Ask HN: What do you listen to when you code?

48 points by kreeWall ↗ HN
Individual songs, playlists, artists, all suggestions welcome!

54 comments

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It varies. Sometimes I listen to my "stock" music - hard rock and heavy metal of all varieties, with a special focus on 80's era glam metal, speed metal, and thrash metal.

Other times it's various forms of electronic music. House, trance, europop, Hi-NRG, synthwave/darkwave, etc.

And then sometimes I go with classical music. Bach, Vivaldi, Verdi, Wagner, Strauss, Orff, etc.

As far as specifics go, here's some stuff I've listened to lately:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8OELzmpgZo&list=PL7F37BB1A6...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9oTQzwXYXk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hd8Or1RrYs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4oZZhpMXP4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyfL9LC1DC4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajF2NOuYkjk

https://youtu.be/-7Q61fH-03E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGMJ2b-3eCk

One other thing I'll sometimes do is put on a movie in the background, with the volume turned down fairly low... just enough that I hear some babble and noise, but not enough that I get caught up in what's going on. This only works if I use a movie I've seen / heard many times, so I already know what's happening and won't get drawn into the story. So, something like The Matrix, Antitrust, Tron:Legacy, Hackers, Sneakers, The Social Network, etc.

Mostly various forms of jazz--lately I've been on a roll with Pharaoh Sanders and Sun Ra. But the key thing is I find it distracting to hear voices while I'm trying to work. So mostly music with no vocals.
I feel the same way about vocals but I also try to avoid jazz with horn solos, so I stick to piano jazz like Hiromi, Ahmad Jamal, or Chick Corea.
Chicago's 911. http://youarelistening.to/chicago For some reason and in my timezone difference to Chicago it puts my brain into coding mode, sometimes hours. I doubt anybody else around me would enjoy that.
I generally listen to heavy metal, classic and hard rock that tends a bit towards prog with long sections and a bit of classical, epic feel to them. Something like Dio-era Rainbow, Led Zeppelin and Iron Maiden.

A few favorites:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6CjO0H2j0s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYrW3yONR44

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVid_fLzN5g

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDwotNLyz10

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J51LPlP-s9o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTqv59JXMUk

I don't listen to anything when coding. I need the silence, and deep thought. However, when I'm doing trivial things, I listen to classical music. Usually "Essential Classical", or something similar, on Google Music.
An orchestra of fellow developer fingers dancing on mechanical keyboards!
Sports Radio - you have to know everything about your favorite teams :-)
Four Tet, Burial, Aphex Twin, µ-Ziq, etc.
Nice choices! Boards of Canada too?
Muchado in the Classic Rock and Techno/Trance genres, and 80s music, but sometimes outside of it too.

From Moby, Pink Floyd, Lindsey Stirling, Disturbed, and M83 are common.

Grateful Dead shows on the Internet Archive.

They're free. They're long so you don't need to be interrupted to change a track. The really spacey jams put you in a creative mindspace.

Plus, one of the songwriters founded the EFF!

(comment deleted)
Pinback has recently helped me write a ton of code.

Tool, A Perfect Circle, Ashes Divide for a mellow, metal mood.

Vitamin String Quartet when I want something familiar, but classical in taste

Nicklecreek, Chris Thile, Old Crow Medicine Show, Punch Brothers for a folk fix.

Kid Ory when a need a New Orleans Jazz pick-me-up

Songs similar to the soundtrack from RWBY
Music with minimal words (which I find distracting) but often with vocals. Usually an album at a time e.g.,

Ibiza chill sessions (annual albums) Melody AM The altogether Little dragon (NPR remix)

a lot of electric guitar - Steve Vai, joe satriani

cat /dev/urandom | sox -traw -r44100 -b16 -e unsigned-integer - -tcoreaudio synth pinknoise band -n 1400 200 tremolo 40 .1 gain 8
I wanted to check it out. Installed sox on Ubuntu 17.04 and it's not working

    sox FAIL formats: no handler for given file type `coreaudio'
You need to replace coreaudio with pulseaudio, try this instead:

    cat /dev/urandom | sox -traw -r44100 -b16 -e unsigned-integer - -tpulseaudio synth pinknoise band -n 1400 200 tremolo 40 .1 gain 8
Anything without lyrics. Classical music is my normal target, but some of Reznor's electronic soundtracks for movies works well too.
Digitally Imported has a very wide range of, well, digital music.

They have some free ad supported streams but the annual cost of ad-free $70 is totally worth it in my opinion.

My current favorite channels are Chillstep, Liquid DnB, Nu Disco, Chill & Tropical House. Various levels of repetitive bass to keep your leg and fingers twitching, and differing tempos to either raise or lower your heart rate, depending on what you need in the moment.

Web Browser Flash or mobile apps. http://www.di.fm

In my case Classic and Psychodelic Trance helps. High BPM + no deep lyrics = key to victory! Listening DI.fm since 2005 :)
I haven't been on di since the early 2000's. Glad to see it's still around.
Deep house, or other kinds of repetitive electronic music. Even though I'm usually a rock/jazz person, this music is perfect some times: very chill parties, dancing alone but surrounded by people, programming. Sometimes commuting.

It's relaxing, rather dronic but with enough variation to not be boring.