Walking to music

Add some strumming to your strolls, riffs to your rambles and tunes to your treks

The Writer’s Walk playlist on Spotify

Hello again 👋🏻

We’ve had some more people join us in recent months, so if you’re new to this newsletter – hello and welcome. I’m Sarah, a writer who uses walking to boost my physical and mental health and inspire my writing. In these fortnightly posts, I share an approach to taking a walk – our walking theme – pair it with a simple writing prompt or exercise, and invite you to try it for yourself.

In this edition we’re going to add some tunes to our treks, some strumming to our strolls and some riffs to our rambles. Well, you get the idea…

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Walking

Are you a headphones on, or head in the clouds kind of walker?

I realised recently that I rarely put my headphones on when I walk in London. But I used listen to music a lot when I was walking, so I decided to get back into it by revisiting some of my old playlists.

Now, I LOVE a playlist. I’ve been putting them together in one form or another since I was given my first cassette recorder in the 80s and realised I could make my own mixtapes by recording the chart show on a Sunday, so I could to listen to it again throughout the week. This was long before radio went digital and we could replay shows any time we wanted. Long before anything went digital, to be honest.

I loved making playlists so much that when MiniDiscs came out I was at the front of the queue to get one. As tech formats go, it was a one-hit wonder – a fact that my long-distance walking friend, Si, regularly reminds me of. Fortunately, Apple came along with the iPod and iTunes, I quickly saw the error of my ways, and then spent far too much of my time copying all my CDs to iTunes so I could add them to my iPod. The early noughties playlist struggle was real, my friends.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been making soundtracks to accompany everything in my life. I’ve made them for driving, yoga, bright summer vibes, lo-fi chill, late dancey nights, to help me get through the week and for getting my head down when I need to focus on words. I’ve made them for all the novels I started to write but never finished. I give them all names – Sunday Morning¹, Becoming Ocean, Lo-Fi Cafe, Get me to Friday and Happyness are just a few of my playlists that I have on heavy rotation.

My first blog, which I started writing in 2006 when I was running a scuba diving centre in the Caribbean, was called Tales From a Small Island.² I still have the playlist I made to go with it.

Anyway, as I was scrolling through my music, I found my original walking playlist, which I put together in 2009 when I was in San Francisco. It’s called Walk The City and is very much of its time with tracks like Estelle’s American Boy – I was dating an American guy at the time – and Matt and Kim’s Daylight. Just look at how much fun they’re having in the official video:

I walked all over San Francisco with my playlist in my ears and it became the soundtrack to my time there. Listening to it again, even after so many years, I’m transported to the places I came to know and love, and I can clearly picture the walks I took along streets like the Castro, Market and Polk, and my strolls around Haight-Ashbury, Duboce Park, Baker Beach and the Marin headlands. I loved those walks. I miss them.

As my ideas for The Writer’s Walk developed over the last few years, so did the playlist that went with it. It’s had various names from simply Walking to Walking and Writing. Now it’s found its groove as The Writer’s Walk and I’m so happy to share it with you:

The playlist reflects my somewhat eclectic musical tastes, my moods, and the rhythms and tempos of the different ways I walk. Sometimes I stroll slowly and I like music to match that pace. Sometimes I want to get my stomp on so I go for more lively tracks with higher BPMs. I started trying to put it in some kind of order, but I change it up so often that in the end I just decided to leave it alone and dip in and out, skip back and forth, depending on my where my feet and mood are taking me.

So for your walk this time, I invite you to travel to the beat of your own drum and listen to the music that lifts your heart as much as it lifts your feet. It’s as simple as that.

I’ve made my Spotify playlist public so you can save it to your favourites and use it as your starting point. I hope you find things there that you enjoy. I’d also love to know what you listen to when you walk – whether that’s music, podcasts, audiobooks, white noise or anything else. Please share them in the comments – and I can add any music suggestions to The Writer’s Walk playlist, too.

Lastly, before we grab our headphones and head out for our walks, here are 3 more music-related recommendations:

• Songwritings is a conversation about songs, writing and songwriting between Kate van der Borgh and Nick Asbury. The conversation includes the writing and performing of some original songs – usually written by Nick, then interpreted and recorded by Kate. I delight in you is one of my favourite songs they’ve created. It’s not on Spotify, so I can’t add it to The Writer’s Walk playlist – yet!

• Flow state is a newsletter and record label with a focus on instrumental music. Every weekday, they share two hours of music that’s perfect for working to. I’m discovering lots of new music, especially ambient, that I’m finding great to have on while I’m writing.

• Folk on foot is a podcast by broadcaster and former BBC Executive Matthew Bannister. In each episode, Matthew walks with a leading folk artist in the landscape that has inspired their music and they sing and play on location. Hat tip to my music expert friend Dan, who runs Night House PR, for this one.

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Writing

Now that you’ve picked out your favourite bands, added their tracks to your walking playlist, and strolled along to their tunes, it’s time for a writing exercise that I was inspired to create, in part, by a real story involving a lost recording of Nick Drake’s Cello Song.

Think of a band, singer or musician that you love, but is either no longer around, or has stopped releasing albums. Maybe it’s a band that broke up after causing a worldwide scandal, or a singer who was around before you were born. You get the idea.

Now pretend that you’ve wandered around a car boot sale and found a vinyl album by this band or musician, lying at the bottom of a box full of junk. It’s in a white album sleeve with only the artist’s name and the word ‘scrap’ handwritten on it.

It’s the only copy of the final album they planned to release but never got around to. It’s a test pressing – a copy of a vinyl record that’s made to test its quality before it goes into production.

It was supposed to have been destroyed.

This is the only copy.

And it’s in your hands. Right now.

Here’s what you get to do:

1. Give the album a title

2. There are 7 tracks on the album – give each of them a title

3. Write a description of the album, together with the band or artist’s bio, and the promotional blurb that the music company would have written if it had ever been released

If you’re enjoying this and want to take it a little further, here are some extra writing prompts:

1. Write a description of the cover art you imagine would have been used had the album been released – if you like drawing, sketching or painting you could even create the cover art, if you prefer

2. Write the review of the album that would have appeared in Pitchfork, NME, Billboard, Rolling Stone or any other music news site that might have reviewed it

3. Have fun with it 💃🏻🕺🏻

As always, I’d love to hear how you find the walking and writing – and music – so let me know by adding a comment to this post 👇🏻

Happy walking, writing – and listening – until next time,

Sarah

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More from The Writer’s Walk

If you enjoyed this, check out my interview with musician Neil Thomas.

1. My Sunday Morning playlist evolves constantly because I add things to it each week. A couple of years ago, I realised I’d taken things too far when I noticed it would take more than 30 days’ continuous playback to listen to it from start to finish – so I split it into 2. It’s since doubled in size again. 🤦🏻‍♀️ Many of the tracks on my Sunday Morning playlist have now found a new home on The Writer’s Walk playlist.

2. My personal social media handle is also inspired by the name of my first blog.