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Sports Music -
finding the right music for sports and extreme sports scenes
Sports are about action and excitement. With a few exceptions most sports are about
speed. Contestants start for fastest sprinter, fastest skier or fastest driver. When we do
sports our pulse is racing, our heartbeat frequency is way above that of relaxation.
When we’re watching sports scenes on the screen their producers want us to feel the
excitement and experience what the athlete is going through while we’re still sitting in
our seats. That’s when music comes in to address another one of our senses and fire
us up.
If we can’t get our pulse racing just by sitting around, then the music has to provide us
with the feel, an illusion of getting that surge of adrenalin which pushes the audacious
downhill racer we’re just watching to his limits. In order to get us fired up the underscoring
music needs a tempo similar to – or better faster than – the frequency of an excited,
strained heart pounding in an athlete’s chest. Such frequency starts at (approximately)
140 beats per minute and reaches up to circa 180 beats. Anything above is said to be
unhealthy, if not dangerous. However, this may be just the tempo desired to express any
such danger involved in the action and the over-the-top sports performance.
Besides being fast, sports music can contain additional elements to support the perception
of such tempo, power and danger. A machine-gun like double bass drum beat keeps the
speed at a constant level and does not allow any exceptions in a listener’s subjective
perception. Loud and overdriven guitars or sawing synthesizers with enough power in the
low mids enhance our perception of being driven by an exterior force. High, shrieking guitar
solos that almost hurt our ears can address and represent our fear of danger which we’d
like to scream out loud.
Just one way to deal with music for sports scenes with a slight scientific approach…
(by Julian Angel)
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