Posts Tagged Coldplay
The Undercover Soundtrack – Leslie Welch
Posted by Roz Morris @Roz_Morris in Undercover Soundtrack on October 25, 2017
The Undercover Soundtrack is a series where I host a writer who uses music as part of their creative environment – perhaps to connect with a character, populate a mysterious place, or hold a moment still to explore its depths. This week my guest is debut novelist Leslie Welch @Leslie_Welch
Soundtrack by Dave Bielanko, Christine Smith, Chris Rattie, Gus Smith, Snow Patrol, Coldplay, The Temper Trap, Green Day, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Kanye West, Imagine Dragons
‘We’re recording these old songs at a church in Millheim. You should stop by.’
Intrigued by the invitation, my husband and I made the 22-mile drive from our hotel in State College to the post-industrial town. Back then, Millheim was growing into the unlikely heart of a serious music scene in Central Pennsylvania. That visit would eventually work its way into a novel I didn’t know I was going to write.
Dave Bielanko and Christine Smith (of Marah fame) had enlisted our friend Chris Rattie to play drums on Mountain Minstrelsy—a collection of old mountain songs they had resurrected with new music. Given the people involved, I expected the session to be different, but we walked into an all-out revolt against modern recording. Recording based on intuition instead of algorithms. My internal monologue alternated between, ‘This is so freaking cool’ and ‘How can this possibly work?’
A tangle of cords, amps, and a giant mixing board crowded the back of the sanctuary where greeters used to welcome people to worship. Mics were set up wherever there was good, natural reverb. Not a computer in sight.
A prodigy
Two towheaded boys chased each other through the pews in loops around us as we checked out the set-up.
‘Who are the kids?’ I asked.
‘The taller one is our fiddle player,’ Chris said. ‘Hey, Gus! Come over and play something.’
Eight-year-old Gus scooped up his fiddle and ripped out a quick melody that sucked me into a serious religious moment. The kind of experience that makes you doubt you could ever be good at anything in your life. That’s what happens when you experience a prodigy in person. Here’s Gus Smith.
Gus, undoubtedly used to these impromptu performances, gave us a look that asked if that was enough of a demo. Before our claps faded into the narthex, he was back to the business of chasing his brother around the church.
While the idea for my novel The Goodbyes wouldn’t come for a few months, I collected plenty of inspiration at that session. Fast forward to November of 2014.
Searching for a Soundtrack
With an idea begging for a blank document and a NaNoWriMo deadline, I sat down to write. Since the story was about Webb Turner, a rock star who races through a blizzard to possibly say a final ‘goodbye’ to the girl who inspired his songs, I packed my writing playlist with songs I thought Webb might write. Snow Patrol, Coldplay, and The Temper Trap dominated the two-hour loop. But when I pressed ‘play’, I found myself skipping each track after a few seconds.
I switched over to my music library, hoping the universe would step in. Song after song, nothing kept me writing for more than a sentence until I skipped my way to the one thing I would have never chosen—Tibetan Monks chanting. Yes, really. I didn’t care what it was, it shifted me into the zone. I tapped out a chapter or two on the train ride home.
When I wasn’t writing, I listened to popular music from the 90s and early 2000s. Green Day, Red Hot Chili Peppers, even Kanye West and Nickelback transported me back to the spirit of that time. These songs play in the background of a lot of scenes in the book. They’re important to the characters, too.
Changing tunes
I finished the first draft in a month. Once I had let it rest for a few weeks, I started the slow and painful process of editing. It wasn’t long before I realised that I needed more than ‘Oms’ to paint the flesh onto the bones of the story. My filmmaker husband suggested listening to movie soundtracks for some momentum. I quickly discovered that these epic melodies, swelling and crashing without apology, are gold for writers who want to add drama to key scenes. The Great Expectations soundtrack hit an especially sweet spot for me.
