Ostinatos

I’ve got a new song coming out on September 1st called “Bd + Sn” and it has an ostinato in it. For those that are unfamiliar an ostinato is a short musical idea that is repeated throughout a song or throughout a section of a song. The word ostinato comes from the same root word as “obstinate” does and means something similar to “unchanging.”

Hence the usage of that word.

They’re common in two somewhat distant genres of music. Film music and electronic music both use ostinatos frequently. In film music they’re used because they keep the momentum going and keep the energy high. Film music needs to follow the film and sometimes there needs to be a constant sense of motion, without having much harmonic motion. That’s where ostinatos can be incredibly useful. Harmonic motion is changing chords and keys. Ostinatos provide a feeling of motion without having to have drastic harmonic changes that will draw the attention of the viewer away from the film. After all the goal of film music is to enhance the film, and the goal isn’t often to be the sole focus. The viewer should be focused on the story in the film. The film music enhances the telling of that story.

Ostinatos are great at this. They stay playing and stay “obstinate” and the same, so your ear gets accustomed to the sound of that ostinato, but they don’t take you out of the story of the film.

They’re also common in electronic music. The main way I’ve seen them used in electronic music is to play around with timbre. Timbre is the specific sound of a specific instrument being played in the specific way in which it’s being played. Basically it’s how different instruments sound. What goes into those differences is fairly complicated, but for an intro I’d recommend Andrew Huang’s video on the harmonic series. Timbre is an aspect of music that I hear being played with in electronic music quite frequently. It’s something that can be better manipulated with computers and synthesizers. Effects like filters, distortion, chorus, and flanger all make changing the timbre of a synth much easier.

One thing I’ve often seen and heard in electronic music is using one ostinato throughout a song and changing the instruments and timbre of the instruments or synths that play it. So the notes and rhythms stay the same, but the instruments change drastically throughout the song.

It’s similar to how ostinatos are used in film music in a lot of ways. They both might add layers on top of the ostinato, which put the ostinato into a different context. They both might move the ostinato around between instruments and change the timbre of those instruments.

Ostinatos can be a very useful tool when composing because they allow you to write in a different way than thinking of chord progressions and melodies. Ostinatos force you to think of textures and chunks of music and different ways to vary one idea.

ISJ