Category Archives: Music
Writing Playlists – Valkyrie Project
As Weathering The Past nears readiness for publication, I’m trying to figure out ways to market it without just pimping the book directly; to say something besides just “buy my book!”
So, to give you an idea of the different aspects that went into writing the second book in the The Valkyrie Project series and, honestly, just to share some music that I really like, I’ve made the playlists that I used when writing Weathering The Past public on Spotify. (Since Spotify is free, I believe anyone should be able to listen just by giving them your email address – or a fake email if you really want)
I think (okay, I know) most writers have playlists that they use when writing to get them in the right mood or mindset. I don’t remember seeing any post more than just a single album, artist, or playlist for their writing, though. I’m guessing they have them, but they’re just trying to be concise. Since the scenes in my books vary in tone and emotion (I hope!), it definitely helps me to have a particular playlist to help with the kind of scene I’m writing.
For Weathering The Past, there were three main types of feelings that I wanted to get. Not all of the scenes match up to one of these three exactly, but for the most part, I found that three lists was a good number to work with. The first… well, there is a lot of action in the book. So, I needed a playlist that would get me psyched up. I considered using Barney’s Get Psyched Mix from How I Met Your Mother, but it’s a bit heavy on the 80’s and I like to stay current on my music. So, I seeded a playlist with some classic Get Psyched songs and then slowly evolved it, adding new songs to replace ones that I got tired of, to end up with the current Valkyrie Project – Amped mix. You’re lucky because I went through a bit of an EDM phase in the middle, most of which has been culled, replaced with songs that I think are generally more palatable.
The next most prevalent emotion was ‘tension’ or ‘drama’. This generally meant slower, quieter, and mostly instrumental tracks. Selections from a lot of movie and video game scores. Some of these were used for action scenes as well, but the kind of action scenes where something very dramatic is culminating or coming to a head. I think you’ll get a good idea of what I mean when you hear it… Valkyrie Project – Dramatic.
Finally, there is the Valkyrie Project – Emotion list. This was used for scenes where I was trying to rip tears from the eyes of readers. I don’t think there’s as many of those in Weathering The Past as compared to The Valkyrie Project, though. That was a conscious effort on my part to make it a bit lighter, include more ‘fun’, and go with more of the scenes that would fit into the ‘Dramatic’ playlist rather than ‘Emotion.’ Based on feedback from the early readers who have finished both books, I don’t think I did as as good a job of that as I wanted, but the overall feedback was very positive for the second book, so I’m not going beat myself up too much.
As I begin work on the third book in the series, I will continue to listen to and to evolve these playlists, so go ahead and ‘Follow’ them to take advantage of Spotify’s excellent notification system.
Dope Machines (The Airborne Toxic Event)
I’m not going to lie, I did not have high hopes for the new album from The Airborne Toxic Event. I’m not sure I’m even supposed to like them (or at least not to admit to it publicly) since they’re not quite mainstream enough to be truly popular, but definitely not weird or indie or hipster enough to be cool. But lead singer Mikel Jollett is a (former?) writer and essayist who named his band after a section of a novel (White Noise) and based a song and video on the short story The Hitchhiking Game (by Milan Kundera). I was intrigued enough to read the story (spoiler alert: it’s a bit depressing, but does help to bring some nice context to the song and video). And the excellent Such Hot Blood, which stood out even in the rest of 2013’s array of amazing music, was enough to get me to buy tickets to their show at the Vic (and I can generally count the number of concerts I go to in a year on one hand with fingers to spare).
At that show, though, the band debuted a couple of new songs… I could tell they were new not just because I’d listened to most of their popular songs enough to recognize them, but because they heavily featured synthesizers and drum machines. My first thought was: “Ah, they’re entering their synth and drum machine phase.” I’m generally in the camp of “That Doesn’t Work Out So Well” when it comes to that stage of a bands career…
Then they released “Hell and Back” on the Dallas Buyers Club soundtrack and while it was still heavy on the synths and computer generated drums, it was as upbeat and rocking as any song on any of their previous albums. While I consider myself more patient, and less “What have you done for me lately?” 24-hour-news-cycle ADHD than most of America, I’ll admit that after more than a year from the release of that song, my interest waned. I am on the band’s email list, though, so I did get a notification of the upcoming release of Dope Machines when they announced it. My thought at the time was something along the lines of “Yeah, I’m sure I’ll remember to listen to that at some point.”
