Music and Writing: What Works For You?
by BudParr | MetaxuCafe on February 21, 2007
I’d like to get some discussions going here at MetaxuCafé on books and writing. So here’s a start:
The idea of music and writing seems to come up often. I find that the music I listen to affects my writing. My favorite piece of music to write with is Bach’s St. Matthew’s Passion, which for some reason that I can’t pinpoint resonates with me from tip to toe. Even though I listen to most every kind of music, I can’t imagine listening to songs with lyrics (at least in a language I understand) while I’m writing, but I imagine that sometimes a certain tune or whatever will set the scene or tone for what you’re writing.
This note from Robert Marshall* (A Separate Reality) prompted the thought and is interesting:
I was a painter for many years before I began to write. I now do both. I’ve noticed that, although some writers listen to music while they work, many prefer silence. Painters always have the radio on. Some listen to Bach, some to rap, some to NPR. I know a conceptual artist who listens only to Country Western. Maybe because I started as a painter, the silence in which many writers work is incomprehensible to me. It makes me wonder if I’m not pure enough, if I lack the courage to face the void. I need music, although the music I need when I write is quieter than the music I listen to in the studio. My novel, A Separate Reality, was written largely to Schubert lieder. I am also now more poorly informed about world affairs, since I hear Brian Lehrer less often.
I think this points to a different kind of energy in the process. Writing is quiet, internal. It often makes me sad. Painting is more physical. You use your body more. And, for me, this is sometimes almost unbearably energizing. I can, in the studio, experience a kind of frenzy. In Scorcese’s section of New York Stories, Nick Nolte, playing an nth generation abstract expressionist, flings the paint around while listening to Procol Harem. But I think this frenzy is there for “quiet” painters too (I am one). This has to do with the fact that visual artists (most of them) make objects. Objects that can easily be ruined by one wrong move. A sentence can be rewritten, deleted. A mark can sometimes be erased. Invariably, though, a trace is left. Casual readings of Walter Benjamin aside, in the real world of artists in their studios, there is always only one copy of a painting. There is no backup disk. I know that books are objects too (especially once published). But the real book is internal, in the mind.
So how does music affect your writing? And what do you listen to? Is there anything magical about the relationship between music and putting words down on paper?
*Marshall will be appearing on a panel about artists and writers at the Mercantile Library on Tuesday March 6th at 6:30, along with Susan Minot and Jonathan Ames.
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I love listening to jazz when I write. People think I do it because of Kerouac, but I was into jazz way before I knew who Kerouac was. Most jazz numbers don’t have lyrics, so there are no words getting mingled in with my own. The beat and variety if jazz lifts me up and moves me. Even slow jazz, but I like uptempo the best.
– Bill Ectric (02/21 at 21-Feb 15:21 -05:00)
I’m very selective about what I listen to when and what conditions i write under. But i love to do both throughout any day.
I think most people choose music because of their mood or to alter their mood. It can be a very powerful force. Because of that, I choose music, if I’m going to write to it, that will support the mood i’m in. I don’t want something coming at me that is going to wrestle with what i’m trying to give my attention to. Sometimes i shut it all off.
I do think it’s good practice to write, though, in various places where you don’t get to alter the surrounding atmosphere. That’s why i go to cafes or parks or crowded places sometimes and practice “using” the stimulus that’s given.
I think to answer this question for yourself, you need to know your own ego and all it’s accompanying tricks. Writers have enough trouble staying in the chair and “getting it done”. You have to know if what you are doing and how you are doing it is helping or not. So many of us want to be entertained while we do the hard stuff. Sometimes we have to face what we wish wasn’t so. I know I do. So, often i save the music as my reward for having written, and it can be ultra sweet. Then I’ve given my full attention to my writing AND get to be fully present with the music. What’s better than that?
– Word-Smith (02/21 at 21-Feb 17:09 -05:00)
I usually prefer silence, as Marshall says. If I listen to music at all, it has to be something that is not distracting or startling, and it’s not the music I’d choose to dance to. Some instrumental jazz, some vocal music. It’s a small selection. I think there is music in language, and it’s easy to be distracted by other music.
– Zen of Writing (02/21 at 21-Feb 20:17 -05:00)
I don’t do a whole lot of writing, except when I blog, but I’ve found melodic music to be distracting. I’ve tried listening to classical while writing, but invariably, I end up falling asleep. I guess the kind of music I listen to while writing depends on my mood, but I’ve found that death metal really helps me. It’s pure noise, so it doesn’t distract me, and the vocals are these indecipherable demon grunts, so I don’t spend any time trying to figure out what they’re saying. I find that I write best when I have a fast rhythym and no melodies. Oftentimes, I’ll finish a post and then realize that my CD is almost over.
