I've always described myself as a person with zero ability to multitask. Always have been, always will be. Every time I cook, my wife about has a panic attack watching me fumble around, forgetting things, looking for things, oh god that's burning, etc.
Back on topic, I absolutely cannot listen to music with words when I code. I'll intermittently type lyrics instead of what I was intending to do. Anyone else cursed with such a thing?
If anyone cares, I actually like a lot of the vaporwave/outrun/whatever it's called now stuff when coding. Techno is a bit too jarring, and while I love classical, it either puts me to sleep or carries me away in thought.
> Every time I cook, my wife about has a panic attack watching me fumble around, forgetting things, looking for things, oh god that's burning, etc.
I do all the cooking for our family because I'm pretty good at it. A few things that help me. First is mise en place. I read through the recipe and lay out all the ingredients and prep them (dice, chop, measure, etc). The next thing is I read through the recipe several times and picture myself following the directions. This greatly helps me determine my timing for everything.
Not trying to fix you. Just thought I'd throw out some ideas in case you wanna try.
EDIT: Forgot to mention music. I can't code to music with lyrics. Nor can I code to music that has too many sharp edges. If it has a nice, smooth, consistent beat, I can really get some stuff done, though.
Thanks! Yeah, my wife keeps trying to drill this into my head as well and even goes as far as to ask what I'm making and help prepare stuff this way as well. It -does- help a lot, but I still find myself losing track of something. For example, I'll put bread in the oven and move to cooking sausage, then eggs, then remember I had (now black) bread in the oven I needed to remove!
It's not really a curse. Your brain has a region which is devoted to speech/language, and that region tends to only track one thing at a time. This is why the first advice in active listening tutoring—and related fields like marriage counseling and negotiation—tell you to stop planning your responses while someone else is speaking. Similarly why when I talk with my wife about whatever conversation is happening on TV, we invariably miss some bit of that conversation.
In that light, all you are reporting is more difficulty than other folks have in tuning out the voice in the music... Different people can do this better or worse, and I'm pretty sure it can be honed if you want. Don't let it concern you too much :)
The mixes on musicforprogramming do sometimes have words but they tend to be really kind of subdued and muted, I found them reasonably effective for programming, your mileage may vary.
Still my go-to is Rainy Mood, I use it to sleep, but somehow it's also useful to program with as long as I'm not too drowsy. I have it installed as a PWA on my MacBook so that I can Cmd-Tab to it when I need to shut it down.
Game sound tracks may be a good option, because to they are designed to be in the back ground, and not to be grating on the ears even after much repetition.
The sci-fi racing series WipeOut has some great tracks for fast-paced instrumental background music. Picks me up every time.
The Portal 2 soundtrack has a good mix of fast and slow/eerie, which I find great for working through things... though I may just associate it with problem-solving because of the nature of the game.
For calmer, more meandering listening, I've got the Morrowind soundtrack. Though really any recent Elder Scrolls game has some great wandering music.
Here are some artists, tools, etc that I have experienced "in the zone" states which I absolutely cannot achieve on my own without some kind of stimulation.
Basically my ADHD means that if I like the music I am listening to I will stop focusing on what I am doing and instead focus intently on the music, if I hate the music I am listening to I will stop focusing on what I am doing to turn off the music and then be pissed off at whatever connotations are raised in my head regarding the music, finally if I find the music bland and boring I will do ok but sooner or later I will hate it because why would someone make such bland and boring music?
I was talking to a (non-programmer) coworker who has ADHD recently, and she was saying that in order to concentrate she has to have music playing. I asked if that included while doing something that actually requires thinking and focusing like writing an essay and she confirmed that to be the case. She said she'll be singing along to rap music while writing.
I thought that was wild cause I'm so the opposite. Music I listen to while working has to not take my attention away at all, so most stuff with lyrics is off the table, as well as instrumental music that I'm enjoying too much.
My friend's wife has ADHD and she's the same as my coworker. I always thought people were lying about their ability to multitask (I can't even pretend I'm able to do it), but sometimes we'll be watching a TV show and she's scrolling Facebook on her phone, but I'll comment on something happening in the show and she's able to reply with full context of what's been happening. If I want to focus on a TV show/movie, I basically have to throw my phone across the room cause if I start paying attention to it at all, I will miss 100% of what's happening on the screen. I'm also pretty bad at maintaining conversation while driving, unless it's a route I'm very familiar with.
I have ADHD and I have to listen to music to focus as well. I focus less without music. Even when I'm half singing along in my head somehow that makes me stay focused, so I don't get bored and drift off.
Interestingly enough I'm bad at multi tasking. I'm bad at single tasking too. But doing two things at once normally means I'll get neither of those things done. Music is an exception for me.
Not sure if I have ADHD, but I have a hard time focusing without blocking all external sounds. I can’t listen to slow music while coding/thinking, I need the music to match my brain speed, so I listen to 135+ bpm stuff. Psytrance and Hardstyle are my go to music genres. I recently made a playlist long enough to get me through a working day https://open.spotify.com/playlist/02mn7gCDxdJeiRwgiEX3EM?si=...
