Placement of Hit Points

The exact placement of musical hit points is very often a matter of psychology and should be done quite carefully. On quite a few hit points it’s not the most effective thing to place the musical accent exactly on the visual action but rather prefereable to leave a bit of time to let it “sink in” with the audience. This is particularly important on musical reactions on things that are a little more complex to understand. e.g. in a dialogue scene where a character says a “game changing” sentence but you simply need one or two seconds to understand and realize what it means that he/she just said. In this case, you don’t want to be too early with the reaction in the music but give it a moment and then follow the reaction time of the audience or the other character in this dialogue. Of course there are also hits that need to be dead on like explosions etc., something that is clear from the visual impact and doesn’t need a lot of “processing”. But when you’re laying out hit points to a sequence put some thought where it would be best to place them.