Finally - someone who recognizes that there's a curious & busy part of the brain which must be kept preoccupied during complex tasks, and mixes music just for that purpose.
"Trance" music podcasts are a great approximation for this. (See "The Vocal Trance", "Above & Beyond: Trance Around The World", "The Perfect Mix", "Push The Night", "Perfecto Podcast", "The Sound of Trance", "Shakedown Podcast")
ETA: Alas, too many managers don't understand this; they think you're getting distracted by the music, and can't comprehend that it is necessary to facilitate focus.
DJ Bolivia has been quite known for his "Music to code by" mixes, I definitely recommend them.
http://djbolivia.blogspot.com/2011/04/music-to-code-by-volum...
But now I'm reading Hacker News.
The drawback with the radio show is that each episode has a 25 to 60 second promo tape at the intro, but after that it's all music, no advertising, and I don't do voiceovers. I'd recommend episodes starting at about #070 - I was still trying to find a groove in the first seventy, and I only stopped doing an intro voiceover in the early 70's.
They're also on SoundCloud (I just archived them all starting a few weeks ago) so you can skip around easily if you need to: http://www.soundcloud.com/djbolivia
All of their music is released under a Creative Commons license for non-commercial purposes. They offer a wide variety of trance genres, including Goa, Progressive, Psychedelic, Uplifting, etc. Plus, all music can be downloaded in FLAC, WAV and MP3 formats.
Some of my favorite balearic stuff:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdhIwGZxtLA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTODkLro8gs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-p_Ihm95KQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyTRd8A7pm8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cl2SOwjx5Vc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=surw1-iXmR0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsEY0OLv_Y4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uRTjooOnsc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXb0y9yws4c
For easily downloadable podcasts, Sander van Doorn's Identity (although he's leaning more electro these days), The Gareth Emery Podcast, and Global Trance Grooves are good ones.
Take a sample playlist of mine http://grooveshark.com/playlist/Trance/63694608
Skrillex and dubstep in general typically has a lower BPM than Trance. Skrillex usually works in the 120s, whereas trance is usually in the 130s-140s. You seem to be lumping trance and ambient together; however, they're quite different! I would argue that trance typically has more complex melodies than dubstep, which focuses more on tambre variations (ie crazy bass distortion). If you want to hear a cool trance track with high BPM and a nice complex melody, check out Duke Can't Come Home by Oza: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BA9If-QkXQk As with all electronic music, you kind of have to sit through the first 32 bars or so for it to get to the good part; these parts of songs are really only there so that DJs can mix them together more easily.
Its like a ticket to the zone.
http://www.aboveandbeyond.nu/oceanlab-sirens-of-the-sea-remi...
Very nice site, well put together.
I found (the majority of) trance music superficial and get quite easily bored listening to them. Songs with lyrics messes with the language processing module of the brain and I don't want that kind of distraction. So I listen to classical, instrumental, OST and some techno (that are NOT tons of bass).
Example of songs I am listening to now:
Pierre Bensusan - Kourouts Nota (highly recommended)
Eric Johnson - Gem
Steffen Schackinger - On a rainy night
The Glitch Mob - Animus Vox
Klint - Diamond (OST from Snatch)
Mirwais - Disco Science (OST from Snatch)
Nathaniel Mechaly - Opéra (OST from Snatch)
...
In case anyone is interested, this is my playlist on Grooveshark: http://grooveshark.com/playlist/Sen+s+Music+For+Coding/66931...
Again, music snobbery is one of the worst topics of discussion (I certainly don't want to invoke it), to each his/her own.
Endtroducing by DJ Shadow is also worth a listen, as although there's vocals, they're generally calm. Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32X-ieCav-M
I'm also partial to Fuck Buttons - Tarot Sport when I want something weirder, and DRMHLLR when I want something less electronic.
Some of the tracks from the remix album are also pretty cool.
Otherwise though, vocal-less trance is usually pretty effective. I love all the recommendations these threads bring up -- thanks everyone!
I've recently been hooked on 41 Strings, a short vocal-less composition by Nick Zinner (of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs). He's performed it live in a bunch of places, but it's available for download here: http://www.thecreatorsproject.com/blog/download-nick-zinners...
http://www.radiolab.org/blogs/radiolab-blog/2008/aug/25/quan...
Here are two mixes you should DL & listen to:
http://archives.bassdrivearchive.com/1%20-%20Monday/Atmosphe...
http://archives.bassdrivearchive.com/4%20-%20Thursday/Scenic...
Lush atmospherics, low-slung 29-38hz basslines, rock out to either full-time at 175bpm or half-time at 87bpm, depending on your mood.
[1] http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/ca4bl/time_to_ge...)
It got me through my Master's dissertation, where I had it on loop for hours at a time.
Fiddler tells me you can currently grab the mp3 from here http://173.193.205.68/audio/RainyMood.mp3 (this was especially useful for the times I wanted to be disconnected from the internet to focus on work).
9 beet stretch might be of interest to anyone wanting something long noise/dronescapes
"If someone integrated a contextual playlist generator into a web-IDE and changed the music based on length of current session, degree of nesting or other complexity values, time of day based on location, etc..., I think it would be a much appreciated feature."
first track: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kHEu50uq3w
And yeah would be great to be able to preview some of this without downloading a 100MB+ file...
