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I discovered my favorite writing music in the winter of 2023, at an audio art exhibition in Berlin. It was an otherworldly experience—instead of paintings or sculptures filling the cavernous white space of the museum, headphones lined the walls. Listening to track after track of avant garde sounds, I eventually came upon the minimalist composers Arnold Dreyblatt and Charlemagne Palestine. Their compositions cycled through the same two or three notes repeatedly, creating what’s known as consonant harmony: the phantom tones between notes. I played the compositions for a friend, who said “This must be what going mad sounds like.” Playing it later as I typed, all I could think was: This is perfect.

What does it mean, for a song to be “good writing music”? Artists’ preferences for background music are often strange and always diverse. When writing, a little melodic madness seems required.…