Just recently I had the unexpected pleasure of looking over the soundtrack for the documentary A Brief History of Time Travel. As the title suggests, this documentary is all about a subject that has fascinated scientists (and regular people for years: time travel. The synopsis is as follows:

Time travel reaches far beyond the realm of science fiction. From early stories featuring heroes mysteriously falling into far-flung future worlds to countless appearances in literature, science fiction and video games, the idea of traveling through time has spanned cultures across the globe.

Through interviews with experts across a variety of fields – theoretical physicists, game designers, spiritual leaders to futurist authors, “A Brief History of Time Travel” explores how this idea has inspired some of the prominent intellectual minds of today, and how it has influenced their work.

The soundtrack for A Brief History of Time Travel was composed by Tracie Turnbull, an LA-based composer. Apart from her work on this documentary, Tracie also works as a scoring and tech assistant for Emmy award winning composer Jeff Russo. She has written additional music on projects including: CBS’s Star Trek: Discovery, Sci-fi’s Channel Zero, FX’s Snowfall, Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy and the film, Mile 22.

The music for A Brief History of Time Travel was a lot of fun to listen to. Considering Tracie Turnbull is also a cellist, it’s not a surprise that the soundtrack features a healthy amount of that instrument. Indeed, a large portion of the soundtrack appears to be devoted primarily to the strings to create the warm, but quirky sounds that make up most of the score. Perhaps I was overly influenced by the title of the documentary, but it seemed to me that a lot of the music I heard reflected the passing of time. For example, I could’ve sworn I heard the ticking of clocks in several pieces. The idea occurred to me because Andrew Prahlow did something similar in his score for Outer Wilds. For that matter, speaking of the passage of time, the way most of these pieces “flowed” felt so appropriate given that they’re covering a documentary about time travel, in that time is often described as “flowing” from the past to the future.

As with most documentary scores that I’ve heard, the music for A Brief History of Time Travel is very easy to listen to; it’s gentle, it’s warm, and it draws no more attention to itself than necessary. By no means is that a bad thing, by their nature documentary scores aren’t generally supposed to stand out because that would make them a distraction to what the documentary is talking about. I think Tracie Turnbull’s score complements the topic of the documentary beautifully, allowing the imagination to run wild about the possibilities of time travel.

Track List:

1 Time Travel
2 Time Passing
3 Clock Slowed
4 Three Theories
5 Beyond Space
6 Back And Forward
7 Perspective Of A Computer
8 Space And Looking Back
9 Freeze People
10 Imagine Time Travel
11 Happens In The Future
12 Constraints Of Nature
13 If You Could Travel
14 History Of The Universe

The score for A Brief History of Time Travel can be purchased/downloaded from the following places:

Let me know what you think about A Brief History of Time Travel (and the score) in the comments below and have a great day!

See also:

Film Soundtracks A-W

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