When it comes to creating a writing playlist, what works for one book might not work for the next. My current manuscript likes The Lightning Strike by Snow Patrol and Radioactive by Imagine Dragons. It’s a nice change, but in the end, the most important thing is finding anything that inspires me to keep moving until I can punch out the two best words in a writer’s journey: The End.
Born in Toledo, Ohio, and raised in the North Hills of Pittsburgh, Leslie Welch spent most of her youth concocting elaborate stories. Her high school English teacher encouraged her to turn these creative lies into creative fiction. Today, Leslie writes at least 1000 words a day on DC Metro orange line trains. She co-wrote her first book in Harrisburg hotel rooms and diners with her best friend, and in 2016 she released her first solo novel, The Goodbyes, published by Blue Moon. When she’s not off exploring the world, Leslie lives in a house full of laughter outside of Washington, DC, with her soulmate, two cats, two dogs, two fish, and a teenager. Find her website here and tweet her as @Leslie_Welch
The Undercover Soundtrack – Theresa Milstein
Posted by Roz Morris @Roz_Morris in Undercover Soundtrack on March 29, 2017
The Undercover Soundtrack is a series where I host a writer who uses music as part of their creative environment – perhaps to connect with a character, populate a mysterious place, or hold a moment still to explore its depths. This week my guest is MG/YA novelist and vignettist Theresa Milstein @theresamilstein
Soundtrack by Coldplay, Madonna, Seal, Nik Kershaw, the Smiths, the Smashing Pumpkins, the Cure, Colin Hay, Seatbelts, Arcade Fire
My new collection of vignettes, Time & Circumstance, was written over the span of five years, so many songs influenced its creation. I honored this connection when I named the two sections of the book. The first section, filled with prose pieces, Tempo Adagio, evokes a slower pace. The second section, filled with poetry, Tempo Allegro, evokes a brisk pace. I couldn’t imagine this collection coming together without musical influence.
Coldplay’s song Violet Hill inspired my early flash fiction piece Violet’s Hill. The darker sound and the first lyrics about a bleak December and his plea during the melody set the right mood for the story of unrequited love. I originally wrote the piece for an anthology, 100 RPM: 100 Stories Inspired by Music.
For the short story Injustices, a stalker is watching a woman dancing in the apartment across the alley as he imagines her listening to Madonna. I heard the song Like a Prayer because it has the right tempo for someone getting ready for work in the morning. Although it’s different than the music I usually listen to, the song helped me pictured the scene more vividly.
When I wrote the story Left-Behind about death and Birthday about a miscarriage I experienced, I listened to Seal’s 1994 album, especially the song, Don’t Cry. A few songs are about mourning, which helped me deal with the feelings of loss.
The poem 1986 brought back my days as a punk girl hanging in New York City. Because I mention the movie Pretty in Pink, I thought about the soundtrack’s influence on me. Two songs from the soundtrack I especially connected with are Wouldn’t it Be Good by Nik Kershaw and Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want by The Smiths. I was an angst-ridden teen.
Steam Punk is about a caustic relationship. To get in the mood for that, I listened to one of my favorite songs, A Forest by The Cure because of the strong beat and mood.
I recalled my first years of marriage when I wrote First Apartment. Grunge was big then, and I especially loved Smashing Pumpkins. Their album Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness played when I wrote it. My favorite song from that album is 1979. It was a coming of age into adolescence song for songwriter and singer, Billy Corgan, and here I am using it as a coming of age into adulthood song for me in the 90s. We’re both experiencing nostalgia.
I actually credit the song Waiting for My Real Life to Begin by Colin Hay for the Revision poem, which humorously portrays writer’s block. In a moment when I was feeling particularly down about my work and thought I’d never become published, I listened to his song over and over.
The song Measure is about my son practising his sax. When he joined jazz band, he always warmed up with the same tune. One day, it struck me how much he’d improved. The song started as an intrusion into our home, and then became pleasant background. When he goes off to college, I will miss it. I don’t have a clip of him practising, but I do have Tank by the Seatbelts.
