MusicForProgramming();

by seanplaice • 14 years ago

411 180 14 years ago

mw632142• 14 years ago

from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2715066

"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."

pizza• 14 years ago

http://comtruise.com/kc/ More Com Truise mixes

badhairday• 14 years ago

I love Com Truise. Ether Drift is definitely one of their best songs: http://open.spotify.com/track/2Z6CFvujnkDyPgsNn7zBAh

vyrotek• 14 years ago

As a general rule, we're looking for 1 hour long noise/dronescapes with no (or very few) drums or vocals.

Happy coding / knitting / drawing / running / painting / writing / baking cakes!

Apparently this should really be called "MusicToGetThingsDone" :)

ctdonath2• 14 years ago

Music possessing these qualities can often provide just the right amount of interest to occupy the parts of your brain that would otherwise be left free to wander and lead to distraction during your work.

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.

joejohnson• 14 years ago

I couldn't agree more about the Trance podcasts. It's great that these podcasts have no breaks (mixing each song into the next). Music like that with a good beat and lots of crescendos/decrescendos can be ideal for tuning out everything around me and staying focused for a long period of time.

kstenerud• 14 years ago

You can also get good stuff on TT in the Trance Out room.

emillon2• 14 years ago

> Finally - someone [...] mixes music just for that purpose.

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...

runevault• 14 years ago

Just grabbed these and started the first track for while I work from home (go go Denver snow) and I'm really digging it. Thanks for the pointer.

ANH• 14 years ago

Good stuff. Started playing it, wasn't sure at first, then started working and was immediately in that other place where things get done.

But now I'm reading Hacker News.

djbolivia2• 14 years ago

Emillon, thanks. Some of those Music To Code By mixes have a fair amount of vocals though. I think nowadays, a lot of coders would prefer my weekly radio show at www.chma.fm.

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

demallien• 14 years ago

I personally am a big fan of a couple of the radio stations in the 'Ambient' section in iTunes. A big shout out for DroneZone, although anything from SomaFM is pretty good.

NARKOZ• 14 years ago

Yes, these podcasts are like Mozart. There are no many words in them, so they're not distracting.

Tossrock2• 14 years ago

For a quick intro, just tune to di.fm's trance channel. They have a lot of great trance radio shows; Global DJ Broadcast with Markus Schulz, A State of Trance with Armin Van Buuren, the aforementioned Trance Around The World, Global Trance Grooves with John 00 Fleming, etc.

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.

Karunamon• 14 years ago

di.fm has a lot of really good content. Highly recommend any trance channel (I like the classic vocal best) and their Chiptune channel.

gren• 14 years ago

totally agreed. I've been listening to di.fm and Armin Van Buuren week shows for 5 years.

ajtaylor2• 14 years ago

I second this. di.fm is playing for about half my work day, and often when I'm at home too. I love the Trance and Vocal Trance channels, with forays into EuroClub, DubStep and Chillout Dreams.

jasonkostempski• 14 years ago

Trance/Ambient stuff drives me nuts. For the longest time it jaded my view of electronic music because I thought it defined it. I prefer faster beats, well structured complex melodies a la Skrillex http://soundcloud.com/skrillex/sets. The first few listens might be a little distracting but once I know the songs I find myself typing like I'm playing the song with my keyboard.

mhitza• 14 years ago

While I'm not that fond on the Trance/Ambient combination, there is out there trance with faster beats and more complex melodies (albeit not sure if we commonly share what more complex means).

Take a sample playlist of mine http://grooveshark.com/playlist/Trance/63694608

Tossrock2• 14 years ago

> I prefer faster beats, well structured complex melodies a la Skrillex

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.

dannytatom• 14 years ago

As Tossrock, dubstep is usually a pretty slow BPM. I'm a fan of fast myself and usually listen to a lot of DNB & breakcore (up to 190bpm), you might enjoy it.

http://www.last.fm/tag/dnb http://www.last.fm/tag/breakcore

varunsrin• 14 years ago

I find progressive trance great music to work to - some great artists in this genre are Ace Ventura, Gaudium, Lish, Zen Mechanics & Space Buddha.

noonespecial• 14 years ago

Oceanlab - Sirens Of The Sea Remixed is my goto.