Have you tried cicada sounds, that sort of thing... I had to do something to drown out the office noise around me (when I was in an office... or when I will have to go back in, I assume). It's tantamount to the Sardaukar throat singing from the new Dune sound track or something, but you can find 4 hour tracks of it. I never thought I'd be the type to rock out to "nature sounds", but here I am, drowning out the industrialized beehive of my life with a more natural insect hive sound.
I cannot listen to music whenever I do anything else than a braindead repetitive chore. I've always thought that the fact that I am a musician is related; I think I cannot help but try and analyze the music I listen to.
However, I enjoy playing 'strategic', puzzle-like videogames and the soundtrack usually is not a problem for me, although I rarely enjoy listening to it. Are the videogames I play braindead repetitive or should I try to listen to videogame soundtracks when I work?
Same for me. As a sound engineer turned programmer I can not listen to any music as background. My mind instantly jumps into analyzing every sound.
Regarding playing games - I think it’s a completely different experience from working. Music + visuals (videos, psychedelic trips, etc) or music + exploration (games, hiking, etc) is a great combination because the elements enhance each other to make the total experience even more rich and absorbing. Which is, perhaps, not the right state for programming.
> I absolutely cannot listen to music with words when I code
1000%
My first job was at a design agency, where they understood next to nothing about programming (and neither did I tbh). They used to listen to the news and talk shows on the radio all day. It was impossible for me to focus. Literally impossible.
On the topic of music, as soon as my brain hears a word it hyper focuses on it like my dog when she smells a treat. It just can't let it go. And if I know the lyrics, forget it, might as well stop coding and start air drumming.
Did anybody else here ever work in the Tea Rooms in Shoreditch,
London? Or any of those "incubators" around the A10 "Silicon
Roundabout"? It was a massive warehouse and popular low rent facility
filled with startups circa 2010. You could rent anything from a desk
to a whole floor.
Only one problem. Constant construction noise! Hammering, drilling,
sawing, cranes and trucks moving. Shoreditch was a trendy place for
tech companies at the time because the whole area was under
gentrification. Every coder in that building had ear-buds in and
blotted-out the din with louder music. For management meetings we had
to go find a basement coffee shop.
I met a guy called Julian Treasure and we did some projects on sound
management in public spaces. He wrote some stuff about the impact of
noise on productivity and quality. The background research looked bona
fide. It will scare you.
After that I realised that every single line of code produced in the
companies I was around at that time was probably broken. When I tried
talking about this to other founders and managers people basically
shrugged.
It may be that "work from home", where you have more control over your
acoustic world, may be the best thing to ever happen to code quality.
That's surely worthy of more serious scientific study. It definitely wouldn't surprise me to see a strong correlation between code quality/ correctness and background distractions (not just audio) at the time of it being written. Or at least between the rate of correct code output and level of distraction.
Personally I very rarely find any benefit to having music playing while coding, unless it's to block out other sounds I can't avoid. Whatever increase in immediate enjoyment there might be would be quickly canceled out by the realization I'm not focused 100% on the task at hand and making silly mistakes/taking too long over it.
I've found that novelty, (new-to-me at least) to be much more distracting than the presence of lyrics, whether that be a new artist or a new song order. As my unit of listening is usually an album, I'll briefly notice album transitions, and shuffle on an album will be jarring, but the 2nd or 3rd time I've heard an album it's successfully backgrounded for the duration of the album.
Seconded. When Spotify finishes an album it follows it with "album radio" which is an auto-generated playlist based on the album - that transition is jarring for me if I'm using it as background music for work, because suddenly my brain is "ooh! something new! let's pay attention!"
I wholeheartedly agree. When I was learning to program, I couldn’t listen to music at all, any kind— I found that it disrupted my thought process and interrupted my train of thought. Many years later, I find now that when I’m writing code that I know how to write, and am just dealing with the implementation, listening to EDM keeps me “in the zone” quite well.
My coworkers find it endlessly amusing to tease me for listening to bass music, or as they call it “trash compactors having sex” while writing code. I admit that it’s odd, specifically the intensity of the music I’ll listen to while writing stuff as mundane as a login panel, but it works very well in regards to keeping me focused and on task.
To this day, though, any music with any lyrics at all is a no-go. I can’t tune out the words, at all. Luckily, EDM seldom has lyrics to speak of in the first place, so I that problem is solved quite cleanly for me. It is quaint, however, when I take my headphones off at the office to greet someone walking in / say hello and I realize how bizarre the sounds coming from my headphones are in the context of my brightly lit office.
I hope that I give off a vibe closer to Christian Bale as Michael Burry from The Big Short, but I doubt it.
I'm similar with non-English hip-hop. For all I know, the MC could be calling me every name under the sub, but damn... Italian and Japanese hip-hop flows so well!
When in a crowded space (like a dinner or party), it is very hard for me to focus only on the conversation I'm currently having if I can heard (semi-)distinctly another person speaking.
This is especially painful during dinners when you can't actually move around too much because well, you're supposed to be sited.
It depends on what I'm coding. If it's something brand new that requires a lot of concentration, then I can't handle lyrics or even any music at all. If it's more routine work, lyrics are fine, I can even sing along
The thing that works best for me is 1) have really good noise-cancelling headphones so I can't hear conversations going on around me, and 2) just listen to a couple minutes of some instrumental music I like at the beginning of a focused session. The music playing can be distracting after a while, but just listening to a bit to get my brain going is a bit magic. After I turn the music off, it keeps going in my head in a pretty intense and still almost audible way. I find myself absorbed in it, moving my body to the beat and maybe humming with it, all in a way that isn't distracting to the task. Don't know how it works but it's fairly pleasant shrug.
