Music is a vastly different experience for each individual, and because of this, we all have our own unique tastes that can depend on what we're doing and our moods. For instance, when I write, I never listen to music with lyrics in them. In fact, I almost never listen to music with voices at all because they can be distracting. The only exception to this rule is when the voice ululates with a wordless note, carrying the emotion I'm trying to project into the character.
Music is the center of my creative writing, as I've noticed it is with many other writers like me. My favorite instrument has always been the human voice and its amazing capacity for range, pitch, and emotion. There is simply no other instrument in the world that can match the raw beauty of the human voice. That being said, there are just some instruments that seem to sing to me the most, and it is those instruments I listen to most often when I'm writing.
Ululate | əl-yə-ˌlāt: verb: to utter a loud, usually protracted, high-pitched, rhythmical sound especially as an expression of sorrow, joy, celebration, or reverence: howl
The most interesting fact of ululate is that the Latin root that it is derived from, ululare, is basically an onomatopoeia, most likely used to describe particularly loud bird calls. Like our representation, ululare had roughly the same meaning, to howl with either morose or celebratory feeling.
What I most often picture after going through all of the research material I've found is the strong, projecting voice of an opera singer. The way it reverberates through a crowd, carrying with it strong emotions that fill each member of the audience with feeling reminds me of ululation. I also have the image in the back of my mind of the little screech owl that woke me up last year at four in the morning with a ul-ul-ul sound. That was the stuff of nightmares in my half-asleep state.
Ululate | juːljʊleɪt: verb: Howl or wail as an expression of strong emotion, typically grief
In the example I've chosen to represent ululate, it's used more in passing, as if to simply describe a sound to help ease into the setting and the senses of the character. In fact, when I read the sentence for the first time, I had almost no context to attach the word to and had no choice but to look it up, which is why I added it to my list of words to use.
She often spent her mornings there, nibbling tree eggs, locust pie, and green noodles, listening to the high ululating voices of the spellsingers, gaping at manticores in silver cages and immense grey elephants and the striped black-and-white horses of the Jogos Nhai.
Sometimes, mentioning a lesser-known word in passing is the perfect way to push a reader to grow their vocabulary. In complete honesty, I think I've found more new words in Martin's work than in many others, but I have noticed the more I read the books, the fewer of these kinds of words I see.
How would you find a use for ululate? Do you prefer simpler words, such as howl, keen, or wail? How would you describe music when given the chance? Let me know, and until tomorrow, happy reading!
Комментарии