Lately I'm focusing on my writing in ways I haven't, for various reasons, in many years. Along with some new strategies, I'm slowly remembering elements that were crucial to my process years ago, and I'd almost forgotten how utterly vital it is to have the right music on when I write. I'm sure a lot of you feel the same way. Music is indelibly linked to mood, and as it's quite possibly the most subjective art from there is, I'm very curious to know who you use and why. For me, it varies by the type of story I'm writing or even the atmosphere of a scene. The horror story I keep trying to sideline, for instance, requires a lot of nineties industrial and trip-hop, not the sort of thing I listen to frequently otherwise, at least not these days. The Neverland/Wonderland-style children's fantasy I revisit periodically is all about the mid-00's indie pop. The sci-fi thriller, on which I'm trying desperately to focus my undivided at the moment, seems to benefit from alternating doses of Charles Mingus and Billie Holiday, depending on whether I need an audio shot of caffeine or muscle relaxers for a particular scene. How about you?
1101 bits of music recorded from cable, 24/7, over two years, with repeats edited out. Everything from eastern medicine bowl to Mongolian/Gregorian chant, techno, classical, Ramstein, Puddle Of Mudd, native flute, and soundtracks. Mostly instrumental and introspective, and an occasional romp, at random.
Well my soundtrack is a lot of music on their specific groups, so when I have a special scene to write, I use that list and get on work to get inspired Some examples :
I listen to theatrical music. Here are a few of my favorite examples, most of which I found through a spotify playlist that Brandon Sanderson put up a couple years ago. I write scifi.
I listen to music all the time. I’m even listening to one of my Spotify playlists while writing this. For my post-apocalyptic book, I like to listen to a YouTube video with music from soundtracks from games like Silent Hill, Borderlands, and Metro 2033. Many of the comments agree it’s perfect for writing to! Here’s the link:
This is interesting. I didn't expect to see actual soundtracks on here, especially movie and video game scores. Honestly, I thought I'd see more popular music. After I posted this, I googled the same question and found articles about Stephen King listening to 80's metal (no surprise), Margaret Atwood listening to modern indie pop (What!?) and tons of authors listening to The Beatles (duh).
I grew up near the sea, and have always loved the idea of high sea adventures like Sinbad, vikings and all that. I love a good swashbuckling story with pirates, monsters, treasures and all that, though it's gotta be somewhat mature. "Pirates of the Caribbean" was just boring. never liked those movies much. But I do want to write a story with high seas adventures, monsters, treasures and all that, so the soundtrack is fairly obvious to me. Alestorm. And lots of it. I remember hearing the snog "Captain Morgan's revenge" the first time, and it blew me away. Since then, I have all five albums on Spotify, and they quickly became one of my favorite bands of all time. We're taking Scottish pirate metal here (their words), and their songs are all about pirates, treasures, monsters and all that. Perfect for my book.
Nice playlist. I thought I'd see more like this on this thread. I seriously thought half the comments would be lists of band way too metal for my hippie ass.
Well I have a dedicated mellow list, which is also handy to have for slower moments in writing. I did find it kinda odd that most only posted a single song, but that isn't going to work for much in capturing multiple tones or pacing in a story. Unless it is a Short, then a song can pull you through, but not for a novel.
As I mentioned in the OP, my WIP involves a lot of jazz with alternating moods, but after the, let's call it pre-production phase, I've dropped all the Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong for bombastic bebop, like Charles Mingus and Miles Davis. Even the slower and sweeter moments in the story are flowing better to high-energy tunes.
