Tag: playlist

Soundtrack for Gaia’s Hands

Every time I write a book, I put together a playlist (or as us old-timers call it, a mixtape). I try to capture the book’s moods in a list of music that plays for between half and hour and an hour.

The style of the playlist varies by the moods and general tone of the book. Voyageurs, a time-travel mystery of sorts, goes from a late 1880’s German wind ensemble place to Indigo Girls and Hoobastank. The energy of Kat Pleskovich and Ian Akimoto’s Buddhist calm exchange importance on the mixtape.

Gaia’s Hands, on the other hand, is a mystical exploration of permaculture, love, and the greening of the earth. The soundtrack is funneled through Jeanne Beaumont’s experience of having been young in the 70’s and introduced to a wide range of music. Here’s that playlist:

Voices — Cheap Trick
Brass in Pocket — Pretenders
Big Yellow Taxi — Joni Mitchell
Doctor My Eyes — Jackson Brown
Ancient Forest — Clannad
The Host of Seraphim — Dead Can Dance
The Book I Read — Talking Heads
For What it’s Worth — Buffalo Springfield
Mother Earth (Provides for Me) — Nitty Gritty Dirt Band

I would love it if you could share playlists with me and the reason you use the playlists!

The Joys and Sorrows of a Playlist

Many of my fellow authors make playlists to inspire them to write. It makes sense — music helps people muster up feelings which can energize, soften, or entrance.

Football (by which I mean American football) and soccer (by which I mean everyone else’s football) use popular songs and team anthems to fire up the audience.

In movies, a playlist can make all the difference in the viewer’s perception of the movie. Guardians of the Galaxy‘s well-chosen vintage soundtrack may well have been some of the reason for its success. For an example of how a soundtrack manipulation can influence our perception of a movie, watch this trailer.

Back to writers — yesterday, I read a Facebook post from one of my favorite romance authors, Robin D. Owens. The discussion centered around soundtracks as motivation, and I was reminded of all the pitfalls we writers have when trying to put together playlists:

  1. Unlike James Gunn, who could afford the time and money to go through thousands of songs to complete the Guardians soundtrack, writers rely on what they have in their MP3 collection, songs they can recall, and suggestions from their friends.
  2. A song with words might have the right words but wrong musical feel, or vice versa. Here is a sad song about child abuse whose tune doesn’t fit its words:
  3. A song you thought was suitable doesn’t flow with the rest of the playlist. I wanted the playlist for Prodigy (Grace, the main character, likes that one) to incorporate a lot of classical, because that’s what she would be listening to. I, of course, wanted the pieces I picked to fit the mood of the segments of the book, which include a lot of running and a counter-attack on the protagonists’ part. I put the playlist together, and realized that one of the classical pieces sounded like the background music to a 1930’s Superman movie. 
  4. iTunes Store has little talent for this type of search. Type “eerie” and you get songs called “eerie” in their title and albums called “eerie”. Most of these will be death metal (not eerie), rap (not eerie), or Halloween music (NOT EERIE, ironically enough.) No theremin music (they can even make “Over the Rainbow” sound a little scary.)
  5. Almost nobody can make your playlist for you because they can’t get into your head, which is the only place your characters and plot live when you need a playlist. Perhaps a playlist goddess can. Or the person who listens to you prattle about your book daily — my husband has gotten pretty good at playlists.
Try a playlist — not just for writing, but for motivation. For working out, for running, for housework, for getting up in the morning. I had a partner for a presentation back in college who walked into the room where I was putting together my poster, said, “excuse me”, and dropped the needle on “Also Sprach Zarathrustra. He then breathed, “I’m prepared now.” It turned out that this was his ritual to get through public speaking, as he was an introvert. 
Just understand that it’s a work in progress. Like you are.