Narrative Links Beyond Themes

Themes are not the only thing that can be used to identify characters/locations/situations musically. In fact, using too many themes especially on a genre that usually doesn’t have many themes might just become feeling strangely operatic and even worse, be more confusing due to just too many musical ideas.

There are other excellent ways to identify certain things without going the way of thematic overload and which will also feel like a more modern scoring approach for example using a specific harmonic language or chord progression, using a specific sound or a specific orchestration can create just as strong connections as a theme and works even better on things that don’t neccessarily need to have the possibility to look on it from several angles (like presenting a major theme in minor etc.).

Using these things will in general give you a clearer concept and structure on your score than overloading it with themes in most occasions.