Don't laugh, but for me, it's Abba. Their entire discography is ~3 hours which is how long I can maintain peak concentration. Their songs are consistently good so that I don't need to skip a song, but not too good that I would stop working and start listening. Plus I've never heard Abba song in any good movie so it doesn't remind me scenes from a movie I would want to rewatch. Of course I don't listen to it every day, only when I really need to, most daily programming tasks can be done with any music.
For real concentration I can't have lyrics but that's a great idea for other flow states. Mozart and Brahms are good for me ... Not slow enough to put me to sleep not fast enough or unusual to make me pay attention to the music.
The Winner Takes It All lyrics are great for commits and Pull Requests: I don't wanna talk
If it makes you feel sad
And I understand
You've come to shake my hand
I apologize
If it makes you feel bad
Like others have said, for specific types of activity, I'll prefer no vocals or maybe even no music, but if vocals are fine Abba does have a great flow to it. I used to run to Abba too, at times, because it feels upbeat/positive with good enough tempo. Super trouper, for instance, makes for a great booster.
As a dancer it’s funny to me that programming and dancing both seem to be better with a disco soundtrack. Or house, or funk. Anything with a strong backbeat.
No laughter here, my brother in music. This is one of the few vocal groups that I could be in the zone with, except "Fernando", because one must release their inner theater kid with that one.
Shoutout to SomaFM's Defcon Radio which has been my go-to programming music for years now. Not too dissimilar to the stuff found on this site. https://somafm.com/defcon/
I like the concept but ambient as a genre doesn't really do anything for me. It makes me want to go take a nap.
Haven't added anything to it in a while, but over the years I built a youtube playlist of songs that help me focus while working. Generally rules are: predominantly electronic, has some kind of beat, zero vocals. I'm up to over 500 songs at this point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dTpQwBMaBI&list=PL2A7B99AB9...
In the morning I listen to chill electronic music without lyrics: Tycho, Emancipator, Blackmill, Jon Hopkins
Later in the day I listen to more energetic electronic music (a lot of which is from the Hotline Miami soundtrack): M|O|O|N, Dan Terminus, Carpenter Brut, Daniel Deluxe, 1788-L, Pendulum
This seems focused on one very particular taste in music of droning semi-random lo-fi synthesizers. I find this unlistenable without any kind of percussion.
I'm a fan of ambient and instrumental hip hop for programming.
My personal favorites are pretty much anything by Nujabes (including the soundtracks for Samurai Champloo), Fat Jon, and DJ Okawari.
I also like some classic albums in the genre like Donuts by J Dilla, Dr. No's Oxperiment by Oh No, and Endtroducing by DJ Shadow.
I will sometimes go through essential charts I find to dive into new genres, and other times I'll pick a random artist and go through their entire discography start to finish.
I highly recommend doing that with Talk Talk, their transition from 80s pop to experimental is phenomenal.
This site is a gem that has accompanied me on many spikes in the last year :) datasette's original music is top tier too. cognitively stimulating but not attention stealing.
If I'd have to make one recommendation it's David August's Boiler Room set [1]. It has such a coherent flow through the whole set, it makes me fly through multiple hours if not days of work.
I tend to like stuff by Will Wood. Always good enough to not skip a song, enough variety I'm not tempted to change to something else, large enough discography to not get distracted by repeat tracks, and insightful lyrics that have "the hacker way" if that makes any sense. Also partial to wendy carlos or whatever The Current (local MN radio station that has really good taste and pulls some deep cuts pretty often) plays
ETA: I forgot to mention gorillaz. Great programming music, and seems to give me good ideas.
I discovered long ago that psytrance/goa was perfect for me. It works almost as well as caffeine and I can work for hours and hours as long as it’s blaring.
I'm well aware that I'm in the minority, but I have never been able to focus on anything - especially programming - other than in absolute, total silence.
