From Hating Music in Podfic to Loving it: A Convert's Journey

[podcath]

Caveat: This is a very personal account, and i don't try to tell anyone how to record or whether to include/exclude music. I changed my mind entirely and thought that might be interesting to some of you. I'm also using my own podfic as examples, mostly because I'm talking about motivations and difficulties in choosing certain songs. I hope to make a music-in-podfic rec post for this year's Amplirecathon 2011 (Signups are still ongoing, and we need lots more people on DW!)

The Beginning: Podfic Music Dislike
I've been meaning to make a post on music in podfic for a while, mostly because I'm a very recent convert. When I first started listening to podfic in SGA, none of them featured music, and that's what I'd gotten used to. Moving into SPN, I started to hear a lot more music (first, actually, in the EVPs, which saw themselves more as podcasts mixing music with speech and different stories) and there were various reasons I started strongly disliking the use of music. (1) The music often wasn't mixed in well so that it was both much too loud and sometimes its quality wasn't very good or consistent with the recording. (2) The choice of music tended to often be well known songs (in SPN often reflecting the style Dean prefers) that already had strong associations for me and that I often didn't like a whole lot. (3) The songs were often played in full (or at least several minutes long) at the beginning of the story, making it impossible to skip if I didn't want to listen to it. (4) In rare cases, there was the reading over music, which made it impossible for me to understand the words themselves.

Epiphany: Violins for Sherlock
In time, I became resigned to this general habit and mostly started ignoring the music, mostly ffwding where I could. Every once in a while, I'd come across a podfic where I really liked the song or where the song seemed really appropriate for the story, but I never thought much about it. And then I listened to FayJay's It's Not A Violin. And suddenly my entire view of the role of music and its potential changed. In this Sherlock story, Sherlock playing the violin is a central theme, and one particular song he plays is Lady Gaga's Alejandro. Now FayJay has a particular way to choose and use music that i'd noticed before: she tends to pick quite esoteric pieces most times, thus preventing the dangers of overexposure of popular songs and previous associations in many cases. She also picks a brief segment only but puts the full song at the end. In so doing, she placed the music in the role of brief introduction only but gave listeners who wanted to hear the entire piece the choice to do so. In this particular story, then, she found an actual violin only recording of the very song played by Sherlock. She thus not only introduced me to the Vitamin String Quartet but also used the perfect, the only possible recording for this story. And made me start thinking about what music could do in podfic beyond keeping me for 3 minutes from getting to the story and/or making it harder for me to decipher the words.

How to Make that Break
Pretty much all the stories I'd recorded until last fall had been longer, but I really wanted to record something in Sherlock and fell in love with a particular story that had clear section breaks. a lot of longer stories seem to break into parts that are names as chapters whereas there exists a style in shorter prose that works with a vignette-like structure. Breaks between sections need to be demarcated somehow yet a pause isn't always clear. So when I went to record The Perils of Urban Warfare I decided to insert a very short musical segment (5 sec) to show the section breaks. My beta liked it, so I went with it. (One of the hard things in podfic, I think is that there's so little feedback that it's difficult to change or improve, but I have an amazing beta who in a way is my primary audience.) I looked for the Sherlock soundtrack but only found the 2009 movie one. Since the styles were similar, however, I decided to go with that, given that 5 seconds seemed short enough to hopefully just recall a sentiment, not a specific scene.

Matching Music and Fic And I guess with that the dam was broken :) But the more I started to think about including music, the more I started to realize just how important it was to pick the right music selection, the perfect song. I'm not a very musical person, I'm mostly text-based, but I found myself listening to various songs over and over again, trying to get a feel for whether the song matched the mood I had of a story, whether they were a good fit. Sometimes the fit was very personal, like with Ghosts (and its forthcoming sequel Lovers I'm recording right now). I'd been on a Sufjan Stevens kick, and the general dreamy, almost alien mood of his music resonated for me with XF in general. When I looked for a particular song, though, I was kinda literal, and went with Concerning the UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois (and from the same album John Wayne Gacy Jr for the sequel). A song about UFOs seemed appropriate for any Mulder story and the sequel is a case file hunting a serial killer, so the song seemed appropriate. But more than that, I liked the sound of Sufjan Stevens, the esoteric quality that was both deceptively simple and extremely complex. In fact, for Ghosts I decided to cut the song into 4 pieces and used a section to introduce each of the four parts. Likewise, I started to use different section breaks, sometimes chosen randomly, sometimes meaningfully.

