Inspiring a mood for your song / lyrics

Does anyone find it useful to have a certain type of song playing in the background while you try and compose your lyrics and thus create the mood for your song through those lyrics? Or do you find this detrimental and distracting or too influencing?

I notice there are certain types of songs that make me feel a specific way and if I want that mood for a song, I put them on

Not me.

When I'm working a tune I need to turn everything else off.

If I have nothing going then I listen to anything and everything until the muse returns.

Hmm. Yes, I did also find that once I had the juices flowing so to speak that I turned the music off as it wasn

Typically pain... Or very occasionally, "love" which quickly turns in to pain? So pain?

I get a lot of inspiration from other music, but when I have to do the hard work of songwriting, I generally work with it quiet.

I worry, since I just don

If the song doesn't get written, you did it wrong.

Oh! That

I've used that technique quite a bit. Even if the song I'm working on is actually very different from the song I'm listening too, I've found it helps to keep the creativity flowing. If I'm stuck, I'll occasionally even take a word or an image from the other song, though I am very conscious to avoid stealing phrases or melodies.

If it works, it works. That's what I say.

Coolness! I feel better now. lol

There's no wrong way to find inspiration....if it inspires you to write, or helps put you in the right mood/mindset to write, then that's the right way for you. Don't overanalyze it...stick to what works for you and keep writing songs.

Ok. Yes. I do over-analyse completely. I think this is also possibly a part of why I do find it useful to have music playing...it relaxes me and distracts my brain from over-analysing for once.

My best work seems to come when I'm either the influence or contemplating heading that way.

I used to do that pretty often, if I was just writing lyrics without any music in mind. Once I decide upon a meter for the words, I don't have much difficulty blocking out other noises or music when writing.

I used to do almost everything while listening to music in the background, but lately I've developed an appreciation for quiet.

I like coffee and racket. Not music. But activity around me. The train. My day job. Running. If my motor's running, I tend to get stuff done.

What's it's running, the only noise I hear is what's going on in my head.

I like the idea of writing stuff with background noise, but not necessarily specific songs...I'm good with noise. I used to do my homework with the TV and music going and did pretty well. I don't like silence unless I'm trying to sleep...and even then, I prefer to have some form of soft white noise going.

Wow! I'm getting quoted already!

I was going to say, my songs always START with mood. I'm a music first kinda guy. I noodle around and find something that grabs my attention and I play it over and over and massage it and work it into song segment. (therefore background music would only be a distraction). Then I ask, "What does this song want to be?" and go about thinking up a lyrical theme/story-line to fit it. Many times I plug in a simple phrase as a placeholder. That may or may not end up in the song. I read where McCartney writes like that a lot. "Yesterday" started out as "Scrambled eggs."

My latest tune (just put on my soundclick) is a moody thing. The plug-in phrase was; "Was I only dreaming of you," and I just decided to keep it and build off of that phrase.

The drawback to this method is my songs are not really "story" songs. "Mood" is more important. And "story" is only important as it fleshes out the reason for the mood. I have songwriting friends that are much better story tellers. But they're probably lyric-first people.

I met this chick tonight? She had a kicking silhouette

no matter how they start, my songs invariably get written with me strumming a guitar and humming ...

and music playing in the background would derail any melodies that may show up

so ... no ... no music for me as i write

now, that's not to say i dont' RIP OFF songs i like as a starting point, but only in terms of chords, not having them playing as i write

Yeah, that's my other thing...I hear a song I LOVE a specific chord pattern or particular change between 2 chords, and then want to use those chords or one of them or whatever in my own song, but it then becomes totally my own creation and sounds nothing like the original song I loved.