The last song in the collection that inspired me was The Suburbs by Arcade Fire from the album The Suburbs for the poem Boundaries. I wrote it in response to the hateful political rhetoric I’d been hearing to contrast it with my experience working with immigrant children in a school and also compared it with my children’s experience living in a suburb. For me, the song symbolizes the destruction of the west. It became the perfect background for the feelings I needed to express.
The back cover of Time & Circumstance states: ‘the unrelenting passage of time connects the vignettes’. Reviewing my song choices as a soundtrack, I have a strong sense of nostalgia tying the collection together. It was nice to relive some of my favorite teen songs when writing some of these pieces. I also appreciate the tone of the songs reflecting the many poignant moments throughout the collection.
Theresa Milstein writes middle grade and YA, but poetry is her secret passion. Her vignette collection, Time & Circumstance, is published by Vine Leaves Press. She lives near Boston Massachusetts with her husband, two children, a dog-like cat, and a cat-like dog. For her day job, she works as a special education teacher in a public school, which gives her ample opportunity to observe teens and tweens in their natural habitat. Find her website here, contact her on Facebook, or tweet her @theresamilstein.
The Undercover Soundtrack – Sanjida Kay
Posted by Roz Morris @Roz_Morris in Undercover Soundtrack on March 9, 2016
The Undercover Soundtrack is a series where I host a writer who uses music as part of their creative environment – perhaps to connect with a character, populate a mysterious place, or hold a moment still to explore its depths. This week my guest might be familiar to you; she’s been here before as Sanjida O’Connell @SanjidaOConnell. She’s turned her hand to thrillers for her latest release and is wearing a new writing persona, Sanjida Kay
Soundtrack by David Gray, Coldplay, The Choir of Young Believers, Massive Attack, Faithless, Sandi Thom
What would you do if you found out that your child was being bullied? Laura, newly divorced and relocated to Bristol, learns that her nine-year-old daughter, Autumn, is being bullied at her primary school. When no one takes Laura seriously, she tries to protect Autumn from the bully – and makes the situation much, much worse. This is the start of my first psychological thriller, Bone by Bone. The story is told from the point of view of the mother, Laura, as well as her daughter.
I found getting into Autumn’s head the hardest part of the process. After all, it’s a long time since I was nine! I wanted to get across what it felt like to be nine as well as the change that being bullied can wreak on a person’s character. Autumn is a shy, sweet child. She loves painting, misses her best friend, Cleo, and likes Mozart and ‘Bark’.
Listening to classical music and looking at Giacomettis didn’t help me understand what it felt like to be Autumn. I started playing Sandi Thom’s I wish I was a punk rocker. Autumn, a slightly other-worldly child, is certainly not a punk rocker – in exactly the same way that Thom sings about punk with the nostalgia of one who never experienced its raw anarchy; aching for a world that never was, whilst wearing flowers in her hair.
Laura, Autumn’s mother, is also shy and introverted. She lacks confidence and is vulnerable and isolated, yet, like any parent, loves her daughter with all her heart.
When Autumn was born, it was as if she recognized her, as if she’d always known that it would be her, this little person who had come to live with her and reside permanently in her heart. It was a love unlike any other: fierce and powerful.
The song that most helped me get into this zone was The one I love by David Gray with its notes of hope and fear.
Because of Laura’s personality and circumstances, she feels powerless to put a stop to some of the terrible events happening to her and Autumn. But at some point in the novel, she needs to overcome her lack of confidence and find inner strength. One of the triggers for this shift was inspired by a Coldplay song, Viva la Vida; a heart-heavy march of reluctant triumphalism.
Bone by Bone is set in Bristol where I live. What I wanted to capture was the juxtaposition of the city as gritty, grafitti-ridden yet woven through with green spaces like The Downs and Narroways, the urban nature reserve where much of the action takes place.