The last five stories I've done have all been in QAF, which offers a wealth of music within the show. There's always the danger of using soundtracks and central theme songs (do we need another vid/podfic in SPN that uses "Carry On My Wayward Son"? :), but given the dearth of QAF podfic, it seemed OK to draw from the show. In Julad's Love of his Life, for example, the central theme is aging and memory. Brian has amnesia and believes he's back in college, viewing his current life through his younger mind. The story is structured around Brian's desire to go out on top, yet he's already missed killing himself at 30, and at the end of the story it becomes clear that his plan to be done with his life at 40 are likewise unrealistic, that he changes his goals and dreams with age. As I was listening to the various soundtracks, the perfect song jumped out: Forever Young. It was recognizable, which wasn't in its favor for me, but the club remix I used fit the general theme of the fandom and the story and the lyrics were perfect for the story, between the amnesia theme mirrored in the "Forever Young" title and the repeated suicide planning reflected in the "Let us die young or let us live forever" line. I ended up using these lines in the beginning and a music only section to divide the sections without distracting from the story too much.

The Problem of Overdetermination It was at that point that I started to realize I was walking around for days thinking about associations and feelings and moods as much as about lines and lyrics and themes. I'd talked with vidders about why they'd choose a song and was always much too obsessed about the lyrics to get where they were using the meaning of the music. But I was finally getting a glimpse of that. For the story I'm just finishing, I wanted something moody, capturing the waiting and uncertainty that the story depicted to me. I finally found a song that worked for me, Chemical Brothers' Where Do I Begin had that feeling of being stuck in place, afraid to go forward, that resonated much of the story (where Brian and Justin meet again in a post 1x21 AU where Brian got the job in New York).

And then, yesterday, I found the scene that used the song on the show. And now I'm thinking about pulling all the 40 section breaks (using 5 different excerpts) out: it's Ted hitting bottom and going into rehab. Whereas I was reading "Sunday morning I'm waking up/ Can't even focus on a coffee cup/ Don't even know whose bed I'm in" as the monotony of Justin and Brian's continuous one-night stands, the show used the lyrics in a much more extreme manner, and I'm now wondering whether a QAF fan would immediately recognize that song and where it was used and not get the same resonance with the story that I had. Then again, maybe i'm just fooling myself anyway; maybe certain music matches a story for me, but for everyone else it's just the annoying distraction that I used to feel about all music in podfic....

ETA: Possibly my favorite example of music is toomuchplor's Inception Steinway!verse. pennyplainknits recorded the first part of this story, Ach des Knaben Augen with musical assistance of xenakis. I discuss it a bit more in Podfic as Transformative Works

Comments

[paraka]

I've been meaning to make a post on music in podfic for a while, mostly because I'm a very recent convert.
Wow, seeing this post kind of had my jaw dropping. I remember you being pretty against it.


But the more I started to think about including music, the more I started to realize just how important it was to pick the right music selection, the perfect song.
*nods*
Rarely will music toss me completely out of a podfic, or prevent me from listening to it again in the future but there have definitely been some selections that jar me, make me go o.O or, sometimes, seem to trivialize the story being told.


I'm not a very musical person
Hmm, I wouldn't say that about myself but I find it hard enough to match up music with podfic that often I don't bother. I think, for me, I have issues with the order. I'm a vidder (or, I used to be, haven't vidded in forever now) and even with that, the song pretty much always came first. I'd hear a song and the images would come together. I very rarely come up with an idea and find the music after. I use the song as the base to build the story around. So to try and add music to a pre-existing story… it's like adding a foundation after the house is built (note, I don't think I could ever make a fanmix :S).

As a result, most of the music that I add to my podfic is generally music that was already a part of the original fic. Either the because it's included in the actual story or because the author mentioned it in an author's note. Sometimes if there's a fanmix I'll check those out but I have trouble relating fanmixes to stories 80% of the time. Twice now (although one of those examples hasn't been posted) I've added music from the source material.


I'm now wondering whether a QAF fan would immediately recognize that song and where it was used and not get the same resonance with the story that I had.
I did most of my vidding in QaF fandom. I don't know if the fandom is still this way (although I'd imagine that most fandoms are like this in general) but I knew I would regularly be surprised at people missing things in my vids. Like, how could they not remember this pivotal scene and catch the connections I was trying to make to the theme of this vid! But the thing is, while some people know a source material backwards and forwards (like I did for QaF) others don't remember details at all (like I've been for most fandoms since). They get the general ideas of what happened and certain things will stand out but the rest of it all blurs together (especially if you consume fandom's works a lot, then you start confusing canon with fanon).