My go-to is the Final Fantasy piano collections: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-dt1ZXxZ6I. I've listened to the music so much that it's no longer novel or distracting, but is still pleasant, complex and familiar.
I don't like trying to work to music with words, either. I end up spending my cycles trying to decipher what they are saying... I've never been able to understand words in songs.
Yes, I have this problem. I listen to electronic music when I code. It usually helps me focus. That is, until some vocalist fades in the mix rambling some inane crap I am forced to divert my attention to. It's like any other interruption for me. The human voice is impossible to ignore. It irritates me to such a level I wonder whether I'm on the spectrum.
For coding background music I can do instrumental music or I can do vocal music that I know very well, to the point where I don't actually have to process the words. But I can't do vocal music that I don't know well, because then my brain tries to process the words.
It depends on the day, but I like to put on some stoner rock/desert rock, or even post rock when I need to concentrate. For example Electric Moon - Inferno, or anything by My Sleeping Karma.
Otherwise, classical music is cool. I also like some mild techno like BT.
If anyone cares, I actually like a lot of the vaporwave/outrun/whatever it's called now stuff when coding.
I can listen to music with lyrics when I'm writing code, but not when I'm reading. So coding calls for metal or hip-hop for me most of the time, but reading usually demands synthwave, darkwave, horrowave, retrowave, classical, etc. If I'm sitting at my electronics bench working on hardware stuff, I particularly like to do the "put on a movie that I've seen so many times that I won't get drawn into paying attention to it" thing. Lately I've been using Iron Man, Iron Man 2, Iron Man 3, Hackers, Sneakers, etc. for that.
Music with words doesn't destroy my concentration like that, but instrumental music is a lot better to help me focus. Calm instrumental music, specifically. Techno would drive me nuts, but Ambient and adjacent genres tend to work very well.
> I absolutely cannot listen to music with words when I code
Same here. Med to high pitch does the same effect as words for me. But undecipherable words or ambients does not have the same paralyzing effect as words, things like metal growl, mumble rap, or ambient acapella. My goto music would be extreme polymetric metal music with dark tone (bright guitar tone doesn't work for me. Check out my fav band Meshuggah), noir jazz (jazz which accompany noir detective/mystery film), or muted song whose mid-to-high pitched instruments arent quite prominent.
And then there is a friend of mine who can program while listening to podcast. A mad lad he is I say.
A substantial chunk of code I've written in the last decade has been written to a Meshuggah soundtrack. I love the music, and find the more complicated time signatures (well, more complicated than 4/4, at least) interesting enough to keep me plugging away, while not getting tired of the songs the way I do when listening to more "traditional" time signature music. With any given 4/4 based song, while coding, I can handle maybe 10-16 bars of it before I'm hitting "next track". This, of course, means that every 20 seconds I'm not coding, and instead interacting with the music player, which is obviously suboptimal.
Their songs speak controlled chaos. I've known them only for 4 years and I have been captivated with how meditative their songs sound, inspite of the genre.
I have the exact same problem. Wow, I could have written almost the same post about myself (including the part about the panicking wife!) Thank you for the music suggestions. One thing I find a bit strange is that the music of Liquid Mind both helps me to sleep AND helps me to code. I find it odd that sleep-inducing music also helps my easily distracted brain to focus. But there is no doubt I have written some of my best code and have achieved a greater level of focus while listening to Liquid Mind playing (softly) in the background.
We’re the same person. I have kids, and let me tell you: the most stressful thing about kids isn’t them constantly trying to impale themselves on something; it’s the fact that they all try to talk to you at the same time.
When our kid was little, she spent sooo much time trying to talk to me while I was working. I didn't mind - I couldn't understand a word of it, and it wasn't distracting. As soon as she started piecing enough English together to make basic statements, it was all downhill from there.
Iam a bit like you. But its not generally words. There are well composed songs which voice i'am already familiar with that work well with coding. To name an example lots of "the streets" stuff is like that.
But this post is a recommendation: Dawn of Midi - Dysnomia [1] was a no brainer for me. Once I heard it I immediately knew that i will listen it again many times. Its so great for coding.
I used to really enjoy floppotron-style stepper motor music while in the coding zone. As a musician I sometimes get distracted by voices of different instruments, so the stepper motors give a nice homogeneous tone.
Unfortunately, I can rarely listen to anything with both ears anymore (always listening for either phone calls at work all day or child cries at home at night). I just play whatever through one headphone but the opportunities for interruption make it a lot more difficult to get in the zone.
You think linguistically as most people do. Visual thinkers have the linguistic part of their brain available for processing music while they are thinking during programming. The benefits you experienced compared to us visual thinkers is that generally your type of people had it easier in school with regard to learning things off by rote memorization. The way mathematics is thought through word problems to school children suits your linguistic brain.
Best thing I ever did for myself, taught myself to be able to listen to music whilst doing something else. I used to have a 2 hour commute on a train, so I would read a book. Bu trains are noisy. So I learned to listen to an iPod while reading. I read a lot of books that way. This then leads on to listening to Podcasts whilst reading. It blows some people's minds, but it is possible. It is a learned skill, not some magic.
