Abstract
Perhaps the most recent resource made available to film music is the popular musical idiom and practice known as Electronic Dance Music (EDM). Three typical categories of interaction and influence can be traced out: non-EDM practitioner film composers who make use of the EDM idiom in their scores, the EDM practitioner as composer, and the use of pre-existing EDM tracks. Little scholarly attention has been given to an analysis of the way these three categories of EDM interaction play out in films, particularly in terms of the formal construction of the music and the diverse functions they serve in the film. Relying on close formal analysis of multiple films and the work of music theorist Mark J. Butler, this paper identifies a key set of EDM practices incorporated into film music practice: sampling, beat manipulation, and layering and looping. This paper also argues that the use of EDM goes beyond simply signaling excitement or connoting ‘the badass’. Instead, EDM practices have been combined in numerous permutations and placed into multiple and distinct relationships with other aspects of films' soundtracks and visual tracks, in the service of a wide range of nuanced functions.
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