If music be the food of love, play on

[zvi]

What should music do for a podfic?

I have to admit, most of the time when a podfic has music, I find it really annoying. However, there have been some cases when it was more effective than annoying, and I have tried to tease out what the differences were.

1) The music was used to structure the podfic listening experience. In Written by the Victors, for instance, music helps mark the transition between the Earth-based documentary sections and the third person narrative Atlantis sections.

2) The music was related to the fanfic. In pandarus' reading of Old Country, which is a Harry Potter/Supernatur crossover from Dean's POV, she uses wrock snippets to break up the sections. (Wrock or wizard rock is electric Harry Potter filk. Dean is a classic rock afficionado.) And, the wrock songs relate to the story sections. House of Awesome prefaces the section where Sam and Dean get sorted, and also relates to the fic's overall theme that Sam and Dean don't exactly fit into the normal wizard world's structures.

3) The music is brief. I always forget, but the musical interlude which opens Old Country makes me unhappy, because it's 1:57 seconds, which is at least 1 minute too long. The interlude which opens section two is 35 seconds, and it is perfect, just enough time to set up the story, not so long that I start feeling like maybe I should switch to my favorite radio station, instead of this one that I have landed on randomly. (And in this particular instance, I actually like In Your Shadow, which is what the too long snippet comes from. I don't have an example of a too long music section with music I dislike, because I've deleted any such podfics.)

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How do you like music in podfic? When does it work for you and when does it make you want to put in your own mixtape instead? Are there any readers who are getting the balance right, or anyone who gets it really, really wrong? Can someone who likes having entire songs included in podfic, either as a reader or listener, talk about what they like about it?

Comments

[dodificus]

Disclaimer: I've used music in at least two of my podfics, both times the music came from an associated fic soundtrack. So, I guess first I'll talk about how I use music (when I do use it) and how I feel about music in podfic in general

So, considering the ratio of podfics that I *have* used music in is very low, it's obvious that it's not something I do all the time. I don't like to add music for the sake of it, it has to have some kind of resonance with the story, it has to add something. The two stories that I used music in were Knuckles of Skinnybone Tree by hansbekhart and Rave Atlantis by smittywing.

To me, I didn't even consider recording Rave Atlantis without including the soundtrack, the structure and content of the story is so bound to the music. And KoKBT had such a profound effect on me when I first read it, I wanted so much to try to re-create that atmosphere and eeriness in my podfic. Hence the soundtrack and a few other sound effects scattered through out. And, for me at least, I think I was successful.

As a listener I'm not a fan of including entire songs, I think the song should set up the mood, make you anticipatory for the story and then nicely segue into the reading. Sometimes the music gets you to that point of anticipation and then just keeps going and you just get bored (and I'm not saying I haven't been guilty of that, it's a fine line) and irritated.

And of course it helps if it's edited in smoothly, with no jarring stop/starts or sound jumps:)

So, basically I enjoy music in podfics as long as it does something for the story and doesn't *detract* from the experience by making the narrative hard to hear. I'm quite happy with a little musical sting at the beginning to set the tone and engage me. Just. Some people have really bad taste in music:)

[zvi]

I've dl'd KoSKBT but never quite gotten around to listening; SPN is not my thing. I somehow missed that you'd done Rave Atlantis. I'll check it out.

Question: if it's just a sting, five or ten seconds, how much does the music actually matter? Like, 35 seconds, yeah, if it's something that's bad, I would care, but can five seconds of not actually painful sound really detract from our enjoyment?

[dodificus]

Like, 35 seconds, yeah, if it's something that's bad, I would care, but can five seconds of not actually painful sound really detract from our enjoyment?

The sting rarely, if ever bothers me, it's not around long enough to. But it can sometimes leave me wondering why the reader chose that particular piece of music.

Rave Atlantis was aaaages ago but from what I remember the music is between every section and goes for much longer than I imagine you would be comfortable with.