Notas en Frame intro

Original Version

Notas en Frame is a creative-research platform that explores how music operates behind recent… and no-so-recent films.

To begin unpacking this curiosity, I think it’s worth explaining why I even dared to start and why I keep doing it. Beyond the “why, there’s the “what for”.

I may have to start from the beginning… since I was a little girl, I’ve always felt an inexplicable attraction to music. I actually studied it, but among all the forms this art can have, I was especially drawn to the kind of music that lives in cinema. Many might call it a trivial taste but I’ve always been a strong supporter of the idea that music is essential key element even just to keep us balanced and I mean any kind of balance.

While studying my Master’s in Communication of Science and Cultura, I focused on the music of two particular films, convinced (and still convinced) that music shapes much of our emotions palette and our bound with the cultural products it emerges from.

Think, for example in Star Wars: maybe you could watch the movies without much effort but without its mythical intro… it’s impossible TO LIVE Star Wars.

So, if music has such qualities, what do we do with it? What lies behind it? Is it a product or a resource?

I often find that everything written about this kind of music stays trapped inside academic circles and textbooks that… let’s face it, very few few people will ever open.

And beyond this conceptual isolation, I’ve noticed a kind of marginalization in many award ceremonies. Seriously, my friends can testify: there is not a single ceremony that I don’t suffer through because of the lack of attention given to the Best Score category… when I think about the last Oscar… I still feel upset, not because I disliked the result (I actually loved it) but because how little voice and time the winner was given.

Why does this happen if we know the importance and power of music? If everyone claims that they “can’t live without music”?

Film music fascinates me because of the immense power the film industry already carries… i mean, if we think about it, when we go to the movies we escape our worries for a while, to get scare, to laugh, to get excited… or simply feel. Music has this incredible power that sometimes we don’t even noticed… you know, suddenly a particular cue starts playing and we know someone’s about to appear behind us with a knife or something like that. Music doesn’t just sound, it builds. It constructs the idea of what bravery, terror or fear should sound like.

Then, music is more than just a product, it’s a resource designed and directed to shape those emotional categories within us. Imagine someone with their own beliefs and ideas, orchestrating what we should feel, when, and the precise memories that awaken as our bodies react. Music becomes a resource that acts directly upon our emotional and spatial perception… and let’s remember, all our acts and decisions are profoundly emotional.

So if we recognize that potential, why not dive into listening with awareness? Or better yet, into creating awareness itself?

Beyond music, beyond being a narrative resource, it’s emotional, cultural and politic.