Incredibox - Background music for programming. | Hacker News Reader

Incredibox - Background music for programming.

incredibox.com

688 pointsbmelton167 comments

I can hack/design for hours without even knowing it while listening to Kap Slap.

It also helps you run a 5K faster than you might have originally imagined :)

Anyone who likes remixes/house/dubstep I'd encourage you check it out! The spring break mix is an hour long and it's full of goodies.

http://soundcloud.com/kapslap/kap-slap-spring-break-mix

p.s. I'm only evangelizing this stuff so much because honestly if I set out to run 10k I'll listen to this and it will help me get there more than anything else. Or if I wanna kill a new comp or a handful of bugs, [PLAY] and it sucks me in like a vortex.

How/why has bargain-basement recycled eurotrance from 15 years ago become the latest thing amongst american youth?

As someone living in the south of the UK this is one of the strangest and most unexpected developments in global popular music in recent years.

I'm sorry if this sounds snobbish but I genuinely want/need to understand this, and I would appreciate any opinions or theories from americans as to how/why this happened and who/what forces could be responsible. Email in profile.

This happens with every genre of music. When it's young it's well known in the area it starts. As it spreads the new areas tend to lag. As popularity grows the genre changes and people who knew about it since it was young bitch about how going mainstream killed it.

What you are saying is true. However that's not really my point.

Firstly, I've never liked trance, so I'm not trying to defend my pet genre from infiltrators. On the contrary, I thought I'd seen the back of it ten years ago, outside certain areas of continental europe. then, suddenly, it's the thing in the US.

Now, the united states has always had its own rich history of electronic dance music, indeed they invented it. Pretty much all electronic music from the last 30 years worldwide is derived from Detroit techno and Chicago house. That lineage has continued unbroken in those places to this day, yet that type of dance music has never really attained popular success in its own country.

So, why is this form of very continentally-european music suddenly achieving populaity in what is actually its distant ancestral home? And why now? These things usually lag about three to five years as you say; trance has been a creative cul-de-sac for at least four of those cycles.

The stateside rise of dubstep and electro house makes more sense to me: it's a substitute for nu-metal and radio rock. Trance, as I say, is an absolute non sequitur.

Because the electronic wave of the 90's/00's was completely missed by most Americans, and it has just taken that long to break into the cultural mainstream here. Radio friendly DJ's who promoted their brands to the masses such as Oakenfold and Tiesto were a big factor, but it is also generational. For instance, my friends and I were pretty into the late 90's electronic scene in the NE US. We loved trance, progressive, house, jungle, dnb, breakbeat, and adored the ambient/experimental stuff as well. At that point though it felt like almost everything great was coming out of Europe and we were regarded as weirdos at school for being into this music.

However, some of us had younger siblings, and cousins. And they grew up looking up to someone they though was cool and loved this music. So they thought it must be cool too, and showed their friends. At the same time, many of the people I grew up with were graduating college and started to work, and putting their favorite electronic music in advertising and websites and music soundtracks etc. Why didn't it catch on earlier, as it had in Europe? I think much of it had to with American attitudes and policy toward drugs and the control of the record companies on music promotion. The only place you might hear electronic back then was late night college radio or MTV late Saturday night. There was a sense that this was very much dirty underground druggy music, and event promotion was still very much by flyers and word of mouth. That kind of thing will never catch on in the US mainstream, where there needs to be a sexy, familiar face on the posters and TV advertisements.

Thanks, this makes sense. 15 years is about a generation in this context.

>However, some of us had younger siblings, and cousins.

This in particular fits. The "cool older brother" thing is a perennial motif in the evolution of dance music.

The race/class/geography aspects of EDM history are fascinating. First you have upper-middle-class often gay black kids in detroit rejecting the polyrhythms and rowdy attitude of the hiphop and funk around them in pursuit of the perceived sophistication of androgynous european synth-pop. Then this gets picked up by white working class british teenagers who add syncopated hip hop drums and dub bass in pursuit of the street legitimacy of US hiphop and jamaican dancehall. This leads eventually to dubstep, which then gets crossed with stadium rock and exported back to america, to the center of the mainstream. When music makes these geographical leaps it is shorn of its sociocultural context and meaning, leading to the sacking of old sacred grounds and the sanctification of new ones. The acceleration of this cycle in the internet age is fascinating. I'm sure many here will see parallels with the spread of hacker/startup culture.

