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by
Lex
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Jun 30, 2014 10:08PM
In recent weeks most of my reading has been done in the break room of my new job. Human traffic flows in and out at a fairly stable, noisy pace. I'm looking for suggestions to music that would 1) compliment space opera reading and 2) drown out the repugnant sounds of socialization.
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Two Steps From Hell - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmUVX...Audiomachine - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqqYY...
Epic Score - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4_4E...
Steve Jablonsky/Transformers OST - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEL5a...
Hmm, not sure what kinds of music you like. I have special playlists for each of my books. Songs that I think of when writing a scene.This whole story kicked off with a dream set to Meatplow by Stone Temple Pilots. That scene is in the second book...
For general awesome music, you can't go wrong with Koyaanisqatsi by Phillip Glass.
Absolutely stunning score to a documentary. I listen to it a lot. If you've seen Watchmen, you've heard part of the score. The song Prophecies was used during the flashback sequence with Dr. Manhattan.
Also, Fragile by Yes. (space theme) and the Yes Album (songs like Starship Troopers...)
I think prog rock works well with sci-fi. How about Black Holes and Revelations by Muse, or OK Computer by Radiohead?
I always forget about Muse. I'm fond of their album The Resistance.Portishead's self titled.
Nine Inch Nails for when I'm in a bad place in the story.
And Peter Gabriel because Peter Gabriel.
Oooh ... bad guy music! Yes ... something heavy metal or operatic in scope for writing or reading about those bad guys!
Thanks everyone for the suggestions. I started up several Pandora stations based on them. This has lead to the discovery of some thematically appropriate sound scapes that y'all might want to check out: Solar Fields, William Orbit, Apparat... there are others but their names escape me at the moment.
Paul wrote: "I always forget about Muse. I'm fond their album The Resistance.Portishead's self titled.
Nine Inch Nails for when I'm in a bad place in the story.
And Peter Gabriel because Peter Gabriel."
Heavy metal for some of the more intense battle scenes!
Steph wrote: "I think prog rock works well with sci-fi. How about Black Holes and Revelations by Muse, or OK Computer by Radiohead?"Muse is awesome. I like to think of them as Radiohead had Radiohead maintained their alt rock trajectory after OK Computer. Obviously they had other ambitions, and that's okay. It's nice that Muse exists to scratch that classic RH itch.
Lex wrote: "Steph wrote: "I think prog rock works well with sci-fi. How about Black Holes and Revelations by Muse, or OK Computer by Radiohead?"Muse is awesome. I like to think of them as Radiohead had Radio..."
Oddly, I was never a big fan of Radiohead, I may have to give them another try.
Anna wrote: "Oooh ... bad guy music! Yes ... something heavy metal or operatic in scope for writing or reading about those bad guys!"
Here's a little sci-fi music for you. I end up listening to most of these while writing, plus Sarah McLachlan and Tori Amos, just because.
"Yes" album by Yes. Songs such as 'Starship Troopers'.
"Fragile" album by Yes.
"I Robot" album by Alan Parson's Project.
"Paranoid" by Black Sabbath
"Brain Salad Surgery" by Emerson, Lake, and Palmer
"And Winter Came..." by Enya
Songs:
"All is Full of Love" by Bjork (amazing video, great song)
"Rocket Man" by Elton John
"Space Oddity" by David Bowie
"The Day the Whole Just Went Away" by Nine Inch Nails
"The Becoming" by Nine Inch Nails
"Walk it Down" by Talking Head (1984 theme)
"Sleeping Satellite" by Tasmin Archer
"The Futures so Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades" Timbuk 3
"Flying Dutchman" Tori Amos (Rocket Man theme)
"Drops of Jupiter" by Train
"When the World Ends" Dave Matthews Band
"What's on Your Mind (Pure Energy)" by Information Society (Star Trek sampled)
Dale posted the music for the EVE Online MMORPG a couple of months ago. It's good ambient 'chill' music ... almost 6 hours worth!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEEmO...
I've been lurking here since I joined and decided to come out of my cave with the intersection of two of my favorite subjects: Space Opera and Music. I saw one mention of Epica (The Score), but what about their "Classical Conspiracy" (it has a great heavy metal/classical version of the "Imperial March" from Star Wars). My favorite though is Nightwish. I write SF with romantic elements(meaning there is more emphasis on the action than the kissing, but yes, it does have kissing and more-all right, no comments about "girl cooties"). I wrote the climactic action scenes of "A Hero for the Empire" to Nightwish's "Dark Passion Play" and "Imaginaerum" (the latter can be purchased with a second disc that has the entire album in an instrumental version-complete with symphony orchestra. If you liked "Koyaanisqatsi", you might try other stuff by Phillip Glass (Mishima, The Photographer and Powaqqatsi). That said, I'll go back to my cave and return listening to music and writing.Chris
Eww! Girl Cooties!Just kidding.
