When it comes to my own writing I spend time working out what music best fits the writing - almost as if the story is a movie. This helps me to get 'in the zone'. When I wrote a hypertext piece, it worked even better, because I was able to have the music play while you read:https://sites.google.com/site/minusearth1/ .
(There is also a short but informative article here:http://www.suite101.com/content/inspiring-yourself-to-write-a102140 )
The article talks more from the perspective of dealing with writer's block, but there are other things hinted at like using music to control the tone or mood of a piece of writing. In my own case, I like to use orchestral music for space exploration SF, Cyber/industrial for my cyberpunk stories and folk metal/folk for writing fantasy.
I suppose it would be a worthy experiment to deliberately play inapropriate music and see what effect it has. I know that in my case it disturbs the flow and will innevitably put me off writing the piece, but each to their own. Happy writing, people!
I do this exact same thing... i have nearly a month's worth of music on my hard drive and spend hours setting up playlists for specific moods.
ReplyDeleteI find movie and TV soundtracks to be the best as they are composed for visual accompaniement and my mind just fills in the missing pictures.