[dfwgator]

One of the best things about the old cartoons was the music and how it matched perfectly the action, especially Tom and Jerry cartoons.

[UnwashedPeasant]

"One of the best things about the old cartoons was the music"

As a kid, I thought classical music was "cartoon music."

[logician2u]

That’s for sure. The music has to be appropriate to the action and fit with whatever emotion a character shows. If it’s not in perfect sync with the action it’s wasted effort.

One of the music composers from the early days (I can’t remember which one at this hour, but he had experience conducting for silent movies earlier in his career) invented a device to shrink or stretch the film speed as needed to make the frames precisely align with the music and/or sound effects.. It worked as intended for the music but I‘ve yet to find any references as to how it succeeded in getting the voices to match up with a character’s mouth movements.