"Partita for 8 Voices - Courante" in Netflix's sci fi series, "Dark"

Today I'd like to talk about one of my favorite syncs, one of my favorite composers, and a pocket of music less commonly synced to picture—instrumental compositions.

(And I'm excluding most production/library music in this discussion.)

It's perhaps splitting hairs to get into the difference, but if you think of newer/"modern" instrumental compositions as music written first and foremost for live performance and library/production instrumentals as music intended first for immediate distribution and/or sync—that's where I'd draw the distinction.

(There are of course exceptions. And I'm not arguing that one has more merit or value over the other.)

Check out this instrumental sync. Max Richter's "On The Nature of Daylight" in the opening of Arrival:

Maybe you recognize this piece from its most recent sync placement—episode 3 of The Last of Us. And it's been in the sync game since at least 2006. (I knoww right??). I personally first heard it used in the opening scene from Arrival, and I had no idea it was source music. I thought it was the late Jóhann Jóhannsson's score. Nope! Turns out this piece has been synched over 20 times! It has 91 million streams on Spotify!

So what point am I trying to make?

There's so much potential in syncing instrumental compositions in TV, Film, Video Games—any genre, any medium. Contemporary composers, modern jazz musicians, instrumentalists like Kaki King or funk groups like Vulfpeck...idk, you name it. You get what I'm saying. There's a lot more instrumental music out there that's VERY SYNC-ABLE and there's no better recent example than this:

Caroline Shaw's "Partita for 8 Voices – Courante", one of my favorite syncs of all time.

Let's watch the placement in action from the Netflix sci fi drama, "Dark," where (SPOILER ALERT) Ulrich is stumbling around his picturesque hometown of Winden, Germany. But WHOOPSIE, he's just emerged from a time-traveling cavern and it's no longer 2019 but now 1953 Winden, Germany. Ulrich, looking dazed and confused, realizes—in complete shock—the woman talking to him is his young grandmother with his 12-year-old father in tow. YIKES.

CUE THE MUSIC

¨Let's talk "Courante"

The haunting vocal-percussion (yeah, you heard me) and ghostly hollowed notes of this movement's opening theme gets needle dropped throughout every season of Netflix's German sci-fi drama "Dark."

It's often used when something ominous and incredibly profound occurs in the actually-very-well-done time-traveling plot.

(look, sci-fi is my comfort genre, ok?)

I don't know how it plays if you haven't watched the show in context, but when this theme shows up and those baritone and bass vocals hit, hooooo-weeee I get the chills. I knew this piece before I watched the show. So when I heard it, and heard those male vocals enter, I kid you not I slipped off my couch trying to hit the pause button. I couldn't believe someone, some beautiful genius (Lynn Fainchtein, was it you?) thought to use this INSTRUMENTAL A-CAPELLA piece of music as source. The R-E-S-P-E-C-T, man.

As someone with a degree in music composition, and knowing the sync world, there's some major bonus points and heart emojis floating above my head whenever a show uses contemporary instrumental music as source. I mean, they could have easily had show-composer Ben Frost write something for this scene instead—he does an incredible job in every episode as the series's composer.

But Caroline's piece hits different, right?

And it's used throughout the show to great effect. A song doesn't need words to be a great sync.

Is there a place for instrumental performance music in sync?

Yes, yes there certainly is and it is majorly underutilized. And I get it—they're more expensive than library instrumentals, and a lot of people aren't listening to instrumental music outside the film score realm, etc—but say a modern string quartet, a minimalist piano piece, some Sam Gendel, a Bach improvisation?

All I'm saying is contemporary compositions need support and an audience just as much as any upcoming indie musician/band.

*If any supervisors or sync agents want some more examples of instrumentals or composers that would make for great sync moments, hit me up and let's talk. Or, you know, tell your friends I'm looking for a job and I'd make a killer music coordinator or someone to have repping your catalog or work with your music marketing team. Also, if Nonesuch is ever hiring will someone please tell me? I basically know their entire catalogue and that was totally by accident but idk what to tell you, we both have great taste.

The Composer:

Caroline Adelaide Shaw.

Write that name down, I'm doing you a favor.

Meet one of my generation's great American composers. She's the youngest composer to win a Pulitzer Prize (pretty sure she was 30 when she won). She's been Grammy nominated multiple times for her string quartets (Attacca Quartet wins the best performance Grammy every time they record her work) and finally Caroline won a Grammy herself for Best Contemporary Classical Composition in 2022—not for string quartet, surprisingly, but for vocals and percussion ensemble.

Check out this shit:

She's got a masters degree in violin, PHD in Music Composition from Yale. And is a talented alto vocalist, often appearing in her own works and with the esteemed experimental a-cappella ensemble Roomful of Teeth. She co-produced and arranged vocals for one very talented yet deluded rapper (let's not get into that, but it's before he went totally Yay-cray). She appears as herself in Mozart In the Jungle. Her name is spoken by the great Cate Blanchett as she embodies the imposing Lydia Tàr when asked to name some modern, influential female composers. Hell, her music was even used in trailer promos for the film, too. And in case you couldn't love her more, Shaw also lends her voice to the score of Yellowjackets (yep, all those creepy female vocal cries and bends are trademark Shaw). And she scores TV shows and films as well. So look out.

THE BIG SCORE interview w/Caroline Shaw on Flieshman Is In Trouble

Thank you for reading my ramblings. Go listen to some contemporary instrumental music. We're still out here writing.

Here's a song of hers but with words too, as a treat: