Music descriptions in TV captions
When I watch TV, I generally watch with captioning enabled. There’ve long been captions of various sorts to indicate when music is playing, but I feel like in the past couple of years, the captioners have started getting more creative in their descriptions of the music.
For example, in the first three episodes of the late lamented series Emerald City, the following music captions appeared:
- [dark music]
- [dramatic musical sting]
- [eerie music]
- [emotional music]
- [epic music]
- [fantastical music]
- [intense musical buildup]
- [intense percussive music]
- [ominous music]
- [uplifting music]
- [whimsical music]
When I put together that list, I noted that there had been about seven such descriptions in the third episode alone. And then a few days later, I watched an episode of Timeless in which there were about 30 music-description captions. Here are the non-repeated ones:
- [brooding dramatic music]
- [brooding music]
- [dark music]
- [dramatic music]
- [gentle music]
- [pensive orchestration]
- [rousing music]
- [sinister tone]
- [soft dramatic music]
- [soft music]
- [soft rousing music]
- [soft tense music]
- [somber music]
- [somber orchestration]
- [suspenseful music]
- [tense music]
Note the rise of two-adjective descriptions, and of terms other than “music.” (I think “pensive orchestration” is my favorite of this batch.)
(Originally posted on Facebook in 2017.)