I can’t imagine not having music going when I’m writing. Occasionally, I’ll have something else going; like a DvD movie or something, but for the most part, it has to be music for me.
My tastes are more diverse then I probably lead you to believe. My first love is the Blues, and I cannot imagine that ever changing. But there is a lot of other stuff that I like as well. With iTunes (and probably any other mp3 player out there), I can get fairly random mixes of music when I want them – and that is usually how I want my music, very random.
I offer you this glimpse into my music – a quick screen shot of my iTunes Party Shuffle list. Click the image if you want a larger view:
As I hope you can see, there is a really good mix here. Everything from Blues and Rock to Pop and Jazz and the occasionaly tv theme song (Drew Carey singing ‘Moon over Parma’ – I also have Lee Majors singing the theme from ‘The Fall Guy’, Murray Gold with the theme to ‘Doctor Who’ and Walyon Jennings singing the theme from ‘The Dukes of Hazzard’, to name a few) mixed in for good measure.
I have had people wander in and ask me what on earth I am playing, which always causes me to pause and listen more closely. I have been known to answer, “Duel of the Fates from Star Wars, Episode I” before, as well as, “Oh… this is from Wrath of Kahn.” or “Lazlo Bane. You don’t know them.” I’ve also had people wander in and discover something that they absolutely love and must have, so I end up burning them a CD at some point or shooting them an email with the artist name/song name/cd title.
I think an ecclectic music collection helps a lot. You never know what you’re going to get. And when you’re writing, that can be a good thing because it can help you define your mood and then you can put that into the words on the page. Also, there are times when you want to be in a specific mood because of what you are writing, so you put together a quick playlist to suit that mood and off you go. I often wonder if authors shouldn’t publish a soundtrack for their novels, so we can know what they were listening to when they wrote something so we can set the mood for when we read it.
What do you think? Does music play a roll in your own writing?
~P
