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Scifi and Fantasy Forum: Writer's Discussion: Questions :
Musical Inspiration?
Musical Inspiration?
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Posted By:  Magus Oct 15, 2004 - 08:11 pm |       | Oh, yes. I forgot about the song Vesuveous. It is an AWSOME piece that our school obsesses over. It is based on the volcano and is pretty awsome.
Soundtracks that are awsome include:
The Lord of the Rings
Jurassic Park
Unbreakable
Harry Potter
Stargate
Pirates of the Caribean
E.T.
Last Samurai, The Soundtrack
Star Wars
October Sky
Minority Report
Princess Mononoke
Schindler's List
Troy
Seabiscuit
... Basically all John Williams music, on second thought, is worth listenening to.
| Posted By: woody000 Dec 26, 2004 - 01:51 pm | | Sorry for bumping a fairly old thread, but I particularly identify with this subject.
Musical inspiration I think sometimes you have to be careful with. For instance, songs can inspire you to write something based on it, but then if you get sick of a song in the middle of a novel and you lose the inspiration... well... oh dear.
The length of the writing has to relate to how much you are inspired by the music, or how long you are likely to be interested by the subject.
Maybe I'm different to most in this way, but when I hear a song which inspires me, it gives me goosebumps, but if I listen to it over and over again, they eventually go away.
I personally am very inspired by music, but on a different level. I rarely find a peice of music and write something based on the music. However, when I listen to truely great music, I feel inspired to be creative, to write some music myself or to write fiction. So, if I ever need a muse, if I ever want to write more of my novel, but I dont feel inspired at that moment in time. I always go straight to music, and I soon am.
| Posted By: Magus Dec 26, 2004 - 07:28 pm | | No need to apologize, woody000. I bump old threads all the time. No harm in it.
I actually got bored one day at school, in seventh hour Algebra II. SO I started writing a little something. It was really nothing more then a setting, a bar. I thought it was pretty cool. The I realized that, under my breath, I was singing Billy Joel's "Piano Man". I got an idea for a novella that was pretty cool, and pretty creepy, that was completely different from the song. You'd never see anything in common between the two, save that they are both set in a bar and all the patrons have some weird obsession, like myself and most of my friends, with the song.
After that period I went outside and waited for my friends by a tree, which is, in turn, us waiting for the busses to come. I found that a friend of mine at the same exact time as I did had the same song stuck in his head that he was singing.
But, then again, all of my friends and family are obsessed with Billy Joel. So odds were pretty good to begin with that he'd be singing one of his songs, especially Piano Man.
End week and a half old story.
| Posted By: Berry Dec 28, 2004 - 10:48 am | | Quentin tantrantino syas he starts writing his films after getting out his record collecton and creating scenes that are imspired by the music. I did try this once as I was particulary moved by a Bob Dylan song called Simple twist of fate. I had totally forgotten about doing it, thanks you have re-inspired me.
I'm not exactly inspired by music in the way some of you are...My book isn't based around a song  . But listenting to music does help creativity for me...I've put together a whole list of moody songs (I call it my angst playlist) that I play when I need to let the ideas flow (usually ending with something either realy creepy or really angry). Some Beatles, The Police, Hotel California, Mussorgsky, Bohemian Rhapsody, Pink Floyd, Holst, Ike Quebec, Zeppelin...it's a mix, but it does the trick for me. Anyone else do something like that?
anything Celtic.
"songs can inspire you to write something based on it, but then if you get sick of a song in the middle of a novel and you lose the inspiration... well... oh dear."
Haha... I don't think so. Who would write an entire novel revolving around a song? You may have gotten the idea from the song, but it's not like getting sick of a song is getting sick of a story.
Maybe I ought to write some music for my novel, so I can have it playing it my head... The culture in my novel involves a lot of music and dance.
| Posted By: woody000 Jan 02, 2005 - 03:28 am | | Well some songs might merit it, and if your inspiration was tightly bound to the song, its quite possible you could get bored. Maybe its just me though, when I was younger I very often got bored with things, so my ideas have to be really tight, and any inspiration for them solid enough to carry me all the way. For my current one for instance, if I read Tolkien, watch the films, or even the documentaries for the films, I know I can be inspired to write it. Dont think thatll ever change, so its a solid idea for me.
Writing music is cool, ive tried to do a lot of background for my novel. I was planning on writing some music for it, but it takes a lot of time. So far its mostly poetry, fables and such ive written.
| Posted By: BenJaru Jan 02, 2005 - 03:43 am | | I agree with Neurolanis, anything Celtic will do the trick. I have quite a few Celtic music cds
Some of my favorite music is:
The soundtrack for Sneakers
Lord of the Ring music
a cd called Braveheart, not based on the movie
Harry Potter soundtrack
and about 4+ hours of ripped game music!
Fairion
Woody000 - Okay, well, I am never inspired directly by music... or at least haven't been yet. It's just the mood the music sets or magnifies that makes it easier for me to write.
Writing music is hard! I don't know how much I can do since one of the instruments is made up, and I don't read, much less write, percussion music. I might also write some music for my alien race because sound is their primary sense.
I can't really write "fables" within my novel unless they're really meaningful and necessary. It just feels a little too unreal to me... It's like even if I can imagine how Beowulf's author thought and acted, I could never tell a story like he could.
| Posted By: Magus Jan 02, 2005 - 10:24 am | | I worte a little song for the piano, I've been tinkering with it ever sionce I got it. It's a slow and rather sad song, that's a litle reetative but still fits. Only recently have I been adding in Bass Clef chords.