> I think much of it had to with American attitudes and policy toward drugs and the control of the record companies on music promotion ... That kind of thing will never catch on in the US mainstream, where there needs to be a sexy, familiar face on the posters and TV advertisements.

All of that has always been true in the UK as well. When rave music started to penetrate the charts at the start of the 90s, that wasn't via involvement from the music industry. Those hardcore tracks were getting in the top 10 purely from ravers going out and buying 12"s in independent record shops, tracks which were pressed and distributed by companies owned and operated by the artists. The huge, often illegal events where people were going to dance to these records were similarly done with no involvement from the music industry, at least at first.

The major difference, at least where the UK is concerned, is the impact of pirate radio, which until very recently provided a framework to promote the music, the events and the culture entirely unmolested by the establishment. This in turn is enabled by high population density: more people in your signal footprint, and social housing placed in convenient 20-storey towers on which to mount your antenna. The US's low population density, which you would have thought would make massive unregulated parties in remote locations easy to execute, makes pirate radio broadcasting uneconomical and unviable. Again, one could draw interesting comparisons to the communities based around local BBSes and how that changed with the spread of internet access.

I think it's mainly because of the availability and popularity of very easy software to slap together something in your own computer. The influx of new people playing with sound loops and their close networks, basically.

In their defense, today's euro-trash is slightly better produced which makes it a little(!) more bearable.

E.g. they largely got rid of the infamous "scooter kickdrum" (aka "poland kick") that was the hallmark of the 90s standard template.

Still I agree. It's often a little embarrassing when americans suggest electronic music these days (for us euros that is - we should really pay more attention to what material we leak overseas...).

Hm. There is quite a bit of misinformation (I like to think it was done unintentionally) that your comment caused when people replied to you. The biggest one being that the US 'invented' 'electronic dance music'.

I can sit here and write an overly, but necessary long reply or recommend a couple of books. I'll do the latter, all of them by Simon Reynolds: Generation Ecstasy: Into the World of Techno and Rave Culture; Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction to Its Own Past.

Music history is filled with ambiguities and nebulous, complex definitions that have changed throughout history. What's more, how electronic dance music got from point A to B to C to D to E, and so on and so forth, usually sounds unintuitive to people who listen to mostly only very few music styles. A linear and extremely compressed timeline of electronic (dance) music can probably start as early as Kraftwerk in the early 70s, then NEU! and a lot of so-called 'krautrock', which morphed into things such as Joy Division, who is said to have influenced rave/club culture. Interestingly, the word 'rave' is actually 1960s British slang for modern day-like, club-like loud parties. These loans (both linguistically and musically from all periods in time) remain very common across all of music and makes it even more complex to explain. Anyway, the whole Hacienda club scene influenced club music in the 80s, especially when Ian Curtis died and New Order adopted a sound that allegedly Curtis had already thought of in the late 70s. The Human League shares a somewhat similar music development in the sense that early Human League incorporated more 'rock' elements with 'electronic' ones, and then mostly switched to pure 'electronic' elements. With the help of hip hop (borrowing and sampling music to form their own music), a type of 'explosion' in electronic music occurred. There were some artists already making electronic dance music but it hit mainstream in the early 80s when hip hop started sampling from other artists and using non-traditional (for that time) ways of making music with electronic equipment.

You get bands such as Duran Duran to DJs 'mixing' to, basically, C+C Music Factory. Then comes probably the epitome of rave and electronic dance music: UK garage, dnb, 2-step, jungle, etc.; that all-encompassing term 'rave music'. This is probably when every type of electronic and electronic dance music was created and the rest is history.

