All kinds, the only time I avoid music and keep silence is when I have to do reading/writing stuff. Probably the same reason I find reading and writing to be more of a chore and coding/designing more enjoyable.
Go for instrumental music, it doesn't activate the part of your verbal part of your brain. Essentially to hear singing (or talking) your brain mimics it, however when you're trying to read/write you've got two processes and only one processor to put it through. You can struggle through, but not nearly as well as running them solo.
Also, just go onto TPB or usenet and download some Beethoven or Wagner. It's 100% legal, no copyrights exist on them and even if they did they're so old it'd be void anyway. Even the BBC offered them up for free at some point, they were surprisingly good quality too.
I learnt this a long time ago when I was working doing reviews. When you spend 10 hours writing reviews, you need something to listen to or you're going to start shooting kids and spearing dogs for making the slightest noise.
What also works is recorded rain sounds, and James Horner (A Beautiful Mind soundtrack). Loud enough to drown out the talking, but doesn't interfere with the thought process.
I heard whale song, and ocean sounds now thinking of it, is supposedly good, however I've never bothered to try it. I'll have to find somewhere to get it that doesn't charge $20, it'd be cheaper to go to the ocean myself.
It's a dup, but I think lots of people don't mind that. I for one don't mind seeing this pop up every few weeks if people suggest new songs.
Toward that end, here is some music I haven't seen mentioned here before. List of Demands, and Black Stacy, both by Saul Williams (see also http://niggytardust.com/, which many here may have heard of). He's on tour right now, if any want to see him live.
Digitally Imported radio (di.fm) is a great trance channel. I used to subscribe for $5/month to get their higher quality feed, which was worth it when I had good headphones. I spent a lot of hours in the library coding and doing math listening to di.fm. They have other great channels like "chillout" and "house" which are also good for coding. Chillout is, well, chiller and good for relaxed coding sessions and house is a bit more funky and less "poo tsh poo tsh poo tsh poo tsh" like trance can get (and can get annoying).
ASOT++ btw. I listen to it every week. You can d/l it on most torrent sites, which isn't even as illegal as d/ling other music. Its like taping the radio and giving it to your friend. And this radio doesn't have commercials. Plus trance style music lives on a different plane of business than the rest of the industry they way I see it - which is a whole different tangent I'll not go down.
Yes, and it's the kind of thing searching was invented for. But for some reason HN refuses to provide a way to search posts and comments (no, having to go to Google and search news.ycombinator.com is not decent search. Google doesn't take into consideration how long ago a post was, how many comments it had and how many votes it received, all information I think is useful for determining relevance of the results).
I'll second that. My suggestions are: American Beauty, Atonement, Braveheart, Gladiator, Lord of the Rings I II III, Meet Joe Black, Requiem for a Dream, The Last Samurai, and There Will Be Blood.
The soundtracks to Batman Begins and the Battlestar Galactica mini-series are not dissimilar to that for There Will Be Blood (which I've just been to see).
Mostly instrumental music, primarily some type of jazz or classical.
If I am in a noisy working environment, then I keep the music going pretty much constantly, to block out extraneous noise. In general, the more quiet and peaceful my environment is, the less music I listen to while working.
Sometimes, music with lyrics in the language I'm learning. I don't understand most of it, but my ear gets better at picking out words, and properly-conjugated phrases start to sound natural to me, even if I don't know what they mean yet.
But that's only when I feel I need to be pulled along. Once I get into flow, I don't see or hear anything except what I'm doing. My music will end and I won't notice until 2 hours later when I come up for air.
In "Peopleware", DeMarco and Lister are even more explicit: if programmers need to put on headphones to drown out ambient noise, they're using up the very creativity they're being paid so much for.
Philip Glass is my favorite to listen to while coding. It's prefect for both background music while focusing on a difficult problem and for putting into the foreground when you just need to take a second away from the problem.
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[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 138 ms ] threadAlso, just go onto TPB or usenet and download some Beethoven or Wagner. It's 100% legal, no copyrights exist on them and even if they did they're so old it'd be void anyway. Even the BBC offered them up for free at some point, they were surprisingly good quality too.
I learnt this a long time ago when I was working doing reviews. When you spend 10 hours writing reviews, you need something to listen to or you're going to start shooting kids and spearing dogs for making the slightest noise.
Toward that end, here is some music I haven't seen mentioned here before. List of Demands, and Black Stacy, both by Saul Williams (see also http://niggytardust.com/, which many here may have heard of). He's on tour right now, if any want to see him live.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=l1llNYAlYrc
http://youtube.com/watch?v=kRsgavuG4sg&feature=related
ASOT++ btw. I listen to it every week. You can d/l it on most torrent sites, which isn't even as illegal as d/ling other music. Its like taping the radio and giving it to your friend. And this radio doesn't have commercials. Plus trance style music lives on a different plane of business than the rest of the industry they way I see it - which is a whole different tangent I'll not go down.
These days I'll listen to MrsFudge Streaming Radio, which has the best music voting system I've seen: http://gurba.sytes.net
Alternately, there's Proton radio: http://www.protonradio.com/
Found it here on YC, actually.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=61831
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=99936
It's a feature on Reddit, and being able to subscribe to something such as listings of books, music, etc. would be handy.
Then if someone wants to pose the question again they can refer to the initial posting and ask people to add their comments there.
My hacking music preferences:
http://www.last.fm/user/zenlinux/
If I am in a noisy working environment, then I keep the music going pretty much constantly, to block out extraneous noise. In general, the more quiet and peaceful my environment is, the less music I listen to while working.
or maybe in the thrash genre
http://www.newmetalarmy.com/band/evile
Lately I'm liking Holy Fuck.
(Though I dug up some Hawkwind, too, for some odd reason.)
But that's only when I feel I need to be pulled along. Once I get into flow, I don't see or hear anything except what I'm doing. My music will end and I won't notice until 2 hours later when I come up for air.
In "Peopleware", DeMarco and Lister are even more explicit: if programmers need to put on headphones to drown out ambient noise, they're using up the very creativity they're being paid so much for.
I assume you don't mean programming language? If that's what you did mean, where can I get music with lyrics in Python, Lisp, etc?
iTunes Radio: Electronic->AH.FM, Ambient->Drone Zone on SomaFM
zenlinux's idea of a last.fm group for this is an excellent idea.