Music to Write By
By Kathleen Bolton | February 27, 2007 |
I finally joined the twenty-first century and got an I-Pod. Now I usually like to write in total silence, just my imagination and the clicking of the keypad, but a cool gadget like the I-Pod interfered with this habit.
I realize I risk dating myself here, but I’m an old California punk-rocker who cut her musical teeth on the Strokes and Plimsoles. Imagine my delight when I realized I could download juicy tracks from the past without having to buy the album; even better, my taste for Euro pop and ambient could be indulged and I wouldn’t have to pay import prices. A whole new world, this I-Pod brung me!
I’d forgotten how inspired I could be by a well-crafted song. Sometimes the poetry of the lyrics grabs my soul and I’ll rethink ways to put my own words together.
Such is what happens when I listen to the songwriter John Ondrasik from Five For Fighting. The song that always brings a lump to my throat is “The Riddle”
There was a man back in ’95
Whose heart ran out of summers
But before he died, I asked him
Wait, what’s the sense in life
Come over me, Come over me …
Ondrasik uses fresh metaphors and unexpected word choices for ordinary things. I’m always challenged to rethink my prose when I listen to him. “Superman” is a particularly good character study.
Other times it’s a feeling I get when I listen to a particular song. Kate Bush is an artist that sets my imagination flying. I can’t believe I waited until this weekend to download a collection of her songs, but once I did I kept playing them over and over. My favorite Kate Bush song is “Cloudbursting”. Remember this MTV classic? Or maybe you’re–koff–too young.
As I mentioned above, I’m a fan of ambient…music that’s combines classical with modern. It makes great background noise and can be the soundtrack to your own work. My current favs are E.S. Postumus and Iceland’s Sigur Ros. When I write to these artists, I seem to be able to access areas of creativity that I hadn’t been able to before. I also can write for longer periods. Scientific proof that music can support genius? I dunno. I just likes the pretty, pretty sounds.
Is your work inspired by music? Please feel free to share your favorites with us. I’m always eager to hear of new artists. My I-Pod has plenty of space on it left.
(My apologies for not embedding the YouTube image here–it made our template all wonky.)
Kathleen Bolton is co-founder of Writer Unboxed. She writes under a variety of pseudonyms, including Ani Bolton.
She has written two novels as Cassidy Calloway: Confessions of a First Daughter, and Secrets of a First Daughter–both books in a YA series about the misadventures of the U.S. President’s teen-aged daughter, published by HarperCollins, and Tamara Blake, for the novel Slumber.
Nice post, Kath.
I don’t write well with music playing in the background; I tend to tune out my characters when I’m tuning in to melodies. But music has played a huge part in the manuscript I’m working on, and I’ve been inspired mostly by classical works. Kenneth Tse and Alan Huckleberry have a CD called Lyric Soprano, a duet of soprano saxophone and piano, that has been perfect for me. And I adore the prodigious family that is The 5 Browns. The young siblings were all Julliard trained and play classical piano, with a modern jive edge. Stunning!
I can’t listen to music and write– I get too caught up in the music and it distracts me. But certain songs do resonate with either my characters or plot and become “theme songs.”
Now that you have an iPod, are you going to get a costume for it? https://www.iattire.net/
Sigur Ros is great! Saw them live a year or so ago in Ft. Worth.
As I mentioned in a similar post a week+ ago my fav writing music is Cliff Martinez’s soundtracks, Solaris, Traffic, NARC. It’s very chill and non-distracting, yet provides a nice texture.
I find my tone changes with the different music I play. For example, I’m working on an article about BASE jumpers. In it I’m hunting for deeper story about these guys and gals. If I play the hard edgy rock music, I find myself thinking more about the adrenaline rush. If I play something alternative the jumpers begin to look like the young snowboarders of the early 90s. If I play The Dead or the Stones (or even Led Zeppelin) a special community of friends fills my writing. I’m getting to the place where I find the tone I want in music and then listen to it while I hunt for the same tone in my writing.
i am inspired by the music and lyrics of simon and garfunkel. amazing poetry, esp their early works. billy joel is the quintessential musical storyteller. and of course, the beatles. i love sara mclaughlin. i’ve begun relistening to U2 (Joshua Tree) and Motown stuff. OK, i admit to the best of the Commodores as one of my guilty pleasures (i’ve got a lot of those. and my all time favorite cleaning the house music is the GooGoo Dolls. I like listening to music when i write but once i’m in the writing groove, i don’t hear it. When I want to get into the medieval mood, i rely on my trusty old Gregorian CHants and some medieval nun music which, honestly, is transporting.
