Tag: background

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This Isn’t a Music Blog, But…

Something incredibly exciting is happening with the top 40 right now. Last week, the track Rein Me In by Sam Fender and Olivia Dean reached 19 non-consecutive weeks at number one. In doing so, it surpasses the 18-week record set by the Frankie Laine single I Believe in 1953.

The last time anything threatened to come close was during the first half of the 1990s with Bryan Adams and Wet Wet Wet with soundtracks from popular films. These have been pushed into third and fourth place respectively. Conversely, Rein Me In is a slow-burning hit with no obvious cultural trigger, with the trade-off that it hasn’t yet bored everyone senseless.

For better analysis, I invite you visit the Chart Watch blog.

I mention this phenomenon because it leads nicely into the topic of this week’s entry: what do I listen to while writing?

The short answer is: nothing specific. My radio is generally tuned to BBC Radio 1 for the breakfast show every weekday morning and the chart show on a Friday afternoon. If I want a change, I might switch to an adult contemporary station like Absolute Radio or one of its offshoots.

I’m also a regular listener to the speech output of BBC Radio 4 Extra, but not while writing. Pop and rock music lyrics tends to fade into the background, whereas comedy or conversation can be distracting.

I used to have a specific playlist. The majority of it comprised music from the 2007 film The Assassination of Jesse James, composed by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, with additional Cave tracks to bring it up to one hour.

These days, I normally use the a resource like the music of Jason Lewis for longer projects. He makes mixes of up to there hours with isochronic tones that pulse on and off at regular intervals. These are supposed to affect brainwaves in a productive fashion. I can’t say whether that’s true or not, but I find they tend to support writing rather than distracting from it.

Sometimes, of course, you need to take the soundtrack you’re given, particularly at writing group. The pub where we meet commonly plays ambient music and/or sports commentary, both of which can be loud and not conducive to writing.

As I edit this, however, I can hear a mixture of classic hits at low volume, so I hope that continues until 8pm.

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Background Noise

Whenever I’m starting a longer writing session, I like to play some music in background. Over time, my playlist of choice has changed.

It was initially the soundtrack of the film The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, composed by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis. Since that lasted only around 45 minutes, I bulked up the playlist to just over an over with more Nick Cave songs.

More recently, I’ve switched to a musician called Jason Lewis, although I can’t recall when I first discovered his work. Since 2006, he’s produced three-hour mixes with isochronic tones. These are regular repetitions of a single tone mixed into rapid beats, which are supposed to enhance concentration.

From what I can gather, there’s no scientific basis for this, but I find his mixes work for me. They’re completely instrumental, allowing me to focus on writing, and free to access on YouTube.

The only real difference between the soundtrack and the Jason Lewis music is the familiarity. With Cave and Ellis, I would hear exactly the same songs in the same order and know roughly where in the playlist I was. With Jason Lewis, by contrast, I tend to listen to either the most recent mix or choose one that matches the mood of my piece.

Of course, I’m completing this entry at my regular Tuesday writing group, which comprises whatever the bar decides to play. It can be a strange mixture of pop, metal, easy listening, dance or rap, with no apparant pattern. Tonight is a reasonable mix, featuring Elton John and Kiki Dee with Don’t Go Breaking My Heart right now.

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Expelling the Exposition

Last week, I was inspired to write a short story, but it needed a lot of background information to be included before the action happened. As I was planning it out, though, I couldn’t figure out how to explain it without boring the reader.

In the years I’ve been writing, one technique I’ve found to work is simply to write the story, exposition and all. Afterwards, it’s usually a case of taking a step back and trying to carve out a structure from what’s on the page.

In this case, I had a character that should have arrived at a place by 6pm and was uncontactable by phone until 8pm before finally showing up at 9:30pm. I initially had the action take place at 8pm, with the characters holding a conversation between that time and 9:30pm.

Looking back over what I’d written, I realised I could dispense with the 8pm call and set the action nearer 9:30pm. That had the effect of both reducing the explanation and intensifying the surprise as the arrival was now completely unexpected. I also placed much of the exposition into dialogue instead of descriptive paragraphs.

That meant I could start the action earlier and it took off with gusto. I wrote so much that I was able to split the narrative, with a cliffhanger between the two parts.