See, the problem is that by the 80s, electronic dance music had already been invented and various locations took those ideas at the same time, so people sometimes emphasise New York (electro), Chicago or Detroit (house), and at the point the music from these places 'sounded' more like what we relate to 'house music' now, many other places (in the UK, especially) were doing the same thing. If we look back at Chicago and Detroit before this time, they still had house, but it sounded like funk or disco or dance music with upgraded gear. In other words, it was funk, disco, or dance music using more electronic sounding equipment that we now equate to an '80s sound'. It wasn't electronic music using dance elements. It was dance music using electronic elements.

The funny thing about the States is that in the 90s, electronic music switched to a mainstream emphasis. There were still raves in the States, interesting DJs, and a thriving club scene, but it was underground. The American 90s were characterized by the rise of underground 'indie music'/'rock'/'grunge'/'alternative' music. As much as I hate to admit it (because I don't like them), but Nirvana is a good example of this, as are bands such as Pavement, Sonic Youth, Soundgarden, and Alice in Chains.

If that makes sense.

If you look, I think you'll find that the "misinformation" in those replies was also posted by me ;)

I have also read the Reynolds book, and most of what I said is backed up by what he writes in it.

You can trace things back to the Paradise Garage, the Warehouse, to the Electrifyin' Mojo, to Amnesia on Ibiza, to David Mancuso's loft, to Kraftwerk, to the Human League, to the 100 club, to the flower children and their "happenings," to Wigan Pier, or you can go back to the Radiophonic Workshop, Musique Concrète, Léon Theremin, you could cite the Dancing Plague of 1518 or ancient african ritual dances if you wanted. Nothing new is ever invented, etc.

I still think that what Reynolds calls the Hardcore Continuum and its assorted tributaries started in some meaningful sense in Chicago and Detroit, as much as you may always be able to eventually link everything to everything else. The influence of records like Strings of Life is writ large in a way that is separate to the way in which the Human League and Giorgio Moroder are still influential on other strands of music history, despite their common sonic signatures. This is especially true if you consider the cultural/political identity of the scenes as separate from the musical evolution: the mythology of proletarian urban militancy surrounding rave arguably started in detroit with Underground Resistance. That must be the element most conspicuously missing from the current Diplo-fuelled chapter in rave history :)

I suppose we inevitably tend towards taxonomy and categorisation as a cognitive survival strategy.

EDIT: re-reading what I wrote, I admit that bold-facedly stating that the US "invented" EDM was perhaps rash.

I wrote a reply but was using this HN app for the iPhone and, of course, it didn't go through.

We disagree on a couple of contentious issues, which is fine :)

I'll try to re-cap very briefly (Argh! No time for long, deep conversations, anymore!)

I think the keyword is 'meaningful'. I think Reynolds would agree that music genres and movements aren't linear or unorganic. They start, have hiccups, move and are flexible. They're dynamic. As you kind of alluded to in your edit. So, I guess we half-agree (?) on this.

The African thing is a bit of a stretch, no? The comparisons I made are in-tune with each other and had stronger (and direct) ties and similarities. This is the tricky part of comparing conceptual/theoretical ties within music periods and sound, from a musicology point of view. The treatment of sound within my comparisons are much closer, I think.

Also, remember that the 'electronic dance music' that is now popular in the States wasn't so in the 90s--it was underground--whereas you can make a case for it being popular in the UK in the 90s. If you hear people like Kevin Shields talk about music in the US vs. the UK back in the 90s and 80s, he talks about how the UK had a larger audience that was 'thirstier' for newer sounds and it was more accessible to 'mainstream audiences', whereas the States had a strong disparate audience and division.

For example, talk to anybody in the US and ask them if they think The Smiths is mainstream. They will tell you they are not. Yet The Smiths was an extremely popular band in the UK.

The same sort of thing occurs now in the radio up until now. So-called 'indie' or 'underground' music in the States is popular or listened to at a wider scale in the UK and even Canada.

Please enlighten us as to what's the thing now and any internet radio stations playing it. I'm always curious as to what's current elsewhere.

I feel that Kap-Slap is too close what you hear to radio on every day.

