Serious question. Can you sometimes (while sober) hear the effects of drugs on the writing of certain albums and such?
I sometimes think about this Hemingway quote about Faulkner "Have you ever heard of anyone who drank while he worked? You’re thinking of Faulkner. He does sometimes—and I can tell right in the middle of a page when he’s had his first one.” which gets me thinking about this.
Sure, the goofiness of some Beatles songs certainly sound like cannabis but a more striking and disturbing example to me is John Cale’s Music for a New Society, which is like the most bleak cocaine experience ever recorded but I wonder if I would of come to that conclusion if I hadn’t read about John Cale’s life around that time.
Apparently Philip K. Dick was such a productive writer in part due to his need of money and his use of speed and while that man’s imagination knew no bounds, I wonder if his use of uppers effected his writing in a negative way, having not read much of his honestly. I would guess that speed would lend writing a sort of cold, clinical edge, without too much room for empathy.
A whole generation or more of people are likely writing and making music on Adderall and I wonder how that (if true) effects the writing process. I would surmise that it dulls a person’s emotional intelligence in a way as the few times I took it while it made me more focused, proficient and in a way more patient, I felt almost half machine or something and not very in touch with the softer more squishy side of my brain but with that said Johnny Cash likely cranked out some empathetic tunes on speed.
I think I have heard a lot of music made when people were stoned out of their nut, because it sounds shit
Obviously this does not apply to all music made under the influence, some of it is awesome, but when you hear some music and it is shit/directionless/inane I always think I bet they were stoned when they recorded it, and at the time they thought it sounded good.
And maybe I’d think it sounded good too if I were stoned out of my nut whilst listening to it.
Somebody once mentioned how the sound/timbre of psytrance reflected the drugs most commonly taken in that bubble – apparently over time it moved away from shrooms or acid and more towards mdma and speed and such.
Not sure how scientific that observation is. But it kind of makes sense, I guess.
Undoubtedly. And it raises the question - does music that is made by someone who has never experimented with altered states have attributes which identify it as such? I personally think it does.
I guess I am more curious about the effects of amphetamines (or drugs that are supposed to help you be more productive) on the creative process than shrooms and cannabis which are more obviously heard in this regard as many people seem to use those two to be more creative which doesn’t work for me and I wonder what effect amphetamines (specifically Adderall) has on the creative side of a person’s brain and emotional state.
I think psychedelics are the most significant group of substances conducive to creativity. But I also think that one need not be under the influence of them to get the benefit of insight, but one must have experienced being under the influence to understand the mechanisms.
Yea, I think the real benefit in those drugs comes after doing them and reflecting on it, and not doing them so frequently that you don’t have proper time to reflect and grow in-between.
…amphetamins are more common in the writers guild…
all musicians who need speed or cocaine for more productive ness, are fooling themselves and run into a deadend road sooner than later…especially those who get lost in that ego push up of cocaine addiction…
while some writers are into ritalin a lot…which clears ur focus and will of induring pretty obvious…but that’s not for “better” thoughts/mindsets…that’s purely for getting it done…
I’ve heard of producers using Ritalin (related to Adderall) to finish (arrange & mixdown) their tracks. I don’t know if they use it while composing the music.
At uni, I did a module called Drug Cultures. It was fucking awesome. This is the best book I studied on that course and it sounds right up OP’s alley:
(Sorry for the Amazon link, couldn’t find a better one)
The blurb: The relationship between altered states of consciousness and art is explored in a fascinating and daring new book the discusses meditative rituals, alcohol, drugs, and other “handles” on altered reality, tracing their influence on the work of William Faulkner, Samuel Coleridge, Jackson Pollock, John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Little Richard, and many others.
I don’t know what drugs people are on who make that over clean DAW produced EDM but it sounds so mundane it would not surprise me to learn it was Ritalin/Adderall/Modafinil or some other smart drug.