Kind of a one task guy myself, but not that bad. I basically like to play videos or something in the background sometimes, or music, but I don't wind up typing it out or anything like that, it just helps me from having my mind wander which is my problem.
I'll either play some rap / hip hop or some metal. Sometimes even some Italian music, maybe try something that is in a different language? Japanese Rock maybe?
Same. Also same goes for anything that has a lot of stuff going on in the same frequency register as the human voice (e.g. piano melodies) - I find that distracting too for some reason.
That's why my go-to concentration music is Kryptic Minds - basically just driving bass rhythms without too much melodic content.
In a similar way, I cannot think while I speak. I know; it sounds like something that can be said as a joke. But it's no joke. Somehow, it's like those two systems use the same resources in my brain. Thinking and typing or writing is not problematic. Just speaking.
I didn't think it would work for me, but I have turned into a daily user of http://lofi.limo/ . The number of tracks isn't too high, but I love the somewhat goofy interludes and the ephemeral chat interactions.
I'm like this too. I also have a hard time focusing on things like podcasts - the only time that works for me is my commute to work or when I go for a run.
You should see how I somehow manage to spend 15 minutes cutting carrots because I get distracted by something. :D
When I code, I usually don't listen to music. I rarely listen to music generally. But when I do code and listen to music, I often sing along. Typing lyrics into code? Never happened to me.
Correct. Songs in languages I don't speak do not have this effect, so I figure it's the brain processing every English word it understands front and center.
I do this sometimes, but only if my focus is not 100% there anyway and the tasks are easy.
So fixing simple bugs, or testing, or cleaning up code works on autopilot, but of course you never will enter deep flow work when half of your mind is distracted with something very different.
I live alone and work from home, sometimes the lack of others makes me feel a bit down, one usual antidote is listening to podcasts, but I also find them to be distracting. What I like to do in these situations is listen to Japanese radio shows, they are upbeat and since I understand very little Japanese they are not too distracting (at least in low volumes).
I quite enjoy the show named たまむすび (tama musubi), this youtube channel posts new episodes (is this the right term?) as frequently as they come out: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCo6OJrar-0P2rqLqMVomQNw , hope it can help some of you.
A couple of my go-tos are Solar Fields and Infected Mushroom. Both are electronic; former is calm/ambient focus, latter is energetic/driving focus. Both have huuuge discographies that you can just put on shuffle
Solar Fields actually did the Mirror's Edge game soundtracks too, if you've played those. Really nice mix of ambient, almost meditative sounds. Often there's a super long, repetitive, pulsing buildup to a brief higher-energy section at the end of a track
Infected Mushroom is a wild mix of heavy Israeli dance-electronica, trance, and even rock, with a dash of metal here and there
For more Psybient in the vein of Solar Fields, it's also worth checking out releases on Ultimae Records (which is the label for some Solar Fields releases). Some of their artists which go well for programming IMO are Scann-Tec, MIKTEK, and Aes Dana.
I particularly like Carbon Based Lifeforms in this vein as well. I assembled a psybient-oriented coding playlist from a bunch of stuff I’ve enjoyed listening to while in the zone over the years, it’s full of Ultimae Records tracks: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2ceXFEO7blxDBa5uhgazyf?si=...
I just quickly scrolled through my collection and here are some random, but fantastic instrumental albums I've used while "in the zone":
- Miles Davis: In a Silent Way
- Brian Eno: Ambient 4: On Land
- Godspeed You! Black Emperor: F♯ A♯ ∞ (one of my favourite albums. listen with your best headphones. HD650s are good)
- Aphex Twin: Selected Ambient Works Volume II
- Mozart: Requiem (my first proper introduction to classical. I was absolutely blown away)
- Boards of Canada - Music Has the Right to Children
- Sun O))): Black One (extremely experimental doom metal. the musicality of it is questionable at times but it's fantastic to study to)
- Sleep: Jerusalem (occasional vocals but trust me they're not distracting)
- Tim Hecker: Harmony in Ultraviolet
- Bill Evans: Sunday at the Village Vanguard
The worst part about these sorts of things is that 30 seconds after posting I'll remember all the awesome albums I forgot and kick myself for it.
> - Sleep: Jerusalem (occasional vocals but trust me they're not distracting)
I'm sure you're probably aware, but for posterity, Jerusalem is the cut down version that the record label released when they didn't know what to do with a 63 minute long song. Dopesmoker is the full song, along with Sonic Titan or Holy Mountain depending on which release you're listening to.
Music for airports is my favorite ambient Eno. I have this part of my brain that notices odd (to me) choices, and some of his ambient stuff has sounds/patterns that break me out of the zone, but music for airports works as intended. Love Eno, and I think this is a "me" problem, rather than an issue with his work.
Unless I need a sense of urgency, random recordings of bird songs (especially mockingbirds) are my go-to for background noise for work.
Outside of music critics, I don't see him talked about much at all. I love his work as a producer for John Cale, David Bowie, and the Talking Heads in particular. Iirc he also worked on the two Iggy Pop records (the Idiot and Lust for Life) that Bowie produced. I also like his solo (non-ambient) work and work with Roxie Music, but the style of singing isn't my favorite. I know he didn't do vocals for Roxie, but the style of singing is similar to me.