Here’s a list of my favs for writing:
Album Leaf
Sigur Ros
Marconi Union
Six Parts Seven
Explosions in the Sky
Tristesa
Boards of Canada
Four Tet
Cliff Martinez
Michael Brook
Brian Eno
Most of these are chill, ambient, or bordering on emo. A few of them have vocals, such as Sigur Ros or a few Album Leaf songs, but the vocals don’t take the foreground.
For those that like classical, or chant type stuff… Arvo Part is excellent.
Thanks for these suggestions! Eric, I’m particularly grateful for the emo and ambient leads…I like stuff that sounds spooky but with an edge (thus Sigur Ros).
I forgot to mention Mari Boine…she’s Finnish and she’s awesome. She’s like Bjork but her voice doesn’t wear on me. Plus she experiments with denser soundscapes.
Bunnygirl, I’m totally getting a little outfit for my i-pod. If I’m going to nerd out, I might as well do it in style. ;-)
I always write with music in the background. It helps screen out background noises and get me into the mood. I stick to instrumental because although I love vocal music I find it distracting. I try to pick something that relates either to the mood of what I’m writing or my setting, Regency England. Mozart and Beethoven are the right period. Vaughn Williams and Elgar evoke England for me. If I’m writing more sensual scenes I put on Debussy or Ravel.
Well now you’ve got me thinking, Elena, because I DO sometimes use background sounds to block out everyday life. I might choose chimes or sounds of a summer night or a thunderstorm, or I’ll just set my water fountain up and listen to the drops tumble. These sounds can help to set the mood for a scene, and I suppose they are a type of music, aren’t they? Nature’s music.
Hello all,
I’m interested in this topic from both sides — as a former writer
who used to use music for inspiration, and now, a musician who
finds that the music I am writing inspires writers!
The musical artists that have gotten me into a state of flow and
peak creative performance when I was a writer are stylistically diverse —
Aphex Twin, Mozart, Kate Bush, Balinese Gamelan music, Neotropic,
Massive Attack, Death Cab for Cutie, Blue Note jazz artists — but
they all share a certain quality of transporting me to an almost
trance-like condition that supports and encourages, rather than
competes with, the creative task at hand.
It has litttle to do with genre per se. I think Kathleen hit one
possible commonality when referring to Sigur Ros — “spooky but
with an edge… “perhaps it’s the intimation of entering “another world”?
And, I’ve also been a musician since I was four. Throughout my time as
a writer or software developer at Yale, the National Science Foundation,
Amazon, etc., I’ve been recording and performing music. Being a
musician is now my full-time career with the band Two Loons for
Tea.
The state of mind we get into when writing our music is remarkably
similar to the state of mind that optimal writing music used to put me
into when I was writing words…. When the writing of words is flowing,
and I lose the outside world, when we’re flowing with composing
music, we forget we’re even playing…
We recently interviewed the most passionate fans of my project,
and we found that every one we interviewed loved our music mainly
because it was a creative companion in their creative processes, be
it weaving, writing code, or — perhaps no surprise — writing.
We didn’t aim to create such music, but apparently, that’s what
we’ve inadvertantly done.
So, maybe some of you will find inspiration in our music as well; it’s
trip-hop / chill / pop with some amazing guest musicians from
Tori Amos, King Crimson, etc.
If you’re curious, you can check out the music at Amazon:
“Looking for Landmarks”
“Two Loons for Tea”
“Nine Lucid Dreams”
And you can hear full song previews at our myspace page.
sincerest regards, and best of luck and joy with your writing (music OR words)!
jonathan
two loons for tea