Foreground
by rachMiel

When taking in a sensory experience (listening to music, watching a movie, etc.), we tend to assign levels of importance to the various strands of sensory input. We relegate, consciously or not, some strands to the background, some to the foreground, and the rest to the middle. Contemporary electronic composers are very adept with back- and middle grounds; this is where most groove-centric music lives. But not many can (or want to) produce inspired foreground material: layers that don’t just dovetail with the groove but stand out above it as a soaring melodic line stands out above a sequence of chords.

When music serves as an accompaniment to another medium (film, TV, dance, etc.), this other medium usually occupies the foreground. Thus dance music doesn’t have to worry about filling the foreground; the dancers take care of this. Likewise for TV and movie music. It’s in standalone pieces that one hungers for foreground. How many times have you heard a piece on a CD and thought: “That would make a great soundtrack for a suspense movie.” If the piece had a commanding foreground layer, you wouldn’t have thought of it as accompaniment, but as sufficient in itself.

The moral: If you write standalone music, you need to think about investing your pieces with compelling foregrounds. If you don’t, you risk having listeners perceive them as soundtracks in search of a movie.