He had a great conversation with Rick Rubin on the Broken Record podcast.
Thanks! You have a really interesting taste in music I think. I just skimmed through every album.
I saved the album from: Tim Hecker, Sunn 0))), Boards of Canada, Aphex Twin and Brian Eno
With Mozart and Bill Evans I am familiar.
The Godspeed You! album I found not as straigt forward and distinct as I like my music. But don't take this as proper critique. Even though I hear lots of music, I have no 'intellectual' base to say anything substential about music else than wether it clicks with me or not. For some music I think I get the (an) 'idea' and other music just feels all over the place and I can't get hold of the (an) general idea.
Sleep: Jerusalem I didn't found on spotify. Seems like a very generic name... Are you sure this is the full name of artist and album?
If you have more to share, I'm happy to listen to just a bit more. Don't you go over board, I have other things to do as well ;)
As other have pointed out, there's also a near-identical release called Dopesmoker, but it's all one long track so a bit less convenient.
They also have a 2018 release called The Sciences which is pretty damn good too.
Some other albums:
- Antônio Carlos Jobim - Wave (bossa nova is one of the most underrated genres I reckon)
- Jon Hopkins - Singularity (ambient electronic)
- Electric Wizard - Dopethrone (doom metal. similar to Sleep)
- Sigur Rós - Ágætis_byrjun (there are vocals but they're Icelandic)
- Chopin - The Complete Nocturnes (I've got a double-album of Roger Woodward playing them)
- J Dilla - Donuts (instrumental hip hop)
I've tried to cover as many genres as possible to pique people's interest in branching out (you'd be surprised by what you enjoy when you give it a chance). Happy to give even more recommendations - I'm a music nut haha.
I went through a period of listening to zelda soundtracks + rain/storm sounds for hours every day at work. It was very calming and there wasn't much to focus on, which let me focus on my work. Video game soundtracks in general can be excellent programming music because they can be looped infinitely and are designed to be in the background of some other task.
I agree! I often listen to music from World of warcraft when coding. I get in a similar grinding mindset I had when I played back in the days. Helps me focus a lot!
Zelda & Chill by GameChops is a good one. GameChops has a lot of other lo-fi video game soundtrack covers that are great for programming, in my experience
My goto right now is https://www.twitch.tv/sgqfmfunk, which streams video game OSTs from the 80's and 90's -- mostly relatively obscure games, including a lot of music from consoles/home computers that used Yamaha's FM chips.
Anyway, I listed to https://rainwave.cc all the time. Video game music with 5 different channels (no ads!). It's great (although there are a few songs with vocals, which I don't like. Not on the chiptune channel though ;)).
I suppose I should link my own Music For Coding To playlist here, for anyone who might be interested. I've tried to refine it over the last 7 years, removing tracks with vocals & anything that throws me out of the flow state:
It's intended to be played on shuffle, but I've started my workday with Ulrich Strauss' "I Take Comfort In Your Ignorance" so many times that just hearing the track can trigger me into a working mode.
As for recommendations, I like the album "Aura" by The Alpha Conspiracy. Trackers and demosceners might know him better as Necros from Five Musicians, and he wrote some of the soundtracks used in the Unreal games. His real name is Andrew Sega.
The mixes are about 1hr in length and his set programming is top-notch. He releases a mix about once a month.
His 'Mixtapes' playlist is a bit more clubby, and 'Textures' a bit more relaxing.
Bio from page:
Sometimes we come across DJs combining talent with a livewire personality, and Ricky Ryan is among these.
His sound is distinguished by a broad variety of musical styles, from beautiful warm House, and deep Techno, to driving dance floor anthems, always guiding the listener through a spiritual soundscape by his silky smooth mixing and impeccable programming.
Ricky toured worldwide, including gigs at the Winter Music Conference in Miami, The BPM Festival in Mexico, ADE in Amsterdam, Creamfields in his hometown Buenos Aires, and an honourable residency at the spectacular Warung Beach Club in Brazil.
His success is exemplified by featuring on John Digweed's Transitions show, and on Proton Radio, setting a record of simultaneous listeners, with rave reviews from Sander Kleinenberg, Danny Howells, and Desyn Masiello for DJ MAG.
Ricky Ryan is just as well respected for his remixes and productions while establishing both fine labels, Sick Watona and Avangardia, supported by Sasha, Hernan Cattaneo, Guy J, and many more.
He, who also is your brother, and companion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and patience of the LORD, for the word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ.
As a massive house-head and someone who's been involved in the electronic music scene to varying degrees for two decades, I actually find it extremely difficult to listen to music while writing code, because all I actually do is listen to the music, rather than work.
Hah, I feel like I'm kinda in the same boat. As a result, I've got a playlist full of "broken in" songs that I've heard 25+ times and sound boring to me. I still find it a little distracting with songs that have vocal tracks, but for the most part it has brought Squarepusher and Venetian Snares back to my active rotation, which makes me a happy camper (coder?)
Lol, it's nice to find like-minded people out there. While my initial post commented on electronic music in particular, I feel the need to re-iterate my point with respect to other genres. I'm a huge fan of Romantic-era piano (Chopin, Liszt, Rachmaninoff, Saint-Säens, etc.), and would find it impossible to do basically anything other than listen should I hear these pieces.
