OOC: Sythyry Music Contest

[sythyry]

This is all OOC.

I mostly write to music.  Most of my novels have theme songs -- oddly, A Marriage of Insects is the one that doesn't, having been written before I discovered that bit of magic.  And it really is magic, in the terrestrial psychological-effect sense.  I have trained myself to focus on Mating Flight when I hear Morning Musume's Onna Ni Sachi Are, or Wrath of Trees when I hear Varttina's Maahinen Neito.  For more extensive writing, I have a whole playlist -- which I constantly tinker with, and some of which I listen to elsewhere, but is suitable for writing that story.

Sythyry doesn't have theme music. 

Theme music, or a solid playlist, would help me write more Sythyry.

So here's the contest.  Suggest music for Sythyry to me. 

• First Prize: Super-cameo: a character of your design will be Sythyry's favorite musician in Srineia.  Hijinx and/or doom may be involved.
• Second Prize: Everyone who tells me something useful (or something new that I like even if it doesn't work in the Sythyry playlist) gets a cameo as a musician.  Or, if you prefer, is allowed to decline a cameo as a musician.

Here are the absolute requirements and rules: 

• A successful entry has to suggest Sythyry or World Tree when I listen to it.
• I have to be able to listen to it, and buy it legally, somehow. 
  
  • (Pointers to Amazon mp3s or iTunes songs are perfect for me to buy it.)
  • (Actually, something that I happen to have around and hadn't thought of would be even better.)
  • Pointers to sites where I can listen to at least a sample before buying are good. 
  • If it's too much work to get ahold of or I can't figure out how to, I won't listen to it.
• Multiple suggestions are fine, and even encouraged.

Here are my suggestions:

• I do like vocal music for writing, especially energetic stuff.  Not required, but helpful.
• Music with English lyrics mostly interferes with writing, though.  (Scraps of English, as often found in J-POP, seems OK.)  French and Welsh music is only a little of a problem -- I don't speak them well enough to fuss about the words in music -- and other languages are all good. 
• I'm not that fussy about artistic merit or stylistic appropriateness.   Morning Musume is aimed at adolescent Japanese girls, but works really well as writing music for me. 

Thanks very much!

Comments

Hmm...

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

Music that comes to mind when I'm reading this LJ includes Lute Music for Witches and Alchemists, the works of Heather Alexander, Holst's The Planets, and the works of Elvendrums, among others. But it is early for me, and my brain isn't really booted up yet. I'll try to get you a more proper list later, with pointers to samples.

[slrose.livejournal.com]

The Kung-Fu Panda soundrack?

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

I like Adiemus... vocal, no language that I can discern. Here's a clip from the album.

Re: Hmm...

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

The Planets is a good thought! (Pictures at an Exhibition, too; they kind of go together). I don't need links for those. The others are well-titled, and I'm looking forward to hearing them.

[dracosphynx.livejournal.com]

Hmm... if you like J-Pop and energetic stuff, have you tried any of the techno-classic remixes, or the disco-classic remixes, or the electronic-classic remixes, etc?

There is Walter Murphy -- I like his "A Fifth of Beethoven" and "Flight (of the Bumblebee)" among others.

If you have iTunes and can follow iTunes URLs:
Speed over Beethoven
Ode to Joy

[jenett]

Adiemus is most excellent (and as far as the sung parts: one of their liner notes somewhere explains this: they're syllables from commonly sung languages but put together in orders that don't actually form words. To me, it sounds more like Italian than anything, but not really.)

I'd also suggest any of the Scandinavian folk stuff: a great starting albumn is _Wizard Women of the North_ or the Nordic Roots compilations, but they do not seem to be available on iTunes or Amazon download, but the Amazon page for WWotN is here: http://www.amazon.com/Wizard-Women-North-Various-Artists/dp/B00000JLJ0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1250437420&sr=8-1

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

I love WWotN, and Scandinavian folk and folk-rock in general. And Adiemus' con-non-lang sounds great; I shall have to go nibble on it.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Nice! Thank you!

[kobolds.livejournal.com]

May I suggest Enya's non-English stuff?

Alternatively Julie Fowlis seems to sing almost exclusively in Gaelic, though she is probably lesser known and getting a hold of her stuff may be harder. Amazon does have some of her stuff.

[kobolds.livejournal.com]

Hug air a' Bhonaid Mhoir is a very lively piece. It's all about hats, which seems appropriate considering Srinean Haberdashing.

[beetiger.livejournal.com]

We have some Adiemus around; check my music files.

[shaterri.livejournal.com]

While not a lot of it is vocal, I'd definitely suggest Yoko Kanno's stuff; she has many soundtracks available in the States, and it's all very cinematic, mostly very energetic music. I particularly recommend her soundtracks for the Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex series, the first Wolf's Rain disc, and the work she's done for Cowboy Bebop (with her band, Seatbelts). It doesn't look like most of it's available in MP3 format (and a surprising amount is out of print, *mutter*), but Amazon has samples you can listen to and iTunes actually has some of her other work available for download. You can probably find the soundtracks 'in person' easily enough at Kinokuniya NYC, too, if you have the opportunity for a trip sometime; and I'd gladly loan them to you.

