1.8 Summary

To briefly summarise this chapter, humans generate meaning from music. They do this through enculturation, association, and experience, and by identifying intrinsic properties within the music. This occurs in film music as well as listening to music in everyday life. The sonic structure of an individual consists of the auditory system and the auditory cortex, musical memory, and the internal framework which governs how we perceive and interpret music and sounds. Audiation relies on all of these components, and audiation forms a part of film music techniques. Miller (1964) asks "how can I discover the transformations that a perceiver can impose upon the information he takes in?" (Quoted in Walker, 1990, 3). Music is heard differently by different people, and film is viewed through an individual filter. Bryant (1974) asserts "Past experience is…crucially important…it must influence the way a person perceives" (in Walker, 1990, 3). Music and sound are interpreted differently by each individual. The role of perception is vitally important in understanding the meaning humans construct from sound and music, and the role of experience, as Bryant asserts, colours our perception. From the damage we do to our ears by listening to loud music, to the values we ascribe to particular types of music, our perception of sound and music is subject to our individual sonic structure, which is constructed through ongoing experience. Audiation is an integral part of this sonic structure. It is classified as memory recall, but most forms of sonic memory will influence the types of music humans audiate. Implicit and explicit memory, episodic and semantic, meanings within the music (especially lyrics) and meanings constructed by the listener (and the listener's cultural background) can all affect the type of music a person audiates. Intraopus and extraopus expectation, and temporal processing can influence the way people audiate. The importance of audiation within the individual sonic structure (both in life and in film) cannot be ignored, and this study aims to rectify the gap in the existing film music literature, by identifying as well as showing how the film music technique of character audiation (metadiegetic music) can be found in films. This thesis explores the use of metadiegetic music (audiation) in two films, and shows how film music can operate in a more complex way through the metadiegesis than generally thought.