Daily Inspiration Quote by Alex North

North is describing the tightrope act at the heart of modern film music: give the audience something they can emotionally “read” in real time, then destabilize it just enough to feel alive. That phrase “resulting combination” is composer-talk for craft over mysticism. He’s not chasing novelty for its own sake; he’s engineering a composite out of “two strands,” suggesting a deliberate braiding of traditions, techniques, maybe even cultural vocabularies.

“Familiarity” does the essential job of scoring: it supplies narrative glue. A harmonic progression that telegraphs tenderness, a rhythmic figure that primes anxiety, an orchestral color that signals period or place. The viewer recognizes the feeling before they can name it, which is precisely why it works in a medium that moves faster than reflection.

Then comes the self-conscious hedge: “for lack of a better word, strangeness.” North is admitting that the thing he values most is hard to label without sounding pretentious. He’s pointing at the uncanny - the slight wrongness that keeps the ear from going numb. In North’s era, that often meant folding modernist language (dissonance, unexpected voicings, asymmetrical phrasing) into otherwise legible musical storytelling. It’s a posture of sophistication without alienation: challenging the listener while keeping them inside the emotional contract.

The subtext is a quiet manifesto against both bland conventionality and avant-garde purity. North isn’t arguing for shock; he’s arguing for friction. Familiarity invites you in. Strangeness keeps you awake.