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I’m 12 years old and reading the climactic chapter of the David Eddings fantasy novel in my hands. As the final battle boils to the surface and the world around the protagonists shakes, I can hear the rumbling of drums. Big ones. Singing, just beyond earshot, a distant cello or violin plays, I can’t remember which. It grows in volume and then the pipes come in. Authentic Scottish bagpipes whining and calling out to the fighters in the book. The words jump off the page even faster and my eyes struggle to keep up as I read. The music, swelling as the action crests and falls, is coming from tiny speakers on my CD stereo in my room. This is one of my favorite ways to read a book.
In truth, the books I read these days don’t lend themselves well to this style of reading, but on occasion I do love to turn on tunes that seem to fit well for the genre of book I’m reading. I was not your average teenager to say the least. I tended to listen to a lot of New Age music, which added nicely when reading all the Fantasy books I read then. And while I still read a decent number of Fantasy novels, I only occasionally find time to setup my reading soundtrack. Besides, the Braveheart soundtrack now feels a bit dated. Yes, I listened to Braveheart while reading a David Eddings book. I was that cool…
But I am absolutely inspired by a good soundtrack, a good album of music that adds some depth to my reading experience. It transports me that much further than a book might already and really settles me in the world I am reading. It has to fit the mood and tone of the book and this, as I said, has become much harder to do as I have grown older and now read a much more eclectic collection of books.
Imagine you are watching a movie, the protagonists have a tender and vulnerable moment and just audible in the background is that sweet melody that brings the whole scene together. Now imagine your favorite movie without any soundtrack at all. No music. Granted we are talking about two very different storytelling mediums, but wouldn’t it be a little weird? Though, to be fair, one of my favorite parts of No Country for Old Men was the fact that there is no music except in one short short scene. The Cohen brothers managed to create emotional intensity without a single chord.
While a musical accompaniment has eased it’s way out of my reading habits, It has gone the other way for my writing habits. I often spend a great deal of time collecting a soundtrack for a particular story. I am sure this actually gets in the way of me actually writing at times.
I am inspired by music when telling or reading a story. It’s an incredible part of atmosphere that I have loved for some time. And while I don’t necessarily remember the stories of the David Eddings books I read when I was younger, I certainly hold the feeling of the experience of a book and the score I chose to go with it very close to my heart.
Do you read with music on? Have a particular album to pair with a specific book? Does music actually distract you? Any other habits that take the reading experience further?
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I absolutely agree that music can make reading so much better. For me, music is a way of bringing out emotion by hearing the mixture of sounds create something that I cannot bring out on my own. This intensifies the book when there is that right moment where the words of the book and the beat of the music hit that crescendo that just brings everything together.
With that being said, a soundtrack is a must as the radio has too many distractions (I.E.: DJs babbling, commercials with annoying sounds, and new songs you don’t know the words to). I tend to use songs that I have heard so many times that my unconscious will pick up the words and the emotions from memory and not distract me. Music does create something in reading that you can’t get with silence though IMO.
1 year ago
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I absolutely do NOT put on music when I read. For me, reading a book and listening to music are equal, parallel experiences — each worthy of fairly strict and discrete attention. It’s too hard for me to concentrate on a book when there is music on, because the latter demands a similar level of attention from me.
I grew up in a houseful of music. My father was a pianist – Mom says they laid me on my blanket as an infant under his grand piano when he practiced – and he had lots of piano students coming through the house, including, eventually, me.
There are some activities I can do with music on — dining, working on stamp collection or scrapbook — but I just don’t do it much anymore because we don’t have a separate turntable or CD player with speakers, and my wife is typically using the computer for other activities. (I’m also not home much, so I occasionally take an iPod with me for long commutes — also fairly rare, I might add — on mass transit.)
When I was in college, I found I could not study with any kind of music on save for the most relaxed and soothing, such as Jean-Michel Jarre’s “Oxygene” or Kitaro’s “Silk Road.” My wife is always irritated by the way I get distracted by the music in restaurants: if it’s very quiet, I’m trying to figure out what it is and identify the song and artist; if it’s louder, I might try to sing along.
So I like silence when I read.
1 year ago