Khun Narin – ‘psychedelic’ instrumentals with traditional Thai/Laotian melodies
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSYJfGjarBw
“I usually listen to indie or folk when I write for my blog , because I’m usually calmer and the words flow a little better for me,” says Heidi Carreon.
This is an updated version of a story that was previously published. We update our posts as often as possible to ensure they’re useful for our readers.
It’s no surprise we turn to music for inspiration when we’re ready to get creative, too.
About the Author: Dana Sitar
When I want to be in writing mood, I listen to songs with slow and gentle beats. Songs like ‘when a man loves a woman’ by Michael Bolton and ‘deep river woman’ by Lionel Richie.
These songs help me to relax and think clearly. But I switch music off to start writing. With music on, I won’t be able to focus on the writing.
I’ve struggled to find the appropriate music for writing as my music taste is so vast that a genre simply wouldn’t do. As of now, because I’m in the process of writing an anime, I’m listening to anime soundtracks. It helps sculpt the tone of the story but since soundtracks also vary in tone and rhythm, it can also be hard to keep a constant ora in the story. Smooth jazz sometimes helps but also can get boring. I suppose I just need to continue experimenting with different sounds to see what’s best.
It’s what I need some days to remind me I’m awesome and worthy of achieving the goals I’ve set.
Never, ever music with lyrics! That throws my brain off entirely as I’m already sorting through words I need/want/ponder for my writing. Suddenly words I don’t want (from the lyrics) pop in and I’m all off track. Give me what used to be called elevator music (do they even have elevators, let alone music in them anymore? ) Soft, pleasant, non-verbal … gotta go and get mine started.
White noise is also worth a mention for breaking the boredom of silence that weighs down some writers. Picture it: crickets chirp, birds sing, and thunder rolls in the background while you pound out 1,000 words on the French Revolution. Words flow like milk and honey from your fingertips, and you finish up your piece with enough time left over to binge watch a few eppys of your favorite show before heading off to bed. That’s the power of white noise. Although not exactly music per se, white noise can put an end to the monotony of quietness, which can, ironically be a big distraction.
Various studies have been undertaken over the years on music and focus, particularly when it comes to writing (and also, studying), and researchers have found that music sans lyrics is the most effective at keeping you on task and churning out meaningful words. Music with words can be distracting to some writers, causing them to pay more attention to the lyrics than they are to the creative process.
- “First Breath After Coma” by Explosions in the Sky. If you’ve watched “Friday Night Lights,” then you’ll recognize this tune as the theme song for the show. This instrumental has limited vocals and is interesting enough without being really intense, so you can focus on the job at hand – writing.
- “You Wish” by Nightmares on Wax. This electronic instrumental has an R&B twang and provides tranquil background noise to get your neurons pumping and the words flowing.
- “So What” by Miles Davis. This 60’s instrumental from one of jazz’s greatest will help you maintain focus without distracting you from what you’re writing about.
- “The Bridge of Khazad Dum” by Howard Shore on “The Lord of the Rings” soundtrack. You don’t have to live in the Shire to appreciate this soothing instrumental.
- “Metamorphosis II” by Philip Glass. This piano solo provides mood-lifting background noise for your late-night writing enjoyment.
- “Time” by Hans Zimmer from the “Inception” soundtrack. This peaceful instrumental will keep you focused and relaxed.
- “Shempi” by Ratatat. This vocal-free instrumental has a high-energy feel, helping you stay alert and keep your focus on pushing through the last few hundred words of your research paper.
If you’re like most students, writing can be frustrating, especially if you’re tense, stressed, or facing a looming due date for an important essay. The answer to staying focused and tapping into your creative juices may be as nearby as your earbuds: music. A whole body of research suggests that listening to music while you write boost’s your brain’s capacity for spatial-temporal reasoning, which is responsible for creative thinking (and thus, writing). So what type of music improves your concentration and focus the most?
Choosing a Genre
Create your own white noise mix with Noisli, a free app (also available on laptops and PCs) with an on-board mixer that lets you add nature sounds, storm sounds, coffee shop sounds, and water sounds, among others, to find the right level of background noise for your tastes.
Although choosing music from these genres can be as personalized as your own specific tastes, there are lots of recommendations floating around the interwebs when it comes to the “right” songs for writing. But don’t worry, we have a writer-approved playlist to help you focus and unleash your creativity.
That’s not to say you can’t throw on an epic soundtrack if you’re dealing with a bugger of an essay, a little Kanye, if you’re feeling like a superstar at a particular moment in time, or even some Adele to soothe your soul while you bring your ideas to life. However, electronic music, with its ambient notes and repetitive beats, and Baroque-period classical music, with its harmonic chords, are thought by researchers to be the best at releasing the inner Stephen King or G.R.R. Martin. “Brandenburg Concerto #3” by Johann Sebastian Bach gets numerous nods from researchers when it comes to heightening concentration and productivity.
Music is a great source of inspiration. Find the perfect tune and have fun working on your next assignment.
These facts are important for setting the ground for the rest of the analysis but shouldn’t be the central part of the essay. One paragraph containing the most important technical details is more than enough.
Once you’ve got all the information together, it’s time to write the first outline.
In addition, use other digital libraries you can get access to, to find even more academic journals, handbooks and valuable sources of information. You can find numerous resources at your local library or in your nearest college or university library.
Use both the information you’ve written down during the listening as well as those found during research. Make sure to adjust your tone and style of writing to fit the purpose. Academic writing requires following the right kind of a writing form and using academic vocabulary.
Do the Research
To make the whole essay even better, don’t forget to use as many technical terms as possible. You can find glossaries of musical terms to help you understand the topic better and write it using the appropriate vocabulary.
