Art never stands still. People change; tastes change. New generations demand new art, something different, fresh, more relevant to the current situation.
Technology dictates change, too, and technology changes art. Photography became an art form soon after is was invented. But photography also changed painting, by pushing artists from exacting representations of “reality” to impressionistic and then expressionist ones, then Abstract Expressionist and Cubist, followed by all the forms still being invented and explored today.
Music has evolved in a bewildering number of directions over the last hundred years; it’s exploded like a sonic Big Bang, with ever new concepts of what qualifies as music, in the concert hall, on the bandstand, and on stage. Those changing concepts have been fed and freed up by new discoveries in recording technology. Multi-track recording revolutionized what it meant to record and perform a song. Music has been highly influenced, it goes without saying, by the electric guitar, bass guitar, the drum set, and the synthesizer. Some claim those changes have nullified traditional musical values. But music, especially, doesn’t bow to tradition.
To skip around art forms a bit, let’s talk about reading technology. Reading has changed fundamentally over the past 20 years with the invention of e-readers and ebooks. Many, me included, still like to curl up with a physical book. But that’s no longer a requirement in order to interact with the printed word. Some e-readers and most browsers and tablets include the capability of playing back audio. The boundary between these two worlds–reading and listening–may be the next artistic frontier to cross.
Which brings us to my own work as a novelist.
Back before ebook technology had been invented, or before it was popularized, before EPUB3 and Amazon’s and Apple’s support of that standard, it occurred to me to write a novel that would contain both a story and some original music. Where the two, audio and story, would intertwine in the tale’s telling. I envisioned a story of some college freshmen back in the seventies who form a rock band. Led by a super-talented, super-confident singer-songwriter, the group would make a splash in the rock music scene of the next decade or two, or three. The music I was thinking of was songs I had already written, along with others I would write expressly for the book.
The twist was that I would author not only the novel but the songs as well, and they would form a significant part of the story, almost like characters themselves. All would be combined into one electronically delivered experience, in an ebook with audio.
Now, years later, to my knowledge it’s still never been done. There have been a few attempts, including a book by Laura Esquivel, the author of Like Water For Chocolate, who attached a CD of opera music to her book and wove the music into the story, though the music was famous Italian operatic pieces. And there have been collaborations between writers and composers, including a book by Jodi Picoult, a novel with music presented on a website, written by a collaborating songwriter. But no one has written both the novel and the music and recorded and presented it all in one package.
EPUB3, you may know, lets you insert audio and even video files into a written work, and they play when the reader clicks on them. In this way the audio or video can become part of the reading experience. So the technology exists. And, I’ll go ahead and say it, the technology has now caught up with my novelistic vision! This fall, I’m self-publishing Fifth Wheel: A Novel with Music.
A couple of side notes: I did earnestly try to interest literary agents in my concept before deciding to self-publish. The agents fled in droves from an idea which had never been tried before, that had no market track record. But I’m confident Fifth Wheel will live up to my high expectations. I’m also in the process now of doing the narration for the audiobook version — a second, even newer technology custom made for Fifth Wheel!
Leading up to publication, I hope you’ll take a look at the excerpts I’ll publish here. Please sign up if you’d like to be kept in the loop. I’m very exciting about releasing to the world, and to you, Fifth Wheel: A Novel with Music.