I was just thinking: I often listen to music when I write, and I know that others do too, so why not bring those two experiences closer together? Here’s my idea:
A set of controls within Scrivener for controlling iTunes playback (back, play/stop, forward, shuffle, the “Up Next” list, if it can be done).
A way — if possible — to have something like the iTunes visualizer as the backdrop in Composition Mode. This might not be particularly practical, but it would make for one heck of a writing environment!
These are just a couple of ideas . . . anybody else got any good ones for integrating music with the writing environment?
Use the mini-player; it will stay front in Composition Mode.
I suspect you’ll have to deal with Apple on this one. Anyway, do you really want all that visual and auditory dissonance while you’re writing? I know, it’s just multi-tasking; still, I try to apply some part of my brain full-time to the words. Mauve and magenta swirls wiggling at the edge of a document would be a severe distraction.
I occasionally play music in the background while writing, but do prefer to minimize visual distractions. And anyway, Jessica and I seem to be quite different people.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say this request is going to be denied as being outside Scrivener’s scope.
For iTunes control on the Mac, I use the Alfred app launcher with the PowerPack features paid for. It’s pretty nice for all sorts of things too. There are lots of little apps specifically made for iTunes control, but Alfred nicely integrates that, an extended paste board, application search and quick access to it’s recent items, and a neat visual scripting interface too.
And below that, a list of more than 400 musical choices. But I dunno, Hugh, what am I to make of a list which includes
James Taylor, but not Leonard Cohen
Saint-Saens, but not Prokofiev
Allison Krauss, but not Gillian Welch
Tchaikovsky, but not Sibelius
Keith Jarrett, but not Errol Garner
Gershwin, but not Ellington
Django Reinhardt, but not Stephane Grappelli
… well, it did have Tom Waits and Yo-Yo Ma.
Ah, Leonard. I saw him on the stage of the O2 a month ago. The man was on stage for three-and-a-half hours, growling like an ancient New Orleans jazz singer, with a fabulous backing band and singers. Something like twenty-five separate songs, including Bird…, Suzanne and Marianne. At the age of 79! And still thin as a wire. Perhaps there’s hope for the rest of us yet.
I collect all of my music in iTunes, but play it through Google Play and Amazon Cloud.
They are set up to auto-duplicate whatever is in the iTunes Library.
Plus they both have Radio options now, in the mode of Pandora.
Select a favorite artist (Dave Brubeck) and I get hours of great music.
And Pandora works well, too, for only $36 a year.
One of those artists I’ve come to appreciate more and more as I age with him. But please, do not put an exclamation point after 79, as if that were a nearly impossible goal. I’m too near it to think that making it will be a severe challenge.
Many apologies. One of the appealing aspects of Leonard’s performance was his physical agility, numerous times lowering himself swiftly to his knees, fedora clutched to his chest and eyes closed in appreciation of a solo by his Barcelonan guitar-player, his French violinist, or his Texan keyboardist, and equally swiftly rising again, and (literally) skipping off stage at the very end like Morecambe and Wise in their prime.
I think he may have many years to go, despite being, or perhaps because of being, in spirit at least, a Child of the Sixties. May it be similarly with you.
I’m still active in regional theatre — did an on-stage tango last year in Leading Ladies — but skipping off at the end… haven’t tried it, and probably shouldn’'t.
But on the right of that page, towards the foot of it, there’s a list of sixty or so alternatives…