Luminous – Rachel LaFond

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One week i'm totally adding Gene Autry's "Back In The Saddle Again" to the list - oh sure it would defeat the purpose of having instrumental music to help you writers out there but i bet you're all familiar with the idea of returning to something after a break - it's a weird thing!

I just took an unexpected week's vacation - I was in Dublin and had intended to work mornings and nights and travel around with family during the day but - the WIFI went down the day before we arrived and never came back!  In retrospect - it worked out pretty well - I actually took some time off and have come back rested and raring to go.

But there's that space - just before you start writing - where your brain does everything and anything to stop you from getting down to it.  It's the place where procrastination lives - where you find a million different things to do that aren't actually writing.  It's one of the hardest things for me personally - to beat procrastination - and I find that music does a great job in helping me through.  

I'd been working with Clarity all weekend and was looking for something different - but also something familiar -  something akin to the early roots of the playlist - something piano driven - something dynamic - something with a range of emotions that I could stick on repeat and just get my head down to.

I got an email from Fiona Joy - a fabulous pianist whose band FLOW has a couple of great tracks already on the playlist here and here (and who has a stunning solo track on the music to grieve to list here) recommending that I check out a young piano artist called Rachel LaFond.  I love these kind of recommendations and you know what - Rachel's music was exactly what I was looking for ;-)

The album is called Encounters of the Beautiful Kind and I spent yesterday afternoon hacking through four different inboxes conquering email while getting lost in the music.  The music of course stands alone and you surely don't need to be doing anything to appreciate it - there's a certain melancholy that I personally love - think sunsets and rain and reflections - but it does work perfectly as music to write to.  Here's Rachel's initial submission notes:

“My listeners tell me my music is really fantastic for studying, reading, and creative endeavors, it all has a passionate emotional arc while leaving the mind free to focus. I released Luminous as a single before the album and it’s been popular. Fun fact: the music came to me while scuba diving here in New Zealand and there’s a music video that reflects that.”

Here's the video:

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Perfect Essay Writing Music: Clarity by Ellipsis

The Music to Write An Essay playlist is sponsored this month by Clarity from Ellipsis.

Enter the Jungle and #FindYourClarity; fresh Chillstep from Ellipsis to help you focus and get writing. Stream it now:

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You can learn more about Rachel LaFond here:

About the Curator: Andrew McCluskey

The first visual memory I have is that of the white upright piano in Singapore, Hell and the dark forces lived at the bottom, Heaven and the Angels at the top. They would play battles through my fingers and I was hooked.

Although I've always played, I haven't always been a musician.  Most of my twenties were spent working with people, buying and selling and learning how the world works.  It was in my thirties that I came to America and focused on music and began to develop music2work2.