Reading with Music (Evan)

Recently I've taken up listening to music while reading. Listening to music while reading is really good at helping me to block out the sounds of the world. Reading is enough to immerse me, but having music as a supplement has the potential to bring the experience higher.

I thought it would be as simple as putting on a fitting track and reading, but there's much more to it than just that. There are rules you gotta know before diving into this. 

The first thing to know is that you need a playlist. Listening to a single song for however many hours will inevitably get stale. A curated selection of songs will give some variety while still remaining thematically appropriate.

That brings me to my next point: genre. Every story has a certain tone and setting that the playlist has to match. Listening to intense gritty metal while reading something like Dr. Seuss isn't going to work out because there is a clash between the genres. It may be funny at the start, but you'll soon find you can't get drawn into the story because the music keeps pulling you away from it.

Lyrics are another thing that you should avoid. They can also pull you out of a story because you'll be too distracted by the words in the lyrics to focus on the words on the page. Instrumentals should take priority when choosing songs. And if you're listening to an audiobook, lyrics are an even worse idea.

An important thing to remember is that the book is the main meal, the music is just a side dish. The main goal is to have the music sorta "tune out" when reading. Sometimes I'll prefer just reading in silence because the music I'm listening to is too catchy or distracting.

I can't get used to catchy songs so my preference is music that doesn't really follow an attention-grabbing chorus. I do listen to energetic songs, but because you can't really sync up a shuffled playlist they can feel out of place. I prefer atmospheric songs, but there are many different tastes. The rules I've stated here are super general and many people don't follow 1 or 2 of them. People will prefer orchestral music, or jazz, or kpop. A lot of people prefer silence.

When you comment, instead of saying "I liked how you gave rules", send a link to a song you like to (or think you would like to) listen to while reading.