A "Novel" musical Challenge

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A "Novel" musical Challenge

1gilroy
Apr 12, 2019, 5:13 am

Someone got me thinking yesterday and this challenge has me wanting to share. It's not as easy as it sounds.

The challenge is this: One of your works is being given a mini soundtrack of up to 5 songs. What would those be?
Rules:
1) It can not be more than 5 songs. It can be less than five songs.
2) No spoken word or comedy sketches. The selected items MUST be musical compositions. So Beethoven's 5th symphony or the Greatful Dead are fair game. Robin Williams or George Carlin, not so much.

I'm still trying to answer this for one of my pieces, but figured it'd be fun to see what others come up with.

2LShelby
Modificato: Mar 30, 2020, 11:11 pm

This sounds fun.

Serendipity's Tide starts out with my heroine rescuing a shipwrecked foreigner. But as the fog rolls in, the people who sunk his ship arrive...

Curse of the Black Pearl OST: Fog Bound
https://youtu.be/yDpMH99Y8cE

Later our heroes are rescued by an ocean liner upon which they briefly make the acquaintance of High Society.

The Merry Widow Waltz
https://youtu.be/A-QnlP7Xw50

But the assassins are still lurking and soon we embark on a series of fights, chases, and near escapes.

When It's at Night OST: Love Adventure
https://youtu.be/L3VKHu1aYp8

But eventually they end up at my heroine's home and her brothers call up the neighborhood boys to help out with a bit of knuckle-dusting and head cracking.

(I have no idea what they're saying, but the sound is about right.)
Sama
https://youtu.be/7Q33Eh_mvfU

And finally a love song that might be epic enough to suit my hero...

999 Roses
https://youtu.be/zSyvDWyx9zc

...Five very different pieces. :)

3jeffschanz
Apr 4, 2020, 11:15 am

I have a soundtrack in my head very clearly.

There are plenty of incidental songs: MJ's "Billie Jean," Journey's Don't Stop Believin'," Cheap Trick's "I Want you to Want Me," Beach Boys "Sloop John B."

But songs that get featured?

For a love scene, Kenny Wayne Shepherd's "While We Cry." Someone once described it as sex on a guitar.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vATTSpDZIM

For a nighttime epic battle scene where the characters are trapped and fighting back with terrifying guerilla means.
Gary Numan's "I Am Dust"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMAz9jofm_4

For another fight scene with grim outcome:
Marilyn Manson's, "Deep Six"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5LZ8YErl2M

Climax/Boss fight near the end:
Gary Numan's "Everything Comes Down to This"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UA1XlmvQkiI

Very end, romantic meeting of the two MCs, this song playing in the background (she buys the vinyl record to play)
BB King & Van Morrison, "If You Love Me."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3ztZiIFJ40

4LShelby
Mar 17, 2021, 11:02 am

I wonder if there is a authorial difference over picking book "soundtracks" that are more instrumental or specific vocal songs. Or maybe it would turn out to be a book by book thing?

5MythButton
Feb 15, 2023, 2:53 pm

For my only novel, Wings of Nialoca

Opener: My Dying Bride - Black Heart Romance
2. Gloryhammer - Angus McFife
3. Metallica - For Whom the Bell Tolls
4. Megadeth - Holy Wars
Closer: Blind Guardian - Imaginations from the Other Side

6LShelby
Feb 19, 2023, 12:57 pm

>5 MythButton:
I can't say that these are my genre, but then I don't have a genre. :)
Anyway, I had to go look them all up. My favorite was Gloryhammer.

The thing that kind of got me though, was that they were so clearly all the same genre. I'm trying to imagine myself managing to stick to one genre for the soundtrack to an entire book and I'm having troubles with the idea.

But it actually makes sense for there to be a consistent style, doesn't it? Maybe I'm the weird one.

7MythButton
Modificato: Feb 19, 2023, 2:23 pm

>6 LShelby: They are and they aren't. Wings of Nialoca was developed with the help of constantly listening to metal to help perfect the vibe. But metal is extremely diversified.It can be fast, slow, menacing, triumphant, introspective and hyperactive.

My Dying Bride - Black Heart Romance - Gothic and doom metal, one focusing on the Gothic atmosphere and another focusing on slow vibes, while incorporating doom metal influence.
Gloryhammer - Angus McFife - Symphonic power metal, generic but still good.
Metallica - For Whom the Bell Tolls - Cross between thrash metal and heavy metal with a noticeable Gothic touch.
Megadeth - Holy Wars - Pure tech-thrash.
Blind Guardian - Imaginations from the Other Side - Sort of pre-Rhapsody power metal before the symphonic edge took a hold.

Other songs that helped are:

Death - Symbolic (Tech Death Metal)
Skyliner - Symphony in Black (Progressive Power Metal)
Birthday Massacre - Over (Industrial Darkwave)
Nine Inch Nails - Closer, Mr. Self Destruct and Heresy (Industrial Rock and Metal)
Immortal - Withstand the Fall of Time (Traditional Black Metal)
Symphony X - the albums V, Twilight in Olympus, Paradise Lost and Divine Wings of Tragedy.

And I typed all this while listening to an album by Cher. :P

8LShelby
Feb 20, 2023, 8:22 pm

>7 MythButton: Metal may be extremely diversified for a single musical genre (although I wouldn't say so myself, the sub-genre "Disney Songs" also includes songs that are fast, slow, menacing, triumphant, introspective and hyperactive, and I think the range of sounds might be greater).

