Oooooh, great panel!

Hmm, well, the husband and I collect movie scores. We own, I think, somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 by now, though I haven't counted in awhile. (Last time I did it was about 430 a couple of years back.)

My iPod is made up almost exclusively of scores, and yes, they are what I listen to when I write. I absolutely pick certain tracks or albums to set tone for scenes, and if I'm not in a "writing mood", often when I start playing, say, Bryan Tyler's Timeline or Children of Dune, or all of Bear McCreary's Battlestar scores on shuffle, I almost immediately slip into the mood to write. The music lets me block out other distractions, and helps me immerse in the world I'm creating.

Right now, I'm hooked on the soundtrack for Cabaret. It has a little of everything - up-tempo, slow, and fun.

About the only music I can listen to while I'm writing is movie soundtracks. I like John Williams' work because he has a knack for summing up a character or a mood with just a few notes -- the infamous Jaws "dah dum" that gives you an instant mental image of an approaching shark, the Indiana Jones theme that conjures a sense of adventure, the majesty of the Star Wars overture, the sense of magic and childlike wonder of "Hedwig's Theme" from the Harry Potter movies.

The soundtrack for season one of Battlestar Galactica got me through a book because it had a trance-like effect on me when I was having trouble blocking out the real world (though now when I hear those opening notes of the prologue, my brain says "time to work!"). I also used the soundtrack for the fifth Harry Potter movie as my background music for a book, so that now seeing the images of the movie with that music feels wrong, as I'm more familiar with putting the images from my book to it.

I do create "soundtracks" for books, almost as a way of doing a musical collage. Something about sifting through my music and looking for songs that spark an idea or remind me of a character, setting, scene or mood helps get my brain focused on the story and helps in the brainstorming process. I don't listen to this soundtrack while I'm writing, but I listen to it in the car or when I'm preparing to write as a way of keeping my mind in the book or getting in the mood. I'll play particular songs that make me think of a certain scene before I write it.

For actual movie soundtracks: The Matrix/Reloaded (especially Navras, with Juno Reactor), most things by John Williams (Duel of the Fates particularly) and Labyrinth (love Bowie!) are my favorites. I don't listen to too many soundtrack songs, though.

I listen to music while I write. I go nuts if there's no music on. I have a massive 19.5 hour playlist I keep on random. However, I do have littler playlists to set certain moods, like for fight scenes, tension scenes, scary scenes, etc.

I make book soundtracks when I write. I'm working on right now for my WIP, songs with lyrics that match the characters' attitudes, moods, specific scenes, anything.

I love movie soundtracks! For some reason, three of my favorites are soundtracks where I love the music, but wasn't all that impressed with the movie, or downright hated it: The Crow 2: City of Angels, Escape from L.A., and Dracula 2000.

I am big on movie soundtracks. My ipod, like rhienelleth, is almost exclusively full of movie soundtracks. I really like Hans Zimmer's stuff (Gladiator, Pirates of the Caribbean), as well as John Williams'. John Williams has pretty much written the soundtracks for the most popular movies of all time... and his soundtracks have also been the most memorable. Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Harry Potter... most of his work is in my itunes library. :)

Another random favourite is the soundtrack to the movie Ever After, composed by George fenton.

One of my favorite subjects. I've blogged about writing music a lot. Soundtracks are wonderful for writing and I always pay attention to them in movies--sometimes more than the movie itself. I have a pretty big post on sexy,bleak and moody instrumental music here. http://relliott4.wordpress.com/2006/04/06/the-write-mood/

Off the top of my head for soundtracks, I like Graeme Revell who did The Crow, Aeon Flux and quite a few others. Also like Phillip Glass, Hans Zimmer.

This is in my post, but I love sharing this find. :) Edgen Animations. Game and movie music. If you go to his site and click on sort by genre, you can pick creepy, uplifting, action adventure, etc. He sorts by mood. If you have time to explore, there's some excellent music. http://edgen.com/music/news.html

Music is a VERY big part of my writing. If I don't have the right playlist set up, it can ruin an evening of trying to work.

I have bits of several soundtracks, Conan the Barbarian, The Matrix, tons and tons from video games and anime. The only soundtrack CDs I've actually purchased are mostly anime. Neon Genesis Evangelion, End of Evangelion, the Ruroni Kenshin OAV, Kodomo no Omocha (Child's Toy), and several CDs from Macross Plus. The only two American-made movie soundtracks I own are Escape from LA (both the soundtrack and the score CD, which has all the great pseudo-western pieces), and I special ordered the Bubba Ho-Tep sound track.

WOW! This is awesome to discover like minds! And you guys/gals are mentioning some I'd forgotten! Like Conan!!!! I LOVE the first Conan score 'The Riddle of Steel' ...had forgotten that one. Thanks for the links, too, I will definitely check those out. And mentioning that some scores are better than the movies, I think of The Phantom. I never could really get into the idea of a guy in the jungle riding a horse and wearing a purple costume, but the score was excellent! Geeze, I'd like to just run through a 500+ score collection...I've only got maybe 100.

Wow, my post is two years old and needs updating. But Conan keeps coming up, so I wanted to see if anyone has heard Knut Avenstroup Haugen's Age of Conan? It's game music again, but wow.
You can listen to clips on Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/Conan-Age-Hyborian-Adventures/dp/B001A7IV8K

heh I was talking about my own double wow in one post--not anyone else's wows. I have a bad cold. It's making me stupid. ;)

Morricone's scores (The Good, the Bad & The Ugly, Once Upon A Time in America) are the best scores ever written for a film in my opinion.