- Classical: sometimes pleasant, but can be too dramatic. - Hard electronic (dance, club, dubstep): too distracting
Minimal or ambient techno tends to be way to go when I'm trying to focus on something, but need something to keep that part of my mind occupied. Soma.FM and Digitally Imported have the best streaming stations for that, IMHO.
http://somafm.com/spacestation/ http://somafm.com/dronezone/ http://www.di.fm/minimal http://www.di.fm/chillout
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Thank you. I get quite a lot of use out of it.
I've also really enjoyed listening to motorik rhythms lately. Something about that beat makes me feel like I'm constantly moving forward. Stereolab are the modern masters...
Based on the comments here, electronic music (whether it's ambient, trance or dubstep) appears to be the assumed genre.
2. The music does not demand attention to itself. Most other music is created with a "drop what your doing and pay attention to ME" sense, and we go to concerts and pay good money to listen to such music for what it is as the center of our attention at that time. Dance music derived from ambient origins creates a beautiful backdrop to something else, driving away other distractions and setting a pleasant environment for whatever we really want to do; most of it is created for, well, dancing - but the style where the focus is on self & moment, not on music or others & events.
In our culture, very little else combines to create this audio backdrop combining meditation and high energy. Most instruments demand the musician(s) focus on a full performance, and hence expect (hope?) the audience to give similar attention - the antithesis of what we're looking for here. Even "minimalist" acoustic[ish] music like Philip Glass & Steve Reich, which resembles "trance", requires an intense single-performance effort & focus of the performers, giving the implication to the audience that similar focus should return the favor.
Electronic music allows lots of free-running loops, zero-effort samples, edited-to-perfection sequences, and time-unconstrained editing after the fact - to wit, it's not created live, not intended for live performance, and the artist has no attitude of "I'm not utterly focused on perfect end-to-end performance of this, so I don't expect utter focus of the audience". Acoustic meditative music heads this way, but involves the performer in the focused activity; music isn't an ingrained part/consequence of coding.
Upshot: electronic music lends itself to creating coding-productive music. We'd like such music from other sources, but nothing else lends itself to producing such high-energy long-run content without demanding the listener's attention.
Interesting that the reasons given here mostly also apply to game soundtracks as well, which is mostly what I listen to while coding. (Overclocked Remix has some great compilations if you are looking.)
I suspect game soundtracks differ from film soundtracks in that they're the backdrop to something that's still interactive, but I'm not sure how that comes into play.
It is hilarious when you realise how calm he is working on the project, completely opposite to what the music is. My colleague prefers listening to old school rock, and my boss (coder as well) listens to classical music.
Definitely a lot of different tastes out there.
I personally am a trance/techno/electronic/dub step/vocal trance kinda person.
I just started trying to improve my focus with isolating earbuds (haven't invested in noise cancelling cans yet) and rainymood.com. I heard the term "ambient" recently and decided to give it a try on Pandora, and got Lichen (#19) from Vol. 2 as the first track. I picked up both albums from Amazon soon after. Having no previous connection to electronic music at all and only knowing Aphex Twin from "Come to Daddy" and "Windowlicker" (not my thing), I was pleasantly surprised.
Some of it's a little dark and/or tweaky, but most of it is great to have on while working, and it covers a range of upbeat/downbeat without ever getting into "dance beats", which don't help me at all.
Lots of stuff on Warp records does nicely, as already mentioned. Autechre, Boards of Canada, Of Montreal. I've been listening to Evil Twin by Modeselector way too often recently.
I assume that most people here like to keep it mellow. I also listen to Amorphis (melodic metal) and lots of underground hip-hop, especially when I have to do administrative work and need a change of pace.
What happens when I start getting into something complicated, is that I notice the music. Until this point, it's just kind of in the background. It feels like my brain's saying, "Not enough CPU to play music and work on this problem. Please eliminate the problem."
Guess the hacker news-dotting did it. Care to torrent the files? :-)
Stuff like a lot of post rock, such as Explosions in the Sky or Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Another option is Math Rock like Battles (I am actually listening to Gloss Drop right now).
This site has some good minimal mixes http://deepmix.eu/
Particularly of note is his 8 hour album "Field Recordings from the Edge of Hell" http://zacbentz.bandcamp.com/album/field-recordings-from-the... . It's my go-to when I need to sit down and concentrate.
Actually hate working with headphones on now. Similarly using music I love to block out noisey work environments doesn't work. (Well, noisey work environments just don't work do they!).
FWIW: I'm on last.fm as rock666
I like short, simple songs. Something like a song off CYNE's album Evolution Fight works really well. For example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rP2ISUThbcQ&feature=youtu...
Try Johan johannsson http://www.ausersmanual.org/stage/ which is good but also with extra hacker kudos given the topic
Also Olafur Arnalds http://olafurarnalds.com/multimedia/
And I want to say that Com Truise's album Galactic Melt is one of the best albums for me for 2011. It gets even better if you combine it with Daft Punk's TRON OST and put those two on shuffle.
Nonetheless that's rara avis among my coworkers, anyone else listening to similar stuff while coding?
Happy coding / knitting / drawing / running / painting / writing / baking cakes!
Apparently this should really be called "MusicToGetThingsDone" :)
i can't handle the monotony of trance, and dubstep can be a bit too much. a lot of dnb also tends to be repetitive, but finny keeps things lively enough for you to pay attention to code
Philip Glass symphonies Wagner's The Ring ( unless you speak German ) Slayer
Michael Brook - Err: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcyQISCPTTs Michael Brook - Ultramarine: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITFyP9b7ius Michael Brook - Several Times II: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RK-oVQaTg_4 Cliff Martinez - Helicopter: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogDj3uXLP7w Hammock - Maybe they will sing for us tomorrow: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6kKjyHrXMw
