What Music Do You Write To?
James At Beach.jpg
I have a few favorites that seem to work best for me, which I have listed below, but I would be very interested to hear what others listen to, if anything, while they write.
Music for me helps set tone, but it also gives me a rhythm to work to. In my writing I try to create phrases and sentences and paragraphs that have a lyrical quality to them in that each world flows intuitively into the next for the reader in much the same way that a lyric flows into the next and then into the chorus and so on.
Anyway, my favorites:
Greg Brown
Yoyo Ma
Natalie Merchant
Bill Evans (jazz pianist)
Miles Davis
Dizzy Gillespie (his bop abd bebop tunes such as "Salt Peanuts")
Tori Amos
Mozart
Sonny Rollins
Betty Carter
Mindy Smith
- Login Or register To Post Comments
- Send To A Friend
- Share With:
Dale Estey says:
Jazz first and Classical
Jazz first and Classical second for me. Nowadays live stream from the wonders of the Internet. It doesn't matter what they play (though instrumental is preferred so I don't listen to words). And I have it coming from another room to make it distant enough.
I had a creative writing instructor tell me that playing music was unwise to do, as the mood of the music might be too influential to the particular writing. I have never noticed this, but, if one were easily, er, swayed, perhaps one should not do it.
Michael Dutton says:
The Music in the Sound of the Words ...
I'm rather surprised that a creative writing instructor had the foresight to actually suggest that listening to music might actually influence the harmony - or lack thereof - of the words being written. I suppose I'm a bit cynical in that area.
Nevertheless, when I write - particularly narrative - the sound of the words is nearly as important as is meaning. When I re-write, I pronounce the words to ensure that the sound of them rhymes with the tone that I wish to convey.
I do recall two short stories that I wrote in which a precise tract of music was instrumental (pardon the pun): Stravinsky's "Le Sacre du Printemps" and Ravel's "Les Miroirs". The effect that I was attempting to achieve was elegance - an elegance of language.
Farzana Versey says:
Hmmm...just a hum for me...
I may be the odd one out, but I cannot do anything with music on. Well, pretty much! It isn't that the music interferes, but it enraptures. I like the words to hum to themselves. Or maybe, I like the sounds of nature...
~F
Kristen J. Tsetsi says:
It really depends...
... on the scene I'm writing. Sometimes, Damien Rice's "O" if a character is experiencing something profoundly painful (romantically). And when someone is either angry or otherwise negatively energized, I like something hard and mad like Three Days Grace.
So, rather than being distracted by music that influences the writing, I intentionally influence the writing by selecting the correct music to do it.
Joshua Keidan says:
My music
I listen to either classic music (usually Yo-Yo Ma) or oddly enough House music (I say oddly enough because normally I detest house music)For me it depends what is the mood of what I am writing is. Also it depends on the time of day as my apartment has paper thin walls and somehow I doubt my neighbors want to be woken up at five in the morning to the thumping bass of something you would find in a night club. I should try to write without music sometime, but I am not sure I can.