The Legend of Korra soundtrack will be released on July 16th. This marks a huge milestone for the show. Bryan and I (among many others) have been trying to release an Avatar soundtrack since the early days of A:TLA. Dedicated fans even began circulating a couple of online petitions over the years. We knew that people wanted this music, it just took some time (and a lot of patience) to get the juggernaut of Nickelodeon to get behind it. But once they did, things moved very quickly. And as of this writing (a month until release), the soundtrack is already #3 in soundtracks and #24 in all music on Amazon. Pretty amazing.
Jeremy Zuckerman’s score has been such an intergal part of both A:TLA and Legend of Korra so I’m happy and excited that fans will finally be able to listen to the score on its own.
Since the early days of the Avatar world, the music has added a whole level to the storytelling in the show. Although I was certainly aware of soundtracks for movies and TV, I never really understood how vital they are to visual storytelling until I had my own show. The composer has a difficult job of creating music that supports the visuals without overpowering them. When done well, music often blends into a scene and becomes part of the story, so much so that you don’t realize it’s there. This isn’t a negative thing. It’s similar to how the right actor can blend into their animated character. If a character is matched with the wrong voice, it can be very jarring and take you out of the story. The wrong music can have the same story-killing effect.
Listening to Jeremy’s score for an episode is always a treat. By the time he gets his hands on an episode, we’ve lived with it for about 10 months, in all its various incarnations. We know the story inside and out and have scrutinized every shot and drawing. So it’s difficult to see the show with fresh eyes. But every time I watch a music preview or sit in a mix for an episode, I do just that. It’s like watching the show for the first time. Emotions become clearer, drama becomes more intense, and action becomes more exciting. The whole story is augmented and pushed to a new level that the visuals alone can’t accomplish.
Research shows that music affects our brain activity in various ways, but the most intriguing (as it relates to this post) is that music can activate our visual cortex.  I also came across this research that suggests our senses aren’t so compartmentalized — the different senses are more interconnected than scientists first thought.  I think this might help explain why listening to the music for Korra helps me see the show with fresh eyes. I’m hypothesizing here, but it seems to me that after repeated exposure to the same story and visuals over many months, I experience a kind of visual numbness. Add music to the mix, and now my visual cortex is being activated in different ways and I’m able to watch with a sense of newness.
The music for the show is also magical for me because it’s the only part of the process where Bryan or I are not intimately involved. We meet with Jeremy (as well as sound designer Ben Wynn and foley mixer Aran Tanchum) to discuss the episode and what we envision for the music and sound. We only check back a couple weeks later, after they’ve done all the heavy lifting. After working in animation for almost 17 years (yikes!) I have a pretty solid understanding of how the writing, storyboarding, design, and animation all get made, but music composition is completely foreign to me. I appreciate and love listening to music, but I have a limited understanding of how Jeremy goes from an idea for a score, to actually composing it. I see him jot down ideas for musical phrases the same way I might write a note for a story idea or sketch a storyboard panel. We speak different languages, in a sense, but with the same goal — to tell a great story.
While you’re waiting for the soundtrack to be released, you can listen to one of the tracks here. Enjoy the music!