I personally.enjoy Apocalyptica. The earlier pre-lyric albums. Lynn Flewling,.one of my favorite authors, actually thanks them in her book. Only sometimes, though. Most of the time,.I need focus to write as well as I can. Namely with narrative.and descriptions.
I can't do it. I find it too distracting. I get really into my music when I'm listening to it, and also with my writing. My mind can only handle one or the other.
Bach, Beethoven, Dvorzak in the morning. The National and like genre in the afternoon. Maybe some of that newage pure moods shit
I love music and enjoy listening to it when I'm doing chores. When it comes to writing though, I'm like Wyr. No way can I concentrate on my writing while listening to music.
I tend to find that I'm too distracted without music. Put on the headphones, and I can focus on whatever is in front of me, which would hopefully be my laptop. I listen to a little bit of everything, from J Pop & J Rock to Dance to Rock to Oldies. It should all fit the mood though. I can't listen to something sad when I'm supposed to be writing happy.
Absolutely I do, I can't write in silence. I have a playlist created of all the songs that remind me of my novel, and I play that when working on it.
I only listen to music before I write for inspiration or mood. I do not listen to music during writing. It is too distracting, without or without lyrics, especially because I only collect songs that makes me want to stop everything and listen to them.
No, but I often use music to get my head in the mood for the scene I'm writing, just prior to starting. I was dealing with a tricky love scene recently and because I have a bad tendency to fall into 'telling' mode, I needed to try and figure out a way to make my language more sensual and poetic. I'm no poet. One of the characters, the POV in this case, is from a place that roughly equates to the Fertile Crescent, so I hunted through my collection to try and find something to set the mood. No joy. Then I came up with an idea. I used a film editor to throw together a load of black frames accompanied by the chosen track, and then went about captioning the track silent movie style. A bit of an effort, yes, but I managed to come up with some imagery, and a rhythmic element I wouldn't have otherwise. Vas - In the Garden of Souls. This set the tone I was looking for.
I usually prefer instrumental music for when I do listen to music while writing. Sometimes it's classical; other times it's just some random instrumental I find on Youtube. This is just for first drafts, though. When editing, I prefer silence.
i do only if i want to 'be in' a place where the story is set and i've been before, so the local music will take me back there and bring back the sights, sounds, smells and people more vividly than just my memory alone can do... so, while writing about greece, i listen to bazouki, when a setting is in mexico, i put mariachi and ranchera cd's on, and if the story's about italy, out come the mandolin cds... i'd never listen to vocals in english while writing, to avoid the song's words affecting the ones i need to hear in my head...
That was impressive. Anyway I listen to slow smooth hip hop, instrumental rock, and r&b music while I write. I specifically love the works of Eric Johnson and Nujabes. They're calming and smooth for the soul. Music that I won't compulsively sing along to but it great background ambience.
I like to match the music with the kind of setting I want. If I want it eerie, I listen to eerie music, if I want it fast paced, I listen to fast paced music. Although I'm not sure whether it actually helps, I feel like it does ease me into the frame of mind I want to be in for writing that particular piece. For me personally, classical or instrumental music works best, because I won't get hung up on the occasional favored lyric and start singing. Recommendations: Erik Satie, Nujabes, Emancipator, Movie Soundtracks.
I listen to music all the time, especially when writing. However, when I'm writing, it has to strictly be instrumental music, which isn't a bad thing for me, since that's mostly what I listen to, anyway. I have a deep attraction to music that stimulates the mind--electronic producers who apply string theory to what they produce, toying with frequencies that mimic certain stages of consciousness--and I find that when I listen to this kind of music, my imagination not only becomes more vivid, it becomes easier to 'lose myself' in, and I can then explore memories, construct false ones, alter old ones etc., as if I'm truly there. That being said, I listen to a lot of deep house/Chicago-style house mixes. Producers like Chuck Love, Mark Farina, Miguel Migs... a lot of Farina's Mushroom Jazz mixes, Nu/Acid Jazz, traditional Jazz, and then I also listen to a lot of indie/jam electronic stuff, like Brothers Past, Lotus, and the Disco Biscuits. This also allows me to sort of go into auto-pilot mode, when my imagination is not engaged. I push the music into the background and just write/do whatever. It's a win/win relationship for me.
Very interesting. Do what works for you. I have a friend author who writes native American historical novels and listens to new age spiritual music. As for me, my brain prefers silence when writing. I confess, however, that I was once a musician, which might explain why music distracts me. The key is to get the brain into a relaxed state. For some writers, drugs or booze do this, unfortunately.
Not too entirely sure if this is the correct thread, but here goes: For the sake of curiosity, what types of music do you listen whilst forging worlds with your keyboard? Trance, Ambient, Downtempo, New Age? I, if you care, have compiled a playlist with just about everything ever.