I would say the opposite, most "good" house music, or house that is considered tasteful, doesn't have lyrics. It may have some voice samples, but nothing too distracting. There are obviously many exceptions to this rule, but you can generally consider most house music to be instrumental.
I've been a house head since the 90s, and I would definitely not describe most house music as instrumental. Classic house frequently had vocals, in both the Chicago and especially NYC/NJ (garage house) styles. Most subsequent subgenres of house followed suit, whether using vocal samples or singing.
Instrumentals are a bit more common in melodic house, progressive house, etc but even then there's still a lot of non-instrumental tracks.
I completely agree with the sibling comment that instrumentals are far more common in techno.
> most "good" house music, or house that is considered tasteful, doesn't have lyrics.
I agree.
> but you can generally consider most house music to be instrumental.
If an instrumental is music without words at all (not even in voice samples), as far as I've experienced, Techno instrumentals are far more common; House instrumentals have always seemed somewhat rare.
I sometimes refer to Every Noise at Once when I'm looking for the right music as background when I want to focus. https://everynoise.com/
For me the music has to hit a balance between being engaiging enough but not too abrasive, sometimes lyrics can completely derail my focus but I focus better when I have something to listen to to drown out the sounds of conversations and people around me when I'm trying to read.
If I'm doing something that doesn't require too much focus, like cutting things for a collage or cleaning, I can listen to podcasts and songs with singing. But if I need to read, write, or think about what I'm doing I generally cannot have the sound of someone saying something I can understand, sometimes if it's not a language I understand it can be fine though.
Guys, guys, everyone is talking about what music they listen to while coding, and no one takes a moment to admire the UI on that page! It's quite neat. Also the spectrum analyzer widget is a real thing and not some generic animation like many modern music apps do.
I go for thrash metal, with earplugs then over the ear headphones turned up enough to get through the earplugs at a comfortable volume. That blocks any exterior sound, is complex enough that I don't get bored, but doesn't have anything hook-y enough that it pulls my attention away from the task.
My "instant-flow" choices are Stellaris Soundtrack (Paradox Interactive) and Oblivion Soundtrack (by M83, Tom Cruise movie from 2013)
I'm a subscriber on Digitally Imported. It's know as DM.fm [1] nowadays but it's Digitally Imported to me since I started listening it in early 2000's :)
Definitely not Frank Zappa: his brilliant lyrics are way too engaging not to pay them full attention, and they demand the same part of your brain you use for programming.
Except for "Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar", "Shut Up 'n Play Yer Guitar Some More", and "Return of the Son of Shut Up 'n Play Yer Guitar". Also "Francesco Zappa"!
I've used it as a source of instrumental, good enough music. I'm not sure if the other "sciency" stuff actually worked. I didn't use it for a while now, partially due to a lack of macos native app.
Have been using this for about 3 years almost daily for reading, coding, and meditating sound if I'm in a noisy place.
I've found that compared to regular lo-fi playlists on Spotify my coding blocks have increased from 30 minutes to 50-60 minutes. Not sure what it does in terms of actual "productivity", but I can definitely spend more time working with it.
Happy to join the co-oping of this post for programming music discovery. My top 5 over the last few years (no particular order):
[Elect] Daft Punk - Tron Legacy OST
[Synth] Perturbator - I Am The Night
[Metal] A Skylit Drive - Wires... and the Concept of Breathing
[ ??? ] Postal Service - Give Up
[Synth] Dance with the Dead - B-Sides: Vol. 1
A while ago I decided to change my usual music lists.
First of all I decided to listen to opera. I started with Mozart then went with whatever sprang to mind or Youtube's recommendation sidebar. I'm now a fan of Puccini (predicatble?) and Nixon in China is amazing.
I also decided to listen to all of Rolling Stone magazine's top 500 albums ever. After listening to each I made a short review on twitter. I managed 2-3 a day. It was impossible to "properly" listen to them, but at least I was getting through them. I paused at 60, and should really restart.
I also listen to In Our Time on Radio4, arguably the original podcasts and certainly (one of?) the best. They have been curated into collections (philosophy, history, religion) and I'm getting an education through Melvyn Bragg (also one of the best chairs in audio). Again, it's not properly listening, but I pick up much more than I get by not listening.
I really love listening to the Donkey Kong soundtrack. It really has something that just relaxes you, or pushes you to the programming limits. It has tracks for every kind of mood. I listen to it on the train or when I travel to work to gain mental focus for the day. In the office, I switch to a different, more upbeat song to create tension. With passing time I switch to Donkey Kong songs with increasing tempo. My hands are literally flying over the keyboard and I am in complete balance with the code. Some of my coworkers say I'm "wired in". I wouldn't disaggre with that.
At some point, when the evening is within grasp, I slowly decrease the tempo of my Donkey Kong songs to calm down step by step. On my way home I switch into chill-song mode again. During the night I let the aquatic ambience of Donkey Kong Country guide my dreams.
Highly recommend it to everyone!
This is a very old website, and apparently they redesigned it. I love the music they make. Some of the sets are exceptional, even.
They also publish these as a podcast too. It's available in iTunes IIRC.
