Why? Is the plot so thin, so bad, so difficult to follow

that music needs to be added to the vocal sound track to carry the plot line.

Gimme a break, I am so hearing impaired I need CC to follow as it is.

Before I got my hearing aids, the background music overpowered the dialogue so much I couldn't understand what was being said. It's amazing how the hearing aids reverse that.

Depends on the music and movie.

Last of the Mohicans - awesome
Transformers - not so much

Yeah.
"Dance Monkey" is a bit much during the scene when a sapper is trying to sneak up on someone sleeping in the main secured facility...

If the story line and dialogue is weak, then make the explosions and music loud to divert attention.

quote:

Originally posted by George43:
Why? Is the plot so thin, so bad, so difficult to follow

that music needs to be added to the vocal sound track to carry the plot line.

Gimme a break, I am so hearing impaired I need CC to follow as it is.

Hearing impairment is definitely one factor here.

Another is that the soundtracks of movies nowadays are mixed for multi-channel surround sound. In this mix, there's typically an entire channel (the center channel that feeds into the center speaker of a surround sound setup) that is dedicated almost solely to just the majority of the dialogue. It's actually quite the opposite of "music being added to the vocal sound track". In fact, they're specifically trying to mostly isolate the vocals in their own channel of the mix so that they stand out from the rest of the sound.

The problem arises when that precisely engineered five-channel or seven-channel sound mix is compressed and forced through two small, cheap, tinny stereo speakers like the ones on the sides of your TV. The resulting sound is flat and muddled, and it gets tough to distinguish between dialogue, sound effects, and music, because the entire sound mix is being jumbled together and weakly pushed out of just two small speakers.

So if you're serious about enjoying movies these days, investing in a set of hearing aids is a good first step, plus then investing in a discrete 5.1/7.1 surround sound speaker set (or at least a decent 3.1 soundbar set) would help immensely.

On weekends I listen to The Score with Edmund Stone. https://www.thescore.org

Some of the sound tracks are awesome.

Something like "Once Upon a Time in the West" with music composed by: Ennio Morricone really makes for a wonderful experience.

quote:

Originally posted by George43:
Why? Is the plot so thin, so bad, so difficult to follow

that music needs to be added to the vocal sound track to carry the plot line.

Gimme a break, I am so hearing impaired I need CC to follow as it is.

No. Sound tracks are utilized to enhance the the scene whether it be sadness or jubilation even if there is no spoken word. Carrying the plot is dependent on the script not the music.

Personally I like a lot of Hans Zimmer and Max Richter scores.

An adjunct to RogueJSK's advice on hardware. Another thing is to look at is your sound settings, regardless of whether you are using the TV's built-in speakers or have a state of the art home theater setup.

Thump and sizzle sells boxes, and special effects puts butts in theater seats. People pay big bucks for the big subwoofers to play all that stuff on their home systems and impress the neighbors. So, there are many settings that bury dialogue in the special effects, going for the 'wow' factor, but there are usually also settings that don't - you just have to find them.

TL: DR - it will be worth your while to watch something with dialog, and cycle through every one of the audio settings on your current setup. I will bet you that at least one of the settings you cycle through will make you go "AHA!"

quote:

Originally posted by Kraquin:

quote:

Originally posted by George43:
Why? Is the plot so thin, so bad, so difficult to follow

that music needs to be added to the vocal sound track to carry the plot line.

Gimme a break, I am so hearing impaired I need CC to follow as it is.

No. Sound tracks are utilized to enhance the the scene whether it be sadness or jubilation even if there is no spoken word. Carrying the plot is dependent on the script not the music.

Personally I like a lot of Hans Zimmer and Max Richter scores.

What he said.

I never realized how important the music is to a movie until I started attending Movies with full orchestra. The Star Trek and ET movies I saw the last year or two were my favorite. I ended up listening to the soundtracks before/after the movies and have a whole new appreciation for a good musical accompaniment.

If anyone is reading this and near the DC area, I highly recommend attending one of the events at Wolf Trap where they do the full orchestra playing the score, it will change how you view/listen to movies forever.

We will see everyone they offer going forward if we are free that date. Was looking forward to the Star Wars one this summer, who knows if it will be on/rescheduled, really looking forward to it.

Background music should be just that - background. Not overwhelming. Good examples include, but aren't limited to, Die Hard, the original Star Trek series episode "The Doomsday Machine," and Jonny Quest. (Seriously.) What I can't stand are extended scenes of the characters doing nothing while an extended piece of music plays.

quote:

Originally posted by egregore:
i]Jonny Quest[/i]. (Seriously.)

I had totally forgotton about this music. Taken by itself, it's actually pretty jazzy for a kids show.

My best friend since 7th grade and I used to make fun of the dialogue pretty regularly. Race Bannon. Sheesh!

quote:

Originally posted by Kraquin:
Sound tracks are utilized to enhance the the scene

This.

Certain scenes with dialogue are brought to another level with a music background underneath.

These examples are not exactly films with weak plots lines.

Sergei Prokofiev, whose music I really enjoyed before I lost my hearing, wrote a few compositions that have been used in movies.

Lieutenant Kijé was used in two movies that I know of, first in a movie of that name, about the fictitious Russian army hero. I never did see that movie.

The second was a hilarious comedy, The Horse's Mouth, with Alec Guinness. It was released in the late 1950s. I saw it several times. The Lieutenant Kijé music was perfectly integrated with the plot, and the marriage of the music and the script produced a perfect blend. The Lieutenant Kijé suite can certainly stand on it's own, but I can not imagine the movie without that music. Putting the two together was a stroke of movie making genius.

Background music and for that matter laff tracks too.
They are only good if you DON'T notice them.
Once you do it's like not thinking about the elephant in the room.

Perhaps the ranting should be about poor film editing rather than the background music. I agree that the music can enhance the mood.

The Jeff Beal score for the Jesse Stone series was so good that I bought the CD.

quote:

Originally posted by 83v45magna:

I had totally forgotton about this [Jonny Quest] music. Taken by itself, it's actually pretty jazzy for a kids show.

It was used in a number of later Hanna-Barbera "action" cartoons until the ninnies got in an uproar over the "violence."

quote:

Originally posted by RichardC:
Image removed to avoid clutter.

I was hoping that was a clickable link to some soundtrack.

What would The Good, The Bad and the Ugly be without the music?