Wednesday, September 13, 2017

Alfâm Kuduszodikh - A Study on Music Playlists



*alfâm kuduszodikh – "music list" (ahl-faam kuh-duhs-zaw-dike – approximate pronunciation)

~~~

As promised, I bring you a post on music playlists. I would have written "music playlists" or "lists of music" in dwarvish (Khuzdul), but my source (Dwarrow Scholar) didn't have the words for those translations, lol.

Playlists are an easy way to keep track of songs that you like. You can pile all your favourite songs from one genre, or list all the songs that inspire you in your writing (or drawing, or working out, or doing paperwork or house cleaning or –).

You can build playlists almost anywhere – on iTunes, Spotify, Youtube, etc!

For example, here's a playlist from my Spotify (which I just built :P)

{ Fantasy Inspirational }
https://open.spotify.com/user/mikaelaingram/playlist/2q0A3v5f7MdOsKRq175389

The list contains these songs:

Lúthien's Lament by Eurielle
Lost Girls by Lindsey Stirling
Misty Mountains by Peter Hollens
My Dear Frodo by Howard Shore
Viverti by Mattia Cupelli
Victory by Two Steps from Hell/Thomas Bergersen
Forbidden by Eurielle

Creating playlists might just turn out to be extremely addictive.

Here's another playlist:

{ Steampunk Inspirational – incomplete }
Filled With
Euphoria (album) by Revolt Production Music
Cosmos
Breaking Away
Darkness Falls
Contageous
Euphoria
Embrace
Drive
Persecution
Nightmare
Killshot
Beyond the Wall
and
Palladio by Karl Jenkins
The Submarine by James Newton Howard
Starfall by Driftmoon
Die Walkure, Act III: Ride of the Valkyries by Richard Wagner
Schubert: Symphony No. 8 in B Minor, D. 759, 'Unfinished': I. Allegro moderato by Franz Schubert
Time by Hans Zimmerman

Music is a fun platform to mess with. These two playlists are just examples of what I might end up building on Spotify. I encourage you to build your own if you want to - you can get a free account on Spotify, though you'll have to contend with the occasional ad.

iTunes would be the only platform out there, other than Windows Media Player, that wouldn't force you to listen to adds between ever three or four songs, but you'd have to pay for the music before you can put them into playlists.

Spotify is rather easy to manipulate, though, and forces less adds on you than Youtube, which makes you have to sit through an add at the beginning of every video, with most saying your "video will play after add".

All you have to do on Spotify is find your song and click the three dots to the right of it. There, you click "add to playlist", and it will give you the option to choose which playlist. You just need to create the playlists before you go hunting so that it shows up.

Before I end this, though, I would like to give you a word of caution. Spotify doesn't support the artists who make the songs you listen to on it as much as you'd support the artists if you bought their songs on iTunes or on a CD.

I know this might not be such a big deal for artists who are extremely popular and have money rushing in because, no matter what, their fans will buy their stuff and pay to see them live. But many of the artists who have their music hosted by Spotify are more independent than the biggest superstars and rely on the money they receive when people by their songs. The Piano Guys released a message about this at the end of their Youtube music video of "Celloopa", and they have compensated for the pennies they receive for having their songs on Spotify.

So, yeah. Use Spotify to your heart's content, but consider buying the songs as well in order to support your favourite artists. After all, it doesn't hurt to have it on iTunes or on your MP3 player just in case you go camping where you can't get LTE service or you're running low on data and you just have to listen to those particular songs that are on that playlist of yours.

The world's music is at your fingertips, folks!

– Mikaela

Tuesday, September 12, 2017

Music to Write By


One of the things that I find helps me get into the mood when I'm writing is music.

Personally, I prefer lyric-less, soundtrack-like music, though once in while I find myself in the mood to write to the sound of people singing - though it slows down the speed of my writing since I have to focus on the words I want to write while being bombarded by a voice singing words at loud volumes right in my ear.

Of course, what determines what I listen to when I write depends on what genre my novel is and what is happening in the novel when I sit down to write it.

For example - when I'm writing my steampunk/sci-fi mystery novel A Murder of Whimsey, I would choose music that reflected the atmosphere I wanted. The album I ended up abusing during NaNoWriMo July in order to get out 20k words before the end of the month was Euphoria by Revolt Production Music.



This album is the perfect mix of dashing Victorian elements and energizing Sci-Fi melodies. I lived on this album, and it serves to remind me that I have to go back to that story someday.

Which I will.

When I have the brainpower to fully outline it, since I can never hold my focus long enough to do so. haha

I also find myself listening to Lindsey Stirling's musical epics, because they often fit certain moments and scenes in my stories. Her music filled my mind in July almost as much as Euphoria did, and it applies to all my works of fiction that I happen to be working on.


 





Another artist I find myself turning to is Peter Hollens, an acapella superstar who does a cover of an already existing song every two weeks or so. He's done many covers of Lord of the Rings and Hobbit songs, which I just can't stop listening to!



My favourites from this album would have to be "Misty Mountains ft. Tim Foust", "Hobbit Drinking Medley ft. Hank Green", and "Gollum's Song"! Outside of this album and far out of my reach, his cover of "Song of the Lonely Mountain" is another one of my favourites, which, alas, I cannot buy on the iTunes store!

These songs are currently helping me plow through a short story I hope to publish in the coming months, which I'll publish once I'm finished the final project of my Advanced Photography class, which will be the story's cover.






There are so many songs you can choose from and build your stories' playlists. I have so many, it's ridiculous - though I haven't had the mind to compile them into a playlist yet. I will here, tomorrow, but there is one more song that I want to show to you, one I enjoy listening to when I write, and a gem of a video I found containing several Steampunk-y/Victorian-themed songs.

The Video


The Song


The song is "Celloopa", as in 'cello–opa', by The Piano Guys, who are musicians, though not all of them play the piano. Like the guy in the video, he plays the cello. 

I love listening to the Piano Guys' music - as it is just as inspiring as the music I mentioned before - though I feel that I've yet to scratch the surface when it comes to the sheer quantity of their songs. 

I can guarantee that their songs are excellent to write to - though everyone's tastes are different. Every song I featured in this post reflect my taste in music and writing music.

Tomorrow, I hope to post a post about "playlists" some writers make while in the process of writing their novels. I have so many, and I feel I will learn something when I write it.

Thanks so much for enduring this rambling post!

– Mikaela

Ranger's Apprentice: The Battle for Skandia, a review

The Battle for Skandia . John Flanagan. 2006. Puffin Books. Pages: 294. Price: USD $8.99/$11.99 CAN. Setting: Skandia. ISBN 0142413402. [S...