Does your book have a soundtrack?

ralphkern

ralphkern

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With the recent good news about Endeavour going audio, I've been reflecting that I've got a some music that I use to get me in the mood to work on my WIPs, that would probably make good sound tracks to them.

The only downside is that because I've tended to encounter this music as part of films they're probably copyrighted, but anyway, these are mine

Endeavour


This may be familiar to those who are fans of BSG. Hopeful yet epic.

Endurance (Venture)


The Oblivion's finale music. Sad yet hopeful and builds to a crescendo where I can just imagine the final scene in my head. (Very different to Oblivion's I might add!)

Does anyone else listen to any particular music to get them in the mood?
 
Anyone who's read Abendau mightn't be shocked at the cheesiness that is my soundtrack . Muse , most notably Starlight (Ealyn, anyone?) Invincible (the bromance if the mc and his brother-in-law), Soldier's Song for the grim bits and Supremacy for book is three. Happy me. I want them to do a rock opera of it.
 
I don't listen to music whilst writing, I actually find it distracting. I do sometimes listen before writing to set the mood.
 
Nope. I don't need my mood setting.

I don't write epics. I think soundtracks work best with epics.
 
Do yelling children count?

(slightly more seriously, I'll sometimes get a song stuck in my head and associated with a scene, but it doesn't happen much)
 
I don't have a soundtrack for my book. But again mine is a kind of paranormal detectivey kind of thing so I'm not even sure what would work with it...I do listen to music while I write sometimes...usually just some sort of instrumental music, whether that is jazz or classical. Depends on my mood and what Songza has for me.
 
There is a music 'soundtrack' or 'backbone' to my WiP but if I told you who it was, I'd have to kill you. They have very hi-spec drones, believe me...
 
ralphkern said:

The Oblivion's finale music. Sad yet hopeful and builds to a crescendo where I can just imagine the final scene in my head. (Very different to Oblivion's I might add!)
Click to expand...

I used that one in my last novel for the climax of the climax, where a character (one that started out as a minor in the previous book) sacrifices himself by flying an unarmed shuttle into an incoming nuke.

I made a whole playlist of music for that climax. One on that playlist is from How to Train Your Dragon 2:


The movie actually came out a month after I finished the book, but this track fits perfectly with a very similar scene I already had between my two main characters. The roles are reversed.

Earlier in the book, I have the President's Speech from Independence Day where a major character is speaking to a flight of dragons just before a major battle:


I even read the speech with this music playing. The cues line up perfectly.
 
More of an 'if my book was made into a movie' soundtrack really I guess. I would love a cover of Brothers in Arms done by JunkieXL as the end titles. Bit cliche maybe but hey.
There are a great many awesome composers out there, particularly within the gaming industry right now to choose from. Also Fever Ray do extremely atmospheric songs I often listen to.
I dont write to music though, I do my thinking and planning to it though.
 
Back in 1992 to 1994 I recorded some live musicians and narrations intended for "other media" versions of "Jorath's Quest". It started as a summary plot for a computer game. The idea was to suitably adapt content (dialogue, narration, story, artwork, photos, music etc) to make the book, graphic novel, web site, computer game and animated feature using a "play script" derived from novel to drive the game engine.
Figurines and other merchandise too.
As a suitable open source or affordable game engine wasn't available I wrote one. So what happened?
The biggest issue was artwork. The amount needed even for simple limited animation is immense.
Second was editing. The story needed a lot of editing to be a decent novel.
Third was I gave up contract work to be an employee and hadn't the time.

Animation doesn't have to be Pixar/Disney/Bluth style. Capt. Pugwash, Flintstones etc is all simple limited animation. I still believe that simple animated features with a good story and decent voice acting can succeed. Ultra realistic CGI doesn't make a feature succeed. It's the story!

I've got computer tape archives and CD archives of the recordings. though no drive for the tape. One at least of the CDs has gone bad on one track. CD is a poor archive media and DVD is far worse. But I neglected to get addresses of my musicians, so contacting them 20 years later would be hard. I'd probably record new music, simpler.

I have a big library of photos digitised on PhotoCD, (not the later rubbish jpg Picture CDs) which seem to be higher quality gold type Archival CDs and the source code of the game engine which would be quite good on iOS and Android phones/tablets. I'd have to port it from Modula-2 to Java for Android, which would certainly not be hard.
 
I write to music pretty often, just everything on shuffle. My WIP has some music mentioned: the Captain of my ship has a love for classical music and the first officer is a classically trained pianist. My engineering officer listens to a lot of a future genre of punk and the comms team have really got into alien popular music. If by some miracle of publishing, my WIP got made into a movie or TV show, and I had creative input it would be fun to play around with the idea of futuristic and alien music.
 
My listening to Sound Track for writing is R4 and some evenings R. Scotland if not replaced by Sportsound.
Sometimes my CD collection via the MP3s (60s pop or 1920s to 1950s Jazz or sometimes 70s & 80s Classic Rock/Pop), Clare FM (evening Trad) or Lyric FM.

Sometimes I listen to both kinds of music:
Country and Western.
 
I write to music pretty often, just everything on shuffle. My WIP has some music mentioned: the Captain of my ship has a love for classical music and the first officer is a classically trained pianist. My engineering officer listens to a lot of a future genre of punk and the comms team have really got into alien popular music. If by some miracle of publishing, my WIP got made into a movie or TV show, and I had creative input it would be fun to play around with the idea of futuristic and alien music.
 
Like many I often find having music on distracting, I more use it as a mood setter then crack on.

I agree the gaming industry has some excellent composers involved. The Deus Ex: Human Revolution sound track is simply amazing. I really enjoyed Mass Effect 3's and Assasins Creed Black Sails (buckles my swashes totally!).
 
I have the local radio station on quietly in the background while I write but couldn't listen to R4 because I'd find it too distracting. The pop music and pointless chatter from the DJs just washes over me.

Silence would be fine, but the dog snoring while sleeping on my feet and the purring cat - scarf make that impossible.
 
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