I always soundtrack fake films of my books in my head! I know, crawl before you walk (i.e. publish before you score films of your books) but its just so much fun. I rarely listen to movie soundtracks when I write, as I always, always associate them with the film if the music was written specifically for it. I usually go for whole CDs that fit the tone of the book I'm working on, and rotate between two. Currently I think I'm going to go with Felt Mountain by Goldfrapp and perhaps a little LCD Soundsystem for the piece I'm working on. It is, in fact, science fiction oddly enough.

I've been bouncing back and forth from Vangelis' Bladerunner and Tangerine Dream's Sorcerer. TD's soundtrack is very brooding and makes for great background noise. It's a must for me because I can get too swept away in a song I enjoy.

My very favorite movie score is from Last of the Mohicans. It's both epic and intimate, so it hits all the right emotional pitches. I also really like the score from the Keira Knightley Pride and Prejudice, and a lot of Murray Gold's stuff (he is the composer for Doctor Who, but I think the stuff he did for the BBC Casanova miniseries is my favorite work of his).

ETA: Ooh, can't believe I forgot Gustavo Santaolalla's score from Brokeback Mountain. Beautiful stuff.

Edited at 2008-09-19 11:52 pm (UTC)

I did a guest blog at Magical Musings about a year ago on this very topic. Here's the Top Ten list I gave, with my lengthy commentary edited out:

1. Lord of the Rings trilogy
2. House of Flying Daggers/Hero/Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (3 different movies, but I used to play them back-to-back every day when I was writing VOICE OF CROW)
3. Run Lola Run
4. The Matrix
5. The Crow
6. Babylon 5
7. Twin Peaks’ Fire Walk With Me
8. Peter Gabriel’s Passion, the soundtrack for The Last Temptation of Christ
9. The Passion of the Christ
10. Garden State (in the original post the #10 spot belonged to 500 Nations, but I've gotten kinda bored with most of that)

In the last year I've added the soundtracks to the movie 300 and the soundtrack to HBO's ROME. 300 in particular works well for any kind of exciting writing, not just fantasy.

Ever since "Gladiator" came out I have written to soundtracks. OMG, that is my favorite soundtrack ever, and Hans Zimmer is my favorite composer, too. He just blows me away. I can't imagine the talent it takes to be a composer.

Most of the time I listen to action/adventure/fantasy/etc. soundtracks when I'm writing paranormal. Of course The Gladiator and the "More music from the Gladiator" albums. All of the Pirates of the Caribbean soundtracks; all of the LOTR; The Mummy movies; The 13th Warrior; The Mists of Avalon; Van Helsing; Batman the Beginning (haven't checked out the 2nd one yet; X-Men The Last Stand; Braveheart; Last of the Mohicans; etc. etc.

When I write contemp. suspense, I listen to soundtracks like all 3 Bourne movies; first two seasons of Alias soundtracks; The Kingdom; Vantage Point; 24; and others.

I'm listening to LOTR: The Fellowship of the Ring right now.

:o)

Ditto on John Williams, love his work on Mask of Zorro especially. But all-time favorite movie OST is William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.

When I write, I often listen to action/adventure soundtracks like The Fifth Element or create my own soundtracks via iTunes playlists.

I've been listening to soundtracks since I was a little kid, and really, they make up probably about 80% of the music I listen to. It feels like my life has a plot, when I listen to soundtracks as I'm doing things, or wandering around town.

My all-time favourite is Last of the Mohicans (by Trevor Jones and Randy Edelman), but some of my favourite composers are:

Hanz Zimmer
Thomas Newman
Klaus Badelt
Yann Tiersen
John Williams
Rachel Portman

Edited at 2008-09-20 04:59 am (UTC)

I am so happy to see so many people chiming in! Thank you! I feel soooo much better about this panel I'm going to be on since I know I'm sooo far from being alone on the subject! YAY!

Last of the Mohican's is a favorite in my shuffle, as well as the LOTR trilogy, First Knight(a lot of majesty), King Arthur (Celtic moodiness); the Mummy Returns; Last Samurai--in one Zimmer uses the Japanese hi-ya's during a work out like an instrument to emphasize a song; Mission Impossible 2--Zimmer uses a Flamenco dancer as the drums for a song (he is sooo cool in that he doesn't always use instruments as music--I love that thinking outside the box stuff) and on MI2, 'INJECTION' is the moodiest love-unattainable-but-promises-nonetheless song ever. I can daydream to that over and over.

I'm going to have to check out Tangerine Dream...and I like Mask of Zorro too, but I kept getting irritated because the trailer had this awesome piece that wasn't there...It's Hans Zimmer's(no surprise), from Drop Zone, called 'Too Many Notes-Not Enough Rests' and it's only this tiny little AWESOME tidbit in the middle, the rest is jazzy. OH, and has anyone hit on E.S. Posthumous? Their stuff was used in the Spiderman trailers. And there's this techno-industrial band called Flesh Field that I love, their stuff is used in some video games, but I can't listen to it when I write because if there are words, I sing instead of write and I get nothing done. :-)

That's so funny Gladiator keeps coming up. That was the first thing that popped into my mind. Doesn't hurt that hunky Russell is on the inside flap :)

Bram Stoker's Dracula soundtrack is good for mood, but there are some parts that are so creepy I find myself popping out of storyworld to fastforward. I can't do anything with words either, so even though I love Phantom of the Opera it's not on when I'm writing.

I can't wait to go check out some of these suggestions. Thanks for the great post.

Yup - I use music extensively. Most of the major projects get a soundtrack kludged together from my CD collection.

As far as movie music, I have a few I find particularly good. Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron figures prominently in my Gabby music. Blue Man Group's The Complex works nicely in places. I love the themes from The Black Hole, Back to the Future, Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia. And I catch myself constantly whistling tracks from Michael W. Smith's "Freedom" . . . movie music without the baggage of a story already attached.