I thought I'd try something tonight by way of an experiment. I'm still plugging away at my Edwardian story so I thought I'd programme some appropriate music for the period, so far it's been Parry and Elgar orchestral pieces, with a chunk of Vaughan Williams ('London Symphony','Lark Ascending','Songs of Travel') - I'm not sure it's working as I intended, I seem to be listening more than typing :)
anyone else tried something similar?
Comments
I usually listen to ...
... BBC Radio 3 if I'm doing anything that might be classed ( loosely) as intellectual - as I am right now. So it's whatever the evening concert or 'Composer of the Week' throws up. I have difficulty if I have lieder playing because I feel compelled to listen to the human voice. If I'm doing practical things ( like building bicycle wheels, as I was yesterday) then it's Radio 4 for the variety of speech broadcasts. Perhaps I should have worked in silence - I laced a whole wheel wrongly and had to strip it and start again. Out of practice, I'm afraid :)
Sadly I often forget to listen and a whole Mahler symphony can pass without my being aware of it. And yes, I am ashamed of myself.
Geoff
professionally deaf
I spend most of my working day ignoring the operators' radio in the office as it's tuned to Radio One (there's a group called 'Scouting For Girls' who only seem to write songs with five syllable chants for chorus... currently it's 'Elvis Isn't Dead' and before that it was 'She's Lovely', or as they would have 'she'sa luvverly'). Radio Three during the day is one of the consolations for being frequently ill, but whenever I tune in during the evening it's inevitably broadcasting the Nose Harp Jazz Quintet of Tblisi or somesuch :)
You could try ...
... using a small radio with earphones if you can keep them in your ears, I can't. My wife used to work in a garment factory and had to suffer Radio 1 all day. She found the only way to combat it was to use earphones to listen to Radio 3. There's usually a reasonable concert on R3 from 7pm but even Classic FM is bearable after 9pm when they actually play complete pieces rather then bleeding chunks torn from their context.
Looking forward very much to your Edwardian story.
Geoff
Musical muses
I find music often helps find the right mood for writing certain pieces. Instrumental soundtracks are favorites as well composers such as Paul Mauriat or Frank Miller. I often see it as providing the "soundtrack" to the story I'm working on at the time. Music also helps me ignore the distractions that is a part of daily life now days. If I hear one more leaf blower or train roaring by .... One of my current favorites is the track to Pirates of the Caribbean by Klaus Badelt.
hugs!
grover
Seems Odd, But...
I find that most of the time I don't "listen" to anything, even though I hear things running through my head all the time. Often, what I'm hearing is directly related to what I may be writing at the time, hence when I was writing "Changing Keys" I had a lot of Stevie Ray Vaughn floating around. "Passing Tones" brought with it pretty much everything I've ever heard of Chopin, etc. Probably one of the pitfalls of having spent my life as a professional musician :)
Currently what's running through my head is some Chick Corea solo piano stuff, as well as some Ron Carter. That should give everyone some idea of what my next story is about.
Never let it be said that I don't enjoy the occasional delusion of grandeur
Never let it be said that I don't enjoy the occasional delusion of grandeur
my FtM story & music
I write to music. CDs & old cassettes. Usually my stories are contemporary and I listen to a rotation of country, old rock, newer rock, really old jazz & swing, bebop to contemporary jazz (there's a dividing line there for me), and classical- romantics to avant guard. The mood of individual scenes I'm writing might influence what I select next.
