Do you listen to music when you write?

[SimonDoom]

Not usually. I love to listen to music but I like silence when I'm doing something that requires concentration.

 

[sexvoyeur]

I do! But nothing with lyrics as that throws off my writing.

 

[Erozetta]

I think music just distracts the side of my brain that wants to wander to random sites when I try to write and keeps it occupied and happy so the writing side can work, lol.

 

[ChloeTzang]

I have a "Music for Writing" playlist that I just start playing every time I start writing. I add and delete songs now and then but the core stays pretty static.

I have other playlists but thats my writing one.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLl-PxEI3NdS_HIgZJ4dA0xaY4-0h642hc

 

[IWroteThis]

Not to split hairs, but I don't listen to music while I write. However, I usually have it playing in the background. I probably should just get a white noise generator, as it doesn't matter what I have playing, but having she-whose-name-must-not-be-spoken-carelessly play one of my satellite radio channels works just fine. I just find that too quiet is distracting, especially because it emphasizes every little noise that occurs.

The only caveat on what I listen to is that it needs to be classical when writing poetry. It can't just be any classical music either, as the tempo of the music can start impacting the meter of my poetry. The William Tell Overture and the 1812 Overture are great pieces that I enjoy listening to, just not while writing poetry.

 

[Rob_Royale]

Nope. I like quiet.

 

[crookedletter]

I enjoy sitting outside and writing when the weather cooperates. Where I live that's really only possible a few months out of the year. But if I'm sitting outside I won't listen to anything, except the neighborhood racket which somehow seems to help my concentration, on a good day. Sitting inside, though, I find the quiet weirdly distracting. I usually put something on, something without lyrics, usually something weird and ambient.

 

[YmaOHyd]

I almost always have music on when I write because I almost always have music on generally. Usually it's liquid EDM, jazz, fusion or progressive rock, but sometimes it's whatever the musical tastes of the character I'm writing would be. There's usually something I put on to get in the right headspace, a song or two or three as a warmup. I think for What's Left of Me it was Al Stewart's "Year of the Cat" and Mostly Autumn's "Bright Green." For the pieces I'm working on now, I start my writing sessions with "Love's Lost Property" and "Monster" by Three Colours Dark and/or Fox Stevenson's "Human in the Evening" and Station Earth's "Cold Green Eyes."

 

[MillieDynamite]

I have an eclectic musical taste, from classical to Rock, from Jaz to the blues, from 80s rock to newer stuff, from opera to rap. Wait, are we talking music or writing?

 

[MillieDynamite]

Crap, I left out punk, country, western (yes, it is different than country).

 

[iwatchus]

I have an eclectic musical taste, from classical to Rock, from Jaz to the blues, from 80s rock to newer stuff, from opera to rap.

I have an eclectic musical taste, from classical to Rock, from Jazz to the blues, from 80s rock to older stuff. And throw show tunes in there for me. I don't do much opera and no rap (or country).

 

[sister jenny]

Always.
Either I play music myself, or I have the radio on, or if hubby is home he always play music. So our home is rarely quiet.

Myself: Billie Eilish, dub, alt country, goth, 80's...
Radio: The Current
Hubby: metal (Deftones, Slipknot, etc), or old punk, or alternative stuff

 

[MillieDynamite]

The first time I heard U2, Where the Streets Have No Name, I heard where the sheets have no name. And I'm thinking WTF!

 

[iwatchus]

For years, I thought Clapton's Forever Man was Four Letter Man, which gives the whole song I very different vibe.

 

[YmaOHyd]

The first time I heard U2, Where the Streets Have No Name, I heard where the sheets have no name. And I'm thinking WTF!

Up there with captain Li Shang in Mulan singing about being as swift as the coursing river, with all the force of great Thai food.

 

[redgarters]

Music is very much a part of my process. There's almost always a song(s), an album or a genre of music associated with my stories. I think Woman in the Spare Room is the only one of my lesbian romances that isn't inspired by music.

The music is often part of what makes the plot bunny start hopping or the MC's emotions/background will trigger specific music. And then I'll listen to that nonstop on repeat until the story is done - while I'm writing, commuting, working...

I like to immerse myself in it. I listened to Fallen by Evanescence exclusively for two months for a story. It's country music right now for my Valentine's story. No other genre. I'm weird like that I guess.

 

[ColtonWrites]

I like to throw on some speed metal or synthwave when I write. It's a habit I got into when I was learning to program. It just meshes well with the sounds of the keyboard and the process of watching something grow on a screen.

 

[HelenL]

There's a thread that pops up every now and then asking what your listening to right now. I haven't responded because I don't listen to music when I write and I'm usually on here while I'm writing. You can make you own judgments on the productivity level drop from that.

Anyway, I came across this article just a few minutes ago and thought it would/could be an interesting discussion.

As I mentioned, I don't listen to music when I write because I tend to get lost in the music and not focus on my writing, so. What's your milage?

I listen to music much of the time when I'm writing code, but for some reason if I'm writing fiction it derails my thinking. Dunno why there's a difference.

 

[lovecraft68]

I listen to anything hard and heavy hard rock, metal even black metal at times.

The screaming chaos drives out everything else but the muse.

 

[AchtungNight]

Sometimes. I listened to the game soundtracks when I wrote my God of War and Ghost of Yotei stories. Also if I’m using a song in a scene I usually play it while I write to make sure it fits.

 

[UnexpectedLuggage]

Sometimes. I'll usually just put on LoFi Girl or a video I don't really need to watch on YouTube.

 

[MillieDynamite]

 

[Duleigh]

Classical does it for me. Piano, string quartet, orchestra, opera. It's all good.

 

[Djmac1031]

I usually listen to music, and then tune out of it when I'm in the groove. For that reason, I tend to listen to things that I already know so that my brain isn't too challenged trying to assimilate new things while I write. As my poor-beta readers know, there tends to be a bit of 'classic' 70s, 80s, and 90s, that then might find its way into the stories. Pink Floyd's a favourite because of the slowly evolving chord sequences that they tended to employ - lots of depth and lyricism in the music, but not too challenging structurally and you can stay in the zone for a long time. The 'Best of American Tour 1977' bootleg, for example, is two and a half hours long, and then you can start it again

Stories about music or featuring music are quite different of course - I tend to have that piece on high rotation until the relevant bit of the story is done. I used 'Let The Sunshine In' from Hair as the anchor piece for my Nude Day story, and did up a playlist of abotu twenty versions of the song to play while was I was writing.

Pink Floyd 1977 bootleg in case anybody would like to inhale:

As a HUGE Floyd fan, thanks for the recommendation. Will definitely give this a listen tonight, after the gummy kicks in.

I personally need silence when I write. No distractions. Even the sound of my girlfriend watching something on her phone or the TV downstairs can frustate my focus.

Which is probably part of the reason I dont write as much lately, im finding myself more and more easily distracted from it.

 

[ericalauren]

Sometimes!!!