Whiplash (soundtrack)

Whiplash (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) is the soundtrack album to the 2014 film Whiplash, directed by Damien Chazelle. The soundtrack was released on October 7, 2014, by Varèse Sarabande and features 24 tracks, which were split into three parts. Each part, consists of varied musical selections, original jazz pieces, original underscore parts and classical jazz standards that featured various artists, including Stan Getz, Duke Ellington and other musicians. A deluxe edition of the soundtrack was released in March 2020.

Development

The album and score was produced by Justin Hurwitz, with Tim Simonec conducting the score pieces.

Hurwitz described about the contrast between Neiman's (Miles Teller) and Fletcher's (J. K. Simmons) music. While Neiman's music plays feverishly throughout the film, Fletcher was seen playing music at few instances, where Hurwitz wrote a tender piano piece for him in the film, contrast to his character. The title song was not featured in full in the film, as "sections of it were played during the rehearsal scene being interrupted with Fletcher stopping the tune recurrently, because of mistakes". While scoring the tracks in the practice sessions, it was generally designed to become "more intense" as the film goes on.^[1]

The overture plays twice in the film. He modelled the track after the Buddy Rich big band style, which was fast and complicated. He added "From an arrangement standpoint it’s complicated because it’s also based on the theme of the movie. We had started talking very early about what that theme could be, and what’s important to Damien and me is that scores are thematically economical, they don’t keep throwing new melodies at you. You establish one or two melodies and use as them in as many ways as possible. So that overture that plays for a little bit at the beginning establishes a theme that we hear in many of the score cues. We hear tender versions of it, unsettling versions of it, then in the end, it’s this big, fast big band piece."^[2]

On the instrumentation of the score, Hurwitz said:

"We knew that the underscore shouldn’t be big band jazz, since there was already so much of that on screen and elsewhere in the movie. We knew that an orchestral score would be stylistically wrong, and that an electronic score wouldn’t make sense in a movie about musicianship and instruments. So we came up with the idea of building a score using the techniques of electronic scoring, but using 100% real instruments — in fact, only the instruments in a big band lineup. With this approach, we would have a score that felt atmospheric like an electronic score without actually being electronic, and organic to the movie’s existing soundscape, without feeling like just more big band music."^[1]

The score cues were produced one note per time, to layer and manipulate the notes as other musicians cannot. The resulting textures are reminiscent of an electronic score, except for each note was either a sax, trumpet, trombone, piano, vibe, or upright bass. The majority of the notes in this score are slowed down to about one-third per time, creating a hellish version of a big band sound. A melodic tune was woven into the score in major, minor, and other modes, depending on the situation. The track "When I Wake" was not included in the standard edition, but later released in the deluxe edition of the soundtrack. He wrote for the initial short film, to sound for a film that took place in the 1930s. Nicholas Britell co-produced the track with Hurwitz, which provided a vinyl sound.^[1] The actual drummer was Bernie Dresel.^[3]

Track listings

Standard edition

The standard edition tracklist was released in September 2014;