Its like a ticket to the zone.

http://www.aboveandbeyond.nu/oceanlab-sirens-of-the-sea-remi...

joelg87• 14 years ago

I find myself playing this one very regularly on Spotify, it really is like a ticket to the zone.

Arjuna• 14 years ago

This is a super netlabel for the trance listener: http://www.ektoplazm.com

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.

leon_2• 14 years ago

yo mon. this is the shit! love ektoplazm.

trafficlight• 14 years ago

The Digitally Imported trance channel is pretty good.

http://di.fm

dogas• 14 years ago

I might as well plug my buddy's site:

http://trance-mixes.com

Very nice site, well put together.

brey• 14 years ago

oh, this is good. just what I've been looking for.

bengl3rt• 14 years ago

Anything by Alva Noto + Ryuichi Sakamoto puts me all the way in the zone.

minikomi• 14 years ago

Was going to post the same! Lovely, hypnotic and minimal.

xxpor2• 14 years ago

What kind of manager doen't let you listen to music?

freehunter• 14 years ago

I'm not a programmer, I work in information security (monitor/response) but I've experienced something similar. My manager listens to music/podcasts, most of my coworkers do as well, but when someone from another team walks by, they assume we're doing nothing based on comments I've heard, "you have headphones in, obviously you're not busy". No, I'm just trying to concentrate. Thanks for interrupting with your smartass remark.

jonstjohn3• 14 years ago

"there's a curious & busy part of the brain which must be kept preoccupied during complex tasks" this is so true - I've found, besides listening to music, I can actual half-listen to lectures/talks while I program, and concentrate considerably better than in quiet. Counter-intuitive but works really well.

msutherl3• 14 years ago

As a DJ/producer, I have a professional obligation to loathe trance music, but I can't deny that it's just the perfect thing for programming.

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQsEOUArwJA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtCOxFvDCFo

BurnZeZ4• 14 years ago

As a musician, I love it. That's probably half due to roughly 70% of my songs ending up as trance by the time I'm done though. What is it about it that you dislike exactly?

kellishaver• 14 years ago

I realized today that I've been listening to the same playlist 203 songs for about a year now. It usually plays all day long. I'm kind of bored with it when I'm actually paying attention to it and want to listen to music, but it's great for programming. The songs are so well known to me at this point that I don't really consciously think about them. My brain just kind of sings along without me while I write code.

Rotor• 14 years ago

Personally I enjoy minimal electronic music while coding. It fits nicely into the background while still sounding interesting.

This site has some good minimal mixes http://deepmix.eu/

k_bx• 14 years ago

http://www.kievbass.com/podcasts/ works for me

davemarchevsky• 14 years ago

This site has some really diverse mixes, thanks!

udp• 14 years ago

I think the site is starting to creak under the strain. Perhaps a torrent of the MP3s would be a good idea?

jQueryIsAwesome• 14 years ago

Or maybe just use mediafire or hulkshare.

manveru2• 14 years ago

I only have one, but it's quite nice.

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:RT5HIT44ZRQPNZOBCP7WAWXC4X5XT43D&dn=music_for_programming_4-com_truise.mp3&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.openbittorrent.com%3A80%2Fannounce

manveru2• 14 years ago

And here's a list of all so far for future reference, seems like the site is doing fine for now though.

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:LKY6JNYEXZZ3DNXJGMQANRQRC65DEDMS&dn=music_for_programming_1-datassette.mp3&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.openbittorrent.com%3A80%2Fannounce

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:YQN3QLRTSAYWBWT3BHOVJJHHSWBYOQIJ&dn=music_for_programming_2-sunjammer.mp3&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.openbittorrent.com%3A80%2Fannounce

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:UE3W6G6R5XQ5A6RV4HU74LCUIFJWMXRK&dn=music_for_programming_3-datassette.mp3&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.openbittorrent.com%3A80%2Fannounce

