Meaning of Soundtrack

Soundtrack

The first step necessary to discover the meaning of the term soundtrack is to determine the etymological origin of the two words that give it its shape:
• Banda, which seems to emanate from Germanic or Frankish depending on what it means.
• Sonora, which comes from Latin. Specifically, it is the result of the union of the verb “sonare”, which can be translated as “make noise”, and the suffix “-oro”, which is equivalent to “fullness”.

The band concept has several uses,. It may be a musical ensemble; a group of armed people; a youth gang; the partiality of people who support someone; a wide ribbon that is used as a badge; a belt; a railing; or the interval defined according to the field of variation of a physical quantity.

Sound is what sounds or can sound. It can also be something that sounds good, sounds a lot, or makes a sound sound good.

The notion of soundtrack, therefore, refers to the strip of a motion picture where the sound is recorded. The concept is usually linked to the music of a movie or a video game.

This music can be selected by the director from works already published or it can have been composed specifically for the film in question. The usual thing is that the songs that are part of the soundtrack allow to reinforce the sensations that the images of the film transmit.

It must be stated that the film that has the honor of being the first with a soundtrack is none other than “The Birth of a Nation” (1915), which was directed by DW Griffith. And it is that a specific score was written for her that came to be composed of popular compositions and already classic themes that were grouped to shape said production.

Since the cinema was invented until today, many are the films that have seen their soundtrack become a fundamental part of their success. This has been the case of feature films such as “Pulp Fiction”, “The Godfather”, “Titanic”, “Rocky”, “The mission”, “The bodyguard”, “Grease”, “The bridge over the river Kwai”, “Gone with the Wind” or “Casablanca”.

All of these are films that anyone recognizes through one or more of the songs that are part of their soundtrack.

And precisely that recognition has been achieved thanks to the work of some composers who have worked for the cinema with great success. Among those would be figures such as John Williams, Ennio Morricone or Bernard Herrman, for example.

It is possible to structure the soundtrack into three large parts. At first, the entry or start theme appears, which is usually the song that accompanies the titles of the beginning or the first scene. Then comes what is known as background or incidental music: the set of themes that complement the various scenes in the film. Finally, it presents the closing theme, which is the song that plays while the final credits follow.

Soundtrack