On the other hand, I can use music as an external clock source for my brain. I can adjust the fuel/air ratio of my brain, and make it cruise or go flat out fast. At the end of the day, my energy is limited, and if I need to finish things, I go fast, but got burned at the end of the day. Then go home, and just sit and chill down.
If my workload is normal, I listen to something more chill, allows a more even day, but I don't go as fast.
I may be the only person, but when I need to focus, and drown out the outside world, the best stuff for me is early Philip Glass--essentially anything up to the Koyaanisqatsi soundtrack. Einstein on the Beach, Music in 12 Parts, Northstar, etc., but as with another poste, nothing with intelligible language--so parts of Einstein don't work, but most of it is perfect.
There is something about the apparent velocity of the music that creates a bubble that the world, or even the non-focused parts of my brain can't penetrate.
Great recommendations. I'd add Terry Riley, whose music has a similar trance-like feel. His album Persian Surgery Dervishes is my favorite flow state inducer.
I can't program with too much/little musical stimulation or without a driving beat, I also find repetition annoying and love symphonic and electronic elements.
So, if anyone is interested here's a random sample:
Roof - Big Spoon Instrumental Version
Theophany - Woods of Mystery
Power-Haus - P.I.M.P. Shyloom Remix
Nicholas Hooper - Umbridge Spoils a Beautiful Morning
Arkana - Umi and the Serpent
VOLO - Mystic
Apashe - More (Prelude)
I go through different phases in what my brain can use for music. Sometimes I want really loud, energetic music with powerful rock lyrics. Those are usually amazing days because being able to function at a high level while taking in competing information often means I'm well rested and in a good mood. Usually though I can't listen to music with lyrics. I used to listen to a lot of classical but lately it feels like classical is just a genre of music that demands an insane amount of attention. It's like a painting that tries to use every colour. Can't really hang it without noticing the colours every time you walk by.
I feel like when I'm in the best possible state that I don't even need music though. In this state its like 'okay, I feel motivated, I know exactly what I'm going to do today. Now I begin.' I can move complex systems around like they're children's toys and the outside world speeds past without me blinking. It feels good making stuff. I definitely think that as a profession we're lucky to be software engineers. It's not physically demanding and I feel like it gives off a crap load of dopamine.
I've been enjoying Blue Turtle[0]. It's got a mix, from melodic, peaceful orchestral game-like music to lofi beats. The animation and illustration are enjoyable, too. My kids have spent a good bit of time peacefully watching it and telling stories about what's happening.
I enjoy listening to synth-y, mostly instrumental, music while working. I ended up making this site after I got tired of searching for mixes on YouTube: https://synthwave.live/
Edit: I forgot to mention, the design of this site is amazing. Love the monospaced type and use of color. The interactions are perfect.
If the task at hand were considered to be bowling pins at the end of a lane, and the ball rolling down the lane is me working towards completing that task, music is the lane bumpers that keep me focused and working towards the objective. Otherwise, every noise, conversation, and item on my desk would throw my focus (the bowling ball) into the gutter.
This vapor youtube channel is really good. He takes songs from wherever, slows them down and puts them into mixes. The song selection is crazy good, just pick any video.
I created https://wfh.dj so I can listen to new music from my subscriptions (>20m) without the youtube procrastination rabbit hole.
Mostly House, Electronic, Jazz (Stuff me and the team like to listen to while we work).
I’ve been using https://brain.fm for years. Super nice to just be able to infinitely generate background noise for working, relaxing, meditating or whatever
In addition to the "about" page, the secret "episode zero" explains more about the philosophy behind the series. I have no idea about the science (or lack thereof) behind it, but it certainly matches my experience and my own sense of why I'm easily able to enter a state of flow while coding along to it.
Here's a transcript of what I can decipher from the robot voice:
--------------
(WARNING: PRETENTIOUSNESS)
While concentrating on complex tasks or creative work, we often feed ourselves streams of musical information in an attempt to occupy the parts of our minds that would otherwise be left relatively idle.
Without this, under prolonged periods of concentration, those other active brain centers create a sense of imbalance. It can often create distracting interjections from powerfully oblique thoughts about food, memories, desires, and emotions.
Using music in this way is nothing new, but for the wrong choices we can often find ourselves fighting against thematic intent to such a degree as to almost denigrate the music itself. We train ourselves to tune out ??? what we've chosen to be background noise.
The goal of this series is to provide listening experiences that can be fully appreciated for their artistic intent despite sometimes having only partial attention paid to them. That is not to say that the music is not worthy of exclusive attention, but that it contains themes or textures of a certain type that the problem solving brain centers won't have trouble processing and fully appreciating while attempting to code, write, or draw.
In other words, the music itself should not task the listener with too much problem solving ???. The musical ideas developed will cover large thematic and emotional distances, but rarely in such a short space of time as to sound dramatic. The back-and-forth motion between contemplation of the next stage of your work and the subsequent actions to realize it will necessarily create peaks and troughs in brain activity.
This series attempts to provide a soundtrack that can be fully appreciated at the level of entire ???. More importantly, the episodes have been lovingly crafted by people who have invested huge chunks of their lives finding all this beautiful stuff ???.