For programming, I cannot recommend Soma FM [1] highly enough. There are a huge number of stations, most lyric-free (as to reduce the potential for flow interruption). I personally enjoy Groove Salad Classic and Lush.
I recently discovered Lorn and have been mainlining his back catalogue ever since whilst working. Thoroughly interesting and immersive yet not distracting.
If I could code with a piece of music playing in the background and not lose focus means it's not worth listening at all.
Very rarely I use custom-filtered (brownish) noise to help with isolation. Perhaps some kind of Ambient or New Age would work too in such situations, but things I like in those genres require attention and not paying it would be absolutely disrespectful.
I listen to all kinds of music at my dayjob but only during specific activities that do not require much contemplation and I can mostly flow with the music and do the work in the background.
Though, I'm a musician and sound engineer, so my relationships with music in general might be a bit special.
It's unsurprising to find lots of ambient / electronica here, and generally I'm the same, but I do occasionally like really loud punk or rock if I need some motivation, like the album Feel The Darkness by Poison Idea, or as I said in another comment, I Am A Tower by Swans on a loop. Generally I get my best work done when I can lock into a single track and have it on repeat.
Everyone is linking the stuff they use, so I will add as well. I like the ambient/electronic as well, but this one might be new/exciting for some of you.
This is an extended edition of "it might just be a one shot deal" from the waka/jawaka album by Frank Zappa. The extended part is the pedal steel played by Sneaky Pete Kleinow.
If you have never heard any Zappa stuff and this is interesting to you, listen to waka jawaka itself if you like instrumentals. If you want something more commercial, listen to the Apostrophe/Overnite Sensation album. If you want more odd, listen to the Bongo Fury album, featuring Captain Beefheart. Happy exploring.
I remember watching an interview with Marco Arment (creator of Overcast and Instapaper) where he mentions that he listens to Phish a lot [1]. He collects every single recording and live show, almost 30 gigabytes of music from this one band. IIRC, he listens to it when working, so he never runs out of "music for programming" this way.
I fully credit Autechre's album Exai for deconstructing and reconstructing my brain to learn functional programming back in college (shoutout Racket and BSL).
The soundtracks for SimCity 3000, 4, and the 5th one titled just "SimCity" are written specifically to be played while doing some fiddly micromanagement tasks.
Impossible to recommend without knowing what works for you. For a one-stop-shop, try SOMA.FM (https://somafm.com/) for a great variety of well-vetted choons in multople genres.
After that, one can build up a list of hundreds of net radio stations in VLC and find one that works for you -today-.
When I'm really trying to get shit done I'll put on some German industrial music like Bagger 258. The lyrics don't bother me because I don't understand them. I find the harsh aesthetic helps to keep me from getting distracted with side quests. Those little voices in my head become inaudible over the nonsensical (to me) lyrics.
Aim to Head's mix channel is a lot of what I listen to for my design work. 30 min to 1 hour of well mixed tracks. The Witch House tracks are partially helpful in focusing.
I’ve thought about and experimented with it a lot. The main criteria is no lyrics, or at a minimum lyrics in a language you don’t understand at all, since this hijacks attention from parts of the brain useful for programming in a noticeable way. I find prominent fast percussion seems to help with focus but I am less confident of that.
Most other elements don’t seem to matter too much. Baroque, industrial, ambient, etc are all effectively equivalent in most regards.
That said, I tend to lean toward 1990s atmospheric drum-and-bass (pretty much anything released by Good Looking Records) as a good default. That genre maximizes things that seem to help while minimizing things that seem to detract.
This may be weird.. but I have been listening to a bunch of extended "save room" ambient tracks based on music in Resident Evil.. Someone under the name of Survival Spheres has a crapload of these on YT-music.. They are all about 10-12 mins long.. and they stay of the way mentally..
I too can enjoy the SomaFM/Dublab sounds for work.
But when I need to mix it up, I switch to FIP (Paris). They manage several different stations, but start with the main one first. It's excellently curated with more of a global palette than your typical station.