Luckily, I also follow them on Spotify, so I got another alert when the new album was available there and figured I’d take a listen. (Even though as a Tech Lead/Engineering Manager, I get a lot less “headphone time” than I used to a straight up coder)
Shoque!
(Perhaps) Needless to say, I was suitably impressed. At least enough to write this blog post about it. 🙂 While the album is not a solid burner like Such Hot Blood, it only has 2 real dud songs among the 10 tracks. Much better than I’d expected. And while I’m not usually one to do a track-by-track breakdown, I’m procrastinating a bit from doing other writing, so here goes…
1. Wrong – (Doge Nels says:) Such synth; such Casio keyboard drum line. And yet… And yet… I kind of love it. Mikel’s voice and lyrics are the same, and they ease the transition. The general mood and feel of the song is the same as most ATE… so it works. The first sign that not all hope was lost.
2. One Time Thing – Less Casio… Storytelling… Metaphors… Sort of fuzzy and gritty with a good build up to take us into the title track….
3. Dope Machines – A little Jack and Diane hand clapping with the first real guitar riffs on the album. Continues to build from One Time Thing – another good thing that ATE does well: blending songs into each other (sequencing, I believe?).
4. California – Moving back to more traditional ATE but with fake drums. Talk about her dress, Mikel. Do it. Update it by mentioning Tumblr. What? Yeah. Part Some Time Around Midnight, part Elizabeth, I was kind of surprised how much I liked this one… It seems a bit cheesy and abstract, like a hint of something that’s not really there. But a couple sharp points dig in and stick with you…
5. Time to be a Man – Now I really want to hate myself for liking this one. Especially since I should be too old for it… but yeah, it still strikes a chord in my heartmind that say “Nels: it’s time to be a man.” More of those sharp, pointy details than the previous song, you can tell this is really something he felt; to the point where I can see him sitting down to write this song with a specific event in mind.
6. Hell and Back – I really like this one, but it almost seems out of place on this album. It’s kind of too much upbeat, pounding (I want to say thrashing, but that’s clearly not the right word – might be time for the Great Courses Vocabulary Builder…) Even my wife knows this… I put it on a mix CD for her (we have a CD player in our car, so I make Driving Mixes) and she didn’t like it, but I put Wrong, Time to be a Man, and Chains on the latest CD and we both like those in the car.
7. My Childish Bride – I’m kind of ‘meh’ about this… It is clearly the descent into the slow part of the album… Like it’s hanging off the cliff between acceptable ATE and the ATE that I don’t listen to. Also, “my childish bride”? Super pervy. Even if it was just the same music with different lyrics it would be better… but it makes me feel a bit pedo every time I listen. “We stare at each other like a sister to a brother” – come on dude… If we’re not supposed to imply incest from that, then maybe my mind is like my bowling balls (always in the gutter). If this came between two other good songs, then fine, I’d probably be cool with it. But since it leads into the next two, all I can think about it what comes next…
8. The Thing About Dreams – Yawn. At least give me a power ballad or something if you’re going to go slow like this… I’ve been listening to each of the songs as I write these reviews, and this is the first one I’ve had to skip through. Awful. I literally can’t even.
9. Something You Lost – Didn’t I just listen to this song and hate it? Pretty sure I did. At least take the fairly decent lyrics and put them with some music that doesn’t make me want to click the -> button as fast as possible.
10. Chains – Holy Hell. If ATE had left off the previous two songs, this album would only have 8 songs on it. (Fact!) But the entire album would be so much more awesome for it. This song gives me chills at the beginning. You can just tell that something awesome is coming. Build it up, guys. Build it. Call it The Storm Redux for the Dope Machines era.