Sometimes music is such an integral part of a scene that people will have immediate associations (like, I wouldn't try playing "Save the Last Dance For Me" for anything not related to prom or things "ridiculously romantic") but for the most part it's just background music for people. A lot of people won't even recognize that it's specifically from the show or remember what scene it was used for.

And even if they do, a lot of people are able to form new associations to music or can disassociate a song from a previous association with the right motivation. Especially if you’re doing something different enough that there's not any comparisons. Bringing it back to vidding, I can enjoy vids set to the same song if they're different enough (different pairings/fandoms/intents).

[podcath]

Yeah, i think I've decided that if my beta is OK with the song I'll leave it. It just jarred me yesterday, because i hadn't been expecting that song.

And it's interesting what you're saying about vids, because I finally thought I'd gotten a sense of getting just a tiny insight into how some vidders might think...I don't actually try to find a soundtrack as much as try to find something that fits...if that makes sense. I think music in vids has to do much much heavier work, whereas here it just needs to set a mood...

I can't IMAGINE using Save the Last Dance on anything. It's like Carry on in SPN. It's so freaking overused and overdetermined and...short of satire I can't imagine wanting to ever use this (like...a montage of every fucking trick getting fucked ever, maybe :)

I do think that while we're an interpretive community that share certain scenes as important and others as less so, in the end a lot of it is personal and idiosyncratic. i always hated lit ID exams, because even when I'd spent weeks with a text, i'd always miss the quotes that someone else found important. So recognizability of scenes may not be the same for everyone (though, again, as an interpretive community, there clearly are moments and scenes that we expect to resonate for everyone...and I'm always fascinated how they differ for different pairings!)

I didn't get to talk about bandom and music that's included on some level in the fic. I've heard both done successfully and both fail spectacularly. Diegetic music may not always work well, but then I think a lot of stories use music poorly (in other words OUR TASTES ARE NOT THE CHARACTERS' TASTES necessarily!!!!)

as for your jaw dropping. I've been feeling like I'm in the twilight zone :) i don't create. like i've defined myself in fandom as someone who never creates. But podfic led to podcovers led to thinking about music and...i'm still not writing but i feel like i'm weirdly participating differently for the first time in my 12 years in fandom....

[podcath]

Re jawdropping:

"Because as strongly as I was opposed to the idea, now that I'm behind it, I'm as fervently and passionately committed."

Yes...worst character assassination ever. But I think it might fit my change in opinion :D

[cybel]

I love music in podfics--with the caveat that it meet the sort of criteria you mention here. If it is part of the reader's artistic vision, if it fits, if it blends well with the volume and style of the reading and doesn't go on forever. It's fine to play a whole song at the end of a podfic; I can listen if I like the song or easily forward to the next story if not.

If it is a long piece of music at the beginning, it often annoys me (as do reading of author's notes, etc. at the beginning of a podfic, probably because I view podfics as someone telling me a story, and such things don't fit that view (my preferred opening is author, reader, and fandom), and also because on subsequent listens these are especially unwanted, like previews at the beginning of a DVD... but that may be just me), and such music cannot easily be skipped.

If the music is integral to the podficcer's artistic vision of the piece, I'd rather just have it posted that way rather than two versions being made, one with and one without music. If it's not integral, then why bother with it in the first place? I know this view is not politically correct, but there you go--my opinion only!

[podcath]

Yeah, I think i may be with you. I mean, as much as I hated music, I never thought about preparing non music versions. But then it's like sex scenes. I've never understood the NC17 optional thing either. If it's part of the story it's adds to it, right? :)

I'm with you on the Title - Author - Reader (I don't even need fandom, though I don't mind). And I don't think brief intro pieces ever bothered me. I just didn't appreciate it either, and i think i'm beginning to get there...I'm wondering more why a reader would pick this particular piece!

[fangirlism]

A lot of people do "with music" and "without music" versions of podfics for accessibility reasons.

[darkemeralds]

Your use of music in Ghost, as far as I'm concerned, was perfect.

I would consider myself very musical, but not very literate in popular music. Though I always use music in my (very few so far) recordings, I'm keenly aware of being not very interesting, original, or up to date in my selections.