175 comments
> Don't laugh
I laugh (:
But good for you, whatever works. Personally, I can't do music with much lyrics or narrative; I find it distracting.
But to each their own!
The first one is a 1-hour mix of "In Motion" from the soundtrack to The Social Network: https://youtu.be/bCxPmMbZjuk
The second is a 1-hour mix of "It Has to be This Way" from the soundtrack to Metal Gear Rising Revengance: https://youtu.be/jKGDib6qZBo
The third is a 1-hour mix of "Clock Tower" from the soundtrack to Dead Cells: https://youtu.be/plwhysPCxXI
Haven't added anything to it in a while, but over the years I built a youtube playlist of songs that help me focus while working. Generally rules are: predominantly electronic, has some kind of beat, zero vocals. I'm up to over 500 songs at this point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dTpQwBMaBI&list=PL2A7B99AB9...
https://www.nts.live/
And they have mobile apps :)
Later in the day I listen to more energetic electronic music (a lot of which is from the Hotline Miami soundtrack): M|O|O|N, Dan Terminus, Carpenter Brut, Daniel Deluxe, 1788-L, Pendulum
My personal favorites are pretty much anything by Nujabes (including the soundtracks for Samurai Champloo), Fat Jon, and DJ Okawari.
I also like some classic albums in the genre like Donuts by J Dilla, Dr. No's Oxperiment by Oh No, and Endtroducing by DJ Shadow.
I will sometimes go through essential charts I find to dive into new genres, and other times I'll pick a random artist and go through their entire discography start to finish.
I highly recommend doing that with Talk Talk, their transition from 80s pop to experimental is phenomenal.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRfwdJx0NDE
ETA: I forgot to mention gorillaz. Great programming music, and seems to give me good ideas.
some personal favourites:
- https://musicforprogramming.net/seventyone
- https://musicforprogramming.net/fiftyseven
- https://musicforprogramming.net/fortysix
(Yes, I'm an only child.)
[1] https://somafm.com/
Boards of Canada
Mr. Robot Original Soundtrack
Very rarely I use custom-filtered (brownish) noise to help with isolation. Perhaps some kind of Ambient or New Age would work too in such situations, but things I like in those genres require attention and not paying it would be absolutely disrespectful.
I listen to all kinds of music at my dayjob but only during specific activities that do not require much contemplation and I can mostly flow with the music and do the work in the background.
Though, I'm a musician and sound engineer, so my relationships with music in general might be a bit special.
It is pretty much ideal for, as Larry Wall once said, letting music "wash over you" while coding https://youtu.be/SKqBmAHwSkg?si=_vHvP8Ij9lacwhFk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lnk_b_7trII
This is an extended edition of "it might just be a one shot deal" from the waka/jawaka album by Frank Zappa. The extended part is the pedal steel played by Sneaky Pete Kleinow.
If you have never heard any Zappa stuff and this is interesting to you, listen to waka jawaka itself if you like instrumentals. If you want something more commercial, listen to the Apostrophe/Overnite Sensation album. If you want more odd, listen to the Bongo Fury album, featuring Captain Beefheart. Happy exploring.
1. https://marco.org/2011/05/26/geek-intro-to-phish
Johann Johannsson and Max Richter are my go-tos.
After that, one can build up a list of hundreds of net radio stations in VLC and find one that works for you -today-.
https://m.youtube.com/@aimtoheadmix1915/videos
OPs playlist requires too many faculties used in coding.
Most other elements don’t seem to matter too much. Baroque, industrial, ambient, etc are all effectively equivalent in most regards.
That said, I tend to lean toward 1990s atmospheric drum-and-bass (pretty much anything released by Good Looking Records) as a good default. That genre maximizes things that seem to help while minimizing things that seem to detract.
But when I need to mix it up, I switch to FIP (Paris). They manage several different stations, but start with the main one first. It's excellently curated with more of a global palette than your typical station.