
Ask YC: What music do you listen to when hacking? - moog
What music, if any, do you listen to when hacking? Do you find it helps you concentrate or is it just a distraction?
======
kajecounterhack
The Feel Good Initiative <http://thefeelgood.com/>

Found it here on YC, actually.

~~~
andr
The Feel Good is the bomb! ;)

------
ken
Sometimes, music with lyrics in the language I'm learning. I don't understand
most of it, but my ear gets better at picking out words, and properly-
conjugated phrases start to sound natural to me, even if I don't know what
they mean yet.

But that's only when I feel I need to be pulled along. Once I get into flow, I
don't see or hear anything except what I'm doing. My music will end and I
won't notice until 2 hours later when I come up for air.

In "Peopleware", DeMarco and Lister are even more explicit: if programmers
need to put on headphones to drown out ambient noise, they're using up the
very creativity they're being paid so much for.

~~~
tlrobinson
_"Sometimes, music with lyrics in the language I'm learning"_

I assume you don't mean programming language? If that's what you did mean,
where can I get music with lyrics in Python, Lisp, etc?

~~~
Hexstream
[http://www.songworm.com/lyrics/songworm-
parody/EternalFlame....](http://www.songworm.com/lyrics/songworm-
parody/EternalFlame.html)

------
doubleplus
Trance!
[http://s-torm.com/forum/dload.php?action=category&cat_id...](http://s-torm.com/forum/dload.php?action=category&cat_id=15)

~~~
maximilian
Digitally Imported radio (di.fm) is a great trance channel. I used to
subscribe for $5/month to get their higher quality feed, which was worth it
when I had good headphones. I spent a lot of hours in the library coding and
doing math listening to di.fm. They have other great channels like "chillout"
and "house" which are also good for coding. Chillout is, well, chiller and
good for relaxed coding sessions and house is a bit more funky and less "poo
tsh poo tsh poo tsh poo tsh" like trance can get (and can get annoying).

ASOT++ btw. I listen to it every week. You can d/l it on most torrent sites,
which isn't even as illegal as d/ling other music. Its like taping the radio
and giving it to your friend. And this radio doesn't have commercials. Plus
trance style music lives on a different plane of business than the rest of the
industry they way I see it - which is a whole different tangent I'll not go
down.

~~~
Kaizyn
di.fm used to be good; then they grew bigger and started charging (about the
same time their music selection quality started to decline).

These days I'll listen to MrsFudge Streaming Radio, which has the best music
voting system I've seen: <http://gurba.sytes.net>

Alternately, there's Proton radio: <http://www.protonradio.com/>

------
xirium
Dup. See <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=61831> and
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=99936>

~~~
yummyfajitas
It's a dup, but I think lots of people don't mind that. I for one don't mind
seeing this pop up every few weeks if people suggest new songs.

Toward that end, here is some music I haven't seen mentioned here before. List
of Demands, and Black Stacy, both by Saul Williams (see also
<http://niggytardust.com/>, which many here may have heard of). He's on tour
right now, if any want to see him live.

<http://youtube.com/watch?v=l1llNYAlYrc>

[http://youtube.com/watch?v=kRsgavuG4sg&feature=related](http://youtube.com/watch?v=kRsgavuG4sg&feature=related)

------
knv
Brian Eno - Music For Airports

------
zenlinux
Maybe someone should create a Hacker News (or hacking music) group on last.fm?

My hacking music preferences:

<http://www.last.fm/user/zenlinux/>

------
mosburger
Boards of Canada, Thievery Corporation, Morcheeba, Zero 7, Massive Attack,
Daft Punk, Kid 606, Royksopp

zenlinux's idea of a last.fm group for this is an excellent idea.

------
mynameishere
This question seems to come up once a week. People never get tired of
answering it.

~~~
tim2
If we don't keep our supply of hacking music fresh then we could all die... I
mean, stop hacking as well.

------
dazzawazza
I tend to listen to something from the death metal genre
<http://www.newmetalarmy.com/band/unleashed>

or maybe in the thrash genre

<http://www.newmetalarmy.com/band/evile>

------
fish
Space rock (God is an Astronaut)
<http://www.last.fm/music/God+Is+an+Astronaut>

and another in the same sort of genre 'Gold Four'
<http://www.last.fm/music/Au4>

~~~
mickt
They're on a US tour at the moment. Playing in Boston at the Mid-east on the
19th of March. Great band, a friend in Dublin claims they're the loudest band
he's heard in ages.

------
karthikv
I think this has been discussed a couple of times here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=61831>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=99936>

~~~
sjh
As new users sign up to HN, and older submissions drop down the list, it's the
sort of question which is apt to come up a couple of times.

~~~
cstejerean
Yes, and it's the kind of thing searching was invented for. But for some
reason HN refuses to provide a way to search posts and comments (no, having to
go to Google and search news.ycombinator.com is not decent search. Google
doesn't take into consideration how long ago a post was, how many comments it
had and how many votes it received, all information I think is useful for
determining relevance of the results).

~~~
staticshock
<http://www.searchyc.com>

------
pierrebombay
Philip Glass is my favorite to listen to while coding. It's prefect for both
background music while focusing on a difficult problem and for putting into
the foreground when you just need to take a second away from the problem.

------
ejs
All kinds, the only time I avoid music and keep silence is when I have to do
reading/writing stuff. Probably the same reason I find reading and writing to
be more of a chore and coding/designing more enjoyable.

