Favorite Music To Listen To While Writing

ExtremeSleuth

ExtremeSleuth

Veteran
You've just poured yourself a glass of scotch and sit down to write out that FANTASTIC idea you have. What (if any) kind of music do you listen to? For me, I've been getting into Post-Rock lately. The Echelon Effect, Good Weather For An Airstrike, Circadian Eyes and God is An Astronaut are some of my favorites from that genre. I'll switch it up now and then and put on some smooth, West Coast or swing jazz depending on the story I'm working on at the moment.

What say you?
 
I don't drink, and when writing, I usually prefer quiet settings with no distraction. But if thats what works for you , then go with it. Thats the beauty of art, each person gets inspired in their own way.
 
I agree! To each his own, sir!

I can't do anything with lyrics. I turn the volume down so it's in the background. Silence bugs me. I need a little stimulus, and some smooth, instrumental stuff tends to help.
 
To me silence is the way to go. When writting you need to be in a neutral mood/state IMHO. Anything else effects my writting... Maybe I'm working on a sequence that is going to be sensitive, emotional, a sequence that is going to reveal the characters tru nature, etc... Having music playing when I'm thinking about structure, mood and athmosfere is a no no for me.
 
Yep I'm a silence/no alcohol writer too. I pretty much want to go into the world of the story as totally as I can. In my imagination, I *am* there. So music, or any other distraction, is a negative for me. Lots of good writers do so while listening to music and drinking though, so to each his own...
 
maranfilms said:
I don't drink, and when writing, I usually prefer quiet settings with no distraction.
Click to expand...

Amazing -- I thought I was the only one. So it's not just me then?

Interestingly (at least to me), I can't write worth a darn if I can hear human voices of any kind anywhere. But I can listen to music. It just has to be instrumental. Mostly classical and jazz. But the more "in to it" I get, the more likely I'll just have silence in my background. It takes all my processing power to write, I don't have any to spare for processing background tasks like listening to music -- often when my wife interrupts me she'll ask what I'm listening to and usually I just don't know. Because even though it's been on, I actually haven't been listening to it at all.
 
A dram of single malt and a not-tooooo-recognizable/identifiable film score mix are the Callagway to go.

...and of course a cigar, if the surroundings allow.
 
Fine. Interesting discussion probably. The ability of writing with or without music depends heavily on very personal preferences, I do believe. My wife - an literary editor - can not work with any music in the room. I can work with next to any music that does not distract me too much. Schoenberg, free jazz, techno and German country music (yes, such an abomination exists - I mean it's NOT German folk, okay?) are absolutely impossible for me while I am at my computer. Next to anything else works when it gives me kind of a "flow".

I believe that the reasons why some people can write with music or - in my case - actually do really like it most of the times, while others really detest it, are very deeply ingrained in the wiring of our brains. Somewhere in the area of the basal ganglia maybe. And as such are not really free to be influenced by our will. It's probably more an institution, a part of what we really are than what we want to be - and as such it is extremely individual, not comparable and not part of any hierarchy. So it is definitely never the question that the one who does it is the better writer or not. In the end it's "only" a question of phenomenology if you want... ;-)

In the same way I do not believe that we as writers can ever be "pure" by going into a state of assumed "no outside influence" - only that the wiring in our brain prefers to not be stimulated by anything acoustic or else. Which is an individual decision. I know people who like to write in coffee houses. A freind of mine at times books a place in the high speed trains in my country especially when he get's stuck with a script and rides for six or eight hours to get unstuck - while writing between frantic business men shouting into their mobiles and the train shooting with 240 km/h through the country.

Apart from that: We are never pure. Whatever happens in our brains was and is influenced by our lives, by our job, by the emotions we had when we awoke in the morning, by what we saw in a glimpse of a moment sitting in the bus to work, not even realizing what it really was, by the smell of the room we are writing in, by the feeling of cloth on our skin - and all of this, all of the times, when we are writing. So any "purity" is an outright illusion - and that's good. Whatever we are while we write is the sum of our experiences. Both intellectually and emotional. The hard part is getting this into a script, a novel, an essay.

So: Music can help to get "the flow". Or it can stifle that. Depending on who you are. There are no rules other than. Imho.

When I am under duress, when I have to finish a script the next morning, I may at times wear earphones and listen things that push me. Loud. Mightily. "Sympathy for the Devil" in the Neptunes-remix. Not bad for that. But that has more to do with keeping me awake than with influencing my writing per se.

At the moment I listen to Ludovico Einaudi's "I Giorni". So if you want to believe that writing on a "light note" shows here - you can believe that. But it's only a believe, I believe. I like writing at times with music by Max Richter and - next to all of the time - anything from Bach or Mozart or Vivaldi. But, music-wise, I am a practising eclectic. Just on a side note: Try Susanna & The Magical Orchestra, "Jolene" or "Turn the Pages" at times. Not bad for giving the deeper institutions of the brain a slight, soft kick & push .... ;-)

Merry Christmas, btw....
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top