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).
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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).