this technological convergence, anticipating (and influencing) the contemporary style of film music, one that seeks a tight integration with the film’s overall sound design. Laudatory accounts have already been offered of the new “integrated soundtrack”. In this article, after providing a short summary of the path to the contemporary integrated soundtrack and sound-design style, and after summarising the strengths and opportunities, I also provide some discussion of the potential threats and risks of this new trend; threats and risks that can have an impact on the film-music practitioners, on the viewers, and on film music in general.