About music in a media.

[Bridge]

I don't know exactly how to explain it, but it made me realise that sometimes soundtracks kind of "tell you" what you should feel instead of letting you feel it by yourself.

This is certainly often the case - but the real magic in music lies in expressing abstract emotions. Moods you cannot paint with words or visuals because they don't really exist. When paired with visuals or a narrative, it can introduce meanings which don't follow naturally from the scene itself. Instead of telling you what to feel by forming resonance with what's on the screen, music can become a character in its own right by offering its own unique perspective, not unlike cinematography or lighting, which technically are not directly perceived either. Even simple scenes can become complex if the music suggests something other than what is being shown - especially if the music doesn't directly reference idioms we connect with certain emotions - stereotypically sad music or heroic music for example (e.g. the music is itself simple, as in one-dimensional). But you're right, sometimes silence is golden.

EDIT: This is often done beautifully in noir films. Possibly my favorite example is the ending to Chinatown:

Spoiler below!

After such a dark scene one might be tempted to close with just silence or something overtly sad or heavy. Instead we get a lonely trumpet accompanied by mysterious jazz harmonies. It's not that it's thematically out of place or isn't sad, it's that it seems to be completely unaware of its surroundings. It's dreamlike and unreal - and stays true to that cynical noir spirit. The scene affects how the music is perceived and vice versa, but it is not the case that the music makes you feel sad - in fact the music is more profound than only a singular emotional state. Instead, you feel conflicted emotions - on one hand you feel sad because of the events and on the other you feel as if it doesn't really matter anyway and life goes on, which is at least personally what I take away from the scene (the music may even be "happy" at times). In other words, the music expresses something which really is not inherent to the scene. The fact that I'm stumbling over my words and having such a hard time explaining what it means is exactly the point I'm trying to make; It doesn't mean anything - but you still feel something. What that something is is not necessary to go into because any answer you find is going to be inaccurate at best. N.B. that doesn't mean you can't be specific about what that emotion is, it just means it has no meaning.