Remember mix tapes? Of course you do. A mix tape was a tape of songs that meant something to you and, hopefully, for the person you were making the mix tape for. If the mix tape was for a girl or boyfriend then odds were the tape would contain love songs. If it was for one of your friends it might contain an introduction to a genre of music you thought worthy of sharing. The point is, the music on the tape often had a purpose.

One purpose of music is to create atmosphere. And atmosphere is very important to the creative process. Music can lead us into the right frame of mind to get that creative task done. And it isn’t simply about music that you like.

I don’t know all the scientific explanations about right and left brain process and how certain types of music can get them working at their peak. What I do know is that different styles of music help me for different creative activities.

A lot of our creative time is now spent in front of a computer. This is good news for creating an atmosphere. Whether you have access to music stored on your computer or streamed via the net, you can create playlists depending on what you are creating.

When writing, I prefer something ambient and quiet, but when working on an image the sound is much louder and rhythmic. With this in mind I have created different playlists to use. I simply turn on the player (current favourite is Spotify) and click the preferred playlist.

Do you have a favourite style of music depending on your creative task? Have you got any recommended soundtracks to help creativity? Let us know in the comments.

Photo by Clix

Here’s a great little apllication to help with learning guitar chords. It has a nice and simple layout, and with the added sound you can even see how close you’re getting to the actual chord when you attempt it.

Guitar Chords

There’s something happening in the bird world that we should take note of. No, I’m not talking about the destruction of the rain forests and the extinction of exotic species, that’s beyond the remit of this blog. I’m talking about Aviary.

Aviary provides a suite of online applications for a growing number of your creative needs. The first applications were image based, photo editing and vector image creation. But now they have moved into audio editing.

Myna, is the latest edition to Aviary. It is a reasonably specced audio editor. You can import or record audio onto separate tracks before mixing away and rendering your final audio creation.

To see exactly what it is capable of have a look at the video below and then let your creativity run free.

Need to try out a quick tune but don’t have your USB keyboard with you?

Then pop along to kisstunes. This little app turns your computer keybaord into a music keyboard at the load of an app.

It can even record what you play! What more do you need when the inspiration strikes.

There is a great post over at one of my favourite sites, Smashin Magazine. It is all about using music to inspire your visual creativity, enjoy:

Drawing Inspiration From Music | Inspiration | Smashing Magazine

This is truly amazing.

Take a group of unrelated youtube videos, mash them up and turn them into complete video / music tracks.

ThruYOU: Kutiman mixes YouTube

The creators of some of the best virtual instruments on the planet are making available, for free, their kore player. This is both a stand-alone and VST instrument. It comes with some basic sounds but is also expandable by buying Kore Soundpacks.

Personally I love Native Instruments, I already use their Xpress keyboards and this new addition looks set to add firepower to my virtual arsenal… now all I need is the musical inspiration; time to look up Eno and his Oblique Strategies.

NATIVE INSTRUMENTS : Products : Kore Line : KORE PLAYER