The Problem with Movie Music

I'll admit it: I listen to quite a lot of soundtracks. Having no lyrics, I find that movie soundtracks are great background music for times when I really have to focus on the written word: when imagining new scenes, when drafting those scenes or when revising. They are atmospheric enough to make me feel what I am trying to write without being too distracting.

Most of the time.

But there's a problem with Movie Music. Take one of my favorite tracks in any movie ever, Yoda's Theme:

It's an amazing piece of music. But just try and listen to it without automatically visualizing Yoda. He's using the force, isn't he? He's using the force to lift Luke's fighter-plane-spaceship thingy out of the swamp, isn't he? It can be a huge problem when trying to  imagine new scenes or plot points for a novel or for trying to imagine new stories. It also distracts when attempting to draft those scenes and during revision. The visuals that are undeniably called up when listening to an iconic track can be just as distracting, for me, as lyrics tend to be.

I find that there are two really good ways around this. The first is to listen to soundtracks of movies I've never seen. Philip Glass is usually a pretty good bet:

Unless you've seen the movie "Koyaanisqatsi" I'm guessing that you're like me and you have absolutely no mental pictures attached to that track.

The other way around becoming distracted by movie soundtrack is to have a bad memory. Now, I realize that not everyone can achieve this. I am a little lucky in this respect, in that if I've seen a movie once, I don't remember it. Unless it was completely and utterly mind blowing, I couldn't tell you anything about the characters' names or more importantly the plot points of a movie after having seen it a single time. And so I get to listen to some fun tracks from iconic movie without having any distracting mental activity. Such as:

Yep, I've only seen that movie once. Yes, it was an interesting movie, of the sort that I enjoy most: speculative, makes you think. But I don't really remember the scene that corresponds to that track in any detail. Maybe people were falling? Or am I thinking of the Simpsons send-up of Inception? I have no idea.

So I'm free, because of my own bad memory, to allow the music to help me imagine whatever scene or plot point I like. Or rather, I am free experience whatever my fertile imagination comes up with when I listen to that track. As for Yoda's Theme -- it, for good or bad, will always be Yoda's Theme and nothing else.

Music for Revision

I'm working on some editing and revision bits today and so I thought I'd post up a playlist of the songs I prefer to listen to while undertaking such tasks.

For me, I need to do my revisions and editing with as little distraction as possible. Since the tasks involve heavy amounts of reading one's own work, what I need most is focus. And being a wordy sort, I just can't focus when someone is singing words that I understand or want to understand.

Drafting is a different story. When I am writing a first draft or when I am brainstorming I can let my mind wander as much as I want. I can sit at a desk with music playing of any sort and just let the ideas come. But for revision, I turn to one of three main types of music for concentration: symphonies/classical music, trippy or sparse ambient soundscapes, or movie scores.



You'll notice a lot of those tracks are looooong. That's good for me. The longer, the better. Even a jarring transition from one short song to the next can be distraction enough. But the funniest thing about editing and revision, for me, is that I pretty much always need to have music playing. If I don't, the silence is almost as distracting as having lyric-heavy ditties playing in the background.

What about you? Can you concentrate on editing if you're listening to singing?