Music as Inspiration

As a writer, and as a person who loves nature, I tend to not listen to music very often as I prefer to hear the noises around me: birds chirping, the wind in the trees, the rain splattering on the windows…

But I recently found some music that is very inspiring to me.  I use it as background and let it filter out the car noises, other people talking etc. but low enough so that I can still hear a bird tweet.

The music I am referring to is resonant music – high frequency tones embedded in beautiful songs.  I found them through a link on Facebook and I am so happy I did.  The artist who created them is Michael Tyrrell and he calls them Wholetones.

Thinking about music and writing, it reminded me of a post I wrote, on one of my other blogs, and I think it is still very relevant today:

Does music inspire you to write?

For instance, if you were listening to Tchaikovsky’s 1812 overture, the part where it is at the peak of the crescendo and the canons are exploding… do you see anything?

Is there a character running from the guns, blood-stained face with bayonet in hand?  Is the sky dark and brooding, then flares and explodes?  Do you hear the cries of the wounded soldiers?

I was reading one of my favorite blogs today: Nail Your Novel, and the focus was on a Russian writer that uses music to inspire his writing.  Here is a bit of what Grigory Ryzhakov said:

“Music was also very important to me when I first started writing fiction seven years ago. My so far unpublished and untitled Russian-language sci-fi novel contains several episodes of gripping action. I listened to the Inception film soundtrack by Hans Zimmer to get myself in the mood for writing them. Thumping drums and basses associated in my mind with escalating threat of peril, I could feel the adrenaline rush as if I was at my character’s side. This music affected the way I wrote those action scenes: with shorter sentences, rhyming syllables, like gunshots. No room for reflection.”

He goes on to say that he writes in silence.  He just listens to specific types of music before he writes to get himself in the mood.  I thought this was genius.  I have never tried it…

Do you use music to inspire your writing mood?  Do you listen while you write or just before?  Can the music have words?  Curious to know what you think – leave a comment below!

~ Gretchen