I'll have to check out Nightwish, Christine, sounds interesting. They're ower-metal with a touch of steampunk? They look it anyway.
I do like Phillip Glass's other work, I've just always had a soft spot for Koyaanisqatsi. I saw the movie in the theatre in 82'. Also, as an anthropologist, I can't resist something with Hopi legends as a part of it. Grin.
Oh, anyone like Rasputina? Rock cellos...
Christina wrote: "...but yes, it does have kissing and more-all right, no comments about "girl cooties"..."Nothing wrong with 'girl cooties!' We're 53% of the population of this planet. 3:-)
And yes ... epic music and space opera just go together.
Well, if we're talking space opera and heavy, epic music, I have to jump in here and recommend Scanner's concept album Hypertrace. If you haven't heard this before, get ready for some goosebumps. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVVtM...
I never heard that the record was inspired by a movie, but maybe it was. All I knew back in the day when this came out was that it was epic, technical metal.Wikipedia says the story goes like this, and it seems right from the lyrics as I understand them:
During World War II the military ordered the formation of a commando troop out of seven convicts. With scientific help these seven were trained and genetically manipulated to become a super combat unit.
The mutant soldiers went berserk, and directed all their strength and superior skills against their commanders. The rebels had to be annihilated ("Grapes of Fear"), so they were shot into space, and their rockets exploded, except one ("Locked Out"), which was found by aliens ("Wizard Force"). The aliens taught the mutant survivor to bring peace to the world ("Retaliation Positive").
Would make a good movie, I suppose.
In a different vein, I always thought that this thing from Peter Gabriel that ended up being the theme song for the second season of a B sci fi show was always really an awesome piece of music with lots of sci fi cred. It's called Darker Star Reprise.
Sometimes, I just listen to it on a loop for a while.
(That's normal, right?)
It's really hard to find, so here's a link to an MP3 of the longest version of it I could ever find. (Anyone with an album that this song is actually on, let me know what it is!)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/9syetvx0wkg...
Music to fly your spaceship by.
Looks like it was written for a TV show, Starhunter.This site: http://www.genesismuseum.com/
has the opening and closing versions.
I love Gabriel's music. Have you heard his cover of Arcade Fire's "My body is a cage?" burns its way through me when I hear it.
Another good album to read/write SF to is "Interstellar Suite" by Amin Bhatia. It's in the vein of Vangelis or Tomita. It's described as the soundtrack to a SF movie without a movie. It looks like it might be getting hard to get a hold of, though. I've spend the past several years trying to get all my favorites from vinyl, first on CD and now in my computer. The one I haven't been able to capture (unless I want t part with big bucks) is the soundtrack to "Ladyhawk".
The music companies were nasty about tying up the rights to a lot of this music and giving the bands a pittance. Thanks to sites like SoundCloud or PlayItLoud you see more and more bands publishing and keeping the rights to their own stuff, but I think a lot of these old soundtracks will remain incognito until the rights-grab by the music companies expires, and then hopefully they'll upload it all? One of my friends is part of a punk rock band and he's been re-recording and re-releasing all his stuff with pretty decent success because he was smart enough not to sign away his life.A frightening reminder for those of us in the group who are indie authors or app developers ... ALWAYS KEEP YOUR RIGHTS!
How about Christopher Franke? He wrote all the music for Babylon 5. That Amin Bhatia stuff sounds like it's in the same vein.I've never heard of Arcade Fire, but I hit up YouTube and heard both their version and Gabriel's version of that song, Paul. I think I like Gabriel's version better by a hair, actually, but I am not really a connoisseur of that type of music.
I'm mostly about the heavy or industrial/electro or thrashy stuff, some indie stuff if it's up tempo. If it's slow, it has to have a lot of mood and something electronic about it to catch my attention (like that Darker Star). I do like some of the music I bought from Christopher Franke, but I love B5 so much that it might be the connection to the show that attracts my interest.
You can find Darkness here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dfiJ...
The first 1:02 is the end of an episode. After that is the instrumental music.
