‘Guided by the Instruments’

In tandem with the rise of streaming services in the past decade, television series’ soundtracks have gained increasing visibility in the paratextual media sphere. Series composers now frequently participate in ‘making-of’ engagements that often spotlight physical musical instruments despite the ubiquity of virtual instruments and DAW-based soundtrack production environments. Synthesising approaches from media studies and organology, I elucidate how musical instruments in soundtrack featurettes guide the reception and interpretation of contemporary television series by taking Variety’ s ‘behind-the-score’ featurette for the Disney+ series The Mandalorian (2019–present) as a paradigmatic case study. By tracing television series music back to its instrumental elements, I aim to highlight how a soundtrack’s aesthetic and narrative impact is contingent upon the technology utilised as much as upon the inspired cognition of the composers, thus drawing attention to the material and practical conditions of soundtrack production and reception.