Battle music is one of my most favorite types of music to write. But there is a huge difference between epic music, trailer music, and a dedicated theme for battles and fighting scenes. When you take a closer look at the masses of “battle music” you find out there, there are not that many that ARE battle music by its definition.
In this post, I want to give you a simple introduction to this subgenre and what you need to look for if you have the task to write one.
“Battle Music” has the primary role of supporting the action provided on the screen and creating a soundbed of tension and a steady forward motion. Melodic motifs usually play a minor role and are reduced to a minimalistic version, while rhythmic sections lead the theme.
Table of content
1. What is Battle Music?
Battle music is a type of soundtrack dedicated to a specific scene within a project. Its role is to create tension and support the action on the screen. In general, the music stays in the background as the ongoing visuals are the main focus for the viewer. It often has a clear rhythmic focus and doesn’t use big complex melody patterns not to distract too much.
The structure of the track highly depends on the footage. While we had huge dominant musical parts in early movie productions, we see a trend of quiet and discrete soundscapes in the background. I did some minor research and looked through various combat scenes from diffrent movies, and I came to an exciting conclusion.
There are three major types of music in battle scenes:
Whenever we have combat scenes in modern time settings we have really quiet parts, till the point where we can’t even hear it properly. Often it’s just a simple drone in the background. In my opinion, it has to do with the heavy use of firepower, as the loud sound design would clash with a loud percussive track.
Another broadly used type would be the use of rhythmic pads which dominate the melodic part as well as the rhythmic part.
When we look at movies in medieval/ fantasy settings, the music gets more dominant but stays in the background. The huge heroic parts occur when the noise of the battlefield is reduced. This can be a dialog, a moment of despair, or a heroic rescue.
As we don’t have the big explosion sounds, the music has more room to feature heavy percussion and basic harmonic and melodic elements.
2. Common Misconception: Epic Music vs. Battle Music
A lot of really great tracks are sold to the listener as battle music, but in reality, they are not fitting for actual battle scenes. The music might be heroic, epic, and feature huge percussion statements, but that is not the only purpose of battle music.
Often, it is written in the type of Trailer Music or a standalone Epic Journey. That doesn’t need to be wrong, but it is not battle music per se. We can divide the epic, colossal and heroic tracks we have in mind into three main categories:
- Trailer Music
- Epic Standalone Music
- Battle Music
Each of these has its own key elements and broadly used features. The categories are loose guidelines, music is a creative process, so for every rule, there are five exceptions. But these categories allow us to organize the music and provide us with a better understanding of the key elements.
Trailer Music
This type of music is written specifically to create tension and will try to sell you the movie as well as they can. We can hear massive percussive statements, a soring brass section, and a vast dramatic melody section. As we saw earlier, that is not the way how battle music works most of the time. Trailer music can have a battle scene as its central theme but doesn’t fit the general structure.
Epic Standalon Music
This is a category where we can find many amazing and inspiring so-called “battle tracks”. But when we analyze them and compare them to the music actually used in battle scenes, they are more like a main theme for the entire movie.
The music usually doesn’t have the room to tell a second story within a single scene apart from the ongoing action on screen. Simple reminders to the main theme are widespread and often used but not in the way of a fully stretched-out main theme.
A common example would be “The battle” (Narnia 2005; by Harry Gregson Williams). The heroic part gets played as a teaser before the battle starts, and slips in the role of a pure rhythmic pattern as soon as the battle starts. The heroic beginning is a variation of the main theme used throughout the entire track, while the music for the battle scene goes in the background.
3. Three Forms of Battle Music
Form A) The quiet approach
Whenever the sound design of the fighting scene itself has a quite high volume, the music immediately steps into the background. There is not enough room for a complex theme because of the high intensity of the ongoing action.
This is quite common in battle scenes set in modern times where firearms and explosions are a dominant part. Some scenes don’t use any music at all, while others are restricted to a drone pad increasing in tension.
Not only modern time scenes are scored in this way, usually, but we also find this type of music in fighting scenes early in the movie, where the villain dominates the hero. The lack of music creates a hole in the scene and underlines the helpless situation the hero is in.
CHERRY (2021; Composer: Henry Jackman)
The scene starts with a quiet but present drone in the background. Without any clear structure, it forms a soundbed for the action on screen. Minimalistic variations are implemented with the use of acoustic guitars and pads.
CENTURION (2010; Composer: Ilan Eshkeri)
The battle takes place at the beginning of the movie and shows the despair the roman soldiers face at this moment. The music underlines this with a sad and quiet strings section throughout the entire battle. As the noise of the battlefield fades out, the music evolves to a more dominant melancholic theme.
