Playlists: Whose Head is This Anyway

Ah, the playlist question. What's next? A rummage through the Word Whore's unmentionables drawer? Trust me when I say you don't want that. Perhaps playlists are a better topic of conversation, after all.

Of course I have playlists. Because I choose to write in public places, an excellent pair of stereo ear buds are necessary to ensure focus. And an artificial sense of isolation. The sound track little matters except in that it acts as a kind of containment system for my normally disorganized, scattered thought processes. For me, music is the ritual cue that says, "Everyone out of the brain except for the following characters!"

I won't bore you with my playlists, especially since they've been addressed in posts past. We already know that I can't have other people's words competing with my words and that I favor the creepy.

No, dear bordello visitor, I have a question for YOU: If you use playlists, are they for you, the writer? Or for your characters? I'll confess. Mine are a mix of both.

A quick internet search on 'music alters mood' will provide you with study after study proving the point. Several of the studies also indicate that mood alters perception. What you perceive is influenced by how your feel. If music can manipulate your emotions, it can therefore indirectly manipulate what you perceive. Useful stuff for a writer, I think, because the music you choose can impact not just the feeling a scene as you write it - it has the potential to influence how you write what you write.

Having learned some of this, it occurred to me to wonder if I could use music to put me inside my protagonist's head by creating a playlist - not for me - but for her. The experiment is still underway, thus I solicit your results. Who are your playlists for? Do you use your music to get into your characters' heads and stories??

Reverse Playlist

I’ve often twisted a topic so I could blog about music. From my guitars or my band, to my love of rock n roll, my love of movie scores, or my complete adoration of Hans Zimmer…so of course I have playlists. I could insert a boring repeat/conglomeration of those posts. But I won’t.

Nope this is FRESH, NEW info.

Instead of reiterating my music ideas, I’m gonna tell you about the music one of my reader’s shared with me.

There’s this fella, Derek, involved with DragonCon, who read my book. Since I was coming to the convention and appearing on his track, I suppose, there was a bit of online conversation about it. He asked me if I’d ever heard of Celldweller.

“Why no. Who are they?”

He proceeded to tell me that when I talked about Johnny’s band in the books, Celldweller was the band he imagined they sounded like.
So of course I had to check ‘em out and see if I was conveying what I hoped and thought I was.

http://www.celldweller.com/2011/

Two years after, Celldweller played at DragonCon, and Derek made sure I got to see them.

They kicked ass!!!
And that’s a great little intro to…I’m off to DragonCon! I leave tomorrow, but I will be back next week with photos and my annual TOP TEN THINGS I OVERHEARD AT DRAGONCON. It’s a list of random snippets heard in in passing on the escalator, in the gerbil tubes (if you’ve been there, you know exactly what I mean by that) or among the crowds. It’s tidbits that could very likely be innocent in their meaning, but which are usually taken in the worst context by the bit I hear. Cracks me up. But then, I have been told that sometimes I have the toilet-humor-appreciating mind of a 13 year old boy.

Play Me A Tune & I'll Tell You A Story

Inner Cover of Erwin Schrott's Album "Rojotango"

I'm a big fan of using music to set the mood.  I have to feel the scene if I want it to come out right.  So, do I have playlists? Scads of them.

• Battlefield scenes? Night on Bald Mountain by Mussorgsky
• Protagonist clawing her way out of her lowest point? It's a long playlist with 3 Days Grace in heavy rotation.
• Smug Badassery? It's a Blues playlist with Joe Bonamassa leading the charge.
• A Dark Seduction? Give me Kristopher Dommin
• Building tension between could-be lovers?  It's all Hot Schrott (okay, his first name's really Erwin, but still...)
• Assassin creeping up on their prey? Not one note of music. (Wha? I can't announce their presence!)

Sure, there are days when I wake up in the thrall of the scene and no music is required. But then I have to play music to celebrate completing the scene.  Something like P!ink's "Slut Like You."

Yes, yes there are those days when the music is a distraction not an aid. It doesn't take much for me to get distracted by lyrics, so when scenes are fighting me, I go for the instrumentals. I blame our Thursday Whore, Mrs. Pang for the long playlist of everything David Garrett.

