Life and its music.
Music is a part of life. Imagine life void of all music. No vinyl record players, no radio, no tape decks or CD players. Remove MTV and those concerts you went to. No DJ booth in your favorite bar or jukebox at the pub. Forget iPods, MP3’s, YouTube and iTunes. Eerie, isn’t it? All of a sudden your first slow dance never happened, that awesome road trip is now just a really lame 8 hour game of “I spy” and those parties in college, well, they don’t have quite the same edge to them.
When you think about it, you quickly come to the realization that music plays a major part in most every aspect of your life. It carries an extraordinary ability to incite emotions, thoughts and feelings. Not only does it do so through lyrics and different tempos and musical arrangements but also by acting as audible souvenirs.
it draws you into a sequence of re-lived experience.”
- John Sloboda, author of Music and Emotion
The Screen and Its Music
It is that emotional connection with music that makes the use of it on screen so important. Music has multiple roles on screen. It allows scenes to connect with audiences on a much more personal level. Music underlyingly seeks out emotion and memories thus enhancing the viewing experience. Not only does it enhance emotional scenes but is also gives a tempo and a direction to a screenplay. Music has become a necessity for TV shows and movies. On screen, as in life, songs accompany us from early mornings to late nights, from comedies to horror and from love to heartbreak.
The Project: Our Mission
Our project began in 2003, when we started to populate a database of songs played during TV shows. It struck us how some TV shows could enhance the experience of an episode by simply adding the right song to the right scene. Since, we have evolved to include movies in our database, compiling 46 TV shows and more than 1000 movies.
Soundtracks have become the modern day version of MTV. Many bands and artists get much more exposure by being featured on a TV show or movie than by traditional channels. TV shows and movies have become ambassadors of up and coming artists.
The goal of Song Detective is to provide a socially efficient database of songs used on the screen: we want our users to be able to share their filmo-musico-philia through our website, social networks and this blog.
Visit Song Detective and find, discover and share your favorite songs from the screen!