And yet, for me, the presence of a bit of music to play me into the story, and to play the story off at the end, almost always adds emotional impact, even if I don't know the music, can't begin to understand the lyrics, or don't relate to it musically at all. If the music track is used with a certain amount of restraint (fading out to the speaker, fading back in at the end), I have quite a physical response to it--my anticipation rises at the beginning, and my sense of "The End" satisfaction is rounded out at the end.

And to my ear, a small snippet of the "theme" music to separate sections or tricky POV shifts (as you did in Ghost) is just like a well-chosen horizontal bar or separator in text--it's an unobtrusive but communicative flourish that adds to the story's meaning.

[podcath]

As i said...I'm coming around :) And you're just biased about Ghost. LOL. (And here OI spoiled my musical selection for Lovers and am now COMMITTING myself to finish recording it!)

But yes, I used to see it as a necessary evil and then I heard some ways it was used really successfully (I remember a J2 boyband podfic that used boyband music, and it was pretty much perfect, though having been in podslash certainly didn't hurt :)

I love the way you phrase it: unobtrusive but communicative flourish I really didn't feel I needed it all that much until recently, and I think certain stories need it more. As I said, the vignette type collection that gathers these brief moments and jumps in time/space/pov/focus...it helps to know there *is* a jump!

[elemgi]

I listen to podfic in several ways. When I am looking for neat distraction while I am doing a tedious chore, a podfic with music is wonderful, it contributes to atmosphere and involvement with the podfic. When I am listening to podfic as an aide to sleeping, I invariably pick well loved, often listened to podfic with absolutely no loud demarcations of scene, no loud music before and after.
Part of the whole (not to wake up) desire I have listening to podfic for the second reason is very individual: I have some PTSD and I use podfic as a way to sleep without medication, as a brain soother. I have podfics I value just for that, with voices that are musical or have an even cadence, (although my use is not restricted to people who have no "accent" as defined by my life history). An exception is always FayJay as her podfics have music that does not soar in volume massively over the reading and is uniquely apropo as Podcath mentioned earlier, and her voice itself is wonderfully soothing.
When I am listening to podfic for the story, and perhaps for the first or second time, and definitely as distraction from tedium, I have no qualms about music, although I have rushed to the speakers and turned down the volume for some music which is decibels louder than the accompanying performance of the podfic. That, I must say, is disconcerting at any time, although if the choice is rock and there is a very good reason for the song choice to be louder, such as in Yasmine 32068's performance of the SPN J2 Disclaimer 'verse by Raeschae--it is totally appropriate to the performance, and a much-loved reading, as well. Thus, loud music is a nuanced pleasure, and people who offer music added and music free performances are going above and beyond, and I sometimes snag both- Laurie_Ky's performances in TS fandom spring to mind, as I am going to be using both performances for different reasons. I, also, would never quarrel with any style and/or music choices that the performer made, as podfic artists have worked very hard to give us the work. People also, because we all learn from doing any work, are going to vary on how well the volume of music/appropriateness of might appear in any podfic to the individual listener. (As always, YMMV rules the works of fandom). I think, Podcath, when you are agonizing over selections/appropriateness etc, you may be going through the first stages of learning a new task in an artistic creation, and possibly the time thinking/worrying might become less over time, as you become more accustomed to it. This is personally very familiar to me because I make jewelry, and have given a lot to my friends, and the new techniques always earn me the most agony of indecision. You are an artist- you have made a creation, and you have entered into that kingdom of the creative soul. You might never completely lose the fretting over your work- I have jewelry that my friends love dearly that I don't think I like, but part of releasing work to an audience is that other people are much more likely to really love your work than you are, and that is also familiar ground to the creative soul.
I've been guilty as many people have, of not thanking podfic performers enough or feedbacking on specific work, so let me add in here- if you have contributed to podfics in any way, y'all rock my world. *So* much love for all of you. Best Regards, Lisa

[podcath]

I very much agree on FayJay as a great sleeping to podficcer. Like you, I sleep with podfic and have many standbys where I don't feel bad if I miss chapters.

I don't ever find loud music appropriate (or, for that matter, huge variations in volume within a story). I know it happens but that's where editing comes in, after all.... I listen to fic on my ipod and it's painful and disconcerting when there are huge volume changes (and when I'm sleeping, they clearly wake me up :)

I have stories I listen to for differnt activities, but i'd never connected it to music like you did. Interesting.