– Brandon (02/22 at 22-Feb 11:44 -05:00)
About half the time I write with music, the other half silence. If I do have music playing, it has to be something non-intrusive such as Enya or music from the Lord of the Rings. It also has to fit the mood of what I’m writing or it just becomes a distraction.
– C.A.Williams (02/22 at 22-Feb 12:08 -05:00)
This might sound a bit ridiculous, but Tori Amos’ music helps. Late-night essays pounded out on keys in rhythm with her pounding keys… In more deluded moments I could imagine my words as just another type of music.
– amcorrea (02/22 at 22-Feb 15:11 -05:00)
This is an interesting discussion. In my experience if I am listening to a particular genre of music while starting and working on a project, I have to continue listening to that until the writing is done or I lose a certain consistency. It must be related to state dependent learning.
– Princess Haiku (02/23 at 23-Feb 01:11 -05:00)
I have to listen to music while I’m writing, and often it is important to tailor the music to the content or the characters I’m focussing on. For my current project I found it was helpful to listen to particular albums when in the point of view of certain characters (BRMC “Howl” for one, Nine Inch Nails “Broken” for another).
Music, though, is imporant in other ways. I often seek to create a mood or feeling in a story that a particular song gives me. Or sometimes I find a phrase or line from a song making its way to my text.
My mind tends to wander too far away to be productive without music.
– damongarr (02/23 at 23-Feb 15:47 -05:00)
I am enjoying what everyone is commenting on this topic, and I wanted to direct anyone’s attention to this link to Christopher Janney’s web site. He creates fascinating public spaces combining architecture with jazz and sound art. He’s got a book and installation coming out soon.
– winebowl (02/24 at 24-Feb 07:56 -05:00)
Sometimes I need quiet once I get going, but I almost always use music to help get me in a creative mood. I have an account on napster and I create a different playlist for each book. For the last book I chose music that each character would listen to as each chapter was written in their voice. For the book I’m currently working on, I have music that inspires me personally. I also was a painter in a “past life” and music helped to transport me to that kind of frenzied place Robert Marshall mentions.
– bookbabie (02/24 at 24-Feb 12:23 -05:00)
If I am composing an e-mail or writing a piece that will be posted on my blog, I can pretty much listen to music and/or watch TV.
If I am working on a longer prose piece or revising a chapter of my novel, then I need silence.
The odd time I listen to music, it is directly related to what I am working on ~ I have an entire section of my novel that deals with the exchange of population that occurred between the Turks and the Greeks in 1922. For those sections, I have listened to both byzantine chants and recordings of old Rembetika singers.
– xine (02/24 at 24-Feb 16:40 -05:00)
Byzantine chants! Wow! What do those sound like? Does your novel actually incorporate the music and the sounds? Or does the music serve as more of a mood-builder in your background? I guess I am curious to know if your characters interact with the music in the scene you’re writing?
Another question: Do you think that chanting has some rhythms and structures that facilitate a writing process that is different from, say, what Jazz compositions would inspire?
– winebowl (02/24 at 24-Feb 17:26 -05:00)
Hey! Does anyone sing while he writes? Does anyone out there whistle while she writes? Or what about playing the kazoo while writing? Now, what kind of buzzed, stuffy-nosed story do you suppose would come of that goof-off-on-the-ol’-Kazoo approach?
Come to think of it—I do know this one guy who can tap dance while he dictates Legal Prose to his secretary. He claims the rhythm helps him “write\” the Legal Briefs that set the nastiest divorce proceedings in motion in court.
– winebowl (02/24 at 24-Feb 17:38 -05:00)
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This is one of my favorite topics! I am also insnpired to write by all kinds of music. I wrote my novel Mint Fan Alley while listening to George & Ira Gershwin. I recently wrote an essay inpsired by a Raï musician named Abdou. The song is in Arabic, entitled “Ana Aachki Bahoul.” The phrase translates to mean “I Love Foolishness.” I don’t speak Arabic, but I do love to listen to all kinds of world music because the Voices of the artists mingle with my internal writing Voice in a way that seems to transcend language barriers. This means that I feel somewhere inside, from that place wherever my writing voice comes from, there is no need for translation. For instance, there’s this song by Susana Baca called “Las Muchachas” that is so seductive. Every time I listen to it, my writing voice tunes in and grows sexy and more confident in ways that my outward personae would never convey. Baca’s voice is so thick and lusty. She rolls her tongue, and I am thinking, “Yes! I want my prose to do just THAT!” To roll right off the page in the same way that the Spanish “R” rolls off the tongue of a fearless diva!
I also like what Marshall says about silence. His comments made me wonder whether or not writing makes me sad. I suppose it often does. Is that true for others? What’s up with that?
Thanks for bringing this up, Bud.
– winebowl (02/21 at 21-Feb 13:45 -05:00)