My brother write a lot of music though. He write for Sax and also for guitar and drums, typically the dijambe. He's even making a Saxophone trio arrangement for that one Strong Bad techno song. Do you know the one?
Well the barry sax would come in on the bass part. The the tenor would come in onf the second part and the alto would pay the siren part.
Haha, sounds good! I'm a sax player myself (tenor) but my writing efforts have been pretty bad. Awfully bland I guess.
| Posted By: Magus Jan 02, 2005 - 10:47 am | | I play Tenor too!!!
AWESOME!
| Posted By: woody000 Jan 02, 2005 - 12:35 pm | | Queen Ehlana ""I can't really write "fables" within my novel unless they're really meaningful and necessary. It just feels a little too unreal to me... It's like even if I can imagine how Beowulf's author thought and acted, I could never tell a story like he could. ""
Well a lot of the stuff I've written wont even end up in the book/s, but I feel that the more background I write, the more real the settings seem for me, and the less careful I have to be when I write. Thanks to my good knowledge of the "world" (universe =P) I've created, the writing just flows without too much risk of contradiction or confusion. I can also put little hints in there which give clues to things which happened well in the past, and expand on those things later.
I mostly write piano music, because it's my main instrument. I'm taking my grade 8, which I suppose doesn't mean much to you americans... erm... well, the third movement of moonlight sonata is slightly harder than the level I'm at. (Not to be confused with the first two movements which are much easier.) I also play the drums and years ago I played the violin for a spell, though I never practised that. (Really I only played it cause I loved being in an orchestra, playing solo I hated =P)
Magus, you sounded drunk in that post - "barry" sax, "litle reetative," etc. 
woody000 - Yeah, I was planning to have a really elaborate background, but I ran out of time, so I just started writing, even though my outline isn't really finished.
| Posted By: Magus Jan 02, 2005 - 05:49 pm | | I was unsure if it would be abbreviated "berry" or "barry". I chose one and stuck with it. That and I kicked back a few a day or two late to ring in the new year.
I used to be considering taking a creative writing course at my school my senior year. But I've decided against it when I discovered that my current English teacher teaches it. And I'm not spending any more time with her then I have too.
Maybe I'll look into the piano lab my school offers. Mr. Covey, the main band director at the school, just not the director of my band, teaches it. It's a semester course that can be followed by Piano Lab II, a second semester. If it works out then I may take it. If not... then I may have other options.
Dat's bari, bari good, Magus.
You have too many options. We don't have a Creative Writing class here, fortunately. If we did, there'd just be idiots in there and probably not a good teacher. That's what happened when they added a Journalism class last year. I worked for the bloody school paper until they started up a class for it that I couldn't be in. My stupid English I teacher is stealing all the good classes from the good teachers because she is supposedly more qualified than them. What a load of crap.
Oops, I'm getting way off subject here... 
Ever wondered what alien music would sound like? Not like on the Simpsons! I'm thinking it should be really fast, but low-pitched.
| Posted By: Aldan Jan 02, 2005 - 09:43 pm | | I'd say it totally depends on the race and culture of that race, on how that race developed (for example: Drums were very important in Africa as a method of long-distance communication and skins were readily available there for making drums. Drums weren't as important in Europe, though, since they got into agriculture much earlier and were a bit more civilized than most non-North-African cultures there...
If an alien race communicates with sound, then if I understand what you MEAN by that, you mean that they do so with sounds that we humans wouldn't recognize as speech. Therefore, sound would have to be VERY different to distinguish it from their normal "speaking" method, and the instruments, similar to ours, wouldn't sound like their vocal tones, but would either be on another tonal level and running in a minor key to it, or would be more like the way our hard rock or punk music can be - really harsh and discordant, thus really emphasizing the tune and tone of the vocal singing. I don't know if any of you have heard any fine singers on a punk or metal band, but their voices can REALLY stand out.
| Posted By: Magus Jan 03, 2005 - 02:57 pm | | Thanks, Queen Ehlana. We have lots of choices at our school. But, then again, with two campuses and an average of 1000 students per graduating class they ought to have a lot of options.
And, yeah, it would really depend on the race and culture.
hahah...yesss Ehlana. I was wondering whether I should point that out as part of my daily spelling lessons...BARI sax. Stands for BARItone.
About Alien music, it would definetely have to do a lot with the instruments. Almost the entire modern orchestra(other than the strings ) was invented by Adolph Sax...WHo knows what more instruments there are just waiting to be invented by some race or another?? It would be cool if, as we humans have mouths to blow on wind instruments and good coordination to play the strings, the Aliens have something different...say many many spikes on their body which they can control the movement of vary well, to effectively play huge, complicated harps.
"harsh and discordant, thus really emphasizing the tune and tone of the vocal singing"
Interesting... I hadn't thought about that.
I figured a bit out: Some of the instruments of my aliens will be for marine use only... And also they will be able to use technology to altar the timbre of their voices - but a little more complicated than Cher.
However, I'm not thinking so much about instruments. Most of the music will be their everyday speech.
I like writing to New Age and Eygptian style music as there aren't any words to get into your mind and boggle it while you're writing but I listen to alot of it anyway especially as I like the soft sounds, followed by a crescendo, and then the lull of the lyre. 
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