CPT (common practice tonality) is usually found in radio hits and children’s lullabies, however, since the golden age of cinema, film composers have unanimously decided to heavily employ late romantic techniques in their work, which oppose cpt guidelines.
CPT “rules”:
- Only major and minor scales
- Begins and ends in the same key (tonally closed)
- Few uses of dissonance, and if used, they’re always resolved
Late Romantic Techniques:
- More complex/chromatic chords that are not in the key of the music
- Chromatic chord sequences like the hexatonic cycle, where each subsequent chord differs by one note moving up or down a semitone. eg: G Major, G minor, Eb Major, Eb minor, B Major, B minor, G Major
When working on the Soul clip, I used the hexatonic cycle during the flashback montage to create a sense of motion and unpredictability, reflecting the twists and turns of the character’s life. The alternating major and minor chords avoid a clear emotional atmosphere—neither purely happy nor purely sad—capturing the complexity of human experiences, where joy and struggle are often interlinked. Moreover, I avoided staying in a specific key during the flashback montage. I used modulation and augmented 7th chords to shift between keys, creating a sense of movement, exploration and unpredictability.