Muse-ic

Muse-ic inspires me to do muse-ic, so very rarely provides any help with ideas while writing. Mostly, I'll be listening to symphonic metal again, interspersed with progressive metal, hardcore metal, speed metal, heavy metal and nu-metal (I don't like death and doom metal). Muse comes straight after Trivium in my playlists, so I'll be hearing them too.

If anyone has been paying attention to the Soundtracks forum, you may have noticed me recommending the same few bands over and over again where ever I can fit them in. I'm on a fairly hardcore shoegaze binge - Lush, Slowdive, and My Bloody Valentine have been fueling me for the past few months - Ride and Cranes also are of interest, though I've only heard a few of their songs.

Otherwise there's The Cure, Nine Inch Nails, LifeForce, Within Temptation, After Forever, and Nightwish, but they all get much less playtime lately.

I don't really have set artists, songs or genres of music that I listen to when I write, I just listen to whatever I have on my computer at the time that I'm currently obsessed with, or whatever crops up on my Zen when it's on shuffle. If I'm in the mood for a certain song/artist/genre, then I'll listen to it, but it's generally not to inspire my writing, or work in sync with it. I just listen. I can't work without the background noise of music I like. Half the time I'm not even really paying attention to the music, it's just there (and wearing earphones is a great way to keep the rest of the world at bay, making it a lot easier to concentrate!).

Having said that, there are certain songs that'll crop up that work with a scene or relate to the overall theme of the story, and I've a few playlists on my Zen that serve as self-made soundtracks for my novels. I'll either listen to these for fun, or to reinspire me when I've lost the desire for an idea, or to help move a scene along if I'm having trouble with it (because the music creates the atmosphere and emotions I need to get it written).

2008 - Thirteen Months (romance/drama) 50,085 words

I have album's I listen to per novel. Last year was the Tarzan Soundtrack. I think this year it will be the Lord of the Rings Soundtracks plus She Wolf by Shakira thown in because it is somewhat on topic.

ML for Brisbane, Australia

2008 - Star Seeker - Winner
2009 - Triblood - Complete

I'm not the world's greatest multitasker, so I find it very difficult to listen to music and write at the same time. I'm going to try a couple different things this year, I'll let you know if any of them work.

If I get really stuck I'll take a break and play some music, and depending on my mood that could be anything from Ella Fitzgerald to My Chemical Romance. There's really no specific artist I listen to, so it would take too long to list all of them.

"Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, martini in the other, totally worn out and screaming,'WOO HOO what a ride!'"

I'm really eclectic when it comes to music, though I do like mood-appropriate tunes on occasion. Most often, I have my playlist on random, so it'll play anything from rock to metal to retro to filk to classical.

I usually like something fairly stirring for writing, and for that I'll plug in a soundtrack. Which one depends on the type of scene I'm writing! Fast-paced stuff for action, fighty for fighty, etc.

I try and avoid stuff I'm inclined to sing along to, as that gets distracting. I usually wind up blocking it out anyway - having music on helps me concentrate by forcing me to filter sounds out of my attention.

Always looking for more music, though. Hmm, perhaps that's a good excuse to go music-shopping before NaNo hits.

~Mel
ML for Brisbane, Australia
Captain of the Purple Ninja Nightowls (of Death)

2007 - Queen of Diamonds
2008 - Shuriken
2009 - The Apocalypse Blog - the final installment

As always, I'm pushing the soundtracks! I love instrumentals geared to mood, for writing music, as I tend to find lyrics too distracting.

Finding Neverland is bright and charming with occasional melancholy moods; Mirrormask is jolting and strange but haunting and sometimes beautiful; The Lord of the Rings soundtracks are stirring, melancholy, uplifting and heartbreaking by turns; The Matrix Revolutions is fast-paced and pulses with action; The Last Unicorn is beautiful and sad (and I always break my no-lyrics rule for 'In The Sea'); Jin Roh is tragic with uplifting moments; Disney's Pocahontas (the instrumental section) can make you giggle or cry; Dr Who: Series Three is action without the breakneck pace of the Matrix, combined with moments of heartbreak and joy; and while the familiar themes on the Harry Potter soundtracks can be distracting, they have a nice mix of moods and Umbridge's theme alone is worth the price of admission for sheer bounce.

I totally have more.

I've found Phrase, Bliss 'n' Eso, Linkin Park & Fat Freddy's Drop useful with some smaller projects that I've had going on this year. I'm hoping they all hold up for NaNoWriMo *crosses fingers*

As Always
Wiggy
"Truth may not set you free but used correctly can sure confuse the hell out of your enemise" Anita Blake (Laurell K Hamilton)

music is going to play a huge part in my nano, so i'll be listening to a lot of the music that is influencing it.

i find bands like brand new, horsell common and closure in moscow good to have in the background, cause i can just get lost in it.

i seem to be the opposite of most people here, i can't concentrate unless i have music on in the background.

hitthepavement.wordpress.com - my australian music podcast

For me my music influences my story, so what I listens to depends on the plot of the story, and sometimes even the specific chapter.

