soundtracking Archives

Posts Tagged ‘soundtracking’

leverage the tricks you have

I’ve spent the past several days (and have several more to come) gear-shifting between three radically different writing projects. On the one hand, I’m taking this approach because I know my brain can’t just buckle down and slam all the way through one of them in a concentrated go; eventually it starts emitting steam and high-pitched whistles, and then I have to stop or switch to something else. On the other hand, that means I’m putting a different sort of strain on it, by asking it to get into a totally different mode on very short notice.

Thank god for the tactics I developed years ago.

It started out as a way to get myself into the headspace of a novel on days when I didn’t want to write. Well, no, that’s a lie; it started out as an accident: me being obsessed with a ten-minute trance remix of a particular song and listening to it on loop while I happened to be writing what eventually turned into Lies and Prophecy. But it became that thing I just said, and so I got in the habit of associating particular music with particular books. These days it’s more often whole playlists rather than single songs; the former is slightly less insanity-inducing than the latter, but also (if we’re being honest) a bit less effective.

This helps SO MUCH when I have to do this kind of gear-shifting. Even though two of the projects are new enough and small enough that they don’t actually have associated music, I picked out an album in one case, a genre playlist in the other, and when I’m done with A and it’s time for B, I change the music. And it helps. My brain goes, “Oh, techno? I absolutely cannot think about Previous Project with that going on. What else is on offer?” And then I open up the file for Next Project and we’re off.

I’m not claiming it’s foolproof. Also, not everyone can write to music (it’s worth noting that the vast majority of what I listen to is either instrumental or in languages I don’t speak well enough to be distracted by), so it’s not a tactic that can work for everybody. Possibly you could sub in things other than music, like beverages or sitting in different parts of the house, though I think those would be weaker insofar as they’re less likely to evoke particular genres, settings, and moods. But if you can do this: hoo boy does it help.

Songs in 5?

I need recs for INSTRUMENTAL music (no lyrics, or at least not in English) written in some form of quintuple meter: 5/4, 5/8, something more arcane, whatever. Songs which are only partially in such a meter are acceptable, though, y’know, not some complicated jazzy thing where it’s like a measure here and three measures there and so forth; I’d like it to be recognizably quintuple without following along on the score to see where it changes.

Soundtracks on Spotify!

Last weekend @hannah_scarbs asked on Twitter whether I had the soundtracks to my novels on Spotify. To which the answer was no — but now it’s yes, because that made me realize that putting them up there is an eminently sensible idea. Of course not everything is available on that service (in particular, all of the Battlestar Galactica scores are absent, and I’ve drawn heavily on those over the years), but the vast majority were there! So if you want to know what my soundtracks sound like, now you can give ’em a listen. And if you want to know what each track maps to, I’ve also linked to that information for each book.

Help me find a song?

I’m trying to pick a song to serve as the “soundtrack” to a certain aspect of one of the games I’m in, and I’m coming up empty. So I turn to you, o internets, for recommendations!

The thing I’m trying to set to music is a situation where two character who both have a crap-ton of secrets (including false identities) are going through kind of a fencing match/cat-and-mouse game of figuring each other out and maybe developing something resembling trust. In a perfect world, the song for this would be a male/female duet, but that’s icing on the cake if I can get it; mostly I just need a song that fits the concept. Or, if I can’t get suitable lyrics, something instrumental that is both lush and a little playful. (With a library of over 17000 songs, you’d think I would be able to find something that fits. But nothing has clicked: the closest I’ve come is “Qué Viyéra,” which still isn’t quite right.)

Any suggestions?

The Story Revealed

Final guesses on the novella I finished last week included “Haitian loa” and “kitsune” — both incorrect. But then two people guessed correctly! So when I get home, tooth_and_claw and sarcastibich, I’ll send you a list of what books I have on hand, and you can tell me which ones you want signed and mailed to you.

This was actually even harder of a question than I thought, because it turns out that one of the giveaway details has never been mentioned on this incarnation of my LJ. If you conducted a search (which wshaffer almost did), you would have had to do so on my old blog, the one I was using up until 2006. The number of people who have been following me since all the way back then is quite small . . . hence admitting this was a difficult challenge, one I didn’t necessarily expect anybody to get. The best chance for the rest of you was to have a good enough memory to remember that I linked to one of those songs last year — in fact, precisely one year to the day before I posted it again as part of this series. That, I believe, was the last time I said anything on here about Ree Varekai.

I mentioned her before and during my tour last year, because music had put her back into my head, and I found that the core of the concept still held a lot of power for me. Enough power that I started poking at it . . . and coming up with a cosmology where she could exist without copy-pasting the game world she came from . . . and then working out a plot for a novella that I really need a title for, so I can stop thinking of it as the “proof of concept” story where I’m test-driving my idea to see if it works. And then during this tour I decided to buckle down and try, and now I have a draft of the novella and this is a thing that might actually happen.

So what were the clues? Well, that fourth song was from the Cirque du Soleil show Varekai — that’s why it wound up on Ree’s game soundtrack, because of her name. (I didn’t realize I hadn’t posted her full name since the old journal. Mea culpa.) The third one, as I said, I linked to precisely one year previously; it’s also from her soundtrack, and stood for the moment when she hit utter rock bottom, just before the transformation that made her whole once more. The other two are recent additions to her score: “Bad Moon Rising” for the way her fatalist aspect is linked to the lunar cycle, and “I Will Not Bow” just because it fits. That’s what she sounds like when her fatalist aspect is dominant over her survivor aspect, when a pragmatic understanding of the obstacles has become “fuck everything; I’ll just take you all down with me.”

