Question for Writers (everyone here I guess...) 'bout Music

I actually listen to film soundtracks more than anything else. My personal favourites are from Amelie and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but others get rotations. Right now, though, while trying to write, I'm listening to 9 by Damien Rice, which is a much darker work than his debut (which was worth every ounce of the critical acclaim heaped upon it) and is very powerful indeed.

No, I don't.

I listen to instrumental rock and metal.
Liquid Tension Experiment
Spastick Ink
Joe Satrianni
Chris Poland
Jeff Beck
Karma to Burn
Attention Deficit
Alex Skolnick Trio - Jazz versions of classic rock and metal songs by Testament guitarist

I listen to Pearl Jam.

I don't listen while I'm writing, but I listen to music while I'm thinking about the characters and the plot - kind of like watching a movie with a soundtrack in my mind. The music often helps give an added dimension to the character and scene I'm visualizing.

With my first novel, I listened to a lot of heart-wrenching softy romantic type stuff, like Sting and Vangelis and movie soundtracks.

With my second, I listened to the buzz-saw guitar rip your heart out stuff like Nickleback (it was a hockey romance).

In my current WIP, listening to Spanish flamenco brings me into the zone. It's about a Basque Separatist rethinking his motives while trying to rescue a brother captured by a rival group during a botched arms deal in Spain/Andorra/Basque country.

Can you tell I'm all over the place?

I don't tend to listen to music when I am actually in the process of writing, but music definitely influences me a lot in terms of mood, imagery, sometimes the lyrics themselves. I like visuals too, for example Pink Floyd's Pulse DVD stimulates my creativity enormously.

And some lyrics definitely affect my understanding of certain concepts, for example (speaking of Pink Floyd), if I were thinking of time I'd almost certainly have been influenced at some point by something like...

So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again.
The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older,
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death.

I've always loved those lyrics, the thought that the universe goes around and around like clockwork, yet as an individual we move through time in a linear manner. Just an example. Sometimes stuff we've listened to often enough just gets infused into our subconsciousness I guess.

Darkedge said:

When you are writing, do you listen to music, and if so, what do you listen to? For me, I always listen to music when I write, and it depends on what type of scene I'm writing about, and then I choose a matching type of music (i.e. when I write a battle scene I might listen to rock, or when I'm typing up a romance scene I'll choose some softer stuff).

So, what about everyone else?

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I'm pretty much the same as you. Though, while sometimes I'll try to fit the music with the scene, most of the time I'll just listen to whatever is next in the stack of CDs I keep next to my computer.

I listen to mostly New Age, like Yanni, Vangelis, Enigma, among others and to various soundtracks. Last of the Mohicans is especially good to listen to when writing battle scenes.

We get these questions asked about once a month I think, but I still enjoy answering them.

I enjoy listening to dark, moody music. Some instrumental, some classic prog rock. Groups like Tangerine Dream, Tuxedomoon, Nektar, Black Sabbath, Robin Trower, Uriah Heep, Hawkwind, Gentle Giant, Captain Beyond, Blue Oyster Cult, Man, Jean Luc Ponty, Return to Forever, Al Dimeola, Frank Marino and Mahogany Rush, and the Moody Blues, to name just a few.

No. I like silence when I write. Well, relative silence: I have a wild three-year-old and an infant.

I used to write to music but I found that the rhythm of whatever I was listening to crept into my prose. I'd have to listen to the same song for every chapter to keep the continuity, and who wants to listen to the same song over and over?