07 it was a lot of nightwish, and some of the riverdance soundtrack, as my primary playlist

this year, I'm doing a bit of dual work, one story is autobiographical in nature so i imagine it will be evanescence for as long as I can manage it, as their songs jog a lot of memories, and other important music from the past few years. For the fictional piece I have in reserve in case I can't handle the first one, I'm undecided, I don't know what would suit, but I best figure it out soon as, for me, if I don't have the matching music, I struggle with inspiration, because music puts me in the necessary mindset.

NaNo 07 - A Single White Plumeria - 50,032 (wow)
NaNo 08 - Started, but failed, miserably, dang distractions (especially cute ones...)
NaNo 09 - In Progress

Mostly heavy metal (what I listen to anyway), I'm doing another cyberpunk / thriller novel this year so I might throw in some trance / house music to get a bit of a different feel.

I could write to metallica, iron maiden, sonata arctica all day and all night.

I'll be going the soundtrack & classical route mostly, but there are certain scenes that demand Pink Floyd to properly inscribe.
One year, I'm determined to plug in my 1TB of music, hit "random shuffle" & see what results. This year, not so much.
Oh! LOTR & Wing Commander will be making an appearance! When you have huge flying lizards, you need huge flying music.

Like DanQnA, I typically listen to a lot of symphonic and progressive metal as my muse-ic.

a) A lot of these bands write songs about fantasy worlds (i.e Elvenking)
and
b) The lyrics are generally symbolic, and open to many interpretations

2009: Mortaelia. Tolkien-esque fantasy.
2010: Poison Apple. Historical fiction. (Subject to change)

Well, you mentioned Muse, so now I'm listening to them 'cause I haven't in a while. Listening to Assassin while writing about Ninjas. Nice.

I'll listen to metal mostly I'd think. Dream Theater, to Dream Theater, with a bit of Poison Black and Dimitar Nalbantov thrown in.

I don't understand the link between twilight and muse... ok so muse have a few songs on the soundtrack to the silly twilight movies but they were around long before those emo vampires (they are up to album number 5!). I like muse and will continue to like them - twilight or no twilight.
Other muse I like to write to includes the flaming lips, radiohead, rage against the machine, air and sigur ros... there are others just can't think of them now. Each band invokes a different mood.... I would be lost without music.

I'm still building the playlist, but "Brasil '69" by Sergio Mendes and the soundtrack from the original 1960's "Casino Royal" feature prominently. Anything with a bossa nova sound or cocktail lounge music of the 60's, such as the Ramsey Lewis Trio.

djfarrugia - Stephanie Meyer frequently references Muse in her books

I'm writing mostly to movie scores including The Queen, Changi and (ok the mocking can begin) the Twilight score. But I just got through a difficult bit while listening to the songs from Glee :)

Well we're only up to day two at the moment, and I've never done this before, but I can see Nobuo Uematsu's work being put on repeat for many of the writing sessions for me. He's the guy who wrote most of the soundtrack to Final Fantasy games and his music is just gorgeous. He's since left Square, the company who makes the games, but is still doing a bit of work for them as a Freelance, and there's like 13 actual games so that's quite a bit of unique listening. Plus he formed a band called the Black Mages, which are like... progressive metal versions of his songs? I guess. So there's that too.

Apart from old mate Nobuo, there's always the Killers, my favourite band. Brandon Flowers is a great story-teller and inspires me a whole lot, perfect for NaNoWrimo.

But I'll mostly probably just put my iTunes on shuffle all and see what happens. Unless the songs distract me with their words, in which I'll just change back to Uematsu. The default. =P

That might be true. But they're still good musically, so just because a moron likes them is no reason why the poor sods should be dragged into the dirt with her. As they themselves have no say to whether their music goes on the soundtracks or not.

:P

At the moment my playlists seem to be heavily relying on...

- Immediate Music.
- Fiction Junction (Japanese)
- Alot of Yuki Kaijura (Just in General)
- Alot of Anime OST's.
- A bit of Glee
- Michael Buble
- Disney~~
-Luka Bloom

Doesn't really match does it? Well, at least that's the general Nano Playlist.

I have customized playlists for each of the Novels I'm working on and change it in accordance to which one I'm working on XD I find it helps me alot XD

Number of Coffees: 8
Number of Teas: 19
Number of Meals Missed: 7
Number of Central Characters Killed: None... Yet... MWAHAHAHAHA

Adele
Joni Mitchell
explosions in the sky
Pirates of the Caribbean 1 and 2 soundtracks by Hans Zimmer
Paramore
Death Cab's older stuff

The problem with me is that I get obsessed with putting together a playlist, then spend more time doing that than actual writing.

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hi mat

hitthepavement.wordpress.com - my australian music podcast

I might note, that Pirates 1st soundtrack is by Klaus Badelt. The later soundtracks are by Hans Zimmer. :D