Music in Prose

[X Equestris]

Here’s something I’ve wrestled with more than once: what are the most effective ways to describe music in prose?

When it’s a minor detail in a scene, it’s easy enough to throw in a few appropriate adjectives. But how about when the narrative focus is on the music? Or the music drives the plot? A handful of adjectives will fall flat. As C.S. Lewis said:

Don’t use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you are describing. I mean, instead of telling us a thing was “terrible,” describe it so that we’ll be terrified. Don’t say it was “delightful”; make us say “delightful” when we’ve read the description.

But what techniques can evoke the feel and flow of music in a soundless medium?

Last year, I wrote a dark fantasy story inspired by the Pied Piper. Naturally, music played a pretty big role. The villain protagonist is a minstrel, and instrumental music drives the climactic scene. I’m not sure I’ve ever tackled a more difficult one. In the end, I decided to use flashes of lore the music was written to evoke in-universe to do the same for the reader and wove in some musical terms to create a sense of its movements, but I doubt this would’ve worked if the POV character wasn’t also the musician.

If you’ve ever featured music at length in your prose fiction, what worked? What didn’t? Any examples from fiction that come to mind, good or bad? Since my current project features sirens, I’m very curious to hear what other folks think.

 

[THUNDAIR]

I wrote this a while ago. Maybe some would find it interesting.

Prose inspired by music
When you hear Beethoven’s Fifth, you know that something big is being proclaimed, and the melody that follows gives us a chance to contemplate the enormity of it. Another great opening is John Williams' foreshadowing, a signal of an impending doom, in the movie ‘Jaws.’ And you can’t help but be consumed by the somber air of ‘Nights in White Satin,’ setting a tone.
If we could give our prose, the feeling like these musical works possess 0, a feeling that seeps into our souls, we would find our work being read and quoted to others as something moving. Words that would have readers going back to them again and again. Some would say that only poetry falls into the category of reading something over and over. But that begs the question: why can’t our short stories be as interesting as a poem or a musical piece?
One might say music has an advantage with all the instruments, which brings a feeling that a reader cannot conjure. Still, without musical instruments, people will quote songs, like “I've been in the right place, but it must have been the wrong time” by Doctor John, and I’m sure there are many more we could remember.
Music is more objective in its structure. Requiring a resolution for some changes where you may need a step or half step to get to your new chord. This is what an author would call a transition. So if music can’t ignore them, why would an author? That is how we get comments like, “it’s a little blocky.” But should that be acceptable?
Timing is another objective that music lives by. Our brains will awake to a surprise, which springs from a moderate verbiage. It wouldn’t be a pleasant surprise if it came on strong and never subsided.
Timing also drives the rhythm, and if you like the rhythm of a song, your prose could have that, which the writer would refer to as pace. Changing the pace adds flavor, intensity, and angst to a piece, but where it changes may require a marker or transition. Music will sometimes use a bridge or a turnaround to make the change. I think back to Leonard Cohen when he sang about the minor fall and a major lift in 'Hallelujah.' When you turn your ear to a chord change from major to minor, your thought may be; that was interesting, and I like it.
Music will often let the intensity subside to allow a recovery of sorts. I think of the Hu playing, Wolf Totem and how the break is used to reflect on the intensity of the lyrics, just as a writer would moderate the passion in their verbiage, allowing the reader time to reflect. Whether it is foreshadowing, announcing, or setting the tone. Music can inspire your prose.

 

[Night Herald]

I use a fair amount of music in my writing, most prominently with the character of Erich Zann in Yggdrasilium. I'm not sure if what I did worked a hundred percent or not, I just tried my best to capture the atmosphere and the effects it has on its player—this is special, darkly magical spooky music, don't you know.

Before long, the weird, mournful melodies he composed on a whim drew a small crowd. This was music of a kind never heard in Nexus before the advent of Erich's arrival. That is quite the feat in a city of billions drawn from tens of thousands of worlds, when one considers the sheer variety of musical instruments and traditions; although, in fairness, that which Erich played was not really music at all, but rather music's capricious third cousin twice removed. If one is to call it music, it should only be for ease of reference.
Unique though it was, that isn't to say it was any good. Few listeners stayed once the novelty wore off. Erich did not particularly care. He did not play for them, or even really for the scant coins they tossed into his case. He played because the music was his opium: the wellspring of his sorrows, and the one thing that relieved them.