When certain scenes refuse. to. be. written. I can't let silence reign. That's when 642 ideas for different books fill my head or how awesome it would be paint a dragon crawling down my fireplace.

How about you, dear reader, do you have a song or an artist guaranteed to get you a specific mood? What mood? What artist? What song?

The Sound and the Thunder

by Allison Pang

I have over 16,000 songs on my iPod. I am a hoarder of music, constantly adding, constantly shuffling - everything from Celtic to country to Rob Zombie to Romany to classical to techno to whatever. I am the crazy cat-lady of the music,  living in my piles of half-forgotten notes and sweeping scales.

I don't build specific playlists for writing or editing. I simply put it on random and let it go. Not that each piece of writing doesn't have its own soundtrack per se, but it's not one I consciously build up. (And not that I don't write music *into* the stories - in the case of the Abby books, I refer to various songs quite a bit - often the songs that I'm listening to at the moment. The fact that Abby owns an enchanted iPod? Yeah. that's all me.)

But in either case, music is my one true solace throughout the day. A standard rush hour can take me well over an hour to go 12 miles. I work in a cube made of glass that is maybe chest high. I literally start to twitch if I don't have my headphones on for most of the day since it's my only way to escape the fact that I live in a fishbowl. (I take the music seriously. I just bought a new car and hated the stereo so much I replaced all the speakers, installed an amp and a subwoofer for way more money than I should have. But...it makes me happy. I brainstorm in the car a lot - might as well have some thumping bass to go with it, eh?)

When it comes to writing, I'm much the same way. I require the music to shut out the rest of the world. (There are limits, of course - if I'm home alone with the kids, I don't use headphones for obvious reasons, though I tend to write better with them than without. Something about drowning out the rest of the distractions leads to a more productive session more often than not.

On current heavy rotation is Orchard of Mines by Globus (they rework trailer music by Immediate Music). The video below is actually one I found that tells a bit of the story from the Dragon Age/Dragon Age 2 games - so if you're interested in playing them you might not want to watch - lots of spoilers)

Indulgences

Ah…indulgences. Catering to mood or whim.

Give me chocolate. Give me rock-n-roll. Give me a decadently dark and bordering-on-Gothic environment of gargoyles and dragons and Pre-Raphelite paintings in which to enjoy them simultaneously.

That would be a kick-ass weekend,

Anyone know where I can get that? Is there a goth/rock cruise ship? A castle B&B with both luscious chocolate and metal heads?

Speaking of weekends, I interrupt the post for this timely announcement: **This weekend, March 5, I will be signing books at the Barnes & Noble in Crocker Park (198 Crocker Park Boulevard Westlake, OH 44145) S.A. Swann, Cinda Williams Chima, and Mary Ellis will be joining me. At 1pm we're going to each give a short presentation on some aspect of writing. If you're in the area, come check it out!** And now back to my regularly scheduled post:

Not to diss the yumminess of the sugared up cocoa bean, but in case you haven’t guessed, I indulge in music daily. It plays as I write, as I cook, clean, etc. I’m happier when music is playing, and more inspired. And not just 80s big-hair rock-n-roll.

*fangirl moment alert* I LOVE HANS ZIMMER, my favorite composer ever. Unlike the atmosphere of a rock concert, I don’t think it’s ever appropriate to fling your sexy underwear at a conductor/composer during a symphony performance, but smack me starry-eyed and call me a groupie. That man’s music is hands down the most fabulously arranged, most brilliantly orchestrated themes ever. EVER.

We’ll get back to Hans in a moment. First, here is an indulgent video for an indulgent techno band which isn’t available for embedding. It’s cool music, great clips pieced together to accentuate the music, and well, seriously, the clips are from the movie 300 –one of the most indulgently costumed, set, portrayed, filmed, and acted films I’ve ever seen.

Now, back to Hans.

I beg you to indulge me, your Hump Day Word Whore, for a moment.

Think of a character you love.

You can choose someone you’ve written, someone you’ve read about

or seen on tv or in a theater or a historical figure you adore.

This video below has no moving images. Hit it to play, close your eyes and just listen.*

(*better with headphones)

How can you not build a story out of the places your imaginings take you?

Tell me if the the ebb and flow of this melody inspired you in the comments.

Enjoy! --Linda