Robin Tompkins's Blog: Rob the Writer - Posts Tagged "calm"
The Sonic Bubble…
From time to time, I will blog about stuff that I do that works for me. I’m not qualified to tell people how to write and I wouldn’t presume to. This will just be stuff I pass on, in case it is of use to anyone.
So, the Sonic Bubble…
The world at large doesn’t have a volume control, I wish it did. It can be very hard to concentrate sometimes.
For a lot of people, the answer might be to wear headphones. That’s a good solution. It doesn’t work for me though. I am deaf in one ear and have tinnitus. I only get the sound from the left channel. With headphones on, it’s like listening to a hi-fi with a broken speaker, in a room full of starlings. Not helpful. I have to play music out in the room, that way I get balanced mono and the tinnitus fades into the background.
The idea though, headphones or not, is sound. You can’t control the external environment, so you create your own. The Sonic Bubble. Even if it doesn’t shut out the extraneous noises, it gives you a point of focus. Concentrating on the music you have chosen, puts it into the foreground and helps to put the unwanted noise into the background.
I think I heard somewhere that Ian Rankin plays Tangerine Dream albums when he writes and that Steven King plays rock music… very loudly. Well, I’m not arguing with a master storyteller but that wouldn’t work for me. He probably has a laser like focus or something, for my feeble, powers of concentration, this would be a disaster. If someone is loudly yelling rock lyrics at me in a language I understand, I will start typing them as dialogue…
For me, it has to be something engaging enough that I can focus on it but not so engaging that I can’t focus on my work.
Ambient music works for me. This is a quote from the sleeve notes of Brian Eno’s 1978 album Ambient one – Music for Airports….
“Ambient music is intended to induce calm and a space to think. It must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting.”
Eno’s Ambient works and Robert Fripp’s Soundscapes are my ‘go to’ thing. To change things up, I will sometimes listen to solo piano music, classical, or modern classical works like those of Ludovico Einaudi, Arvo Part, Phillip Glass or Phami Gow.
Here’s a little playlist of my current ‘trying to concentrate,’ favourites…
Mixing Colours – Brian Eno and Roger Eno
Equatorial Stars – Brian Eno and Robert Fripp
The Pearl – Brian Eno and Harold Budd
Thread – Theo Travis and Robert Fripp
At the End of Time – Robert Fripp
Ambient 2 Plateaux of Mirrors – Brian Eno and Harold Budd
Ambient 1 Music for Airports – Brian Eno
What works for you could be something completely different. Why not experiment and find out?
Maybe you already do this? Anyway, I hope that this was useful to somebody, somewhere.
So, the Sonic Bubble…
The world at large doesn’t have a volume control, I wish it did. It can be very hard to concentrate sometimes.
For a lot of people, the answer might be to wear headphones. That’s a good solution. It doesn’t work for me though. I am deaf in one ear and have tinnitus. I only get the sound from the left channel. With headphones on, it’s like listening to a hi-fi with a broken speaker, in a room full of starlings. Not helpful. I have to play music out in the room, that way I get balanced mono and the tinnitus fades into the background.
The idea though, headphones or not, is sound. You can’t control the external environment, so you create your own. The Sonic Bubble. Even if it doesn’t shut out the extraneous noises, it gives you a point of focus. Concentrating on the music you have chosen, puts it into the foreground and helps to put the unwanted noise into the background.
I think I heard somewhere that Ian Rankin plays Tangerine Dream albums when he writes and that Steven King plays rock music… very loudly. Well, I’m not arguing with a master storyteller but that wouldn’t work for me. He probably has a laser like focus or something, for my feeble, powers of concentration, this would be a disaster. If someone is loudly yelling rock lyrics at me in a language I understand, I will start typing them as dialogue…
For me, it has to be something engaging enough that I can focus on it but not so engaging that I can’t focus on my work.
Ambient music works for me. This is a quote from the sleeve notes of Brian Eno’s 1978 album Ambient one – Music for Airports….
“Ambient music is intended to induce calm and a space to think. It must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting.”
Eno’s Ambient works and Robert Fripp’s Soundscapes are my ‘go to’ thing. To change things up, I will sometimes listen to solo piano music, classical, or modern classical works like those of Ludovico Einaudi, Arvo Part, Phillip Glass or Phami Gow.
Here’s a little playlist of my current ‘trying to concentrate,’ favourites…
Mixing Colours – Brian Eno and Roger Eno
Equatorial Stars – Brian Eno and Robert Fripp
The Pearl – Brian Eno and Harold Budd
Thread – Theo Travis and Robert Fripp
At the End of Time – Robert Fripp
Ambient 2 Plateaux of Mirrors – Brian Eno and Harold Budd
Ambient 1 Music for Airports – Brian Eno
What works for you could be something completely different. Why not experiment and find out?
Maybe you already do this? Anyway, I hope that this was useful to somebody, somewhere.
