Music Monday: Music to help fuel your creativity

Music can be a powerful tool for helping you to ease into your own 'creative zone', inspiring and motivating you to reach that all important flow state of being fully immersed in your work and approaching your craft with all the energy, enjoyment and focus possible.

For me, finding the perfect piece of music to help fuel my own creativity requires a couple of things:

• The music must block out background noise and distractions
• It must stir and inspire something within me; energy, passion, emotion.
• Yet at the same time the song itself must not become so distracting that, as I'm often prone to doing, I find myself singing along, fully emerged in a great song rather than in the task at hand.

This last one is particularly important. Trust me, there's nothing worse than being full of energy and fully productive only for a really great song to creep up on you from nowhere and drag you, feet tapping and head bopping into some terrible karaoke job, not only wasting that energy but making it harder to return to the task at hand.

Over the years, I've experimented with lots of different music to help fuel my creativity and push me into that flow state. Here are five of the best examples I've found so far, but I'd love to hear your suggestions too.

1) Mountain Mirrors - Your Dirge
Mountain Mirrors is an artist I only came to discover during my most recent trip to America this summer. Almost as soon as this dark, brooding music met my ears it carried me off to some distant place, an almost mystical land far away from my own reality that really helped me sink my teeth into my writing projects and got the proverbial creative juices flowing. I could have picked any MM song for this post, but since 'Your Dirge' was the first track I heard, here it is. Now, every time I need to create, Mountain Mirrors is my go-to music.

2) Days of the New - The Real
Like most of the songs on this list, I have no idea what it is about this track that just gets me every time, but it does. Subconsciously, the rhythm sinks into my veins, pumping the adrenalin and getting me into that creative spirit without overwhelming to the point that I have to jam along.

3) School of Seven Bells - The Night

Not as dark as the previous two songs, this one nonetheless manages to sweep me from my surroundings and hurl me into that creative flow state on every listen.

4) Tchaikovsky - 1812 Overture

Classical music has long  played a big part in helping me reach my own creative zone. I could pick any number of  pieces from my every-growing 'Classical Classics' playlist on Spotify, but there's few that will really list my emotions, fuel my thinking and pull me away from the outside world like this one.

5) William Fitzsimmons - Passion Play

I'm not ashamed to admit that the first time I heard über-bearded songsmith Fitzsimmons I shed a little tear. Though embarrassing at the time (I was in the middle of a busy office checking out a promo copy of his latest album that his PR people had kindly sent, though without a required 'This will make you cry' warning sticker), it at least turned me on to the fact that he makes some incredible, emotionally-powerful music. Since then, I know that if I really need to get in touch with some part of myself to create something very personal, I can always count on William Fitzsimmons to help get me there.

So, there's my favourite five pieces of music to help create flow states and fuel my creativity. Do you have any others? I'd love to hear them.

(And by the way no, Passion Play wasn't the song that first brought a tear to my eye. I wouldn't subject you to that on a Monday morning!)