Form B) Rhythmic patterns
This is by far one of the most used structures to increase tension in a battle scene, especially in modern action thrillers. The music forms an underlying rhythmic pattern with a strong forward motion. Strings and low brass play a huge role in it and usually from the supporting structure. Heavy percussive hits might be a good idea at first glance, but if put together with the sound design of the scene they can clash quite quickly.
A reoccurring variation of the main theme is commonly used to give the viewer a hint of what they can expect of this scene. These motifs are usually not completed and only play the main chords and musical ideas.
GAME OF THRONES (2016; Composer: Ramin Djawadi)
“The Battle of the Bastards” goes down as one of the most intense fighting scenes in cinema history. The music follows the pattern of the scene by leaving out entire sections (the cavalry charge) to give space for immense cinematic freedom and setting the tone with rhythmic patterns to provide a forward motion.
The music steps up to a melancholic motif playing variations of the character’s themes when the scene allows it.
THE DARK KNIGHT (2008; Composer: Hans Zimmer)
The main theme of the “Dark Knight Trilogy” is dominated by the rhythmic section in combination with long stretched melody chords. In this scene, the main theme gets woven into the rhythmic soundbed for the forward motion effect.
To give a clear breakpoint at Batman’s arrival, the music fades out to return as a more powerful variant with increased tension.
Form C) Heroic theme
The heroic theme within a battle scene can have two main effects on the ongoing action. The first commonly used method is to implement the heroic theme at a point of rescue where the tables turn in favor of the hero. These moments often lower the intensity of the background noise to give the music more room to expand.
The second method is to form the battle scene into a collage or to show the absurdity. In the story of the hero is typicaly a moment where his training/ combat experience is shown in form of a collage, usually in the first half of the movie. Battlescenes later in the movie can have the same energy by underlying them with a heroic theme.
Heroic Theme
THE LAST SAMURAI (2003; Composer: Hans Zimmer)
The music starts with a focus on rhythmic patterns but switches to a heroic theme as the battle occurs. We can hear the dominant dramatic theme on top of the battle noise throughout the fighting sequence. The music varies between huge themes and powerful ambient patterns but stays on a consistent foreground.
LORD OF THE RINGS (2003; Composer Howard Shore)
I don’t think I need to lose any words on the epic scale of this scene from Lord of the Rings. At the clash of the cavalry charge the music fades out but returns as a heroic theme once the first shots are over. Consider, that this scene doesn’t reflects the entire battle of Minas Tirith, but forms the point of hope and therefore uses a heroic theme in the battle scene.
Implementation of Songs
KINGSMEN (2014; Henry Jackman and Matthew Margeson)
This scene contains an ongoing fighting collage, which gets a unique effect on the viewer by underlying it with a pop song rearranged for use in the movie. This makes the scene humorous and gives it an absurd joyfulness. Notice how the fighting sounds get reduced in volume to fully support the music.
THE SILENT MOINTAIN (2014; Gregor Narholz)
This scene uses a similar technique as the scene above but uses a scratchy recording to give it the distinctive sound of a gramophone in the 1920s. The recording is bearable during the entire scene.
4. Battle Music in video games
The music for video games has a diffrent approach than movie scenes. Here the action is not written down step by step but is formed by the player’s actions.
Therefore the music needs to react to the gameplay. The music is written in loops that get repeated till the next sequence begins. The single stems get programmed so they get played in diffrent constellations depending on the player’s experience.
There are two main structures in video games: The “ambient world battle music” and the “boss battle music“.
Ambient World Battle Music
A brilliant example of this is the “witcher 3” ambient battle music. The ambient world music needs to shift quickly into a combat stage as a fight along the adventure occurs. As the player attacks the bandits, the music switches within seconds to a piece of fighting-style music.
Boss Battle Music
The boss battle music is when the player confronts the main threads of the world. This composition focuses purely on the boss but is still written in single stems.
The Dark Souls Series contains beautiful examples of this progression, as the music reacts to the diffrent stages of the fight.
5. Standalone Battle music
We can find “battle music” not only implemented in a movie scene or a video game. There are tons of epic Standalone approaches on YouTube and other streaming platforms. These scores have the battle as a theme but don’t have actual footage they accompany. The battle is a part of the story that gets formed in your head by listening.
Therefore this type of music is not considered as “battle music” itself but is structured like “epic music” or “Trailer music” with the theme of a colossal battle.
As we already have seen, these forms can be implemented as a heroic theme, but tend to be too intense and clash with the sound design.
Soundtracks from movies and video games get rearranged for the release, to perform better by listening to them without the visuals. Especially video game soundtracks need to be transformed into a Standalone export.