Welcome to Colin Galbraith's guest blog

The Pleasure Of Writing To Music

Whether you’re a classical canary chirping away merrily to the sound of Bach, or whether you’re a metal manic battering the keyboard as the drums thrash behind you, writing to music is a common pleasure no matter who you are, and what you’re writing.

Ever since the first wireless radio was invented and the first phonograph record hit the shops, music has been as much an essential part of the writer’s armoury as a pencil and paper.

The idea for my latest book, STELLA, came from deep within my own love of music. In 1985 a popular electronic music duo from Switzerland called Yello, released an album of the same name. It gave them mediocre chart success until they released Oh Yeah, which became an instant world-wide hit, and was used in a number of movies soundtracks such as Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

When I first heard the album I was swept away with its mysterious music and bizarre lyrics. It made me think of gothic mysteries and shady Amsterdam streets, steam-filled railway stations in Budapest, chance encounters by high-collared men in hats with glamorous ladies, and dark underground caverns where the Devil’s faithful might play.

Back then I wasn’t a serious writer – I had just started High School - but two decades on I finally got round to doing what I always knew I would: put pen to paper and describe these weird and wonderful ideas, brought to life in my mind by the music I’d heard twenty years earlier.

Once I had this collection of scenes I developed a theme and began filling in the story. I started by threading together these exciting scenes and characters, finally cementing them in a story by writing whatever my imagination felt was right. I let the words flow using the music as the spur.

I’ve always written to music. Music is emotion, and from stirring the right emotion within oneself, it’s possible to bring out the best in a piece of writing that requires the emotion needed to hook a reader into a story. I listened to Yello’s album extensively while writing my latest book, Stella, and now when I hear it, it’s all I think of.

I’ve used a variety of music to inspire my writing over the years, from the abstractness of Pink Floyd in short stories and poems, to the non-lyrical rock of Mogwai to create tension and danger when writing crime. I’ve used classical music to relax me when the words just aren’t coming, and occasionally the radio, BBC Radio 2 being a strong favourite as it blends effortlessly into the background, allowing me to focus in an element of comfort that I’m not alone in the world as I write.

On the few occasions that no music seems to work, when my concentration is lacking or a deadline is looming, silence - total and utter silence - is about all that works.

Writing to music can be pleasurable as well as it can be productive. Pleasurable from the point of view that as you enjoy the music it makes you feel good, but pleasurable also in that if you match the right piece of music to the right prose, a sense of real artistic satisfaction can be gained from the resulting words.

It’s most probable that if I‘d never heard Yello’s album I would never have had the inspiration to write Stella. I would still be writing, there’s no doubt about that, but the satisfaction of working with two of my favourite characters may never have been realised. What would have been worse might have been I missed out on the discovery that writing to music can be a unique and fused experience. And that would have been a crying shame.

Do you write to music or is silence your preferred score? Is it something you can’t do and you need silence to write? What type of music do you listen to when you write? Leave a comment below and tell us your opinion.


About The Author

COLIN GALBRAITH’S popularity as a contemporary Scottish writer has grown rapidly over the past few years. He is a prolific writer of fiction, poetry, non-fiction articles and reviews, and has been earmarked by the Scottish local Press as one to watch. His latest book, STELLA, is available for purchase from Eternal Press at www.eternalpress.ca/stella.html and you can find his website