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April 20, 2006
Music to write to
I've been trying to dedicate more time to writing recently. This morning, instead of going directly to my office, I spent about an hour at a coffee house near campus. I booted up my laptop and turned off its wireless device so I wouldn't be tempted by e-mail and web browsing.
The coffee house has a nice mix of background busyness. I find I'm distracted both when there's too much going on and also when things are too quiet, so the coffee house in the morning is a happy medium. But I do find myself distracted sometimes by the music they play there. Today, however, I found a good solution: pop in the headphones and have Billy Holloman playing on iTunes.
I didn't always appreciate organ-based jazz, but Ben introduced me to the finer points of the Hammond B3. As a gift last year, I gave Ben This is Organ Night, a CD collection featuring Billy Holloman on organ. The album gets its title from a regular feature at the St. Paul jazz club, the Artists' Quarter. Tuesday night at the AQ is Organ Night, as you can see from their calendar. (We'll have to get down to the AQ one of these Tuesdays...)
As I discovered today, this is great music to listen to while writing. There are no vocals to be distracted by, the fluid tones of the organ serve as good background music, and the tempo of the songs helps keep my thoughts flowing and the fingers typing. I caught myself swaying back and forth, bobbing my head to the music on a few occasions, but that didn't seem to raise any eyebrows -- I'm just glad I wasn't in the library!
I recommend you head on over to the album's CD Baby site where you can listen to decent-sized MP3 samples of the tracks. If you like what you hear, you can order right there (not available from iTunes). CD Baby is great "little online record store" that sells music directly from independent musicians.
Posted by rigd0003 at April 20, 2006 12:19 PM | Music | PhD Process