As for choosing music getting easier. Oddly it is getting harder, so I think i'll stick to only using music when it feels necessary from here on out :)

[crinklysolution]

I'm just so happy there have been so many additional comments and thoughts - clearly this is something podficcers think about and maybe agonize over a little, so it is great to hear the different opinions expressed here...

[podcath]

Yes, i'd hoped to hear different opinions, but it's neat to see so many people commenting, both with similar and differing opinions. and did you see my praises for you? seriously, as much as I love feedback and cherish it, i'm not devastated to not get any, bc you feedback so gorgeously when you beta!

<3

[luzula]

I tend to like music in podfic if I like the music itself and find it appropriate to the story (and the volume is all right, etc). I've never used it myself, but I think that has to do with me being lazy. Sure, it's not hard to do, but I've never gotten around to doing it and have seldom felt inspired to do it, although I do love music and consider myself a musical person. Maybe I should try it just as a challenge to myself.

[podcath]

You should! (Oh man, am i actually getting people to use music now? :)

I just bet you'd bring in some really fascinating pieces. You just strike me as the weird funky atmospheric music lover who samples things we've never ever heard...

I know you've sung before, so maybe that'd be a nice thing to do on some of your longer things???

[crinklysolution]

Here is what I think of your music post: it is excellent. I liked the way you wrote it, as if you were talking it over, very simple and yet interesting in the telling. I think many people will be able to relate to it. Thank you so much for naming the violin players in those stories by FayJay, pop music for violins! It was particularly good, and particularly memorable. I liked that music so much I spent a while fruitlessly searching for it on ITunes, but finding nothing. I might even buy one of their albums, I liked the juxtaposition so much (just what a modern-day Sherlock would play...)

I like your points about matching the music to the content of the story, and using shorter bits of music. I started with SPN podfic, which has a lot of music, so I had a slightly different take on it in the beginning. Like you, I do find it hard to deal with words over (or under?) music - I just can't focus on the words effectively, there's too much going on. When I think back, I do have some regrets about my use of sounds or music in my podfic, but I also have points where I thought it contributed and I loved it. I used a lot of music in Crush from the author's soundtrack, and it was fun to mix it. Maybe I shouldn't have used whole songs (the Radiohead was a bit over the top because it was 5-6 minutes inside the podfic itself) but I loved the way music can be used to reinforce a tonal point of the story or indicate the separation of sections, particularly where passage of time is important.

Here's another use of music in podfic that I don't think you mentioned: when the story calls for singing (even one of the characters singing) and you don't want to subject your listener to your singing voice. Some people can actually sing and it is effective, but most of the time....awkward!

[podcath]

Re Vitamin String Quartet, you should be set now :) And yes, i'm totally enthralled with them (just like the Cello dudes...btw, have you seen Lim's latest Sherlock vid? If not you must: http://sherlock-flashfic.dreamwidth.org/4500.html)

Re crush...I think that was one where it didn't fully work for me. I think part of it may have been the whole songs though. But I did love the way it became almost radio play like in certain places (I remember one where the radio was playing a song and then you filtered in that song)

Passage of time is what i think I didn't fully talk about but what i think is part of the issue in the vignette type stories. There's a jump in time that a slightly longer break doesn't fully indicate. And yes, the tone thing is what has me really going. I think one of the reasons that familiar songs often don't work as well is that we have too much personal associations for it to set the "right" tone...

Oh yes, the diegetic music. oh man. I had one in an early SV and I just ended up reading the lyrics. It seemed wrong to use another voice (I'd thought about making my son sing :) and I wasn't about to butcher the national anthem!!! Some people (Luzula?) are doing a gorgeous job, but in general, I fear I'd get thrown out if a professional song were filtered in (I think i hear music as DIFFERENT which makes it great for beginning, ending, breaks but less so when it's supposed to blend...maybe that was the Crush issue for me?)

[ailelie]

I'm not one who listens to podfics, but I do listen to origfic podcasts quite a bit. Music, I've learned, helps set the mood. Also, when a story spans several chapters, the opening music can be a cue to get ready for story. I smile whenever I hear the opening music for Salmon and Dusk b/c I know good stories will follow. The author of S&D did another podcast novel that used music much more heavily. While I didn't like that novel as much, the music always worked for and with it.

Honestly, coming from podiobooks that integrate music and occasionally sound effects and other voices to varying degrees of success, a podfic that was just voice would probably sound unfinished to me, unless the reader was really, really good.

(Note, I've never listened to an audiobook so I'm not sure how they differ from podcast novels and podfics).

