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

[luzula]

I tend to like music in podfics if the music itself is to my taste (and if I feel that it fits with the story and character). Yeah, that's quite subjective and not a criterion that's very useful to anyone else. So in that way it could be considered a bit risky to include music in your podfic--the listeners who don't share your taste in music might be put off.

Talking over music tends to put me off, even if I like the music, since it's harder to hear the voice.

I do remember one podfic where I really enjoyed the way music was used, and that's Endless Moments, by Fayjay. The fic pairs up the Firefly characters with the Endless in Sandman, and a short clip of music is used to separate the sections. I liked the way the reader selected music to fit the various characters, and the length of the clips worked well for me, too.

I like using music in quite a different way in my own recordings. I enjoy singing, and I've recorded fics where a character was singing something, so that the singing was part of the story. I've also done one (Two Birds) where bits of poetry that were taken from an old nursery rhyme separated the sections. I set these to music and sung them. Does anyone know of other podficcers who use singing in their podfics?

[niko]

One of the reasons I chose the story I'm working on right now was that I *really* wanted to do the singing in it. :) It's only a few lines in the first and last scenes, but it's supposed to be really obnoxious and over-exuberant and not very good. Gave me a chance to ham it up a bit, and it didn't matter if I sounded horrible. :)

[luzula]

Well, it sounds fun to sing in character, and deliberately overdo the singing. I've thought of doing a fic like that, too.

[valiha]

Presuming you're talking about what I think you're talking about, you have no idea how much I'm looking forward for you to finish this! :flails:

[darkemeralds]

No, but I'm currently listening to Alan Rickman reading Hardy's The Return of the Native, and he sings a stanza or two of a folk song that appears in the narrative. He sings it in character. In the regional dialect.

With a standard like that before me, I wouldn't dare! I think I'd risk singing a line or two if I were podficcing a story in which, say, Dean sings some Led Zeppelin, but I have to take my hat off to you for actually setting something to your own music and singing it. Very impressive.

[luzula]

Setting things to music is actually my earliest way of being fannish--I read LotR as a kid, and made up melodies for all the songs.

Anyway, I'm not aiming for a professional actor's level. And I doubt I could do regional dialect anyway, since English isn't my native language. I just enjoy singing.

And hey, I'm glad you liked Two Birds. Thanks!

[darkemeralds]

Oooh, I just downloaded your "Two Birds". You have a LOVELY voice! Wow, no wonder you're willing to sing in your podfic.

[zvi]

Yeah, this is the other problem I have with a lot of music in podfic. Personally, I'm very forgiving if the song is serving a story purpose, even if it's nothing I would listen to on my own. But if someone just slaps a song in because they like it, and I can't figure out how it's supposed to relate to the fic, I am now listening in a v. v. cranky mood.