But your whole vibe thingy...
I don't think I've ever identified a story as having a musical genre "vibe".

I can sort of grasp it happening to someone else: writing a story with a blues vibe or a western vibe or whatever, and then when I read the story I might be able to say, "Yes I guess I can see where you are coming from." (But probably only if you told me that's what you'd done.)

But I'm very sure my brain doesn't work that way.

I do often have something in mind when I start writing that could possibly be called a "vibe", though, it just doesn't make me think of any particular kind of music. More... a way of moving?

Anyway Cantata's vibe is clearly different from the upcoming Ice Wolf Investigations vibe...

This game might be funner if we did more than one book each, and then looked at the differences. :)

You have a Metal story, do you also have a Pop story?
(Scalzi claimed that The Kaiju Preservation Society was a Pop song book.)

9MythButton
Feb 21, 2023, 7:53 am

>8 LShelby: Metal is actually one of the most expanded-upon genres in the world. But applying it to writing really just stems from having appaylist for helping to create the mood. The characters and worlds themselves are not really "based" on any scenes, songs or bands except MAYBE fantasy power metal, as Imaginations from the Other Side is a song about the fascination of written fiction. Hell, they just released songs about American Gods and The Witcher.

As for blues, you kinda just described Cowboy Bebop. Very chill and bluesy mood (the original, not the reboot).

Unfortunately, no, I don't really have any "pop" stories. I don't talk about stories I haven't published, but I can safely say that I don't really have a story dedicated to pop. Although I admit I'm thinking about a story where the main cast is based on different EDM genres, and a kids book I'm working on has a playlist dedicated to folk, country and a little bit of Grease.

This all makes me wonder how much Gerard Way's band played into his own comic.

10Cecrow
Modificato: Feb 21, 2023, 8:04 am

Might be maddening to discover what music your readers would choose to set to it instead, lol. Or (to be even more fanciful) a Hollywood studio. "So glad they made a movie of my book but oh, gawd, the soundtrack!!"

I find tracks by Enigma inspiring, like "Out from the Deep", "Push the Limits", etc. Sometimes has prompted me, but I don't think in terms of them playing during the scenes. I'd prefer my fantasy worlds have music that is uniquely theirs. I guess I've been too cliche in that department, always assumed there would be mandolins involved, maybe like Milla Jovovich's Divine Comedy album, lol.

11LShelby
Feb 24, 2023, 2:22 pm

>9 MythButton:
I used to hang out in a music community where all the songs we sang/wrote/played were based on Science Fiction, Fantasy and other compatible subjects, like History, Dinosaurs and Food. (Food is pretty much compatible with anything?)

We didn't care much about musical genre, except that we mostly used acoustic instruments for easy of transportation and lack of complaint from neighbors, and lyrics were considered very important, so if people couldn't make out the words you were singing they complained.

12LShelby
Feb 24, 2023, 2:32 pm

>10 Cecrow: "I'd prefer my fantasy worlds have music that is uniquely theirs."

I did my best to create a musical piece that was unique to one of my cultures using a musical composition program and "ethnic" instrument voices.

But when I try to share music I create this way, the feedback I get back is mostly complaints about the mechanical nature of it. I'm not a keyboardist, I make the music by placing the notes on the staff. It's just a score, not a performance.

Anyway, I did it in 7/8 and with an a-standard scale. I was thinking that complex rhythms would be very suitable for that culture, and of course a lot of ethnic music uses different scales than major and minor. I also used a lot of drums, 'human' voices, some horns and so forth, and bagpipes.

Cantata has got quite a lot of musical content in it. But in the book you mostly get the lyrics of songs, depicting music is harder. I do describe an instrument that is inspired by a musical saw. :) I'd like to compose music for that culture, but I haven't seen a musical saw voice compatible with my software. ::rueful::

...
I imagine MythButton would find it very disconcerting if someone took his Metal Vibe story and for the movie version composed a soundtrack lie the ones I'm used to listening to. :)

(But there's quite a lot of variety in Asian TV soundtracks, too. In a recent show I watched one of the main musical themes had both electric guitars and ancient chinese opera style singing.)

13MythButton
Feb 24, 2023, 3:02 pm

>12 LShelby: Listen to some world prog for two months and call me in the morning.

14gilroy
Feb 24, 2023, 3:06 pm

>10 Cecrow: Oh Enigma is inspiring for me too. Especially like the whole Voyageur album when writing.
Then again, I powered through the end of a story listening to late 80s and early 90s rap the other day too.
And I have everything from Nightwish, Metallica, and Evanescence to Britney Spears and Michael Buble playing when I write. As well as movie scores and Broadway soundtracks. (Though admittedly, the Hamilton soundtrack discouraged me more than helped...)

15MythButton
Feb 24, 2023, 6:28 pm

>14 gilroy: Add some Kendrick Lamar and Herbert Von Karajan and you got a real party.

16gilroy
Feb 24, 2023, 7:55 pm

>15 MythButton: I might look into Von Karahan but nothign that Lamar has ever put out has appealed to me.

17MythButton
Feb 24, 2023, 8:10 pm

>16 gilroy: No prob, just adding onto the diversity.

I gotta admit, though, while I'm familiar with some new age, I haven't heard Enigma yet. And since I've got a lot of new albums by big name artists to listen to this year, all the way from Pink to GBV to Godsmack to Code Orange to Skrillex, it's gonna be some time before I can get around to checking them out.