My absolute favorite writing album is Takk by Sigur Ros. It’s beautiful, sweeping, epic… and I can’t understand the lyrics, so they aren’t distracting. :) I don’t mind using music with lyrics as long as they’re inspiring and something I’ve heard enough to let it fade in the background. The Echoing Green, Anberlin, Imogen Heap, Death Cab for Cutie, and Radiohead come to mind.

Another fun thing to do: Make a soundtrack playlist for major projects. Before I even really begin to write an idea, I put a bunch of songs that fit the story in an iTunes playlist and tweak it over time as the story develops. It helps me set a mood for writing, and it helps me stay in the story. It’s amazing how quickly you can train your mind to associate a scene or character with a song!

Yay for writing music. :)

Know exactly what you mean about writing when listening to music and reading. When you immerse yourself in other people’s creations, when trying to create your own, everything seems to flow much better!

I wish I could use Pandora, cos it looks like there’s some fantastic music on there, but I cannot access the service due to licensing restraints, with me living in the UK. Never mind! Have you tried SomaFM? There’s some amazing music on their channels.

Thanks for reading!

Thanks for reading, glad you liked the article!

I notice a difference when I’ve listened to more music and read more books, as opposed to when I’ve just been watching TV and writing mindlessly. My plot lines seem to flow better, my dialgue is snappier, the meaning behind the words is deeper.

I’m sure these bands aren’t obscure to most people but I’ve only heard of Pink Floyd. I like mellow music that will me just write without having to stop and skip songs. I am a big fan of jazz, and I like to use Pandora. Select a station, put in the earbuds and write away. The music is very inspirational.

It’s powerful.

Jazz also helps,
And so does stuff like Mogwai, Explosions in the Sky, EF, …

i like writing to bands on wefunkradio.com

anything that’s got a groove really helps me.

I like your passion though! Championing lesser-known, interesting bands is brilliant, and more people should do it.

Thanks again.

This post was mentioned on Twitter by randylewiskemp: Five Bands You Should Be Writing To http://bit.ly/5SzcYT…

Imagine some one writing a blog post to musicians on a musician blog, and saying hey you guys should really expand your mind and read some straight talking drug induced contemporary fiction, like Thomas De Quincey, or even Charles Bukowski, or William Burroughs. And although they would be right in part, they are not really in time or very original, or adding unique value, anyone could have said those three, or at lest one of them.

Sure their are musicians who probably haven’t read any of these, and probably even more who never thought to look there for inspiration for their songs, but that’s not the point.

Wouldn’t Chuck Palahniuk be a better suggestion, well even then it would be better because it would be in time with the world around them, but they probably already know about him, or even if they don’t directly, they do indirectly, films, posters, spin offs etc. So not so much of an added value.

In the same way that even if a few people haven’t thought to write with this music on, they have been influenced by it culturally for a long time, these groups are used in films, commercials, ads, etc.

I am in no advocating that you have a contest to find obscure things for inspiration, that’s ridiculous, and not even close to adding value to people’s lives, it suffocating actually.

But think about the Beats as just one example, they were fueled by jazz, Benny Goodman, Louis Armstrong? No the Jazz that was going on at the same time they were writing, music they could touch and experience, see in an intimate club, have their pictures taken with them, invite them over to share in the wonderful energy that is creativity.

I love B. Goodman, and I love the Jazz of the 50s that Beats wrote about, but I need only step out my door to find Jazz of today, that is as fresh now, as that was then. If I want to write about the 50s then I’ll go back to those records, or about the war, then sure back to B. Goodman and the like. Etc.

With the internet, no band is obscure, when my first record came out, my family couldn’t even buy it because Wal-mart is the only place that sold music for 100 miles around them and I was too “obscure” for wal-mart, now with the internet you can make a single in the basement of a church in papa nui guinea and be a hit 24 hrs later in London, NYC and Chicago all at the same time, that is cool, and smashes barriers that used to be so high.

However, there are still barriers, now it is hard to figure out what is good, because there is so much out there (pick any topic and its the same, this is the flip side to the internet.) Which is why your voice on this particular platform as opposed to your blog/twitter is so important. Because it has clout and a far reaching audience. People come to big reputable sites for unique value and because they trust they will get it and be told something they can’t hear elsewhere.

I agree no two people will ever create the same work, even if listening to the same record, I think that goes without saying, but the point is that pink floyd for as much as I love them, is not 2010.

And more importantly any band as popular as these listed already has so many things stapled to their persona that will get folded into your writing, if you are writing a period piece then that’s cool, but if you are trying to write today about stories of today, let’s talk about music of today that is not selling out stadiums, or at least something with less paraded mystic. You say Pink Floyd and people have thousands of reference points already.