Bristol is a vibrant, culturally-rich and ethnically- diverse place to live; it’s also riven with divisions between classes and races, rich and poor, and I wanted to imbibe the novel with that edginess. The tracks I chose that summed up what Bristol means to me for the purpose of writing are by Bristolian bands, Massive Attack, Safe from Harm and Insomnia by Tricky of Faithless. Safe from Harm seems to embody that uneasiness, its melodic voice and hopefulness undercut with darkness; this track combined with the restlessness of Insomnia were perfect for what I was trying to do with Bone by Bone: create a relentless ratcheting up of tension.
Bone by Bone is set over a period of ten days, covering Halloween and Bonfire Night. It’s grey, cold, icy: I wanted to develop an atmosphere that was taut, tense, sinister. To get me in the right frame of mind, particularly on days when the sky was bright blue and sunshine flooded my office, I would listen to this lyrical, haunting and disturbing single – Hollow Talk by The Choir of Young Believers – now made famous by The Bridge.
The lines began to sing, a shrill, electric song, and then the cacophony of the train roared out of the darkness. The carriages were almost empty and painfully bright as they hurtled along the tracks to the heart of the city. In the fleeting light she saw the meadow, dotted with stunted hawthorns, their twisted limbs dense with red berries, and then a shape: achingly familiar, child-sized, shockingly still.
Sanjida Kay’s debut thriller, Bone by Bone, is published by Corvus Books. She lives in Bristol with her husband and her daughter. Find her on her website, Facebook and Twitter @SanjidaOConnell.
The Undercover Soundtrack – Dina Santorelli
Posted by Roz Morris @Roz_Morris in Undercover Soundtrack on July 25, 2012
‘Music enables me to reach a deeper understanding of myself’
Once a week I host a writer who uses music as part of their creative process – perhaps to open a secret channel to understand a character, populate a mysterious place, or explore the depths in a pivotal moment. This week’s post is by journalist, writer and editor Dina Santorelli @DinaSantorelli
Soundtrack by Avril Lavigne, Coldplay, Miley Cyrus, Barry Manilow, Susan Boyle, Bonnie Tyler, The Pointer Sisters, Frankie Valli, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin
Full disclosure: I write in total silence. Well, maybe not total silence (I do have three kids), but in an environment that’s veritably music free. While I do things like pay bills or edit copy while listening to my favorite Pandora stations, when it comes to fiction writing my creativity amps up only when the radio is turned down.
Now before you start wondering, What the heck is this fraud doing penning a guest post for the Undercover Soundtrack, you should know that although I don’t write with music playing, my writing is fueled by songs and lyrics just the same, particularly in the following three ways.
1. Pure inspiration
For better or worse, my writing process is one of perpetual breaks – periods of furious keyboard tapping followed by periods of drought, or perhaps pause is the better word. Many times during a writing session my momentum will come to a crashing halt, and it is during these periods of inactivity when self-doubt tends to rear its ugly head: I’m not good enough. Who’s going to care about this story? Why am I bothering?
And while I have been known to take a walk, a shower, and do all kinds of things to get past this kind of “block,” one thing that almost always does the trick is my go-to soundtrack of inspirational songs. There are many of them that I’ve compiled over the years, performed by all kinds of artistes in all kinds of categories. What I find is that often the artiste or song doesn’t matter; rather, it’s the intention, or the message of the song, or sometimes it’s just the title or a meaning that I, alone, have infused into it that’s important to me. Here’s a quick list of some of my stand-bys:
- Keep Holding On by Avril Lavigne
- Fix You by Coldplay (this song undoubtedly made the list because of a very touching and inspirational weight-loss video posted on YouTube)
- The Climb by Miley Cyrus
- It’s a Miracle and Looks Like We Made It by Barry Manilow
- Defying Gravity from the Wicked original Broadway cast soundtrack
- Freak Flag from the Shrek original Broadway cast soundtrack
- I Dreamed a Dream, sung by Susan Boyle (what better lesson in triumph than Susan Boyle’s rendition of I Dreamed a Dream on Britain’s Got Talent?)