[ailelie]

http://www.podiobooks.com/ <--what I mean by podcast novels, btw

[podcath]

Interesting.

So...what is the difference between podio and audiobooks? Is the recording amateur? Are the pieces that are being read unpiblished writing? Does it think of itself more like a radio show with short segments?

I've seen novels recorded and released parts a t a time, but I had'nt seen the term podiobook...

Here from metafandom

[yourlibrarian]

do we need another vid/podfic in SPN that uses "Carry On My Wayward Son"?

Given that it's now the theme for the anime series, I think "done to death" is appropriate.

I'm agnostic on the issue of music in podfic -- I've listened almost exclusively to SPN podfic and I think about 60% have used music. Of course, music used to be pretty important to the series as well so I can see more of an argument for using it there. I'd say QaF is similar in that respect. I don't actually remember the specific song use you reference but I think that songs can be used in different places at different times. Although I haven't read the story it sounds like the general idea isn't so different since Brian's suicidal feelings are part of the theme. What's more the whole story seems to be about how a change of perspective can make the same scene look different -- not unlike what one could do with the song.

Re: Here from metafandom

[podcath]

I do think that the major role music plays in certain shows makes it easier to find good matches. Otoh, I've always been slightly wary of Dean's music choices that strike me as more appropriate for someone 10 years his senior...oh, like, let's say Kripke?...than someone born in the late 70s.

Or maybe it's the discrepancy between the mood of many stories that doesn't wholly fit the tone of the show that makes the songs sometimes not work all that well for me?

and you're totally right about change of perspective and different contexts. I decided to keep the song and when listening to it again, I felt it did work for me (and hopefully will for other listeners!)

[busaikko]

I'm torn, I really am, because I love music and I love podfic, but.... Can I say I'm wary based on personal experiences?

For me, the perfect use of music in a podfic is like the scene-breaks in The Summer House Trilogy, which uses snips of the themes for Eureka and Stargate. That is, short bits of music (under 20 seconds), at the same recording level, and bearable even for people who are not fans of that kind of music.

But I've got podfics which start with entire songs, and ones with several minutes of disco music stuck in, and ones where the music is so loud that I have to rip out my headphones. At this point, the hits are, sadly, fewer than the misses. A trend that drives me nuts is when a story is titled "Free Falling", and the podficcer decides to open with Stevie Nicks covering Tom Petty's song... starting from the beginning; so we hear her sing up to "Free Falling" (fade out) and then "This is a recording of XYZ's Free Falling..." That is, listeners are subjected to:

(22 seconds of strumming) She's a good girl, loves her mama
Loves Jesus and America, too
She's a good girl, crazy 'bout Elvis
Loves horses and her boyfriend too [10 seconds of more twangy guitar]
It's a long day livin' in Reseda
There's a freeway runnin' through the yard
He's a bad boy, 'cause he don't even miss her
He's a bad boy for breakin' her heart [1:17 before we finally, finally get to]
And I'm free, I'm free fallin'

...wow, and I just hijacked my own comment with a minute and a half of music >.< But I don't know what the name of this use of music is, and I find it both very common and very annoying. I would prefer any music longer than 20 seconds to be made its own chapter in a podbook, so it can be skipped or deleted. I listen while riding my bike and can't fast forward easily. (Also, I usually don't enjoy the music used in podfic [if pop or disco or metal; bluegrass is sadly underrepresented in my fandoms], and find it earworms *really* easily.)

[podcath]

I'm sitting here grinning, bc I could have written EVERY line in your comment! i'd love now to have some bluegrass music :) Heck, there has to be some SPN where that'd fit. Or maybe i'll do some True Blood :) [Though I might try to smuggle in some Zydeco there]

But yes, you nailed how and when and why music doesn't always work for me. I don't think i've ever used more than 30-45 sec in the intro, because I know that's when i want to move on...

Also, can I just grin that *you* would use Freefalling as an example? Because I adore what you did with it!!!!!!

[dossier]

I love the music in 'Ghosts', I am so impressed at how well that song compliments the story. That 'Lovers' is in the queue is utterly fantastic.

[podcath]

Thank you! My best friend is a total Sufjan Stevens fan and has pulled me down with her :) I did think the atmospheric quality worked well for the story and the fandom, and i'm glad you felt the same way.

and yes, Lovers will be a while, but i am recording and editing...it's just...so long :) but so worth it!!!

LOL at the icon...