Notes from the Soundscape

As a soundtrack reviewer for over a decade, I have seen trends in musical styles come and go. When discussing film scores, I will often comment on similarities to a composer’s previous work or to other unrelated scores. For example, the popularity of Battlestar Galactica and The Last Samurai scores in the early 2000s caused a rise in the use of taiko drums, some thing I discussed extensively in reviews for SoundtrackNet at the time. But I do not want to limit this blog to film scores. My other musical interest is hard rock and metal, and will cover new (and some old) releases in this genre as well. I take a similar approach, noting stylistic similarities and changes between bands’ albums as well as between various songs.

A soundscape is the sounds that encompass an individual in a certain space at a given time, and its study is acoustic ecology. I have no training in acoustics (other than sonars) or in music beyond my tenure in concert bands as a bass clarinetist from grade school into graduate school. My thoughts on this blog will be notes on my own soundscape – how I perceive music used in film, my thoughts on how a rock album is composed and assembled, or how a live concert impacts the audience around me. Hopefully in my descriptions and discussions I can add some insight into today’s musical landscape.

My blog posts will generally be album reviews, and I will also be reposting some of my older reviews from SoundtrackNet (reposted with permission of the site). Unlike those reviews, however, I will not be scoring albums out of 5 stars. The reviews here will be discussion focused rather than on scoring and rating. The other posts will be notes of mine on various trends or topics in film score and rock music genres.