Rick Balentine Film Composer: Finding Emotion, Tension and Resolution in the Score for CHARGE
From Copland-Inspired Harmony to Piano Motifs, Orchestra and Synths
One of the things I still love most about composing for film is that every project gives me an opportunity to create a musical world from scratch.
With CHARGE!, I had the chance to bring together several things that have influenced my writing over the years: the emotional power of a full orchestra, the incredible colors available through synthesizers and modern technology, and a harmonic language inspired in part by some of the composers whose music has stayed with me throughout my career.
For this score, I wanted something that could feel expansive and distinctly American, but at the same time intimate and personal.
That led me to a hybrid approach—full orchestral writing combined with synthesizers, electronic textures, percussion, and some of the extraordinary orchestral sample libraries available to composers today. We have tools now that I could only have dreamed about when I began composing. The level of expression available in modern string libraries is remarkable. But I've always believed that technology should serve the music, not become the music.
The samples, synthesizers, computers, and orchestra are all simply colors on the palette.
The emotion is the point.
Ultimately, the question is always the same:
What does this moment in the film need to feel?
Finding Americana Through Harmony
While writing CHARGE!, I found myself thinking about the harmonic language of some of the great American composers—particularly Aaron Copland and music such as Appalachian Spring.
There's something about the openness of that harmonic language that I've always loved.
Rather than everything being constructed from traditional triadic harmony, you frequently hear the openness of intervals such as fourths and fifths. They create space around a melody.
To my ear, those intervals can suggest enormous landscapes. They can feel hopeful, strong, pastoral, even heroic. And there's something unmistakably Americana about that sound.
In portions of the CHARGE! score, I used quartal harmony—harmony constructed around intervals of a fourth—to surround the melody.
Instead of simply placing conventional chords underneath a melodic line, the fourths become part of the architecture around it. That gives the melody room to breathe while still providing harmonic movement.
Here's an example from the score where you can hear the use of fourths around the melody using woodwinds. Listen to the openness they create and how that affects the character of the theme.
Finding Emotion In The Piano Motif — Sometimes Less Says More
Another musical idea that became familiar throughout CHARGE! is a recurring piano motif.
I've always loved what a piano can do in a film score when you resist the temptation to make it do too much. Sometimes a handful of notes surrounded by silence and space can communicate more than an entire orchestral statement.
That's an approach that has been influenced in part by another composer I've admired tremendously over the years: Thomas Newman. I've always been drawn to the way Newman can use piano, unusual instrumental colors, repetition, texture, and especially space to create an emotional environment around a scene.
The music doesn't necessarily tell you exactly what to feel. It gives you somewhere to feel it.
That philosophy influenced some of my thinking while writing CHARGE!, particularly in the way I approached the recurring piano motif. I wanted the piano at times to feel almost like a voice within the score. It's recognizable when it returns, but its emotional meaning can change depending upon what's happening around it.
Put strings underneath those notes and they can suddenly feel warm and expansive.
Introduce a synth texture and those same notes can become mysterious or uncertain.
Change the harmony underneath them and something familiar can suddenly feel completely different. The melody is in a major key, but the second and third chords shift keys creating a sense that something is not as rosy and it seems.
That's one of the things I love about using motifs in film music.
The notes can remain familiar while their emotional meaning evolves with the story.
Here's an example of the recurring piano motif from CHARGE!. Listen not only to the piano itself, but to the space around it and how the surrounding orchestration gives those few notes their emotional context, allowing me to bring in the orchestra to finish out this cue.
The IV Chord — Relief Without Going Home
There's another harmonic idea that became particularly important to me throughout CHARGE!, and it's actually very simple.
The IV chord.
In traditional harmony, we're conditioned to hear the tonic—the I chord—as home.
You create tension. You move away from the tonic. Eventually, you return to it.
And when you do, there's a feeling of arrival.
Home.
Finished.
Resolved.
But while writing CHARGE!, I discovered that I often didn't want the music to feel completely resolved. I wanted relief—but I didn't necessarily want to go home. So I began repeatedly using the IV chord as a place of emotional release. The music might build... and build... and build... and then, instead of resolving completely back to the tonic, it opens onto the IV chord.
There's something about that sound that has always felt incredibly warm to me. It's inviting. It's comforting. It gives you relief from the tension that came before it. But there's still something left unresolved. We're safe for a moment, but we're not home yet.
That idea became something of a harmonic motif itself, and I found myself returning to it throughout the score. The audience doesn't need to know they're hearing a IV chord.
In fact, I don't want them sitting there analyzing the harmony. I want them to feel what the harmony is doing. That's ultimately what film music is about for me.
Here's an example from the score. Listen as the score settles on the IV chord around 0:08, 0:28, then really relies on the resolve at 01:05 and 01:12, music builds tension to the V chord, and then gives the main landing on the I chord at 01:21.
Bringing the Orchestra and Synths Together
Another part of writing CHARGE! that I particularly enjoyed was combining this harmonic language with a hybrid orchestral palette.
I love writing for orchestra. Strings can provide enormous emotional movement. Brass can bring tremendous weight and scale. Woodwinds can introduce intimacy and humanity. Percussion can completely change the physical energy of a scene.
But then we have synthesizers.
And suddenly there's an entirely different world available. I've spent much of my life around synthesizers, and one thing I've learned is that they don't necessarily have to announce themselves. A synth doesn't always have to sound like "here comes the synthesizer." Sometimes it's underneath the orchestra providing movement.
Sometimes it's reinforcing the bottom end.
Sometimes it's creating a pulse.
Sometimes it's adding an almost imperceptible texture behind the strings.
You may not consciously hear it at all—but if I mute it, suddenly something is missing.
That's where hybrid scoring becomes especially exciting to me. I don't really think of it as: ORCHESTRA + SYNTHESIZER. I'm trying to make all of those elements become one musical world.
If I've done my job properly, you're not thinking about which library produced the strings or which synthesizer created a particular texture. You're watching the film. And you're feeling something.
Rick Balentine Film Composer: The Joy of Creating It
After more than four decades of making music, this is still the part of composing that excites me. Experimenting. Sitting at the keyboard and discovering something I wasn't expecting.
Finding a harmony that suddenly makes a scene work. Hearing the strings bring a melody to life. Finding exactly the right synth texture underneath an orchestra. Writing three or four notes on a piano and discovering that they can become part of the emotional identity of a film. Or finding that one unexpected chord that changes the meaning of an entire passage.
That's the joy of composing for me.
Technology has changed enormously over the years. The instruments have changed. The computers have changed. The libraries have become astonishingly sophisticated. But the fundamental challenge hasn't changed at all. We're still trying to tell stories with music.
We're still trying to find that combination of melody, harmony, rhythm, texture, orchestration—and sometimes silence—that connects with something emotional in the audience. And sometimes the most satisfying resolution isn't really a resolution at all.
Sometimes you don't need to go all the way home. Sometimes you just need to arrive somewhere that feels warm enough to stay for a little while.
For CHARGE!, very often...
that place was the IV chord.
Rick Balentine
P.S. Search for Rick Balentine film composer and you'll find a body of work shaped by my love of orchestral writing, synthesizers, harmony and storytelling. With CHARGE!, I had the opportunity to bring many of those influences together in one score.
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