Thanks for the info on "Darkness!" I really appreciate it--I have tried several times over the past several years to connect "Darker Star" to some other, larger work of Gabriel's--namely an album it might be on. I was looking for the wrong title.As it turns out, "Darkness" is a nice piece of work, but "Darker Star" is definitely the piece of music I prefer of the two. It's got all the good bits I really like.
Thanks!
A band I love is "Radium 88." Described as "thoughtful melodic electronica with violin, guitars and vocals." To me, much of their instrumental music have a space-y vibe, which would be a nice complement to space operas! They even have a song called "Enter Hyperspace." Ha.Radium 88 is a small, U.K. based band. Unfortunately, it is not popular enough to be found on Pandora, but I'm always hoping more people will discover them and become fans as I have.
Listen to their songs here:
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/defau...
https://myspace.com/theradium88/music...
If you're visiting the myspace link, you might want to check out the following tracks:
#50 -- Sergio (an odd mix of Western and Space-y vibe)
#46 -- Dream 2
#21 -- Watch the Skies
The band's official website: http://radium88.net/
You can follow what LOTGH did and just play awesome classical music during all the big space battles.www.youtube.com/watch?v=Duu1ZKtJDsw
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hc5xgCqTy_k
Yamato had an amazing track as well http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGvIsp...
Another song I know I have seen used before to great success is Mars from the planets series.
Thanks Alex and Aaron. I'll check those out. I'm always looking for inspiring music.
I'm gonna recommend some heavier music because, while a lot of what is being recommended on here is futuristic and electronic and synthesizery, it just doesn't get my blood pumping like I like. If this is the case with you, too, then I'd like to point you in the direction of some stuff that inspires me but has more BPM and shreds a bit more. These bands remind me of steampunk and Blade Runner and Snowcrash and futurism and cyborgs and . . .These are not for the faint of heart, and I can't vouch for any of the lyrics (don't listen to them for whatever they're talking about for the most part).
These bands are industrial/techno/electro and have a lot of heavy guitar riffs to boot:
Chemlab - Best album is probably Burn Out at the Hydrogen Bar
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list...
Swamp Terrorists - best albums are Combat Shock, Wreck, and Five in Japan, but it's hard to pick . . .
These guys sample a lot of thrash metal riffs and stick them between their electro-techno insanity. (They morphed into a band called Hellsau eventually.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qlYG...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLsCh...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btL7L...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiGl5...
Brainchild - check out this guy's album Mindwarp. This guy also did a band called Circle of Dust which had a few cool tracks, too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwPoE...
Pitchshifter - best work is arguably on album Infotainment?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rum_Z...
Treponem Pal - recommend the album Higher as a starting point
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3pK0...
Shotgun Messiah - the only record of theirs that falls into this category is Violent New Breed (where they had this fellow Cybersank as a band member; their singer, Tom Skold, went on to do Skold).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGu3A...
Monster Voodoo Machine - recommend State Voodoo/State Control to start here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ8Cy...
Cubanate - might want to start with their classic record, Antimatter
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lZ3s...
And, for a little techno, you can't beat:
Praga Khan's Pragmatic (really, it's a little different from the rest of his stuff, which I often find a little too tame)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7o1Cy...
Of course, there's also all the old favorites everyone knows like KMFDM (or MDFMK), NIN, and all of those.
I hope someone will discover a new favorite band in there somewhere!
Robert wrote: "I'm gonna recommend some heavier music because, while a lot of what is being recommended on here is futuristic and electronic and synthesizery, it just doesn't get my blood pumping like I like. If..."A metalhead, Robert? :-) A friend of mine, whose name also happens to be Robert, is the drummer from Seige. If you're into heavy, heavy stuff to really get the blood pumping, I think you'd enjoy his stuff. He's also a horror writer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kOw5...
alex wrote: "A band I love is "Radium 88..."Oooh! I like the Sergio piece. Have to hunt that down...
Aaron wrote: "You can follow what LOTGH did and just play awesome classical music during all the big space battles...."Oooh! Mahler! Everybody loves Mahler! (line from Educating Rita. I love heavy orchestral pieces, both old and new composers.
Anna wrote: "A metalhead, Robert? :-)"Anna,
A metalhead indeed!
I hit that Seige stuff and it was pretty cool! I was never into grindcore as much as other forms of metal, though. (I liked Napalm Death more during their "experimental" years.)
Mostly, I'm the thrashing mad type of metalhead.
This was me back in the day (like 1992) (doing the "singing:).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqELe...
Did this more industrial stuff later (plus a bunch of other stuff).
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/eim
Latest thing, more flat-out speed/thrash metal, is here:
http://enfolded.bandcamp.com/releases
Christian ... thrash ... metal?[*giggles*] Now I've heard it all.