He removed his viol from its coffin and began moving the bow across it, restrainedly at first, as though easing the instrument awake. He gradually increased the tempo, and wove in more and more vibratos and discordances. Soon he was playing with complete abandon, swaying, sweating, his bow sawing and whipping at the strings, his hand crawling up and down the viol's neck like a spider having a seizure.

Faster and faster the music poured from his aching hands, ever angrier and increasingly obscene. He had never played so recklessly before. Not even in his darkest moods had he plucked these unholy notes from his instrument. Sweat soaked his undershirt. The muscles in his arms burned. His joints hurt worst of all. And still, Erich could not stop playing.

Yeah, I dunno. That's the best I think I was gonna be able to do with that. I can hear it, and if it spawns anything remotely comparable in the reader's mind that's good enough for me. The main thing to get across is that it is "sour, squeaky" and "not really music as commonly thought of".

 

[Homer Potvin]

Here’s something I’ve wrestled with more than once: what are the most effective ways to describe music in prose?

My guitar teacher uses a three axis graph to describe music. I think he made it up--and I doubt there's an actual physical graph--but his three elements are:

Rhythm: which could include fast or slow, staccato or legato, chaotic or leisurely, etc

Harmony: the notes themselves, happy or sad, smooth or funky, nice or mean, etc

Dynamics: how the song presents itself, loud or soft, clean or dirty, etc

There's some overlap in there probably, but you get the idea. Sometimes it's easier to describe music in how it makes you feel or how it is being perceived as if were something non-musical.

 

[Also]

I DM'ed you a link to a few of my performance-heavy chapters.

 

[X Equestris]

Yeah, I dunno. That's the best I think I was gonna be able to do with that. I can hear it, and if it spawns anything remotely comparable in the reader's mind that's good enough for me. The main thing to get across is that it is "sour, squeaky" and "not really music as commonly thought of".

I can’t speak for anyone else, but the sort of eldritch/unnatural feel certainly comes across there.

Also another example of how it seems easier to describe music from the POV of the performer!

Sometimes it's easier to describe music in how it makes you feel or how it is being perceived as if were something non-musical.

Yeah, if there’s anything I’m learning as I chip away at a musical passage in my current story, it’s this. The main character isn’t at all musically inclined, so representing the siren song through the memories and emotions it conjures seems like my best option.

 

[Homer Potvin]

I can’t speak for anyone else, but the sort of eldritch/unnatural feel certainly comes across there.

Also another example of how it seems easier to describe music from the POV of the performer!

Yeah, if there’s anything I’m learning as I chip away at a musical passage in my current story, it’s this. The main character isn’t at all musically inclined, so representing the siren song through the memories and emotions it conjures seems like my best option.

Sound itself can have a physical description too. Like, I describe the sound of my overdriven, hollow body neck-pickup through a Marshall jazz tone as being thick enough to wipe from your skin like sweat. Or some personification, like describing a screaming metal tone as a pig in heat. Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here sounds like an AM radio at the bottom of a well, which is probably my favorite description.

 

[big soft moose]

Powder by Kevin Sampson, which is about the rise and fall of a indie rock band gives a lot of great examples of how to describe music

 

[big soft moose]

Sound itself can have a physical description too. Like, I describe the sound of my overdriven, hollow body neck-pickup through a Marshall jazz tone as being thick enough to wipe from your skin like sweat. Or some personification, like describing a screaming metal tone as a pig in heat. Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here sounds like an AM radio at the bottom of a well, which is probably my favorite description.

things ive said about music in my books (not a definitive list)

From Darkest Storm " it was the worst type of metal, where the singer screams profanities over a backing track of a chimpanzee mutilating a guitar"

Also from Darkest Storm "Aldo sang along with the radio as tuneful as a coyote fucking, 'had a brother at Sagin, fighting off the taliban, they're still there he's all gawn'

From Border Crossing "I could feel the throb of the bass notes trying to separate the flesh from my bones"

From Thieftaker "some wannabe axeman was murdering 'Welcome to the Jungle' but by the sound of it Slash and Duff were fighting back"

From Lightfighter "Blew shook his head dredlocks swishing, ' the motherfucka not only forgot about Dre but he never been knowin' him in the first place'"

 

[Rzero]

Sorry for the long post, but y'all don't have to read all the excerpts unless you really want to.

Music is a common element in my books. I think musical taste can be a very telling character trait, so I'm constantly mentioning what they're listening to. Or sometimes characters will discuss music briefly in a scene, connecting or conflicting in interesting ways. Music is also an effective sensory detail to add to a scene and can help create atmosphere if you capture the feel of what's playing.

