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How Listening to Music can Inspire Your Creativity

  • October 31 2014
  • Comments Off on How Listening to Music can Inspire Your Creativity
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Searching around for inspiration, as a writer can be a problem for many, especially when you don’t know where to look. For some writers, inspiration comes from imagery, settings and relaxation. However, a lot of people are finding that inspiration from music can be just as powerful, if not more. There have always been studies about how music affects the brain and a lot of them showed that classical music, such as Bach and Mozart to be highly beneficial to your IQ. Recent studies have found that it’s not just classical music that does this, but any type of music that you find appealing. If you are looking for different methods of inspiring creativity within your writing, you may find the following to be interesting.

 

Music Increases Your Focus

For some people, dead silence is more distracting than listening to music. There are some writers who need to have music playing in order to begin writing. If you grew up in a home that was noisy and are used to tuning things out, this could be a way to give you a sense of normalcy as you write. On the other hand, listening to music that you enjoy, like soft rock, classical or even hip-hop could help to improve your focus as you write.

 

Music Lifts Your Mood

Whether you’re writing stories or articles, being in a mood to write is important for creating great content. When you’re in a funk, it shows through your choice of words. To help enhance your mood, you can listen to tunes that uplift you. Put on a CD or mp3 player with your favorite songs and watch how your mood shifts to a brighter state. For some people, techno, rock and oldies can invoke elevated moods.

 

Music Lyrics Can Inspire You

Have you ever listened to the lyrics of a song and it spoke to you or resonated with you in some fashion? The stories told through music can help us think of ways to enhance our own characters and novels. There are some writers who say they created scenes that were inspired by the words in a song they were listening to. The type of music you’re playing may create an aura that is sinister, joyful or even sad. Knowing exactly what tracks or albums to put on for the mood you want to inspire can help you with this process.

 

Music Can Bring Emotion

If you’re looking to add feeling to your writing, you can use certain types of music to help inspire these feelings within yourself, so that you can transfer it on paper. For example, you can put on angry music or love songs to help you get into that emotion as you’re writing. Some people aren’t able to easily tune into different moods. If you struggle with the same thing, this can be used to give you a little boost in the right direction.

 

Music Can Act as a Powerful Anchor

Likely, there’s music from your past that each time you hear it brings you back to a particular moment, person or experience. This is called an anchor and can be used to transition you to a place in time that can help you with conjuring up ideas or feelings for a scene or character in your writing. Once you have found anchor music, you can use it any time you need to have a brainstorming session. The more you use the same songs, the more likely they will continuously trigger the inspiration you are looking for. Your brain will automatically associate certain songs with opening up your creativity.

 

Music is Scientifically Proven to Shift Brain Waves

The inspiration that comes from music isn’t imagined – there’s actual evidence that your brain waves are indeed affected by the music you listen to. For instance, on an ordinary day, your brain produces beta waves between 14 and 20 hertz, then when you listen to music that has a pulse of 60 beats, your brain heightens to alpha waves that are between 8 and 13 hertz. When you reach your peak of creativity, your brain produces theta waves between 4 and 7 hertz. This indicates that the more relaxed you are, the better your creativity. This is likely why classical music is one of the top rated genres for producing inspiration.

Music can be used for more than just entertainment and fun. When used correctly, it can also help you to tap into your creativity whenever you need to be inspired to write novels, articles, scripts and other forms of content. As you get better with selecting music for different moods and emotions, you can create dedicated CDs to use for particular emotions you want to instill in your writing. Hopefully, this has given you a bit of insight on how music can be used for your creativity as a writer. Now, give music a try to see if it can help get you through your next writer’s block.

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Cameron Mackey

Cameron is the Content Manager for the Vorongo Blog. He has spent three years in various content marketing roles. When he is not working with Vorongo he enjoys photography and hiking.

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