Musical Inspiration

Hello Lovelies,

In trying to work on the next entry for Little Island Tales, I ran into a bit of an issue. What issue you ask? Well...I HAVE NO INSPIRATION!!!

At least, not at the moment.

Ok, maybe it's not THAT bad. While I know where I want to go with the story and the steps that are being taken to get there, I'm recovering from one of my normal medical procedures and therefore my brain is just a bit muddy on the uptake (gotta love all them painkillers...buh). I currently can't quite put the sentences together (at least not with impact in a form I like) and so I wanted to take a more human moment to discuss writing and the processes behind it rather than leave you in the hard-vacuum of silence that I have had a bad tendency of doing the last couple months.

I've talked about inspiration before on this site and about the little things that help to push me (and theoretically other writers) to make the things they do. Everything from a wildly overactive imagination to the types of books and movies they read; just about anything in the world can serve as inspiration for the next tale or story. Everyone has their own thing that works at least sometimes to get their blood boiling and get the words flowing.

As such, today I wanted to address music and its role in my own inspirational process. For any of my regular readers, you know my biggest rock tends to be fear and horror. The things that scare me most are the ones that fascinate me the deepest. Monsters, creatures, cryptids, myths, aliens, etc. all lend their own unique touch to the things I create and this is something that is plainly seen in my works; so it raises the question of how does music provide inspiration?

Well, at least for me, music is a much stranger beast than reading a story or watching a movie. Whereas exposure to other general forms of inspiration give me an idea for content and story progression, music provides me a much more ethereal inspiration. I often find that it gives me a sense of emotion, tone, and environment more than anything else. In other words, it gives me a 'feeling' for the world at large in my writing. The music that I find really inspires me varies from day to day and week to week, however will often maintain a similar overall tone.

So what do I listen to?

Well, the common default that I often go back to when actively writing is Rock. There's a wide range here, so depending on the who and what, it may or may not contribute to the tone of any given story. I've often found that more Psychadelic Rock like The Doors tends to work well but, even more commonly, variations within the Metal genre are very effective too (particularly when writing hard action). Artists like Rob Zombie and Powerman 5000 have contributed to some of the more tense or chilling moments throughout my pieces. One artist in particular, Jonathon Young, has proven really entertaining for his Rock/Metal remixes of a number of different songs which have provided me a great deal of new depth to old pieces.

On the flipside, occasionally I need something more atmospheric; something I can hear and listen to but maybe with a deeper tone outside of rock songs. You need something more folky or ambient, something with less hit and more punch. More overall feeling behind it. I've found YouTube has been particularly wonderful for this because you can find a wide range on there. Some of my favorites include old folk songs like 'O Death' (which I've featured before) or 'Misty Mountains Cold' (from Lord of the Rings), Cajun inspired beats such as Kaleo's 'Way Down we Go' and Rag'n'Bone Man's 'Human', or even classical tunes such as Beethoven's 'Moonlight Sonata'. If I'm feeling particularly off, dark ambient music such as ones produced by JediMaster or Two Steps from Hell (Featured above) serve wonderfully to get me the ether mixing.

When all is said and done, music is less about showing us something to inspire us and helping us find that which is resting beneath the surface. It helps us pull up and out, rather than to internalize, those forces and things that would fill our minds to the brim until they overflow.

So, with that said...

What music inspires YOU most?