'Seeing' music: The Music Video

Music videos can essentially be thought of as a promotional tool for a band or performing artist. They are also proof of the inextricable relationship between sound and image, and the ways in which the visual and aural inform each other in music videos. The aim of this essay is to consider the relationship between sound and image and how these ideas will be applied to the music video ‘Sirens’.

A. Goodwin notes a key term in understanding the relationship between sound and image:

Synaesthesia [is] the intrapersonal process whereby sensory impressions are carried over from one sense to another, for instance, when one pictures sounds in one’s ‘mind’s eye’. This concept is key for understanding music television, since video clips build on the soundtrack’s visual associations (Goodwin, 1992, p.50).

The act of listening to a song involves an imagining of the song in a visual sense. Therefore, a music video becomes part of that process of visually making sense, or extracting meaning from, the song. According to Goodwin, meaning is to be found not just in the song as a whole, but in all of its elements: the lyrics, the music, each instrument, the tempo of the song, and the emotion in the vocals (Goodwin, 1992, p.56). If the song itself can contain several elements, all with potentially multiple meanings to be derived from them, how can a music video be asked to provide a definitive visual representation of what the song means?

One way the music video can become the visual expression of what the song ‘means’ is through the use of genre. A song’s particular genre may inform how a director of a music video may go about visually representing the song. However, this approach is problematic. According to Francois Pachet and Daniel Cazaly, musical genres appear arbitrary, and are essentially a labelling device designed “to produce the shortest possible path for consumers to CDs, while keeping a reasonable CD rack size, and meaningful category headings” (Pachet and Cazaly, 2000, http://www.idiap.ch/~paiement/references/to_read/music/genre_classification/pachet-riao2000.pdf, viewed September 15, 2007).

Musicians will often use several different musical genres within their own work. This includes blending genres not only within their albums but even within their own songs, making the identification of a particular genre difficult. Daniel Chandler notes that this is not simply a problem in defining musical genres:

Specific genres tend to be easy to recognize intuitively but difficult (if not impossible) to define. Particular features which are characteristic of a genre are not normally unique to it; it is their relative prominence, combination and functions which are distinctive (Chandler, 2000, http://blackboard.newcastle.edu.au/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab=courses&url=/bin/common/course.pl?course_id=_71491_1, viewed 30/08/07).

This inability to define a particular genre makes any sort of visual representation of that genre problematic. Not only that, but how does a music video, which is a mode of film rather than music, visually express a musical genre. What does a ‘rock’ video look like? There are stylistic similarities between music videos based on rock songs, but this does not mean that all music videos featuring rock music will all follow the same generic conventions. If a rock song, for example, is visually conveyed in a particular way, this does not necessarily bear any relation to the song’s aural style.

Chandler notes that working within particular generic conventions has been denounced by some critics for its limitations:

Robert Hodge and Gunther Kress define genres as 'typical forms of texts which link kinds of producer, consumer, topic, medium, manner and occasion', adding that they 'control the behaviour of producers of such texts, and the expectations of potential consumers' (Chandler, 2000, http://blackboard.newcastle.edu.au/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab=courses&url=/bin/common/course.pl?course_id=_71491_1, August 30, 2007).

Though the use of genre can add another dimension of meaning to a video, it can also limit the creative choices available to a music video director. Another problem is that film genres, which can apply to music videos, do not correspond to musical genres, and vice versa.

Because music videos use the song as the basis for their narrative, they are not bound by a particular genre. And because the music video cannot convey all the possible meanings of a given song, this allows the director of a music video to select one possible meaning and visually express it. This visual representation need not come from the song, either. It may come from other sources which the song recalls to the mind of the director. It may also come from the musician or band.

The music video, in its function as a promotional tool, is marketing not simply the song but also the band. What is it about this particular band that will make them of interest to a potential audience? And because the music video has little to no generic restrictions placed upon it, the video can communicate the band’s personality to an audience. This is the intention of the music video for ‘Sirens’ by Montana Fire. Though the meaning of the lyrics do not correspond to the narrative of the music video, the video hopes to communicate the band’s personality, in particular their sense of humour, to the audience.

Goodwin notes that one of the main ways in which a music video communicates the meaning of the song visually is through the tempo (Goodwin, 1992, p.60). The song’s tempo can be represented either through the rhythm and pace of the narrative, or through the editing of the video. At particular moments throughout the song, ‘Sirens’ conveys a sense of urgency building from a dawning realisation, and the narrative of the video will attempt to convey this, albeit through a different visual and thematic device, that of the monster movie. Editing will also play a significant role in conveying the tempo of ‘Sirens’.

While it is important to consider the promotional nature of the music video and the tempo of the song when considering a music video concept, directors of music videos have a lot of creative freedom when visualising a song. This is because music videos are not bound by generic conventions, either through the genre of the song or filmic genres, and they are not bound by one particular meaning generated by the song. Though the video for ‘Sirens’ will be used as a promotional tool for the band Montana Fire, the concept is informed by this sense of potential creative freedom available to all music video directors.


Bibliography
Chandler, D., 2000, An Introduction to Genre Theory, http://blackboard.newcastle.edu.au/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab=courses&url=/bin/common/course.pl?course_id=_71491_1, viewed August 30, 2007.

Goodwin, A, Dancing in the Distraction Factory – Music television and Popular Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992).
Pachet, F., and Cazaly, D., April 2000, A Taxonomy of Musical Genres, http://www.idiap.ch/~paiement/references/to_read/music/genre_classification/pachet-riao2000.pdf, viewed September 15, 2007.