In Reset, my MC has amnesia. (I'm not a cliche. Shut up.) Discovery is a major theme in the book. There are many first-person descriptions of her "first time" experiences with music, food, sex, etc. From the beginning, she connects deeply with music, and I had to write a lot of her impressions of music that many readers will be familiar with but she doesn't remember. As obvious as it seems, what I did, and you can do this, too, is listen to the song. If you're not using songs that exist, you can find music that sounds the way you want yours to and simply express your feelings about it filtered through your character. I like to use a combination of technical info and emotional perceptions, so the reader knows both what it sounds like and how it feels.

I don't know if any of these will help, but here are a few from Reset:

I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning by Bright Eyes played while we ate. Leia said it was one of my favorites, and I understood why immediately. Something about the simple structure and untrained but controlled vocals created a sense of natural beauty. A minute in, I was in love. It evoked emotions similar to the ones I was already grappling with over Jason. I felt as naturally taken with him as I was with the music, and I had to wonder: were these new sensations forming, or were they residual emotions from before the memory wipe?

She said it was time for me to hear something special. Her picks so far had been amazing. I couldn’t imagine what she meant. I placed the record she suggested on the pad, engaged the soundbox and heard The Beatles for the very first time.

The wooden bell attached to the heavily modified gramophone was purely for show. The tracks were read by laser, interpreted by means I couldn’t begin to understand and transmitted to the same speakers Leia used to communicate. What I heard from those speakers was something grander than the sum of its notes and profound beyond the meaning of the lyrics. By the second track, Rubber Soul was my new favorite album, and when "Michelle" played, I practically wept.

All she had was a wine suggestion and a record by Billie Holiday. The wine was a Malbec, and I drank it faster than I intended. The record was Lady Sings the Blues. The first track defined what constitutes “the blues,” and from this, I thought the album would be the antithesis of comforting. I was wrong. There was pain in her voice, and certainly in her lyrics, but I was uplifted all the same. She sang of spurn and heartache in a way that offered cleansing catharsis. Her vocals expressed hope in the midst of hopelessness, a sentiment akin to the mixed feelings I was having about almost everything in my world today.

A particularly pleasurable tune was playing throughout the house. It was like nothing I’d heard so far. There was a strange effect imposed on the female singers’ voices, something pinched and brassy but beautiful. The instrumentation was simultaneously muted and amplified in a melodic cacophony. It was complex, to be sure, but somehow it added up to something simple and accessible. “Be my baby,” implored the lead, and I was instantly and inexplicably compelled to bob my head.

As I danced my way to the closet...

Our dinner selection was a soul record, and I must say, soul is awesome. It was titled similarly to the Billie Holiday album, so I expected there to be more overlap in style, but Nina Simone Sings the Blues could not have been more different. It was slow and driving and sexy. I loved it. The instruments begged and moaned, while Nina’s vocals commanded with amorous authority, and her lyrics demanded respect.

And if anyone's still with me after all of that, here are two from Curios in a slightly different vein:

Cody waited patiently as the 8-track in the van engaged. Robert Plant’s reverberating voice belted out the first line of “Black Dog” followed immediately by Page, Bonham and Jones tearing through a killer riff in alternating 4/4 and 7/8 signatures.

Toni, Cody and Brett all smiled at each other. For the better part of a year now, Led Zeppelin’s second eponymous release, commonly referred to as Led Zeppelin IV, AKA Zoso, had been a group favorite.

Brett heard the whispers in his head. “Play,” they told him. “Write,” they told him. He took his antique pick and his Gibson ES-330 hollow body electric and sat down to compose a blues song. He spent some time picking out a Hendrix-like riff with a classic Muddy Waters aesthetic and slowly constructed a twelve-bar blues structure to house it. He scribbled notes on a pad as he conjured possibly the smartest dark and gritty blues accompaniment ever penned.

Next came the lyrics. He followed the traditional AAB pattern, repeating the first line and rhyming the third. The words flowed from a source Brett couldn’t identify. It felt as though he was remembering rather than writing.

There’s a hard-hearted woman with her hair fire-red
There’s a hard-hearted woman with her hair fire-red
She took me home, let me lie in her bed

Saw that red-haired woman dancin’ with the sheriff’s man
Saw that red-haired woman dancin’ with the sheriff’s man
She tossed me aside, I’m just a lowly music man

I bought me a pistol, and I shot the deputy down
I bought me a pistol, and I shot the deputy down
Over that mean, cheatin’ woman runnin’ all over town

Lawman charmed my woman, and I almost died
Lawman charmed my woman, and I almost died
I burned down that trailer with my woman inside

 

[Homer Potvin]

"...alternating 4/4 and 7/8 signatures."