2. Pacing
Baby Grand is a contemporary thriller, which means one very important aspect of the book is its pacing. I was very conscious of keeping a certain pace – almost like a perpetual drum beat – throughout the writing of the novel and then ratcheting things up toward the end, as if riding a train that was traveling fast and suddenly accelerates until it is speeding out of control. And because writing a novel is all about stopping and starting and picking up where you left off, I found there were times I needed some zippy songs to get my toes a-tapping and to return me to that ‘train’ mindset, particularly for the chase scenes that are inherent to most thrillers, Baby Grand included. Here are two of the many songs I’ve turned to in order to help me keep readers alert and on the edge of their seats (interestingly, these both come from films):
- Holding Out for a Hero by Bonnie Tyler and featured in Footloose (this one, I find, is particularly useful for chase scenes – is there anyone out there who doesn’t visualize Kevin Bacon with his shoelace caught on a tractor pedal during this song?)
- Neutron Dance by The Pointer Sisters and featured in Beverly Hills Cop
3. Character developme
nt
Occasionally, I’ll use music to help me get into the mind of a character. I also use movie clips for this purpose, particularly when a character is loosely based on the physicality of an actor. I did this for Baby Grand’s villain Don Bailino (whose appearance is based on a younger Robert De Niro), a handsome, charismatic ex-war hero/successful businessman in his late 40s. Bailino hails from Brooklyn, and having grown up around Brooklynites my entire life, when writing Bailino’s scenes I tended to channel lots of family favorites from the 1950s , 1960s and 1970s, such as Frankie Valli or Frank Sinatra or Dean Martin (who happens to be the person I was named after—my parents were big fans):
- Swearin’ to God and My Eyes Adored You by Frankie Valli
- Luck Be a Lady and The Lady Is a Tramp by Frank Sinatra
- Mambo Italiano and Ain’t That a Kick in the Head by Dean Martin
I call these songs ‘the soundtrack of my grandparents’ and they stir up in me fond memories of summer vacations spent shopping on Nostrand Avenue or at Kings Plaza and playing at the Buddies Arcade. I think in this case, though, it’s not necessarily the songs that inspire, but the memories that they invoke.
In the end, whether it is inspirational or helps me develop a scene or character, music enables me to reach a deeper understanding of myself in some way. And from there, I am able to find the confidence to explore a deeper understanding of my characters and of my story and the courage to fight through another round of that ominous self-doubt. Cue Theme from Rocky.
A freelance writer for over 15 years, Dina Santorelli has written for Newsday, First for Women and CNNMoney.com, among other publications. She served as the ‘with’ writer for the well-received Good Girls Don’t Get Fat and most recently contributed to Bully, the companion book to the acclaimed film. Dina is the Executive Editor of Salute and Family magazines for which she has interviewed many celebrities, including James Gandolfini, Tim McGraw, Angela Bassett, Mario Lopez, Gary Sinise and Kevin Bacon. You can follow Dina on Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, Pinterest, and on her blog. Baby Grand, her first novel, is available on Amazon.
The Undercover Soundtrack – Nicola Morgan
Posted by Roz Morris @Roz_Morris in Uncategorized on December 7, 2011
‘If I’m writing fiction there must be music… invasive music to kick me in the heart’
The Undercover Soundtrack is a weekly series by writers who use music as part of their creative process – special pieces that have revealed a character to them, or populated a mysterious place, or enlarged a pivotal moment. This week’s post is by prolific YA novelist Nicola Morgan @nicolamorgan
Soundtracks by Beautiful South, Belle and Sebastian, Coldplay, Franz Ferdinand, The Kaiser Chiefs, Muse, The Police, R.E.M., Sting
Music and I have an odd relationship. If I say “There was no music in my life until I was eleven”, you’ll think I’m being melodramatic or metaphorical. No. My extremely unusual childhood was full of amazing freedoms, but no music. Or rather, we didn’t listen to it at home, ever, and since home was school, I didn’t listen to it at all. There was a school choir and I sang in it, but that, being for chapel, was somewhat narrow in its tastes. Anyway, it wasn’t till I went to boarding-school that music appeared, and by then I lacked the musical parts of my brain. (Confirmed when I tried to learn the oboe as an adult.)
