Music & words

[pbray]

Over on fangs_fur_fey, Melissa Marr melissa_writing posted the following prompt, which intrigued me so I thought I'd share my answer here.

Pick one of your novels, screenplays, graphic novels, or short stories. List 3-6 song titles (& the artist singing the song) that will give a reader a taste of the tone of said novel.

Listening to music is an important part of my writing ritual, and in the early stages of each book I become obsessed with finding just the right CDs to inspire me.

While writing DEVLIN'S LUCK, I listened to Steve McDonald's Sons of Somerled over and over again. It was the perfect album to set the mood, filled with songs about living with despair and hardship, struggling to endure knowing that you will not live to see the fruits of any victory that you achieve.

From "I Will Return" where a man hopes to reunited at death with his lost love, to the lonely exile described in "Soldier's Lament" these were songs that didn't just evoke the mood of the book, they were songs that I could imagine Devlin had grown up hearing, and sang to himself when there was no risk that strangers could hear him.

For later books in the series I added other albums by Steve McDonald to the mix, but Sons of Somerled remains my favorite.

Cross-posted from fangs_fur_fey.

Comments

[vcmorris.livejournal.com]

Interesting... I'll have to give this some thought.

[pbray.livejournal.com]

I've found most writers fall into either the "must have music playing while writing" or "can't write with music playing" categories.

I find playing music gets me into the right headspace, and helps me make the transition from being at computer for day job or fun, versus being at my computer to write. In general I prefer instrumental music or songs with lyrics in other languages such as Gaelic, Latin, etc, but the Steve McDonald CDs were an exception.

[elizabeth-welsh.livejournal.com]

I've found most writers fall into either the "must have music playing while writing" or "can't write with music playing" categories.

I guess I'll be the third category -- makes up music simultaneously. I don't usually play other music because a. The computer in my house is right next to the television and unless my husband is asleep, the dang thing is on, b. at any given moment I may have to leave a sentence midstream to answer a question from my son or get him more juice, etc. or to do the myriad of things moms do when at home, and c. since I compose music naturally, each character has their own theme, and certain scenes have a soundtrack playing in my head, and there's really only so much noise I can sort out at once -- though I grant you that I do more multi-tasking than average.

I cannot do this meme for myself because no one would recognize the music I'd mention. Songs that make their way into my stories as simple ideas (the tune where Saffron and Cypress seem to compete) are real to me. They have melody and harmony. Sometimes they have words.

[pbray.livejournal.com]

How totally cool! I'd love to be able to compose my own music.

[elizabeth-welsh.livejournal.com]

What's funny is that sometimes I wish it would stop.

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

I'm sometimes one and sometimes the other, depending on ... well, I'm not sure what, to be honest. But if I'm not listening to music, there's some other music playing in my head, so maybe I'm in the first category anyway? ;^)

There's a lot of singing in my book; two songs are specifically mentioned, "She Moved Through the Fair" and "Ae Fond Kiss,"* because they particularly suggested themselves at those points in the story, so those naturally suggest themselves as theme songs; I also remember that parts of the book were written to the tapes of rousing Scots folk and popular songs my friend B pirated for me a jillion years ago, and parts to my CD of William Byrd choral masses, and parts to my beloved Beethoven Symphony No. 7.

In a couple of weeks I'm singing at a recital, among other things, a late-eighteenth-century Gaelic song called "Fear a'Bhàta" (http://www.ambaile.org.uk/en/item/item_audio.jsp?item_id=21380) (except I'm singing it in English), and I so want to fit it into book 2 somehow ...

I have always tended to develop obsessions, and listen to the same piece (or group of pieces) over and over and over -- right now it's totally gorgeous the soundtrack to O Brother Where Art Thou?, which my colleague R lent to me -- whether or not I'm writing anything at the time; my writing music seems to follow the same general pattern.

*Yes, Robbie Burns still exists in my timeline, except he's from the area between the two Roman walls, known as "the Border country," not actually from Scotland. Let's not interrogate that assumption too vigorously, okay?

[pbray.livejournal.com]

I think it's so neat that you find time to fit singing into your busy life.

And that's a very cool song--I recognized that sound clip immediately and know I have it on CD somewhere, sung in English. Perhaps Capercaille?

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

Maybe. I don't have a recording of it, and the translation I have doesn't seem to be particularly accurate (but it's poetic, so I can live with it), but it plays in my head a lot these days :)

I tried not singing for a while, and it made me crazy. I always wanted to take singing lessons when I was younger and never had time (what with the piano lessons, the clarinet lessons, the two bands, the four choirs, etc.), so when my mom's friend J, who's a singing teacher, moved here from Calgary a few years ago, I thought, If not now, when? ;^) It's fun, but I still miss the Big Honking Choir (http://www.tmchoir.org) I used to sing in, pre-SP.

[pbray.livejournal.com]

>>If not now, when?

Words to live by. They're why I became serious about being a writer.

[vcmorris.livejournal.com]

"The Pride" certainly has a soundtrack, that being a series of Enya songs that I rearranged on a tape and retitled to fit the section or character the song corresponded to. Some of the songs matched the scenes so much that I can't listen to them to this day without having those scenes roll through my head again.

The Civil War/Erotica stuff is much more difficult to define musically.

I don't generally listen to music while I write so finding 3-6 song titles that will give the reader a taste of the tone of said novel is diffcult. I've thought of 2 but much like elizabeth_welsh commented, most people reading my blog would not have a clue what either of those two songs sound like.

I mean, that's what the meme is about, right? Not whether or not we listen to music while writing. :)

PS - Enjoying "The Sea Change" so far. Lucius has just been crowned the new Emperor.

[pbray.livejournal.com]

Cool, the lizard crown!

And true, the music we listen to while writing may not be songs that remind us of the book. For DEVLIN'S LUCK, it worked that way. For THE FIRST BETRAYAL, I wrote it while listening to CDs of Italian Renaissance music, mixed with Enya CDs on auto repeat. But songs that invoke the feeling of the story include Matchbox 20's BENT "Can you help me I'm bent/ I'm so scared that I'll never/ Get put back together" and 3 Doors Down's Kryptonite.