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:RT5HIT44ZRQPNZOBCP7WAWXC4X5XT43D&dn=music_for_programming_4-com_truise.mp3&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.openbittorrent.com%3A80%2Fannounce

lignuist2• 14 years ago

Jan Jelinek's music is great for programming. At least for me. :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jKqVswlAZ0&feature=relat...

brownegg• 14 years ago

Make sure to check out his LP under the name Gramm.

first track: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kHEu50uq3w

lignuist2• 14 years ago

Was my coding soundtrack for years. :) Actually I couldn't find a less distracting album yet. Just a little more than silence.

j45• 14 years ago

Somafm.com has a few channels with few drums or vocals

9 beet stretch might be of interest to anyone wanting something long noise/dronescapes

m_for_monkey2• 14 years ago

If you use background music only for noise cancellation (crying babies, reconstruction works etc.), I recommend http://www.simplynoise.com/. It's not as distracting as even the most minimalistic trance.

ineedtosleep• 14 years ago

Ah nice. Definitely bookmarking this. Also related, I started using rainymood, fireplace and jazz loops found on a reddit thread from a while back [1]. After using different combinations of the 3, I've found that sometimes music doesn't cut it, and a simple fireplace/rain loop helps me work better.

[1] http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/ca4bl/time_to_ge...)

m_for_monkey2• 14 years ago

These are great, too. I can't stand the water sounds, though. After a few minutes I feel an urge to urinate :).

richardk• 14 years ago

Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works?

fady2• 14 years ago

i was thinking the same thing. both albums are really good.

nlawalker• 14 years ago

This is what I came here to say.

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.

jentulman3• 14 years ago

Hello Everything by Squarepusher goes along nicely with this too. Not too up, not too down.

alptrv• 14 years ago

I used to listen Aphex Twin's music, works great for me, but now I mostly listening to The Flashbulb's compositions, can listen it for a whole day. Arboreal and Kirlian Selections albums are pure piece of art.

un1xl0ser• 14 years ago

Bogdan Raczynski's stuff can be quite nice and varies from acoustic Polish roots on accordion to 8bit beats and well executed video game nostalgia.

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.

jonstjohn3• 14 years ago

Selected Ambient Works is fantastic for coding - totally agree.

ben_straub• 14 years ago

Made a Pandora station seeded from the artists in all the mixes.

http://www.pandora.com/#!/stations/play/738121268334091862

jseims• 14 years ago

Thank you, thank you!

subbu• 14 years ago

I really wish Pandora was in my country too. SSH tunneling is too expensive.

nzmsv• 14 years ago

Little known fact: only the webapp part of Pandora is IP-restricted. The media servers are open to the world. So as long as you can load the player through a tunnel, the actual mp3s can go through your normal connection.

DrCatbox• 14 years ago

Alpha and Omega (dub) and is the music I code by, repetitions, echos and reverb, the groove just takes you forward in your code. Example: http://grooveshark.com/s/Chantig/41T4IJ?src=5 http://grooveshark.com/s/Higher+Than+High/2JhKQT?src=5

fady2• 14 years ago

nice. thanks for the mixes. i use "boards of canada" pandora station to accomplish the same idea. you get a lot of down tempo, ambient styles.

saturdaysaint• 14 years ago

I wish these were compiled in a Soundcloud - something mobile-friendly that lets you skip around in a mix without downloading the thing. And the hosting is pretty slow.

djtriptych2• 14 years ago

Hosting seems pretty borked at the moment.

And yeah would be great to be able to preview some of this without downloading a 100MB+ file...

LearnYouALisp• 14 years ago

Agreed, I didn't want to waste a hundred megabytes of the owner's bandwidth (plus the time to download) just to sample the file, so I pasted the link into a media player to stream it. However, it was not able to jump ahead in the program I used (Media Player Classic).

turbolent• 14 years ago

http://www.limbikfreq.com/ http://somafm.com/

djtriptych2• 14 years ago

I pretty much just play Trent Reznor when I don't feel like putting together a playlist.

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...

Void_• 14 years ago

ETN.fm guys.

upthedale• 14 years ago

Whilst not music, I find listening to http://www.rainymood.com to be great for concentrating. It's a 30 minute sample of a rain storm.