Right now one of the things I'm working on (for the new contest, but not likely to be done on time with a
5-part serial taking priority) is a story of a teenage transman, stepping out totally en homme (?) for the first time. His adventure drinking beer in the park with his new guy buddies is going great until they decide to beat up a queer. Our hero Gus, with alleigances to the LBGT community is naturally conflicted ......... Writing this piece is dictating what I listen to more than any other story I've ever written. Trying to get into his thoughts and feelings means I have to listen to stuff that is driving and phallic and highly metallic. Or the best I can come up with from my limited collection. Black Sabbath PARANOID, B.O.C., Deep Purple, Van Halen....... Yeah, I know it's ancient, but it's sufficiently teenage and headbanger to get me into his character. And I absolute CAN'T listen to my favorite girl groups- even harder stuff like X-Ray Spex or Siouxee if it has a female singer, or for that matter anything that has a gay male or glam-drogynous sensibility; Gus just evaporates in my brain! Not to render this kid as a caricature, because I'm sure FtM's represent a whole gamut of musical tastes, just like the gals here- but he has to be the kind of kid who would love to hang out and drink beer & smoke chronic and maybe yell a little with his rowdy new friends (He IS kind of modeled on Brandon Teena as portrayed in that movie, but this tale's more of a misadventure than a grim tragedy). So I'm listening to stuff
I do enjoy, but just not 2-in-a-row, and certainly not for hours on end. I'll be glad when I'm done
(I wanna hear some Billy Holiday) and I hope I do the character justice...
~~~manly backslapping hugs, dude! LAIKA
What borders on pure insanity?
Canada and Mexico.
.
Music and writing
to me, Music and writing go hand in hand. I don't usually write unless I'm listening to music....... what kind?
For me,a lot of it depends upon mood. BUT Mostly I listen to classical, and New Age music. In fact, I have the music on my computer in three catagories.
Rock,-most modern music as well as music with lyrics
Soft Writing,- softer classical and New Age pieces i.e. mozart, Tchykousky(sp) etc..
Hard Writing, - heavier, louder Classical music. Rachmanninoff, Some Bach, Aaron Copeland, Korishnikoff(sp)
When I'm writing action sequenses, I tend to listen to my Hard music or Rock. Everthing else, I listen to the soft writing music.
but then again, I'm an old fart :)
A.A.
Writin' music
I listen to Reggae, Blues, and Big Band music, with an occasional dip into Classical.
Mr. Ram
Nice choice
But I tend to end up writing what I hear. Not always appropriate!
For me, Mike Oldfield sometimes or else it's too distracting.
Try working on something gentle while AC/DC slam out For those about to rock - we salute you, or Bob is talking about his three little birds, Third world are talking about cool meditation or Pete Tosh is complaining about Reggae Militis.
Harder still when Jimmy Page is grinding his axe into fine powder, or Tony Royster Jr is beating the good for the roses out of a drum kit I can only dream of owning (or playing that way).
I let the story talk to me. I am only a bloke after all...
I always listen to music when I write...
... but that may be why I haven't been brave enough to post any of my writing yet. Perhaps listening to music is distracting me too much!
For Some It Is Distracting.
And for others it's not. My choice not to listen to music is actually something that applies to most things in my life. A big part of my training post-secondary was in music theory and analysis and as a result I can't just listen most of the time for relaxation. I try, but find myself analyzing whatever I'm listening to. That tends to get in the way when you're trying to get something else done :)
Never let it be said that I don't enjoy the occasional delusion of grandeur
Never let it be said that I don't enjoy the occasional delusion of grandeur
Go International!
Ceri, there's more to the Edwardian era than the British Isles. Try John Philip Sousa marches & Scott Joplin (ragtime). And there's always dear Gustav Mahler. Hugs, Daphne
Daphne
Not that I'm a fanatic
but I on a rain-sodden trip to Amsterdam I made my friends trudge half way across the city to the Concertgebouw, purely because Mahler had conducted there!
So far the story hasn't gone beyond one Kensington town house, and won't wander much further than Russell Square, so I picked English composers, especially Vaughan-Williams. I'm fighting the good fight to keep photographic jargon to a minimum, and it would be so easy to let music references run away, as it's one of my favourite periods.
I'd thought of Joplin but wasn't sure how well known his work was known in London at the time; the same goes for other American composers, particularly Charles Ives who fascinates me, and others I know from Naxos's American Classics series.
It's a bit early at the start - which is around 1906 - but Ketelbey screams out to be included, if only for the madness of his pieces, and there are other types of music... 'revivals' swept parts of the country, bringing American hymns to the UK, parlour songs and ballads, music hall numbers...
The title of your post also brought to mind 'L'Intenationale' as the central character is a committed socialist and far less likely to sing 'Land of hope and glory' than 'Arise ye workers from your slumbers'.:)