Reading with Music

Pairing music with books may help you recall the book

Picture this - you’re at a restaurant and your favorite song from middle school comes on. What happens to you? Do you begin remembering specific scenes from those awkward years? Does a movie screen begin playing in your head with memories good and bad?

Something happens in our brains that connects music to memories. As part of this reading project, I’ve noticed something else that happens with music. I can pair specific music with specific books and to some level recreate the reading experience. Pairing the two actually helps me to better remember what I read.

For example, last year when I read through the Bible, I listened to the Dreamweaver choral album by Ola Gjeilo. Now, any time I hear a song from that album, I’m immediately transported to my reading chair and to that specific version of the Bible.

I started doing this as a way to inspire my reading. I paired the Lord of the Rings soundtrack with the reading of the books. I hadn’t seen the movies but I decided to pair that soundtrack with that series.

I did the same with the Iliad and the Odyssey, playing the soundtrack to the movie Troy while reading those great epics. Soundtracks help enliven a book, providing gravity to the material.

Those may sounds like cheesy examples, but any time I hear the opening of the Troy soundtrack, I’m taken not to the movie but to my chair reading Homer.

I’m currently doing this with The Analects by Confucius. I’ll search traditional Chinese music playlists and have that in the background while reading. Later, when I hear traditional Chinese music in a restaurant, a movie, or elsewhere, that book will come to mind. I like that that happens.

Pairing music with books is a way for me to immerse myself in the book, a similar experience to traveling. If I’m in Paris, there are unique smells, delicious foods, a certain feel that combine for my experience of the city of lights. Listening to music while reading provides another level of experience that I can later recall. It gives me two methods of remembering a specific book - the ideas and the sounds.

I know the idea of listening to music while reading is anathema to some of you. It’s interesting, I can listen to almost any type of music while reading or working except for rap. When I listen to music, I don’t hear the lyrics, I just hear the music (opposite of my wife who focuses on lyrics over music). But in rap, at least in my head, the lyrics are one of the instruments and my mind tunes into what is being said, distracting me from reading, much like hearing a conversation at a coffee shop will distract me if I’m working.

Do you listen to music while you read? Have you experienced something similar in terms of being able to recall certain books through certain music?

I want to invite you to give it a try. Maybe start by pairing classical works with specific books. Say you plan to read The Aeneid. Select a work by Mozart or Beethoven that lasts around an hour of listening time. Then, while reading that work, start the musical work at the beginning of each of your reading sessions. Your mind will begin associating that book with that music.