Make your reading rooms feel even more inviting with a soft, continuous soundscape. This live, wordless music respects the stillness of the library while adding a layer of comfort that invites people to stay a little longer.
Thunderclap Murphy plays it live. He sets up in a corner of the reading room with a table of instruments, and loops flutes, glockenspiel, guitar and synth into a slow, evolving soundtrack while people read. The sound stays under the room rather than over it.
Libraries can also programme it as a scheduled event. In The Ambient Book Club, readers bring a book and settle in together for 90 minutes while a live soundtrack fills the room.
He comes back within the week with a plan and a fee.
A recent performance, filmed live.
Why it works: Science-backed focus
Gentle, live instrumental music is designed to support the reading brain. It quiets ambient noise, eases mental fatigue, and unlocks deep focus (Frontiers in Psychology, 2024). By keeping the soundscape entirely wordless, it leaves all your attention for the page, helping a whole room of readers sink comfortably into their books.
How other libraries do it
Libraries have already made it their own. They even have a name for it, immersive reading.
- Seattle’s Central Library ran a free Saturday series of live ambient music through 2025, played while people read and moved through the building.
- Harvard’s Countway Library runs silent-reading nights that set out a quiet room, a hot drink and instrumental music.
- The National Library of Latvia took its silent reading up into the roof space above the city and staged the whole evening as an event.
Quiet by design
The sound stays around the level of a soft conversation and keeps to the reading room. It is wordless throughout, so it sits alongside reading rather than across it. Hear a full performance and you will know exactly what the room gets.
Staff pick the date and the room
Everything is self-contained. Thunderclap Murphy brings his own instruments and sound system, runs off a wall socket, and sets up and clears away himself. A session runs from a single reading hour to a full afternoon. There is a full account of what arrives with him, and what the branch provides, down to the cabling and the power.
Thunderclap Murphy is the performing name of Aidan Murphy, a Dublin musician with twenty-five years in Irish arts venues, who has spent years running music workshops in schools, libraries and community rooms, so a reading room is familiar ground. Send a booking enquiry for a reading hour, and the branch gets an event that draws people in and asks nothing of them once they’re there.