Diane Patterson has a pretty great post up about discovering that movie-trailer music is actually its own genre and you can buy it and it’s great to write to. She also mentions that she writes to movie and video game scores, which is something I might try, because it sounds like something I would enjoy:
I discovered a while ago I need music when I write. Not just any music, but orchestral music. There must be no singing (or the words must be unintelligible), which makes the background music in most cafes deeply annoying. I started with New agey electronica like Enigma or Andreas Vollenweider, and then moved on to movie scores, which tend to be driving, rhythmic, and stirring. I have written tens of thousands of words to Pirates of the Caribbean. The Killing Fields makes me tear up every time. Mishima. The Mission.Steamboy. And oh my God, Last of the Mohicans — every time I’m listening to Last of the Mohicans and I feel myself getting incredibly emotional and stirred-up by the music, it’s “Massacre/Canoes.” Every. Time.
Then I discovered video game scores. I had no idea that modern video games had such good music: Assassin’s Creed (any of them),Uncharted (any of them), Infamous. Video game scores have a tricky mission in life: they have to be good music that you might hear over and over and over again while you try to solve a certain puzzle, so that you feel energized but won’t want to stab someone the thirty-second time you’ve heard the same clip.
I used to listen to Enigma and Andreas Vollenweider a lot.
I wrote pretty much every paper my senior year to the Amelie soundtrack.
Have you see The Artist yet? First go see it, then come home and download the soundtrack, then GET TO WORK.
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@B: I dunno, is it really, really, REALLY that good? Because these days a movie costs about $30 more than it used to, when you figure in three hours of babysitting. [Bursts into tears]
It’s really that good, but you can definitely wait to watch it on a larger-than-average television.