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).

meow2• 14 years ago

Most of the time it helps me sink into deep sleep :)

Nathandim• 14 years ago

Yep, add an extra point of help for those suffering with tinnitus (like me) and the site is suddenly made of gold.

bobwebb• 14 years ago

Oh wow, this is brilliant. I had heard of rainy mood before, but I'm so grateful you've found an mp3 of it. This is going to be on my mp3 player all the time now.

jonursenbach• 14 years ago

Would love it if there were Spotify playlist links for these.

oe• 14 years ago

I searched for the artists of episode 1 in Spotify. Only ~1/3 of them could be found and often the specific songs were not there.

draggnar• 14 years ago

That Com Truise mix is nice. Also check out his Komputer Cast 4 part set http://comtruise.com/kc/

simondlr• 14 years ago

Com Truise is great. Discovered him last year. I'm a sucker for ambient lo-fi stuff.

jianshen• 14 years ago

Side question: why do you think so many coders prefer electronic music to be productive?

Based on the comments here, electronic music (whether it's ambient, trance or dubstep) appears to be the assumed genre.

ctdonath2• 14 years ago

1. As vishaldpatel notes, the pattern resembles meditative mantras. However the mind reacts to religious chanting, "trance" resembles that and invokes similar focus to the exclusion of other distractions. Indeed, we call the music "trance" for a reason.

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.

technomancy• 14 years ago

> The music does not demand attention to itself.

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.

estevez• 14 years ago

Music for 18 Musicians is usually my first choice whenever I want an hour of uninterrupted productivity. The piano and mallot lines are like a rhythmic propulsion system.

steauengeglase• 14 years ago

Can't speak for "electronic music", but the binaural beat folks have their argument. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_waves

X-Istence2• 14 years ago

At my workplace we have a contractor that listens to hardcore speed metal while coding. The really angry kind...

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.

mw632142• 14 years ago

It would be cool to see a breakdown by age/race/occupation/etc... of feedback from Emotiv Epoc ( http://emotiv.com/developers/ ) and Affectiva Affdex ( http://www.affectiva.com/affdex/#pane_overview ) in regards to music choices and how it affects productivity/emotion/etc...

Argorak• 14 years ago

I am a music addict and can (and do) listen to almost all genres of music during coding. But a consistent pattern is that I rarely listen to _new_ music while coding. What happens to me is that when I am really concentrated, I start listening to one album over and over to make sure that the music doesn't surprise me or force my attention. Sadly, its also a way to kill albums for you real quick :).

joshaidan• 14 years ago

I think the site might be going a bit slow for me. Is there a mirror?

ecaron2• 14 years ago

I reached out to @datassette to see if he'd let us host the MP3s for him on Cloudfront, so fingers crossed!

ecaron2• 14 years ago

The mirror of #4 is up: http://d2cb4q5pwp3op.cloudfront.net/music_for_programming_4-...

leeoniya• 14 years ago

i usually stream psytrance, works well for some reason :)

stdgy• 14 years ago

I went through a long Shpongle phase about a year and half ago. Great coding music, if you don't mind the heavy psychedelic feel.

burke• 14 years ago

Same story here. I wish there was more music that sounded like them. Particularly more music that sounded like Dorset Perception.

vishaldpatel• 14 years ago

Buddhists often chant mantras to stay in meditation. I suspect that a steady beat / rhythm has a lot more to do with concentrating than any specific genre. It gets the rest of our minds jogging along with the thing we're trying to achieve.

pork• 14 years ago

Wow, you're really asking for a lawsuit aren't you? I mean, MP3s available for download for free on a simple HTML website? What is this, 1998?

angersock• 14 years ago

Or maybe it's more important to help your fellow programmers than worry about stupid legal shit?

mutewinter• 14 years ago

I wrote a blog post about this a while back, I'll just leave that right here.