~~~
Electro
Go for instrumental music, it doesn't activate the part of your verbal part of
your brain. Essentially to hear singing (or talking) your brain mimics it,
however when you're trying to read/write you've got two processes and only one
processor to put it through. You can struggle through, but not nearly as well
as running them solo.

Also, just go onto TPB or usenet and download some Beethoven or Wagner. It's
100% legal, no copyrights exist on them and even if they did they're so old
it'd be void anyway. Even the BBC offered them up for free at some point, they
were surprisingly good quality too.

I learnt this a long time ago when I was working doing reviews. When you spend
10 hours writing reviews, you need something to listen to or you're going to
start shooting kids and spearing dogs for making the slightest noise.

~~~
vanekl
What also works is recorded rain sounds, and James Horner (A Beautiful Mind
soundtrack). Loud enough to drown out the talking, but doesn't interfere with
the thought process.

~~~
Electro
I heard whale song, and ocean sounds now thinking of it, is supposedly good,
however I've never bothered to try it. I'll have to find somewhere to get it
that doesn't charge $20, it'd be cheaper to go to the ocean myself.

------
kingnothing
Progressive trance streamed from ETN.FM.

~~~
tim2
Yeah, progressive trance, dnb, and hard house (I think it's called).

------
alexsolo
I listen to a lot of Pandora... but recently, I realized that iTunes has radio
stations built in. A really good trance station is Electronic -> ABF
Underground.

------
greendestiny
Devo, Gary Numan, Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band, Janis Joplin, Led
Zeppelin, Rolling Stones, Muddy Waters, Derrick May, Juan Atkins, Drexciya,
Dan Curtin.

------
jamesbritt
It varies, though it tends to be noisy repetitive semi-drone electronic-ish
stuff.

Lately I'm liking Holy Fuck.

(Though I dug up some Hawkwind, too, for some odd reason.)

------
edw519
I prefer to Enjoy the Silence.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hd7y6A-5uTY>

------
gsheep
Wow, we all have pretty similar tastes. I always listen to something that has
a steady beat and fight for my attention, so anything too lyric heavy is out
the window.

Proton: www.protonradio.com Frisky: <http://www.cbs.nu/home/> CBS:
www.cbs.nu/home/ Radiomagnetic: www.radiomagnetic.com

------
tjr
Mostly instrumental music, primarily some type of jazz or classical.

If I am in a noisy working environment, then I keep the music going pretty
much constantly, to block out extraneous noise. In general, the more quiet and
peaceful my environment is, the less music I listen to while working.

------
caudicus
Bands: Infected Mushroom, Shpongle, Sigur Ros

iTunes Radio: Electronic->AH.FM, Ambient->Drone Zone on SomaFM

------
ivankirigin
NIN - a downward spiral. Daft Punk - Alive. Timbaland. Kraftwerk, Chemical
Brothers, Radiohead.

------
srp
Gothic radio on the net. R1Live, darkwave or www.gothicradio.tv.

All that screaming behaves almost like white noise for me :-P

I once downloaded a recording of heavy rain from a nature site. I found that
sound very very conducive to coding :)

------
dood
Mostly dubstep recently, since you can just sink into it and get into a nice
groove: <http://dubstep.fm>

IDM or drum n bass for occasions where hardcore coding is needed.

------
thomasswift
bassdrive.com, itunes -> radio -> electronic -> bassdrive ...

------
dskhatri
Pandora's (<http://www.pandora.com>) is pretty cool to run in the background.
I've discovered lots of new music through the site..

------
sjh
When I was still working in an office, I found listening to film scores, in
particular, very helpful in shutting out the noise of the office.

~~~
brent
I'll second that. My suggestions are: American Beauty, Atonement, Braveheart,
Gladiator, Lord of the Rings I II III, Meet Joe Black, Requiem for a Dream,
The Last Samurai, and There Will Be Blood.

~~~
sjh
The soundtracks to Batman Begins and the Battlestar Galactica mini-series are
not dissimilar to that for There Will Be Blood (which I've just been to see).

------
christefano
For this last project a lot of what I listened to was the Battlestar Galactica
soundtrack by Bear McCreary.

------
CHIEFARCHITECT
Mozart and Bach! Agreed w/ one of the other entries. "Accept no substitutes
for true greatness."

------
adduc
This is definitely a page I'm going to have to come back to. One look through
is not enough.

------
mickt
Groove Salad at SomaFm: <http://somafm.com/>

------
yters
I beatbox.

------
kuratkull
Music when coding is a MUST! Preferably a band you love/like.

------
nonrecursive
Lately: Moby, Kenna, Cee-lo, goodie mob, david bowie, prodigy

------
PStamatiou
techno/trance. ETN.fm / DI.fm type stuff in iTunes Radio

------
wyclif
J.S. Bach. Accept no substitutes for true greatness.

------
german
Lately I'm listening: Read My Mind - The Killers

------
pius
Mostly hip-hop, especially freestyles.

------
jdavid
pandora FTW!

stations i created "rabbit in the moon" "hacker radio" "garbage" "fluke"

any other cool strings to create stations off of?

------
thorax
They Might Be Giants

------
mronge
Paul van Dyk

------
simianstyle
daft punk

------
treeform
enya

------
nickhac
psytrance or any kind of hypnotic techno music when programming

