UKC

I am trying to get a big chunk of writing done. I am sitting down to it on a Saturday evening when I'd rather be doing something else, but making progress by playing a CD of Rodrigo's guitar Concierto de Aranjuez which has worn grooves in my mind over the years and works a treat. It has to be familiar - listening to new music in the circumstances would prevent me from writing.

Anyone else have music they use like this?

L

In reply to BusyLizzie:

Orbs Adventures beyond the Ultraworld. I put it on, hear the intro to Little Fluffy Clouds then miraculously it's an hour later and I've done stackloads of work and I don't recall a thing.

In reply to Pbob:

Listening to that - yes, I like it. Thank you!

In reply to BusyLizzie:

Any emancipator album always helps for me.

In reply to BusyLizzie:

I'm not much of one for listening to music in every possible circumstance, but I've been writing about my trip to Moscow and Minsk and started listening to a Jack Savoretti album about half-way through. It really helped me to capture the feelings, emotions etc. and improve my writing. Great album.

In reply to BusyLizzie:
A motorik driving beat does it for me - Neu, Can, Mogwai or (recently discovered) Toy are great for upping the workrate. For your more stately and majestic passages, Dead Can Dance.

In reply to BusyLizzie:

I've never heard of one single writer, myself included, who can do any useful work with background music of any kind. It might help get you started, but as soon as anything useful is happening, and you're really concentrated 101 per cent on your work, you just have to turn it off. This has come up as a subject hundreds of times over the years and I've never found anyone who has experienced otherwise.

In reply to Greasy Prusiks:

Yes, I like that too. Draft 1 finished, and I'm now well into the process of getting i's dotted and t's crossed and ducks lined up. Pretty good!

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:
Gordon, I've changed my views on this over the years and having written a lot of stuff. I now find music helpful. And I think there is some sort of respectable theory to the effect that it wakes up the creative part of the brain.

I suspect the reason may be that I very rarely concentrate on one single thing to the exclusion of everything else. There's always something else going on in my head, even if I'm doing something that is supposed to be tricky like playing the piano; so I think that music, of a non-intrusive kind, is helpful when I'm writing because it uses up bits of my mind that would otherwise wander.

The only time when I am concentrating on one thing 101 per cent is when I'm climbing, which is why I love climbing because it sorts out the contents of my head.

In reply to BusyLizzie:




Well said.

In reply to Yanis Nayu:

Thank you


(I really am still working...)

In reply to BusyLizzie:

OK, stopped now; will finish it tomorrow. Thank you all for company!
L

In reply to BusyLizzie:

PS. I let myself become absorbed in music, where appropriate, at the research stage of any book, which is a hugely important part of the creative process. But not actually at the creative writing stage, if you know what I mean. (Don't worry if you don't ) Of course, when I was a music editor in the film industry I absorbed myself completely in the music, night and day, but that was a very different kind of thing.

In reply to BusyLizzie:

I like his YouTube.
http://relaxdaily.net

In reply to BusyLizzie:

Either satie "Vexations" or Eno "Music for Airports" should do.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

Ah - the difference may be that my writing is not creative in the way that yours is; I'm a lawyer.

There is, of course creativity in all writing, and I enjoy shaping an explanation and putting together something readable/helpful/enjoyable out of materials that are, ahem, really at the boring end of the spectrum! But there are no pictures

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

Maybe this one will work for you.....on constant repeat
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4%E2%80%B233%E2%80%B3

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:
Often I find that I can concentrate better with music playing, mostly as it drowns out annoying background noise which I can't control. This is true both at home & in the office, especially in the summer when windows are open. But there are times I'd rather proper silence but unfortunately its not an option living & working in a large city

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

I used to listen to the Third Programme constantly when writing up my thesis. I wish I never had. Not for the thesis but because I totally blocked out the music in concentrating on the job, or so I thought. But subconsciously I was absorbing it with the result that many great classics became ultra familiar and I just don't want to hear them again even today. Nowadays I never listen to music as background, and when I do put something on I give it 100% concentration, or fall asleep!

In reply to BusyLizzie:
Currently at work in an empty office, listening to some Ravi Shankar

youtube.com/watch?v=LXXBfL5lRqE&

(And wasting time on UKC while I'm backing up some files...)

I also have some weather sound CD's, natural sounds of the wilderness, waterfalls, rainstorms, rivers....they seem to do the trick.

Any background music with lyrics / words in tends to distract me, as I start to focus on the lyrics...

In reply to ThunderCat:

Absence of lyrics is key for me - I need something to drown the silence, but nothing with a voice to distract me. The end of a CD usually signifies time for a brew.

In reply to BusyLizzie:

I can't listen to music with lyrics when trying to work. Beethoven's 9th symphony helps when trying to rattle through emails etc, but other than that, silence or a metronome.

In reply to Tall Clare:

A metronome? Crikey, that would be stressy - it would just make me think I ought to be doing some piano practice. I suppose if you like a ticking clock a quiet metronome would be ok.

That is surprisingly difficult to spell: metronone, mertronome, metrognome...

I'm nearly through. Done the really difficult bit.

In reply to BusyLizzie:

Done it. All arguments knitted up, no dropped stitches, conclusion rock solid. Yippee. Love you all. xxx