http://pileofturtles.com/2010/12/music-for-programming/

zavulon• 14 years ago

Instrumental classical mix works best for me. I put on Mozart or Beethoven radio on last.fm and just skip all the stuff with words (i.e. opera)

sil3ntmac• 14 years ago

My favorite album to listen to while I code is probably Blockhead's "The Music Scene." Gets the blood pumping.

potomak• 14 years ago

I was unconsciously searching for this for a while!

paulnasca• 14 years ago

Few years ago I wrote an extreme time stretching software ( http://hypermammut.sourceforge.net/paulstretch/ ). You can use it to get a nice audio ambiance from any music or sound.

farnsworth• 14 years ago

I remember when paulstretch was making the rounds a year or two ago and I still find it fascinating- just want to say thanks!

markbao• 14 years ago

I remember using Paulstretch a long time ago, with amusing, awesome, though sometimes spooky results. Nice work!

Ryanmf• 14 years ago

Fancy seeing you here.

Thank you. I get quite a lot of use out of it.

desireco42• 14 years ago

I really like the part with binaural beats...

tucosan• 14 years ago

OK, the site seems down. I managed to download half a mix until i got timeouts. If anyone managed to download those track, a mirror somewhere else, or a torrent would be really nice. Anyone care to provide us with a mirror?

mstevens• 14 years ago

I used to find http://musicforhackers.com/ the perfect background to coding, but they're down, and I've never worked out another source of the sort of stuff they played.

kennywinker2• 14 years ago

All my upvotes. I started listening to this 15min ago and it's been 100% perfect so far. Thanks!

_gd3l• 14 years ago

Matt Mullenweg's method (at least, that's where I first heard it) of playing one song on repeat really works for me.

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...

astral3032• 14 years ago

Atmospheric drum'n'bass is where it is at for coding. Warm lushness, yet rhythms that will help you keep your mental cadence up.

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.

astral3032• 14 years ago

And on a more upbeat, liquid sunshine note, for those who want to go faster/harder: http://archives.bassdrivearchive.com/1%20-%20Monday/Atmosphe... (Bjork remix at the end kills it)

achompas• 14 years ago

These are excellent--halfway to my favorite LTJ Bukem mixes. Thanks for the links.

jonstjohn3• 14 years ago

Great for late night coding when so much productive works get done. I've been a huge drum and bass fan for years - reverberates deeply for me.

codesnik• 14 years ago

If only DJs in thoose sets could shut their mouths. Extremly distracting.

ajtaylor2• 14 years ago

Listened to the beginning few minutes of the first, and went straight to downloading. Thanks for the links.

jentulman3• 14 years ago

I was recently pointed to http://block.fm/ as I like to go with some beats to work with and they have some great Dnb and electronica shows. Usually I can't cope with any words, lyrics in the song or presenters on a show, but if I can't understand the words, in this case because I speak no Japanese, it's not a problem and sometimes it's nice to have voices (outside my head) as part of the white noise.

jcromartie• 14 years ago

Indeed, the presenters on DnB shows are usually really hard to understand. "Big ups to cheesy grifter in tha gleebow huppa dig walla shim bam to ya fo keepin it real ya". I have no idea what they are saying. Since it's supposedly English, my mind has to try and parse it. Very distracting.

jentulman3• 14 years ago

:) I feel I should point you in the direction of the Hospital records podcast, in case you haven't found it http://www.hospitalrecords.com/broadcast/. The usual presenter is the label boss Tony Coleman, and a nicer man you'll be hard pressed to find. No posing, no cheese, no slang and a constant positive attitude. Plus it's an absolutely superb label.

Thangorodrim• 14 years ago

The site is unresponsive, but I wanted to recommend:

Philip Glass symphonies Wagner's The Ring ( unless you speak German ) Slayer

abruzzi• 14 years ago

The stuff that works best for me is the Phillip Glass early crossover stuff (i.e. post-Einstein.) Things like Glasspieces, Dancepieces, 1000 Airplanes on the Roof, The Photographer, and the three *qatsi films. They're minimal enough not to intrude on the foreground, but also not as harsh and "difficult" as the early stuff like large chunks of Einstein (except the knee plays) and Music in 12 Parts.

domador• 14 years ago

Got a "bandwidth exceeded" error message. Too bad.

