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About LinkBacksDo you listen to music when writing? I do. It helps me to focus.
Do you have any recommendations for music that inspires you?
This is a discussion on "Best music for writing fantasy?" in the Writing Questions forum.
Best music for writing fantasy?
Do you listen to music when writing? I do. It helps me to focus.
Do you have any recommendations for music that inspires you?
Instrumental music mainly. Michael Giacchino is a must for me. He creates such vibrant songs that can fit into any given situation and seem plausible.
Howard Shore is great too, especially for his work on Lord of the Rings. His music feels more vibrant than the films themselves.
If you've ever heard of Immediate Music, I don't think I would need to say more. They create songs for movie trailers, and their music is quite epic in scale, the Latin lyrics adding a sense of mysticism.
Bruce Faulconer, Charlie Clouser and Ellen Mejiers are all equally high on my writing playlist, too. Each with a distinct style for differently themed chapters.
Those are but a few of mine.
Immediate Music? Is that the name of a musical group, or is it more of a scoring company?
I totally agree with you about Howard Shore's Lord of the Rings score. It is always inspiring.
Of course Basil Poledouris's scores are often great for inspiration. In particular, I recommend his music for Conan the Barbarian and Flesh + Blood.
If you want to try something more random, there's a shoutcast station called Radio Rivendell. They play fantasy music all day long, much of it coming from films and video games. Everything they play is worthwhile, and it really can get your creative juices flowing.
It's more of a scoring company. They don't release their songs or albums commercially, and the only way you can get them is by downloading said songs from torrents.
I'm going to go out on the limb and check out Radio Rivendell. Sounds interesting!
I like to listen to various genres on my iPod by using the shuffle feature. Different styles of music can often supply new imaginings for my short stories. I've only written two short fantasy stories, with the other four being of different nature.
Taking some time out to lie down and listen to music allows me to come up with changes or additions which fill in the story.
Perhaps my method for choosing music is not the same as everyone else's. I think that it all comes down to what moves you to be creative at your best.
I think that it depends entirely on the situation that you're writing about, if its fighting then it has to be some good ol' heavy metal, however if its something like a death or a romance then choose the music that would best fit the situation, i usually spend the same time finding just the right songs as i do actually writing.
Last of the Mohicans is a great soundtrack... yeah, heavy metal doesn't work too well for my more cerebral stuff, but I like it well enough when I'm writing action...
BD's on the spot with LotR's music, that's fantastic. Carmina Burana!
Legerdemain
"My hands are fast, but wit's faster."
1,200 words of 50k written in March
Anything. More specifically, anything that lets you shut out background noise. You might find instrumentals work better if you can't background the lyrics; for me, though, they aren't distracting—whereas anything spoken makes it very difficult to concentrate on the writing. (Music, even vocalic, is processed by a different part of the brain than speech/text is, for anyone who didn't know.)
I wouldn't worry too much about matching "moods"; if anything, I try to avoid it, as any section of writing is going to require more than just the dominant mood of the action (not all of your concrete description in a fight scene is going to be violent… possibly not even most of it).
Originally Posted by Taree
The Ipod shuffle feature can be a lifesaver. When you're creative juices aren't quite flowing, nothing mixes it up like shuffling your playlist.
I've been known to spend more time selecting music than actually writing. Unfortunately, sometimes putting together your playlist can become another excuse to procrastinate.
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