I've become a big Polyrhythmics (https://www.polyrhythmics.com/) fan over the last year. Their music is high energy and somewhat repetitive so it works well for programming. They have produced a large number of tracks over the years.
I curate a slowly-growing public Spotify playlist called "Flowstate: Repeatable FTW", consisting of strictly instrumental tracks spanning various moods / vibes, mostly ambient / chillout, with steady beats and no jarring transitions, suitable to play on repeat for deep work sessions. Enjoy!
House is the best for coding. I have a playlist on spotify that I always listen to, but I gotta start using Soundcloud more since there's so many great sets there. The UX kinda annoys me tho.
The tracklist for the latest mix (episode 64 by Strepsil @ time of post) is packed with some absolutely fantastic music. Thank you for sharing, I can't wait to dive into more of this.
Just posting this in case anybody else experiences it too but I've found that listening to a 140 bpm instrumental track on a loop puts me in the zone very quickly.
It doesn't even have to be long track, even a 30s loop does the trick. The 140 bpm is like a sweet spot for some reason though.
I dunno if it's because it's like a video game music which repeat over and over but it really helps me focus and get in the zone everytime. Anybody else have something like this to share?
I was doing soundcloud via the paid Daftcloud App Store app. But switched mostly to the poorly promoted but growing "Dj Mixed" collection of edm on Apple Music.
I switch between doom metal albums like Bongripper’s Satan Worshiping Doom and random YouTube videos with titles along the lines of “mind numbing adhd focus music 10hrs”
Can't listen anything with words to focus, so it has to be instrumental music in background, so while not programming but doing different work with zero error tolerance I listen to soundtracks or electronic music, often to supress noise from kids playing in other room, if they are at home, so it has to have ideally various frequencies like white noise, I find soundtracks like Prisoners or The Prestige probably the best.
Ambient? Nope. I had the best zone with Ostkreuz [0], it reliably erased every other thought in my brain and pushed me forward with unprecedented pace. Before, you'll have to hear it multiple times to let it sink in. With good headphones.
Some good stuff on here at first glance. I often go to movie soundtracks when coding, and I see some nice selections from Uncut Gems artist Daniel Lopatin.
Am I an outlier in the fact that I'll listen to any type of music when programming, not just ambient(boring) stuff? Maybe it takes a mental adjustment, but it seems like my brain tunes it out as needed. It's certainly easier to tune out than co-workers talking.
One thing that makes co-workers talking particularly hard to tune out is that they might be talking to you, or about things relevant to you. The music is not talking to you.
I like it ! :) Especially the UI ! Not because it is good (it's not bad) just because it's different from the 1001 sites I see everyday that looks basically the same. Plus bonus points for not making me click on accept-cookies :)
#55 is 20 Jazz Funk Greats, and I thought it was suggesting that (industrial noise group) Throbbing Gristle would be good programming music. However, it just looks like that's just the name of a blog that they used to find the music.
I had a colleague that liked to hear Christmas songs while programming, ANY type of music as long as it was Christmas-y. Very odd, but the dude was amazing at programming, so...
I've put hundreds of hours into a Hayley Westenra Christmas album. I liked it for coding because it was generally happy music but it didn't take any mental cycles away from me thinking about code. For other catchy tunes, I generally find myself singing along, which distracts me from work. But Christmas music is just background noise....
I'm not a huge fan of Christmas music in general, but A Charlie Brown Christmas by Vince Guaraldi is one of the only albums I will put on repeat while coding.
- doom 1 and 2 soundtracks and their remakes
- quake sountrack
- second reality demo sountrack
- rush (2012)
- sometimes, but only when i have something easy and fun, rammstein
Yeah, I think those may be weird choices but they work well for me.
I used to have MTV playing on the TV in my office when working, but I've now found clubbingtv.com which is essentially 24-7 DJs playing sets in clubs and various venues.
It's just a shame they don't play more acid trance.
Like... it's not my favorite music, but it is not obtrusive and the fact that I have no choice in the order or selection of songs removes a huge time-waste temptation for me.
Love Music For Programming. Been a fan for years and years, haven’t kept up with the releases as I still play and enjoy the first few. Those really work to get me in the zone.
I often listen to aliceffekt while working on side projects, while at $dayjob I like music I either know already, is chill (think lo-fi hip hop), or City Pop/jrock mixes.
There's two pieces of music I can't. One is Tchaikovsky's Cappricio Italiano, the other is "Corona Radiata". I'll break down sobbing and eventually wailing and I don't frakking have a clue why.
Thanks for sharing. I have also been fond of alpha waves while working. Soothing wave of consistent sound without much alternation makes me hyper focused.
I want someone to develop an Emacs minor mode that algorithmically generates music that increases in intensity the deeper you are in a syntactic construct. So, when you're at the top level, it's pretty chill, but once you're about seven levels deep, it's like the velociraptor is coming for you in Jurassic Park. I think I'd feel as though I was accomplishing something more exciting with background music that makes my mental effort audible.
Back on topic, I absolutely cannot listen to music with words when I code. I'll intermittently type lyrics instead of what I was intending to do. Anyone else cursed with such a thing?
If anyone cares, I actually like a lot of the vaporwave/outrun/whatever it's called now stuff when coding. Techno is a bit too jarring, and while I love classical, it either puts me to sleep or carries me away in thought.