Karn• 14 years ago

Some of my favourites:

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

ciroduran• 14 years ago

509 Bandwidth Limit Exceeded :-(

Guess the hacker news-dotting did it. Care to torrent the files? :-)

MetalMASK• 14 years ago

This is definitely one of the areas that is to each his/her own.

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.

Hortinstein• 14 years ago

good call on glitch mob, I would check out emancipator too

droctopu5• 14 years ago

I used to be able to dev to any kind of music or talk, but it's gotten harder as I've gotten older. Sometimes I try to pick music that culturally matches the web site I'm working on.

- 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

AlexCP• 14 years ago

I always listen to http://designers.mx/ when I work, lots of great mixes and a nice way to discover new genre.

shearn89• 14 years ago

My absolute favourite album to code to would actually be the Tron Legacy soundtrack by Daft Punk, but I've also spent the last few years at uni listening to http://www.prettylightsmusic.com/ while I code: his albums are all available for free/donation, and the genre is kind of down-tempo electronic. There's the occaisonal vocal sample, but I've found it doesn't distract me from work.

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

kennywinker2• 14 years ago

I listen to the Tron Legacy soundtrack a few times a week. It's perfect for getting shit done. Enough intensity to keep me focused, not enough to be distracting.

I'm also partial to Fuck Buttons - Tarot Sport when I want something weirder, and DRMHLLR when I want something less electronic.

morsch• 14 years ago

The Tron Legacy OST is always fun, but it's even better when you listen to it doing something suitably epic, because many tracks sound so unapologetically grand. Perfect sound track for handing in an important paper and doing mountain climbing. Or doing mock epic things: feel like Batman while chopping onions.

Some of the tracks from the remix album are also pretty cool.

alinajaf• 14 years ago

Try the Tron Legacy: Reconfigured soundtrack (mixes of the original). Same level of epic but better to program to IMO.

coopersloan• 14 years ago

Groove Salad has always been one of my favorite streams for coding. Lots of down-tempo stuff, tasteful choices: http://somafm.com/groovesalad/

xxpor2• 14 years ago

I find that music with no lyrics is most helpful.

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).

oceanician2• 14 years ago

Snap. Though I think I may have accidentally tranced out my co-workers in the past with this music.

mvalente3• 14 years ago

Ulrich Schnauss, System 7, Man With No Name, Art of Trance, Dimension 5, Jean Michel Jarre, Tangerine Dream, Astral Projection, Kraftwerk, VNV Nation...

mvalente3• 14 years ago

I'm usually a metal/hardrock guy, but coding to that is impossible. Major le me singing and playing air guitar and air drums.

mvalente3• 14 years ago

Here's a Grooveshark playlist http://grooveshark.com/playlist/Music+For+Coding/66934126

pnmahoney• 14 years ago

daft punk, daft punk, daft punk.

tobiasSoftware• 14 years ago

One of my favorite CDs for coding: Ecco the Dolphin. I'm not making it up, the CD by Spencer Nilsen is amazing, just perfect to code to. Also, the song "Water Ruins" from the video game Jet Force Gemini and anything by Opus III is excellent as well. Then there's "Just Hold On" by Jillian Aversa, and Super Metroid remixes on OCRemix, "Kindred," "Avien," and "Solitude." And I have dozens of trance CDs for coding too.

jff• 14 years ago

I typically just listen to my rockabilly/psychobilly station, I can't handle the trance/techno/ambient/whatever music everybody else seems to advocate. A good Reverend Horton Heat track has a good beat and fast pace too, it's just a lot more fun for me.

mark_h2• 14 years ago

My go-to artist is Zoe Keating (layered cello, and on bandcamp as an added bonus: http://music.zoekeating.com/). She's also quite interesting to follow: she's heavily into twitter, and is quite open about her profits, dealings with labels, etc.