If you didn’t guess, don’t feel bad — you basically have to know Ree to guess most of those songs are pointing at her. (Both of the people who did guess were players in that game.) But hey: the bright side is, now I have all kinds of other things that apparently you all think I should write about! 🙂

As for the novella, I don’t know what will happen with it. I need to revise it, and then see about trying to sell it somewhere. News on that when I have any to share.

Guess That Story, Part 4

I’ve had two more guesses, one non-serious (but it made me think I should write a Medusa story someday); the other was “werewolves” — which is amply suggested by “Bad Moon Rising,” but alas, is not correct.

So: last shot! This is about as obvious as it’s possible for me to get — which means still not that obvious, but enough that there’s a fighting chance:

A change of pace from the three depressing songs I posted before. 🙂 It isn’t all grimdark over here at Swan Tower . . . .

Any takers? There’s a signed book in it for you, if you guess right . . . .

Guess That Story, Part 3

I’ve had two more people take a stab at guessing, but no successes. One was in email, and wasn’t so much a guess as “I feel like I should know the answer based on X context” — which was, sadly, off-target — and the other was a tongue-in-cheek guess of “Lune,” made by someone who knows exactly what I’m writing about. 😛 A third person said the songs would be appropriate to Supernatural, but they don’t think I’m writing fanfic; indeed I am not. This is a piece of original fiction, written in the hope of selling it, and not for an official tie-in anthology or anything like that.

Since nobody has nailed it yet, it’s time for a third hint! If you missed the first two, they are here and here.

Getting less subtle as we go along; if this doesn’t do it, I have one more I’ll post on Monday, that’s about as blatant as I can get (at least as far as musically-based hints go). Which still isn’t that blatant: you need a pretty good memory to recall the pertinent details and think “oh, so that’s what she’s writing.” But there are people reading this blog who might be able to pull it off — and besides, I’m entertaining myself posting these songs. And isn’t that what really matters? ^_^

Remember that I’ll give a signed book away to the first person (if any) who correctly guesses what I’m working on. You don’t need to guess the exact plot, just a general description of who or what I’m writing about.

Guess That Story, Part 2

I finished a draft of the story in question last night. It’s officially a novella: 18,100 words. I need to add in a few bits, but I also need to tighten up other bits, so I expect the word count will stay in that general ballpark.

Someone on the previous post said that “I Will Not Bow” made them think of Julian, which was eye-opening for me: I firmly associate that song with a different character, but upon listening to it in that frame of mind, I can see where there’s a resemblance. But no, the story in question is not about Julian, which means you get a second musical hint!

This is less subtle than the first one, though still obscure enough that the list of people who could spot the connection is pretty short. (And several of the people on that list are disqualified on the grounds of too much insider knowledge.) I will say, though, that if anybody manages to guess what I’m working on before I run out of hints, I will send that person an autographed book of their choice out of my pile of author copies — subject to availability, of course.

If you still can’t guess, never fear — there are more hints to come . . . .

Let’s play “guess that story!”

While I’m on tour, I’m taking a crack at drafting something new. I’m pretty sure it’ll be either a novelette or a novella, but if this piece works, it might also be a launching-point for something bigger. And I figure, to keep you all entertained while I bounce from city to city, I’ll give you a chance to guess at what it is!

Here’s your first hint:

Ignore the visuals; it’s the song itself that’s the clue. It rather perfectly encapsulates the character this story is about. Mind you, it’s a bit of a long shot that anybody might guess this one; you kind of need insider knowledge to put it together with things I’ve said before and realize there’s a connection. But don’t worry; if nobody guesses it from this, I’ll provide another hint to make it easier.

(If you’re one of the people I’ve talked to in person about wanting to do this story, then you are disqualified from guessing, for obvious reasons.)

I haven’t done a meme in a while

You can tell a lot about a person from their music. Hit shuffle on your iPod, MP3 Player, etc. and put the first 10 songs! One rule, no skipping!

(I’m leaving out the part where I’m supposed to tag ten more people to do this.)

I guess I’ll go with the playlist I’ve been slowly assembling for Chains and Memory. This isn’t the soundtrack; it’s just the music I’ll be going through when I pick stuff for the soundtrack. As such, it skews toward techno, rock, and more modern-sounding scores (whereas the playlists for the Memoirs, to choose a contrasting example, avoid those exact things).

1. “The Magic Wedding,” Cirque du Soleil, CRISS ANGEL Believe
2. “The X-Jet,” Michael Kamen, X-Men
3. “Mater Gloria,” Lesiem, Mystic Spirit Voices
4. “. . . He’s been arrested for espionage,” Harry Gregson-Williams, Spy Game
5. “Written in the Stars,” Ramin Djawadi, Clash of the Titans
6. “CWN Annwn,” Glenn Danzig, Black Aria
7. “Amnesia,” Dead Can Dance, Anastasis
8. “No More Sorrow,” Linkin Park, Minutes to Midnight
9. “Creeping Death,” Apocalyptica, Plays Metallica by Four Cellos
10. “There’s Only Me (Instrumental)”, Rob Dougan, Furious Angels

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