Yet, if I’m writing fiction, there must be music. And I’m pedantic about the choice. It has to be just right for that piece of writing. Once I find the album, I play it over and over. And over. Sometimes I have to play it through headphones because my family shout, “NOOOO!”
A kick in the heart
It’s not background music. It’s not just to block out the real world – though it must do this, too. But it must be more invasive. It needs to kick me in the heart, make me sing – sometimes literally. It needs to take me to a place where fiction dwells and worlds can be created.
What music? The word my family use to describe the music I write fiction to is “anthemic”. They will suggest a new band or album and say to me, “You could write to that.” It must have powerful melody, rhythm and emotion, in both the music and the words. And there must be words. I think as well there must be colour. And music with colour – an aspect of synaesthesia – is something that’s hugely a theme of Mondays are Red.
Losing my religion – in yellow
So, exactly what is on my Undercover Soundtrack? When I was writing The Passionflower Massacre (Hodder, 2005) it was R.E.M., mostly Around the Sun, though in fact I quite wanted to call the book Losing My Religion. R.E.M.’s music is rich and golden, warm and vibrant, mysterious and with odd meaning. And The Passionflower Massacre is a book like that. I think the book is more yellow, more summery than R.E.M., though, but the Around the Sun track is perfect.
Sleepwalking (Hodder 2004) was Sting. Sting and the Police are cold, thin blue, the wail of a heartless future. That’s how Sleepwalking feels to me. The Highwayman’s Footsteps (Walker 2007) was Franz Ferdinand, rich with reds and blues and excitement; The Highwayman’s Curse (2008) was Franz Ferdinand again and The Kaiser Chiefs, harsh, cruel, jangly, angry, steel grey and blood red with the horror of religious hatred.
Wasted was a strange mixture: Belle and Sebastian, Muse (Uprising – love it!) and Beautiful South. With smatterings of REM again. It’s not a violent book, more thoughtful, and if it had a colour it would be an impossible blue lilac disappearing at all its edges. (For your interest, the main character is a girl with music-colour synaesthesia.)
Everything I want for a dark book
And the novel I’ve just finished, Brutal Eyes, is pure Coldplay – mostly Viva la Vida but with the recent revisions written to Mylo Xyloto, especially the phenomenal Us Against the World and Every Teardrop is a Waterfall. Those two songs are everything I want in music for a dark book. You can hear every rasp of Chris Martin’s breath, every squeak of finger on string. You can
hear his eyes close, his shoulders move. It has enormous emotional heart. I’d like to hope it lends some of that to the book. Funnily, Brutal Eyes doesn’t have a colour for me.
What did I write Write to be Published to? Nothing! I couldn’t possibly write non-fiction while listening to music!
Nicola Morgan is an award-winning author, with around 90 published titles, and a growing list of self-published titles. She is well-known to aspiring writers for the honest advice on her blog, Help! I Need a Publisher! and a book – Write to be Published – published by Snowbooks. Notable works include her famously gruesome novel Fleshmarket; the Aventis shortlisted Blame My Brain: The Amazing Teenage Brain Revealed; and Wasted, which was longlisted for the Carnegie Medal and won or was shortlisted for many awards. Mondays are Red was originally published in 2002 and Nicola has now created a new edition for ebook format, including some extra material such as creative writing by school pupils. This time, she is publishing it herself, with the help of her agent. Follow her on Twitter @nicolamorgan
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