Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici

This research program intends to address a scientific and systematic study of new film music writing processes, increasingly characterized by computer assisted technologies, which allow to compose, arrange, orchestrate, mix, spatialize and dub music in fully digital or hybrid (analogical-digital) settings. This evolution has made the traditional composition practices obsolete and relegated them to the fringes of film music production. However, despite the fact that nowadays the vast majority of film composers use an increasingly complex set of computer music techniques as actual compositional means, there’s not yet a scientific in-depth study of basic practices, of the writing methods and of the rapid historic evolution of the new digital film music contexts. Such an investigation would definitely clarify the creative processes that give birth to contemporary film scores, whose practices are passed down orally with a remarkable transnational circulation of artistry and skills. Production houses entrust the writing of scores to composers who usually work in their own home studio or within freelance structures, at the expense of traditional recording and post-production facilities. Composers learn these technologies on the field, thus producing a gap with the experiences acquired in their training; they apply composition methods which are totally under-theorised from both a critical and a teaching perspective. We are faced with practices resulting from the individual composition experience which should necessarily be contextualised with regard to a broader horizon of contemporary music production which combines the use of IT tools with new digital writing, editing and composition processes. In order to understand the ever-increasing transformation in the film music creative universe and to build the conditions for a scientific debate, the challenges posed by the new music writing processes must be tackled from different perspectives. 5 research units will work in strong collaboration in a groundbreaking initiative to reframe film and media music studies: review of pertinent literature, survey of the sources in different composers’ archives, in-depth reconstruction of the evolution of the musical language for film scoring, study of the new electronic and digital organology and of the practices for sound spatialization, research on virtual instruments and on the forms of technological transfer between universities/conservatories and industries (with a focus on the development of sound libraries), development of ICT infrastructure to support source criticism, and developing of semantic interoperability between digital archives dedicated to film music. The ultimate goal is the foundation of a professional academic center (The Sound Screen) of national and international relevance, both for the scientific and the creative community, and for the film production companies.