Music To Work To

[Guest]

Apologies if there has already been a thrad on this, but.....

I have a rather heavy writing project starting up in the next month or so, and I don't always find silence terribly conducive to inspiration. So, I was wondering what other forum members would reocmmend as suitable music to work to - you know the drill: not too distracting (so opera/vocal is probably out). I've recently acquired Brian Eno's 1975 album 'Discreet Muic', which was apparently designed for this precise purpose.

Any other suggestions?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Personally, I cannot stand background music. Silence is wonderful.

Mr Grumpy

[Roehre]

Personally, I cannot stand background music. Silence is wonderful.

Mr Grumpy

That makes two Messrs Grumpy (or two Grumpies...)

[amateur51]

Tune to Gold - very work-friendly

http://www.mygoldmusic.co.uk/

[heliocentric]

Remember though that a great deal of music - I'm thinking of baroque instrumental music in particular - was at least in part intended as background music, as in the titles of collections like Telemann's Musique de table and Delalande's Symphonies pour les soupers du Roi.

[salymap]

Haydn symphonies that one doesn't know very well. You can always listen properly later if necessary.
Not too loud though.

[Osborn]

Painter/Decorators are the experts. Say 'Guinness' to get his attention, ask him to turn the volume down for a mo & give you his advice.

[Pianorak]

I cannot abide background music of any kind. - Grumpy Three.

[Wheels of Cheese]

I'm a writer and - weirdly - I find I write best to really difficult contemporary classical. It's almost like I'm making a space which is about art, as opposed to day to day life, which, regrettably, ain't. That said, Morton Feldman's For Philip Guston is good...

[Roehre]

Remember though that a great deal of music - I'm thinking of baroque instrumental music in particular - was at least in part intended as background music, as in the titles of collections like Telemann's Musique de table and Delalande's Symphonies pour les soupers du Roi.

And that's generally speaking not the music I am listening to

[Dave2002]

Currently I've been listening to Rzewski's Coming Together - several versions. It does have vocal parta, but I wonder if it can act as a useful silence killer for anyone who wants to work to a musical accompaniment.

[DracoM]

I write to Brian Eno's Ambient stuff - Music for Airports 1 and 2, Another Day on Earth, and Jocelyn Pook.

Gently, minimally repetitive but lyrical and inventive and ever shifting. Good stuff.

[Serial_Apologist]

Erik Satie's Musique d'Ameublement - except that it's more interesting and attention-sustaining to the music than its composer probably intended. Vexations, for solo piano, would be another Satie piece, which is effectively a loop of unresolving soft chromatic chords playing for... I can't remember how many repetitions.

[Flosshilde]

Whatever's on Radio 3 at the time - it means that you don't have to decide what to listen to, & you don't have to put on another CD after 50 minutes or so.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Whatever's on Radio 3 at the time - it means that you don't have to decide what to listen to, & you don't have to put on another CD after 50 minutes or so.

Oh, but Flossie: imagine the effect on anybody's writing of having those gushy introductions, pointless interviews, requests for tweets, news reports, the reading out of the tweets themselves! I can see the reviews now:

Mr Man's is a work of considerable scholarship and erudition as we have come to expect from this source. But there is a hitherto unexpected but nonetheless inescapable tone to his writing here that can only be described as "petulant", as if the author was suffering from recurrent attacks of gout whilst writing. We therefore cannot recommend the work to the general reader. For academic collections only.

Better to stick to a 75 min CD on auto-repeat, methinks. (It doesn't have to be Music, of course - there are recordings of birdsong and forest/ocean "noises" that soften the silence without having passages of Music that you just have to stop working and listen to.)