On a somewhat more energetic (if less soundtracky) tip, I heartily recommend Cibo Matto's Stereotype A, and Miho Hatori's Ecdysis, both listenable at Amazon and both available for reasonable prices on iTunes; dreamy, trip-hoppy, heavily accented music with a few absolutely brilliant bits (both halves of "Sweet Samsara", for instance). Well worth the checking out.

On an entirely (entirely) different front, you might try checking out the Battles album Mirrored, particularly the track "Atlas", which is... well, sort of vocal, albeit in some very very strange ways...


Much luck! I'll be curious to see what else people come up with.

[kensan-oni.livejournal.com]

Well... I have a problem. I have a lot of recommendations from shows, and I know that they are available, but you'll probably only be able to find them in Import stores, assuming that some of them are even sold anymore.

However, most of them probably are... and here is where you can find my recommendations!

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=B477E66E712E3F0B

(P.S. I don't really want the prize. Mainly because if I won, I'd be introducing 'trouble' and I don't want that. I just wanted to share musics!)

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

I like the work of Amon Tobin for certain kinds of creative work a lot. It's probably way too foreboding for Sythyry, though - he tends towards music that you might hear accompanying an armada of spaceships looming over a doomed city.

Possibly some Future Sound of London.

Possibly some later Gong.

[shaterri.livejournal.com]

I get a lot of this, too — oval is some of my favorite programming music, but I can't for the life of me quite picture it being used to write Sythyry to...

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Yum!

I don't speak any Gaelic, and there aren't too many Welsh cognates, so I can't follow it at all, but ... yay,hats!

[cowboy-r.livejournal.com]

Have you considered Dead Can Dance? That particular song has English lyrics, but a lot of their stuff doesn't. It's available through iTunes and Amazon.

Also, Sequentia is an interesting bunch. They try to recreate medieval music. I particularly like their Ring Cycle, but there doesn't seem to be any of it on YouTube. Alas.

[aprivatefox.livejournal.com]

For some reason, the Creid arranged soundtrack to Xenogears has always somewhat suggested World Tree to me. It may fail on the obtainability index, though - it can be obtained used from Amazon for $25, and I can make MP3s of it available for you to see if you like prior to purchase, but it looks like it's certainly out of print.

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

As I mentioned earlier, the song I associate most with Sythyry is "I'm Calm" from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, particularly the Mark Linn-Baker version from the 1996 revival cast.

[otter3.livejournal.com]

A few things I'd recommend:

1) Lala has generally been my favorite for previewing music, namely because it generally allows you to preview an entire song once before doing the 30-second clips. (They also tend to have cheaper mp3s...) That being said, I'll dump Amazon links below.

2) Deep Forest. Highly recommended as energetic vocal music that isn't English. Although they're a little strange to listen to imo to start with, they really grew on me after a few listens and generally are quite interesting listens. Trying to pick out songs that in my mind might go with Sythyry is interesting - depends on the tempo, and Deep Forest has different sorts. Few sample songs: Boheme, Forest Power (in particular), Bohemian Ballet. I could probably recommend 2/3rds of their albums. Sweet Lullaby is the song that actually had pop status for a little while. A shame the first album isn't readily available, or I'd highly recommend a few tracks from that one.

3) Cusco. Instrumental work, kinda synthy, that always has had a sense of otherness to me. Examples: Da Gama, Ghost Dance.

4) Infected Mushroom. I have to admit a sort of earworm-obsession with them. Most of it's techno instrumentals, a few songs in English. Examples: Heavyweight, Scorpion Frog.

5) Era is also interesting in the it's-trying-to-be-Latin-chanting-but-isn't method. All import though.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

I like several of those, but I am going to have to work to get ahold of them!

(And Sythyry's story is mostly about trouble, but you certainly don't need to be the cause of any if you'd rather not.)

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I could program to Oval (if you mean the electronica group), much less write to it. The clickies are awfully distracting.
[Bard snags an Amon Tobin track to investigate]

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Era is a fairly common word, and hard to search on. And I do like Latinoidal chanting. Could you give me a song name or something like that?

Deep Forest is nifty, though the album I have is mostly English stuff (that I like but I had to take out of my usual playlists 'cause English.)

[shaterri.livejournal.com]

That's the Oval in question, yes; it definitely has to be fairly low-volume, but I find that when I'm able to tune it out and not pay close attention to it, it does a remarkable job of insinuating itself into the back of my brain. Whether this is recommendation or warning, mind you, is left for the listener to decide...

Also, on the Amon Tobin front, I'd suggest dipping in for at least snippets of various tracks off of various albums; he's worked in a plethora of styles and I'm not sure one track is sufficiently representative.

[otter3.livejournal.com]

Music Detected is imo the weakest of their albums. Partially because of the English. ;) But I'm a big fan of their work otherwise.

Best-known Era song is Ameno, which was used in some Australian ad. Also crossreference this album, which Amazon has helpfully linked to other albums by Era.