One final chapter to the story… I got an email from the band saying that they were releasing an acoustic album along with the electro one on the same day. Nice! I thought: Maybe that will make up for the two disappointments that I got when I bought the very reasonably priced Dope Machines off Amazon… except, oops: The acoustic album is apparently only available if you buy Dope Machines from their web site. Buzzkill! I feel like I should get the album for free just to make up for The Things About Dreams and Something You List (yes, those songs are really that bad). Instead, my plan is to write the band and see if I can send my Amazon receipt showing my purchase of Dope Machines in exchange for a download of Songs of God and Whiskey (which it seems you can’t even stream anywhere just to listen to it without buying it…).
To be continued (maybe sort of) …
Update
After emailing my Amazon receipt to the Gmail account associated with the merch site for TATE, I got a link back to download the Songs of God and Whiskey for $0. So: Awesome. Thanks guys! (No review on that one yet…)
NaNoWriMo Prep: The Music
Last year I didn’t have a set playlist for writing during NaNoWriMo. This year, I’m trying to change that. Starting with the list I began last year, I’ve been adding to the Code Warriors playlist with songs that I hear that seem to fit the theme. Just as a warning, if you hate this playlist (which I can understand), I don’t think that means you’ll hate the book (whenever it ends up getting finished). The music is quite obviously and unabashedly heavy on EDM, Dubstep, and movie soundtracks. But it combines the two main things that I want to start off with which are: Technical/Electronic feel and Upbeat/Light-hearted/Energetic. (Okay, yes, that’s five if you split on the slashes, but it’s two general ideas)
It’s only a small part of the entire list, but this one spells it out pretty well… Play Hard.
My Early Noms for Album of the Year
Released first was Frightened Rabbit’s new album Pedestrian Version
More recently: The Airborne Toxic Event’s Such Hot Blood (only $5 at the time of this post!)
I’m not on top of music or anything so I just got both of these albums in July (which comes out to five months late for Frightened Rabbit and a month late for TATE).
I’m sure there are others that I’m not really thinking of that I might have actually gotten when they came out, but so far, these two really hit the “Nels” sweet spot for the kind of almost-poetry/high-school-poetry lyrics and mostly upbeat arrangements. I think I’m not supposed to like the Airborne Toxic Event because Pitchfork gave their first album a 1.6, but the same guy gave the Childish Gambino album a 1.6, so I think that’s really code for “Don’t tell anyone that I actually like this because it would ruin my street cred.”
Sure, a lot of the songs on Such Hot Blood are tailor made for performing in arenas, bombastic anthems that build and swell to something grandiose, but guess what, I like stuff like that.
Also, they did this (an allusion to How I Met Your Mother):
So, I mean, come on.
It’s rare, very rare indeed, that I actually like all the songs on any given album and can just listen to the album straight through without making a playlist to filter out the lower quality songs. Even those songs on Such Hot Blood are not bad. I’d say ‘True Love’ is my least favorite, but the pseudo-folk-Trampled-By-Turtles thing makes up for the fairly grating chorus and the annoying number of times he says “Cause it’s true love.” ‘The Fifth Day’ gets a little self-involved and over-orchestrated in it’s 6-minute playing time, but the beginning build-up feel so raw and genuine that again, it makes up for my minor quibbles with the middle part of the song.
Now, as for Frightened Rabbit, I feel like their The Midnight Organ Fight and The Winter of Mixed Drinks while both brilliantly titled albums were not wholly consistent in their quality (don’t get me wrong, they’re still really good). (I haven’t heard Sing The Greys or the songs on the EPs, so I can’t speak to that) But Pedestrian Verse is so good that I actually looked up their tour schedule and pretty much immediately bought tickets for their Lollapalooza after show. I go to live concerts even less than I buy music (read: irrationally cheap), so I’m not sure that there’s anything that could speak more highly of an album.
Last.fm Trains Robot Ears
In their post on advanced robotics, Last.fm explains how their using “robot ears” to identify music and make recommendations based on that. You can get in on the action by classifying the music yourself using their Robot Ears app and then comparing to what their algorithms came up with. I like the idea because I think (I hope?) I tend to be more interested in the style of music and want to hear more from artists who sound similar rather than just taking socially implied similarities between artists. Though sometimes I do like to put on “Bush” in Pandora and relive the 90’s alternative scene, I think most times I’m actually looking for a new artist that sounds similar to the ones I like, and it will be interesting to see if actual sonic analysis yields better results.
Nels Wadycki 