Soundtrack in the context of Recording artists

Music is the arrangement of sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm, or otherwise expressive content. Music is generally agreed to be a cultural universal that is present in all human societies. Definitions of music vary widely in substance and approach. While scholars agree that music is defined by a small number of specific elements, there is no consensus as to what these necessary elements are. Music is often characterized as a highly versatile medium for expressing human creativity. Diverse activities are involved in the creation of music, and are often divided into categories of composition, improvisation, and performance. Music may be performed using a wide variety of musical instruments, including the human voice. It can also be composed, sequenced, or otherwise produced to be indirectly played mechanically or electronically, such as via a music box, barrel organ, or digital audio workstation software on a computer.

Music often plays a key role in social events and religious ceremonies. The techniques of making music are often transmitted as part of a cultural tradition. Music is played in public and private contexts, highlighted at events such as festivals and concerts for various different types of ensembles. Music is used in the production of other media, such as in soundtracks to films, TV shows, operas, and video games.

A digital audio workstation (DAW /dɔː/) is an electronic device or application software used for recording, editing and producing audio files. DAWs come in a wide variety of configurations, from a single software program on a laptop, to an integrated stand-alone unit, all the way to a highly complex configuration of numerous components controlled by a central computer. Regardless of configuration, modern DAWs have a central interface that allows the user to alter and mix multiple recordings and tracks into a final produced piece.

DAWs are used for producing and recording music, songs, speech, radio, television, soundtracks, podcasts, sound effects and nearly every other kind of complex recorded audio.

A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film or a television program. The score consists of a number of orchestral, instrumental, or choral pieces called cues, which are timed to begin and end at specific points during the film in order to enhance the dramatic narrative and the emotional impact of the scene in question. Scores are written by one or more composers under the guidance of or in collaboration with the film's director or producer and are then most often performed by an ensemble of musicians – usually including an orchestra (most likely a symphony orchestra) or band, instrumental soloists, and choir or vocalists – known as playback singers – and recorded by a sound engineer. The term is less frequently applied to music written for media such as live theatre, television and radio programs, and video games, and that music is typically referred to as either the soundtrack or incidental music.

Film scores encompass an enormous variety of styles of music depending on the nature of the films they accompany. While the majority of scores are orchestral works rooted in Western classical music, many scores are also influenced by jazz, rock, pop, blues, new-age and ambient music, and a wide range of ethnic and world music styles. Since the 1950s, a growing number of scores have also included electronic elements, and many scores written today feature a hybrid of orchestral and electronic instruments.

A musician is someone who composes, conducts, or performs music. According to the United States Employment Service, "musician" is a general term used to designate a person who follows music as a profession. Musicians include songwriters, who write both music and lyrics for songs; conductors, who direct a musical performance; and performers, who perform for an audience. A music performer is generally either a singer (also known as a vocalist), who provides vocals, or an instrumentalist, who plays a musical instrument. Musicians may perform on their own or as part of a group, band or orchestra.

Musicians may specialize in a musical genre, although many perform across a variety of styles and often blend or cross genres. Their musical output is influenced by a range of factors, including culture, skill set, life experience, education, and creative preferences. A musician who records and releases music is often referred to as a recording artist; while a musician who primarily writes and records art music, media soundtracks , and scores—including for films, theatrical stage productions, and video games—or classical music is usually called a composer. A music producer, while not a musician outright, may themselves be a musician. A conductor, by way of gestures, leads and provides live direction for, or conducts, an ensemble, typically an orchestra or choral group.

A soundtrack album is any album that incorporates music directly recorded from the soundtrack of a particular feature film or television show. The first such album to be commercially released was Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the soundtrack to the film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, in 1938. The first soundtrack album of a film's orchestral score was that for Alexander Korda's 1942 film Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book, composed by Miklós Rózsa.

Dubbing (also known as re-recording and mixing) is a post-production process used in filmmaking and the video production process where supplementary recordings (known as doubles) are lip-synced and "mixed" with original production audio to create the final product.

Often this process is performed on films by replacing the original language to offer voiced-over translations. After sound editors edit and prepare all the necessary tracks—dialogue, automated dialogue replacement (ADR), effects, foley, and music—the dubbing mixers proceed to balance all of the elements and record the finished soundtrack.

Incidental music is music in a play, television program, radio program, video game, or some other presentation form that is not primarily musical. The term is less frequently applied to film music, with such music being referred to instead as the film score or soundtrack.

Incidental music is often background music, and is intended to add atmosphere to the action. It may take the form of something as simple as a low, ominous tone suggesting an impending startling event or to enhance the depiction of a story-advancing sequence. It may also include pieces such as overtures, music played during scene changes, or at the end of an act, immediately preceding an interlude, as was customary with several nineteenth-century plays. It may also be required in plays that have musicians performing on-stage.

Hauntology is a music genre, movement or a loosely defined stylistic feature that evokes cultural memory and aesthetics of the past. It developed in the 2000s primarily among British electronic musicians, and typically draws on British cultural sources from the 1930s to the 1960s, including library music, film and TV soundtracks, psychedelia, and public information films; often through the use of sampling.