I -did- enjoy it, though. I use music to write, and what I'm writing these days is mostly epic fantasy about the wars in heaven at the dawn of time with angels/demons who are really genetically engineered super-soldiers from a space-faring galactic empire, so I'm into Two Steps from Hell, Audiomachine, and believe it or not Transformers. At the moment though I'm writing a pure contemporary romance, and it's like ... quick! I need something mainstream and romantic to listen to!!! It's hard to write 'Cinderella goes to the ball' while listening to The Battle of Pellanor from LOTR :-) Luckily for me, I just post something on my Facebook page and my reader friends always suggest stuff that works (I call it 'friend-fiction').
Hmmm... Robert's Sacrament band ... [*closes eyes*]. Angry vengeful man on a motorcycle ... black leather ... mohawk ... lots of tattoos ... real bad-boy. Maybe a little bit like The Punisher or Judge Dredd. Have to bookmark this one :-) I'm a character-driven writer so anything that helps me 'nail' the character goes into a special little file.
Years ago, when I was younger I used to listen to some fairly heavy stuff, mostly mainstream as I didn't discover the 'indie underground' scene until I went off to college and by then had been bitten by the R.E.M./alternative rock bug.
Anna wrote: "Christian ... thrash ... metal?Yeah . . . we kind of got pigeon-holed into that category. We never billed ourselves as such, but apparently some folks need a label on you to do their thing. It's always interesting what people assume about you when you have a label, though. That project hurt some people's heads, I think. I definitely rocked the leather and studs and hair down to my backside. Then I needed a full time job and had kids . . .
I am totally into Transformers, too! I have collected quite a few, especially the Japanese releases. Old School Megatron has a spot of honor on corner shelf in my house to this day, too, under the big anniversary Optimus Prime they put out a couple years ago. I really got into the Beast Wars line, and was totally obsessed with that show for a while. I also collect all kinds of other animated cartoons from that classic Transformers era. Ostensibly, it's for my kids to enjoy, but I'm pretty sure I'm more psyched about them that they are. Oh well.
I've never heard of Two Steps from Hell, but I checked them out, and that's definitely stuff to play D&D by all right. You should check out Bal Sagoth. Symphonic extreme metal. They sing about all these pagan gods and heroes of renown (I think they are really into it, too). Their music is nuts, though. Really epic. Just the names of the songs will give you chills. (Most of the song names are too long to fit on my MP3 player and I have to rename them so it can handle the files!) I think you might truly dig them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GRjO...
I looked into your books when I got in this group and I have Sword of the Gods: The Chosen One cued up for when I wrap up The Toad King. Sword really looked like something up my alley. I noticed you had this kind of disclaimer that the book was "not religious" in the front. I thought that was funny, and it resonated with my thoughts on labels and how they affect people and how they or their work is perceived.
Alternative rock was big when I was in college, too. I still like Magnapop and early Smashing Punpkins. I got more into the Sub Pop and Revelation Records label type bands. Seaweed and Pegboy and Big Drill Car still make into heavy rotation in my car! Plus all those crazy Boston bands Seige probably played with (Only Living Witness, Tree, etc.)
I always return to heavy metal, though. A real metalhead at heart here.
Yay! Transformers! I have the Steve Jablonski Orchestral Score from the first movie ... listen to it all the time for writing. If you read Sword of the Gods, to write Raphael's character I always have 'Autobots' playing, and when I write Emperor Shay'tan I have the 'Decepticons' song playing. It helps me to keep the 'feel' of such a large cast of characters separate. Mikhail is a combination of Nickelback 'Saving Me' and Two Steps From Hell 'Freedom Fighter.' And General Abaddon aka 'The Destroyer' is Two Steps From Hell 'Dark Harbor.'Hope you enjoy Sword :-) Don't list it here as it's more epic fantasy than space opera, though it doesn't really fit there either. One day, I let myself imagine what might inspire a powerful creature such as the Archangel Michael to give a flying rat's butt about humanity enough to drag the devil into hell and the answer was 'a woman.' From there, over a million words were born in only a matter of months that could care less about things like genre or marketability. Now ... to edit that stream of manic brilliance into something readable ... broken up into 5 books :-)
Smashing Pumpkins .. eh? 'Disarm' is where the seed idea for Lucifer came from.
Okay ... off to go listen to some Bal Sagoth. One of their tunes my friend Robert (Seige-Robert) recommended to me at some time. He writes some great horror stories off of the stuff :-)