Otherwise though, vocal-less trance is usually pretty effective. I love all the recommendations these threads bring up -- thanks everyone!

damncabbage• 14 years ago

This is wonderful; thank you for the link. Just bought the download. :)

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...

mark_h2• 14 years ago

I just got around to checking that out; thanks!

maular• 14 years ago

Wow, she's great. Thanks for the recommendation!

spacemanaki• 14 years ago

Here's a Radiolab segment about her, and they use some of her music in their shows:

http://www.radiolab.org/blogs/radiolab-blog/2008/aug/25/quan...

meow2• 14 years ago

Wow, all her tracks are so soul soothing...

eLobato• 14 years ago

Ludovico Einaudi and Max Richter put me in the mood quite nicely. Mozart, the three tenors, and similar stuff also work (but most of the time not as good as the former artists).

Nonetheless that's rara avis among my coworkers, anyone else listening to similar stuff while coding?

lautis• 14 years ago

I sometimes listen to ambient-ish classical music while coding. Ólafur Arnalds and Jóhann Jóhannsson have been recently on my list.

moondowner• 14 years ago

Reading through the comments, I'm glad that there are people on HN who know what good music is - from Trance and Ambient to Dubstep and what not.

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.

koudelka• 14 years ago

I'm amazed that nobody has mentioned Hybrid yet: http://www.hybridsoundsystem.com

mrinterweb• 14 years ago

I can't concentrate on programming because my brain can't ignore how bad the music is.

glfomfn• 14 years ago

For me they are two 'states'. When i am doing something 'tough/complicated/new etc' that needs 100% of my attention i need complete silence, no music, no sounds, nothing. When that's not the case (95% of time) i am fine with any kind of music, my taste goes from dubstep to classical and based on the mood i am fine to listen to anything.

BurnZeZ4• 14 years ago

I cannot agree more. Often it makes me wish there was some type of program/device that plays music based on concentration levels.

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."

paragraft• 14 years ago

I've found the drone music this guy does fantastic for zoning in while coding: http://zacbentz.bandcamp.com/

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.

hk_kh• 14 years ago

Too comments. Nevertheless, I want to share, High Tone, that's all http://www.hightone.org (fuck dubstep, let the old people stick to dub)

jvoorhis2• 14 years ago

I was playing Alva Noto + Ryuichi Sakamoto when a contractor came for an on-site and he remarked on how it was good "design music". He mentioned he preferred ambient music whilst doing cognitively intensive work. When doing something rote, rock, pop or metal was a good choice.

eslaught• 14 years ago

What is the license for this music?

BasDirks• 14 years ago

I love listening to Paul Kalkbrenner while programming.

leon_2• 14 years ago

this music is the suxx0r. goa trance > all

oceanician2• 14 years ago

Personally I find music without vocals, or very familiar music in the background to be useful. Blocks out the occasional car going past. Post-rock is really good unless it sends you into a trance haha.

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

bellbind• 14 years ago

Wrong in so many ways.. I don't know where to start.

dmoo• 14 years ago

I've an Icelandic kick going on at the moment, some really great music coming out of there.

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/

eisbaw• 14 years ago

Röyksopp is #1!!!

kapranoff• 14 years ago

I will add my 5 cents with a mention of Qawwali music and specifically works of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. See, for example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustt_Mustt. This is not just a ticket to the zone for me, more like a teleport :)

larrytheliquid• 14 years ago

dj finny's dnb mixes have been sustaining me for years: http://www.mixcloud.com/finny/

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

robomartin• 14 years ago

Pink Floyd Mozart Bach

datassette• 14 years ago

http://musicforprogramming.net/ now has an RSS feed

gtrak2• 14 years ago

account suspended whaaa???

gtrak2• 14 years ago

I found the links to what was up: http://d2cb4q5pwp3op.cloudfront.net/music_for_programming_1-... http://d2cb4q5pwp3op.cloudfront.net/music_for_programming_2-... http://d2cb4q5pwp3op.cloudfront.net/music_for_programming_3-... http://d2cb4q5pwp3op.cloudfront.net/music_for_programming_4-...

blob8108• 14 years ago

I really like DJ Shadow for this kind of thing. Try "Midnight in a Perfect World": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmzHRGoKca0

MusicForProgramming();

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