Before handing in the essay, you need to remove any mistakes and errors you may have made during the writing phase.
When you finish writing and polishing your essay, it’s best to leave it to sit for a day or two. Don’t read it for at least 24 hours. It will help you step away from the writing process and spot any mistakes or weak points once you come back to it.
I suppose my first writing about music was when I was at college. I had trained as a musician, although never to a very elevated degree, and also composed music – or tried to – from around the age of nine or 10. So I was very much immersed in music. Writing was my other great love when I was younger, but I didn’t try to combine the two pursuits until I was doing a radio show in college which required me to write out announcements for programmes I was doing. We also published some CD reviews, so those were my first official acts of music criticism.
Nietzsche is one of many philosophers who has written about Wagner – others include Theodor Adorno and Alain Badiou. What is it about Wagner that attracts them?
Over the course of the 20th century, classical music became progressively more defined as an elite form – as something that was at a distance from the mainstream, from everyday life, even from emotion. It became seen as highly esoteric and intellectualised. None of that is true. There’s always been a great diversity and audience for classical music – wealthy people, poor people, people in the middle – and everyone who loves this music identifies with it, first and foremost, on an emotional level. The intellectual level comes after. But in the presentation of classical music, something went awry. Bernstein put a temporary stop to that, or at least slowed down the progress of that stereotype.
There are many shining examples of good and great writing on music. It’s just a very inexact and idiosyncratic science. Either people have an instinct for it or they don’t, but it’s very important that it go on. Because the great throng of people who care deeply about music in any genre want to be part of a conversation about it, and they want someone out there doing the work of listening to this vast quantity of new music and singling out some voices that they should be paying attention to. So I think the role of the critic will remain strong even if the media landscape is constantly changing.
Listen To This
by Alex Ross
Certainly in my own work I’ve tried to react against that. I’m not a particularly confessional writer, and I don’t really talk about my own experiences that much, but in the essay that opens [Listen To This] I consciously made an effort to bring my own history as a listener into the discussion. It doesn’t come naturally to me, maybe because I’m as much part of this classical mentality as anyone else. But you don’t need to just write a searing diary of your daily life as a critic – you can make the emotional dimension clear in many other ways.
Why does Nietzsche’s reaction to Wagner differ so between the two books?
One very significant problem that classical music has faced in the 20th century has been an association with fascism, and in particular Hitler’s notorious love for Wagner. There was a sense that something had gone spiritually awry in classical music itself, or that Hitler’s love for Wagner had somehow tainted the music or revealed something evil inherent to it. This is something of a misunderstanding, or a far from complete picture of Wagner – but it needs to be confronted and talked about.
Complexity, formality, precision, objectivity, hedging, and responsibility – these are all features of academic writing. The list can be much more comprehensive if one is to give a detailed description of what academic writing is about. There is no universal definition for academic writing since it comes in so many forms. But mostly people use it for denoting any kind of writing that is done to meet the requirements of educational establishments, like colleges or universities. So pretty much any written assignment done for the school or college can be considered a piece of academic writing. Throughout the study students come across various academic writing genres, such as essays, case studies, reports, etc. In this article we would like to dwell on one of the most popular genres of academic writing - an essay. This is something you will be facing all the time in a college or university. Knowing about what it is in advance may help you better understand how to write it well.
- Argumentative essay. The very core of this essay type is an argument. Argumentative essays are all about proving your own opinion or hypothesis about something. This kind of essay is very similar to the persuasive writing. However, in this case you have to argue for your own opinion that is opposed to other people’s views which is much more than simply persuading someone to take your position. In order to write a good argumentative essay one has to research a topic very well and to understand all factors and aspects of the topic. Working on developing a solid evidence is another key for success when writing this kind of essay.
These are basic writing genres people have to know about. At this point we don’t want to talk about anything more specific than that, for example a persuasive essay or book review. Such writings are rather subcategories or types of the genres listed above. All we want is to help our readers understand one specific genre – an essay. This is truly the genre all students will be working on regardless of the degree and course of study. So what is an essay and how to write it? An essay is a short piece of writing on a particular subject usually written in prose. It is a literary composition written in an argumentative fashion that is meant to address a problem or topic. Most of the essays are either analytic or interpretive. However, there are a lot of speculative essays as well. An essay is a way to express your ideas, analysis, and thoughts on a particular subject. It is important to understand that writing an essay is opposite to retranslating the thoughts of other people. Although other people’s ideas and thoughts are to be used in the process of writing an essay, they have to assist you either argue something or prove your own point. In other words, an essay should distinctively retranslate your own voice – this is the whole point of an essay after all.
- Report
- Case study
- Essay
- Dissertation
- Review/Critique
- Reflective writing
- Research proposal
What is an Essay?
- Expository essay. This one is very simple. This type of essay is meant to explain writer’s interpretation of a theme, idea or issue. In other words it is a personal response to an event, artwork or any other thing that people usually evaluate or have some kind of response to. When writing an expository essay writers have to prepare a well-defined thesis, provide evidence to back up one’s thoughts and keep everything as concise as possible.
- Analytical essay. When writing an analytical essay you have to focus on a quality analysis first. Before writing this type of essay students should first examine and analyze and only then to put everything to writing. This is not something you write on the go (that is you write as you think). It is important to analyze an event or artwork and only then to interpret it. Such essays are to begin with an introductory paragraph followed by an analysis itself and personal interpretation of the findings. A conclusion should naturally flow out of the things previously mentioned in an essay.
- Persuasive essay. If you want to convince your readers about something then you need to write a persuasive essay. That is where arguments are to be your primary focus. Persuasive essay writing is not about emotions or even the explanation of something