Did you mean "The Ocean," which is 15/16 but sometimes staffed as 4/4 alternated with 7/8? "Black Dog," is closer to a 5/4 for an extra measure... 29/28 if you were to math it all the way out. It has an extra beat, not a missing one like The Ocean. Page plays ahead of Bonham than loops back before the verse restarts, so some say it isn't an altered signature at all. Get a bunch of music teachers together and they will argue about this like italics for thought.

And I can't seem to quote a quote, but somewhere up there, "Malbec" is varietal and never capitalized unless it's part of a proper name.

Sorry, but you can't get wine or time signatures past this goalie.

 

[Rzero]

"...alternating 4/4 and 7/8 signatures."

Did you mean "The Ocean," which is 15/16 but sometimes staffed as 4/4 alternated with 7/8? "Black Dog," is closer to a 5/4 for an extra measure... 29/28 if you were to math it all the way out. It has an extra beat, not a missing one like The Ocean. Page plays ahead of Bonham than loops back before the verse restarts, so some say it isn't an altered signature at all. Get a bunch of music teachers together and they will argue about this like italics for thought.

And I can't seem to quote a quote, but somewhere up there, "Malbec" is varietal and never capitalized unless it's part of a proper name.

Sorry, but you can't get wine or time signatures past this goalie.

Well, now you made me go back and count. I always thought it was 4/4, 7/8 like "The Ocean," but it's not. In the beginning, the pairs of Plant measures are in 4/4, and I'm counting 14 beats between from Page, but it's really hard to judge the beginning and end of the riff, because the downbeats are so eratic. So I went to Google, and there seems to be some disagreement about the instrumental sections in the beginning being either 5/4, alternating 5/4, 2/4 and even 5.4/4. I'm still not sure which of those is true, but I'm leaning 5/4 with inexplicable downbeats. I do see what's going on now, though. Bonham remains in 4/4 the whole time. (I know you just said that, but I never noticed before.) And Page's beats don't resolve at the end of Bonham's measures. Later in the song, they resolve every 20 beats on the guitar and 16 on the drums with what's called 5 over 4, similar to the way triplets resolve in 4/4. I counted, and the 20 to 16 thing seems right. In the beginning, however, they don't resolve before Plant's measures start. He's playing more than the 14 beats I was counting, but they spill over. So I guess I'll be altering that little tidbit.

And thanks for the malbec catch. I may have let Word's spellcheck "correct" that without thinking about it. It wants to capitalize all wines. Please let me know if this is wrong, but I've been following the rule that regions (like Bordeaux) are capitalized; grapes (like pinot) are not. That's the way I learned it.

 

[Homer Potvin]

Well, now you made me go back and count. I always thought it was 4/4, 7/8 like "The Ocean," but it's not. In the beginning, the pairs of Plant measures are in 4/4, and I'm counting 14 beats between from Page, but it's really hard to judge the beginning and end of the riff, because the downbeats are so eratic. So I went to Google, and there seems to be some disagreement about the instrumental sections in the beginning being either 5/4, alternating 5/4, 2/4 and even 5.4/4. I'm still not sure which of those is true, but I'm leaning 5/4 with inexplicable downbeats. I do see what's going on now, though. Bonham remains in 4/4 the whole time. (I know you just said that, but I never noticed before.) And Page's beats don't resolve at the end of Bonham's measures. Later in the song, they resolve every 20 beats on the guitar and 16 on the drums with what's called 5 over 4, similar to the way triplets resolve in 4/4. I counted, and the 20 to 16 thing seems right. In the beginning, however, they don't resolve before Plant's measures start. He's playing more than the 14 beats I was counting, but they spill over. So I guess I'll be altering that little tidbit.

And thanks for the malbec catch. I may have let Word's spellcheck "correct" that without thinking about it. It wants to capitalize all wines. Please let me know if this is wrong, but I've been following the rule that regions (like Bordeaux) are capitalized; grapes (like pinot) are not. That's the way I learned it.

The riff migrates ahead of the downbeat and then catches up, I guess? My guitar teacher spent an hour showing me how to tap my foot when I play it. It's based on this video, I think... I never actually watched it.

Best part of that song it when you bend the G up to an A while it rings over the rest of the power chord... the distortion will pull the fillings out of your teeth until it resolves.