5 Perfect Musicians to Help You Write

mellow songs to help you write, songs that drive writing, songs that motivate writers, songs to listen to while you write

Thursday, November 12th, 2009 - 3:40 pm - Study Tip

RT @eduify 5 Perfect Musicians to Help You Write

by Brandon Chester

In our f headphones-computer ast paced lives, music is often the perfect remedy to slow down our pace and bring focus to a writing project. Consider the effects of the tempo and rhythm of your favorite songs or the mood a certain musician brings you to and how your creative faculty responds to those elements. Whether you’re doing a last minute paper in the wee-hours of the morning, letting some submerged thoughts spill out in a stream of consciousness free-write, or carefully constructing your masterfully novel, music can help unlock thoughts and enhances your writing process. Although musical tastes are highly subjective, Eduify has identified 5 albums to accompany your future writing projects. We’ve even thrown in a style of writing we think fits the theme of the music for each album.

Click here to listen to Eduify’s Write to Radio on Last.fm! All these albums and our fan’s suggestions. Free!

Miles Davis “’Round About Midnight” – Jazz

Whether you’re a fan of the jazz or not, it would be hard to find something bad to say about this classic Miles Davis record. What could be better for getting those original ideas hidden deep in the core of your mind onto the page (or screen) than listening to some masters of the art of improvisation at work? Along with the Miles Davis lyrical trumpet melodies is the innovative and untouchable John Coltrane on saxophone. If you don’t know what you’re going to write about, don‘t stress, a lot of the best jazz musicians like John Coltrane and Miles Davis didn’t know what they’re going to play until it was played. Eduify’s imagines this albums as sexy, noir crime novel in some big city in the early 20th century, rich with muggy night clubs and rainy alleyway rendezvous.

John Fahey “Blind Joe Death” – Blues

Alright, so maybe listening to five people exploring the limits of their instrumentation all at the same time is too distracting. If you’re working on, say, maybe a paper for school, you might need something a little more mellow. John Fahey is considered by many a virtuoso of the blues guitar and this record is audible proof. Nowadays one might hear the term ‘guitar virtuoso’ and think of wailing, light speed riffs and hi gain ultra-sustain whammy bar show-offs. If you hate the monotony of writing your papers in the same desk, in the same old room when you would really rather be somewhere else, maybe the songs of John Fahey’s Blind Joe Death can help you pretend you’re writing underneath an old oak tree in the country. Think old American folktales told around the fire in the woods after a hard day of work at the farm.

Ravi Shankar “Sounds of India” – Classical Indian

Let’s escape our current location. Let’s go to Northern India! A whole world of foreign traditions and different ways of life may tune your mind to a different frequency. In actuality, you might still just be in the same old chair as always, but listening to the man many consider the most important classical sitarist of the past century could give your mind some unfamiliar inspiration and get your inner atman writing. Eastern music is known to be fundamentally different in many ways to the Western traditions of music, theoretically, thematically and instrumentally. (Western hemisphere that is–not the shoot ‘em up, saloon-brawling style ‘western’). This could be the soundtrack to some poetry collection found locked in an ancient treasure chest you stumbled upon during a quest alone through some tranquil mountains.

Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry and The Upsetters “Super Ape” – Jamacian

We’re trying to keep the selection as diverse and well rounded as possible, but maybe the drones and sitars are too far out for you to concentrate on finishing your homework. We don’t want to leave out any music for our readers who dig the steady pace of the drum and bass we hear in popular music today. Maybe it’s me: I think it’s difficult to finish writing when you hear someone saying more words in ten seconds than you’ve written in your last paragraph. Check out Jamaican producer, Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, with music performed by The Upsetters. Most of his work, along with this album, was conceived in his own back yard studio, The Black Ark, and has continued to influence following generations of various types of music up to today. This music is like that book you’ve always wanted to write, but it’s still being planned out in your head until you think of the perfect ending.

Earth ‘Hex: Or Printing in the Infernal Method’ – Hypnotic

If this is all still all too distracting for you to get that novel or term paper finished that you’ve been slaving on for what seems like years, then maybe you just need to write in silence. Well, that’s not our 5th album suggestion, but not far from the peace of quiet is the atmospheric worlds crafted by the hypnotic Telecaster sounds of Earth. Look to some of their older albums and you may find music more apparently inspired by metal and blues, but Earth has always had a leaning towards repetition and continuity: two elements perfect for undisturbed concentration.