I realize you intent is to help writers and not musicians but perhaps, not something their dads smoked pot to and told stories about, perhaps not music that has been on Sex in the City or on car commercials. Don’t go looking for something obscure just to be cool, but then again don’t give out baby food just so that it will be so bland that everyone will agree. Between, ITunes, Amie St., Amazon and file sharing, etc., people can find anything with a quick search no matter if it came out yesterday, and you can help them along even by adding a link.

It’s about adding unique value. I love U2 and I write to them often, but I am not going to write a blog post about it and assume that it is something unique and fresh that is going to make readers come back and ask for more.

You could write a whole novel while listening to Running to Stand Still, but come on, anyone could tell you that.

Give me added value tell me check out Sharon Van Etten who I didn’t know until this week, but has blown my mind and fueled my writing with the unique sound of my own city at this particular moment. Is she obscure, no, no one is obscure anymore, just paid or un-paid.

best of luck in your writing.

want to hear her? I have listened to it on repeat for the last week:

http://www.mbvmusic.com/2009/05/26/listen-mbv-sharon-van-etten/9712#

My goal with this article was to share with the FYW readers the music that I like to listen to when I write, why I feel this music helps me to write, and to encourage readers who would not normally write to music to give it a try.

I have shared these particular bands with other writers in the past, and many times they were new to them; maybe not Pink Floyd but certainly the others. I know they aren’t the most obscure bands out there, but that was never my intention with this post. I, like yourself, know of many similar examples that I could have used (’Explosions In The Sky’ instead of ‘Mogwai’, ‘Reklein’ instead of ‘Autechre’), and I am familiar with several of the alternative examples you gave, but I chose not to use these more obscure bands for the simple fact that I don’t listen to them as much when I’m writing as I do the bands listed above, because I don’t find them as good for writing as the examples that I used.

Perhaps, as you mentioned, this was a missed opportunity to give exposure to some lesser-known bands. I am all for championing obscure bands, and sharing them with others, and I often do this through my daily interactions, my own blog, and my Twitter. While this site may reach a larger audience, my goal in this article was to help writers, not musicians.

It seems that you do not even think I have achieved that goal – because by encouraging writers to listen to these bands they are going to be inspired by music that has inspired so many stories in the past. Firstly, I shared these bands precisely because they have inspired others in the past, and continue to inspire me and other writers now, through their quality and deserved popularity. Secondly, you say “Do we need yet another Pink Floyd fueled book?” I would argue, though, that what I get out of listening to Floyd (and the other bands listed here) will be different to what you get out of it. My point is that while these bands often inspire particular emotions, listening to the same bands will not necessarily produce similar results. Listening to these bands, combined with our own different experiences, personalities, moods, and writing styles, may throw up some similarities, but will ultimately be bound to fuel a wide range of stories.

Finally, I’d be up for writing a follow up post, but I think it would arguably be redundant. Yes, it would give exposure to a few lesser-known bands, but like I’ve already explained I don’t think this is the forum to be doing that. And yes, it would expose some writers to new obscure music to write to. But I am sure that there are many writers who have not written to the bands I talk about in this article; they may have heard of them, certainly, and may even listen to them – but they might not have tried writing to them. They may not write to music at all, and my main goal of this post was to encourage that practice. I hope I have achieved that.

Again, thank you Jesse for taking the time to comment, and I hope I haven’t come across as too defensive.

Christopher

1. These bands have each sold a million records, and therefore you’re not using this opportunity to help musicians.

2. These bands have each sold a million records, and therefore you’re not using this opportunity to help writers. Do we need yet another Pink Floyd fueled book? FSOL, Mogwai, Isis, these are all bands most writers know, as they are featured in contemporary movies and have been written about extensively for years.

There are thousands of great bands out there to Fuel Your Writing, bands that would really appreciate you mentioning them as that it might allow them to keep making music, and even due collaborative work with authors.

These more “unknown” bands would maybe give you a mental landscape that doesn’t already have the pathways beaten down by millions of others before you.

I would be glad to give you days worth of music to write to if you were to do a follow up post to this one. I will send you records from every genre perfect for writing, but not easily found on Wal-mart shelves.

Musicians need it, writers need it, and sometimes those people are one in the same.

Here is a quick list to match yours with lesser known bands of the same or greater quality (don’t get me wrong I love the bands in your list, but they have had their due):

Pink Floyd = Ghost

Autechre = Tim Hecker

Mogwai = Set Fire to Flames

Isis = Sun O)))

FSOL = Fennesz

For everyone of these there are 10 off the top of my head just as good.

here are some examples:

Ghost: http://bit.ly/6m1Dde

Set Fire to Flames: http://bit.ly/8GBiMx

Tim Hecker: http://bit.ly/1mM9rv

Fennesz: http://bit.ly/8RLpdo

Perfect for a rainy day like today = Max Richter: http://bit.ly/2riNZ3 or http://bit.ly/o1Tw7

If your up for writing the post, I’ll send you the music.

Jesse Poe

http://www.google.com/profiles/jessewpoe