The term was derived from philosopher Jacques Derrida's concept of the same name. In the mid-2000s, it was adapted by theorists Simon Reynolds and Mark Fisher. Hauntology is associated with the UK record labels Ghost Box and Trunk Records, in addition to artists such as the Caretaker, Burial, and Philip Jeck. Music genres hypnagogic pop and chillwave descended from hauntology.

The double bass (/ˈdʌbəl beɪs/), also known as the upright bass, the acoustic bass, the bull fiddle, the Bass Fiddle, or simply the bass, is the largest and lowest-pitched chordophone in the modern symphony orchestra (excluding rare additions such as the octobass). It has four or five strings, and its construction is in between that of the gamba and the violin family.

The bass is a standard member of the orchestra's string section, along with violins, violas, and cellos, as well as the concert band, and is featured in concertos, solo, and chamber music in Western classical music. The bass is used in a range of other genres, such as jazz, blues, rock and roll, rockabilly, country music, bluegrass, tango, folk music and certain types of film and video game soundtracks.

Video game music (VGM) is the soundtrack that accompanies video games. Early video game music was once limited to sounds of early sound chips, such as programmable sound generators (PSG) or FM synthesis chips. These limitations have led to the style of music known as chiptune, which became the sound of the early video games.

With technological advances, video game music has grown to include a wider range of sounds. Players can hear music in video games over a game's title screen, menus, and gameplay. Game soundtracks can also change depending on a player's actions or situation, such as indicating missed actions in rhythm games, informing the player they are in a dangerous situation, or rewarding them for specific achievements.

Simulcast (a portmanteau of "simultaneous broadcast") is the broadcasting of programs or events across more than one resolution, bitrate or medium, or more than one service on the same medium, at exactly the same time (that is, simultaneously). For example, Absolute Radio is simulcast on both AM and on satellite radio. Likewise, the BBC's Prom concerts were formerly simulcast on both BBC Radio 3 and BBC Television. Another application is the transmission of the original-language soundtrack of movies or TV series over local or Internet radio, with the television broadcast having been dubbed into a local language. Yet another is when a sports game, such as Super Bowl LVIII, is simulcast on multiple television networks at the same time. In the case of Super Bowl LVIII, the game's main broadcast channel was CBS, but viewers could watch it on other CBS-owned television channels or streaming services as well; Nickelodeon and Paramount+ showed the English-language broadcast, while Univision showed the same visual but had Spanish-language broadcasters for its audio.

A spoken word album is a recording of spoken material, a predecessor of the contemporary audiobook genre. Rather than featuring music or songs, the content of spoken word albums include political speeches, dramatic readings of historical documents, dialogue from a film soundtrack, dramatized versions of literary classics, stories for children, comedic material, and instructional recordings. The Grammy for Best Spoken Word Album has been awarded annually since 1959.

Eithne Pádraigín Ní Bhraonáin ([eːnjə ˈpɒˠd̪ˠɾˠɢiːnʲ nʲiː ˈvˠɾˠiːn̪ˠɒːiːn]) (born 17 May 1961; anglicised as Enya Patricia Brennan), known mononymously as Enya, is an Irish singer and composer. With an estimated equivalent of over 80 million albums sold worldwide, Enya is one of the world's best-selling music artists. In addition to being the best-selling Irish solo artist, she is the second-best-selling music act from Ireland overall, after the band U2. Enya's music has been widely recognised for its use of multi-layers of her own vocals and instrumentation, lengthened reverb, and interwoven elements of Celtic music.

Raised in the Irish-speaking region of Gweedore, Enya began her musical career in 1980 playing alongside her family's Irish folk band, Clannad. She left Clannad in 1982 to pursue a solo career, working with the former Clannad manager and producer, Nicky Ryan, and his wife Roma, as their lyricist. Over the following four years, Enya further developed her sound by combining multi-tracked vocals and keyboards with elements from a variety of musical genres, such as Celtic, classical, Gregorian chant, church, jazz, hip-hop, ambient, world, and Irish folk. Her earliest solo releases were two piano/synthesiser instrumentals for the Touch Travel T4 cassette compilation (1984) composed around 1982–83. The majority of the soundtrack for The Frog Prince (1985) was composed by Enya, and she sang two songs with lyrics for the project. Enya also composed a body of work for a documentary series by the BBC named The Celts. A selection of Enya's pieces for The Celts was released as her self-titled debut album in 1986, with the documentary and BBC Records releases in 1987.

The music of Hawaii includes an array of traditional and popular styles, ranging from native Hawaiian folk music to modern rock and hip hop. Styles like slack-key guitar are well known worldwide, while Hawaiian-tinged music is a frequent part of Hollywood soundtracks. Hawaii also made a contribution to country music with the introduction of the steel guitar. In addition, the music which began to be played by Puerto Ricans in Hawaii in the early 1900s is called cachi cachi music, on the islands of Hawaii.

The traditional music of Hawaii's Native Hawaiian community is largely religious in nature, and includes chanting and dance music. Hawaiian music has had a notable impact on the music of other Polynesian islands; Peter Manuel called the influence of Hawaiian music a "unifying factor in the development of modern Pacific musics".