Creativity and My Personal Link to Music and It
I have written in a past blog about some of this before, but it really intrigues me how my passions for acting, writing, directing and so much else has always been attached to music. A little funny, as I have no talent with any musical instrument and only have a passing fair singing voice. However, it has always seemed to be a part of my life, and deeply ingrained at that. I hadn’t realized how much until relatively recently, some 10 or so years ago. It started with a lot of the rock music of my youth, moved quickly into movie soundtracks, then into Classical music and then into what it termed Trailer Music, or ‘themes looking for a movie‘, if you will.
The difference between the rock music of my youth and the rest of the styles mentioned is that songs have words and tell you what to think. (I will admit that sometimes some of the music is better than the lyrics, such as many of ‘America’’s songs like ‘Horse With No Name’.) The rest more or less allow your thoughts, your mind, to take you where they will; they encourage creativity.
One of the first pieces of movie soundtrack music that stuck with me to date is from the early ‘70s movie ‘Logan’s Run’.
Later that decade were such incredible soundtracks as ‘Superman: The Movie’ and ‘Star Wars’, and others. Sometimes, the soundtracks would take me out of the movie I watching and all I could hear was the music and think I have to get this soundtrack! This is one of them:
In the 80s I really got into RPGs, the paper, pencil and geodesic dice kind. I recall developing characters to classical music pieces, though none come to mind as I write this. What I DO recall are these:
which brought to my mind visions of wandering through a lost castle with dust and cobwebs and all the furniture and rotting tapestries still there. It became the beginning of an epic adventure, the first one I wrote and ran for my players, who discovered and underground fortress of a lost, legendary hero. That same epic adventure ended with:
where Our Heroes, after years of adventure and tragic losses finally trailed to (as I recall) the First Fire at the Center of Creation Before The Gods (basically a Journey to the Center of the Earth bastardization of a sort). It was also another piece of music that took me out of watching the movie and thinking I needed to pick up the soundtrack!
The Further Progression Into Writing ‘From Music’
To follow a linear train of thought, after the RPG phase of creativity powered by music, I eventually entered the Directing a RenFaire Group Creativity (That Became) Powered By Music. This was gradual where I began listening to Renaissance music as rehearsals commenced for the RenFaire season. As the group I directed became more nuanced as a kind of Gypsy band, I began seeking out music that spoke to the character of the group that I could play for them to give them the ‘taste’ of what I envisioned. Such as:
and:
and:
to post just a few. This them, I thought, could help each member of the group understand each individual character if they could find a piece of music they felt best fit their character. It seemed to work a treat, too, especially after I said they couldn’t use the theme for ‘Game of Thrones’! 😁 (Yeah, a few did as it was popular at the time!) One comes to mind that I felt perfectly fit the particular character, especially as they acted out that character while the piece played, which wasn’t part of the exercise!
I had quite a wonderful of actor and creative people!
Write On, Baby!
As Life will lead us along differing paths, it was eventually time to leave off directing a RenFaire group and move on. Figuratively and Literally, as you shall read. Again, for some of you. I have been writing the story of the character I’ve played for quite a while, now, in that epic RPG campaign that was mentioned above and also as the character I portrayed while being in and directing my ReFaire group. In fact, it was the actor who chose that piece of music thay acted their character out to who suggested the reason my character was leaving the RenFaire, and I wrote that out for my group as a ‘good-bye’. That was 8 years ago and I have been, a bit here and a bit there, writing what has become a 350+ page book on his life since.
Following the progression of types of music I am now more ‘into’, this is where I enter the ‘Trailer Music’ phase, if you will. Lots of music with no words, a lot of dramatic scores, love themes, magical and mystical and more. I tend to listen to this kind of stuff as I write and there are many a time the music will speak to me a either engender a new part of the story or become a perfect catalyst for the feeling and ability to write a better scene. So much so that as I have written, I have included the piece of music in parenthesis as the ‘feel’ of the scene. I know they will need to be relegated to an appendix or footnotes eventually, but it just seems fitting to do so.
Finally, I will just post a screenshot of where I am in my writing. It hasn’t progressed a great amount since last update, and I wish all I needed to do of a day was write, but I have neither the means nor the time to do so. Yet.
Be well and do good works!