For working there is nothing better than repeating, simple melodies and patterns. What I consider to be a good song is something that you can work along with and not even notice it. This can be classical (Arvo Part, Philip Glass), but I often find that electronical music with a baseline beat is more mellow and fluid.

Here are my recommendations (some really good stuff): http://soundcloud.com/juliengray/julien-gray-gondwana-extend... http://soundcloud.com/monca/djuma-soundsystem-les-djinns

These are a lot better than anything else I've heard today. I'd greatly appreciate anything else that evokes a similar mood.

This was really great stuff. I'd appreciate similar recommendations!

If you really need to get stuff done then there is this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dOM3p-80HI&hd=1 Sorry for the late reply :)

This is not good for productivity! I've just spent the last hour with my hands in the air.

No kidding. I was tapping my foot so much I got leg cramps.

I prefer it more underground... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbBvTEnhrBM

That said, based on what you've linked, have you checked out the DATAMIX podcasts by Designer Drugs? I loves 'em.

http://soundcloud.com/designerdrugsmusic/sets/datamix-mixtap...

#12 is a good place to start. And #04.

This sounds a lot like the popular page on hypem.com http://hypem.com/popular

Di.fm (and its mobile apps) are pretty awesome too. they usually have awesome EDM.

Love this, any more recco's?

If you're looking for more mashups, check out Girl Talk, Milkman, and Super Mash Bros.

If you're looking for similar electronic music sets, here are a couple I've been digging lately:

Kaskade's set from Coachella, soundboard recording. http://www.themusicninja.com/live-set-full-kaskade-coachella...

Porter Robinson's BBC Essential Mix - http://soundcloud.com/edmtunestv/porter-robinson-essential-m...

Knife Party's BBC Essential Mix - http://soundcloud.com/edmtunestv/knife-party-essential-mix-l...

Luvstep 2.5 (There are several other mixes in this series, though this one is my favorite) - http://soundcloud.com/dirtysouthjoe/luvstep-2-5

Straight Bass to the Dome - Coletrain http://soundcloud.com/cberra88/straight-bass-to-the-dome

A dubstep mix retelling Jeff Wayne's musical version of war of the worlds, sampling the original narratives by Richard Burton, Phil Lynott and David Essex - http://soundcloud.com/erwtenpeller/war-of-the-worlds

Flux Pavilion’s BBC Radio 1 Essential Mix - http://soundcloud.com/edmtunestv/flux-pavilion-essential-mix... | http://soundcloud.com/qrip/flux-pavilion-essential-mix

Somejerk's Moombahton over Miami VI live mix - http://soundcloud.com/somejerk/moombahton-over-miami-vi-some... (this might make you run/code funny... try it while doing Zumba?)

If you like Knife Party, you might like the band's main project (Knife Party is a mini-project by two band members from a group named Pendulum.) They do fantastic drum and bass. Immersion, their most recent album, may be their best.

The Island Pt. II: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBIYl88Zwyc Witchcraft: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AooMCiV2eb4

Their other albums, In Silico (Showdown, the Temptest) and Hold Your Colour (Slam, Blood Sugar) are also fantastic. My favorite band, personally.

That explains why I like both Knife Party and Pendulum's sound. Set Me On Fire is an awesome Pendulum track.

Big +1 to Girl Talk. When I listen to Feed The Animals or All Day, I feel like there's nothing I can't achieve. Still hasn't failed me.

Milkman and Super Mash Bros is good too but I just don't get the same feel.

Porter Robinson's new single, Language, is phenomenal. Thanks for these links!

I've never understood how anyone can do anything productive while listening to these. They're just loud, repetitive noise to me.

That Porter Robinson set is awesome. Thanks for this list.

Thanks!

Girl Talk: http://illegal-art.net/allday/

For Mashups collections, check out Bootie: http://bootiemashup.com/ (and if you're in SF, definitely check them out at DNA Lounge). They do a downloadable annual Best Of album. http://bootiemashup.com/bestof/ (IMHO, the older albums are better.)

If you're looking for a full-album experience, check out the Kleptones. Here's an awesome HTML5 visualization of their album A Night at the Hip Hopera: http://mashupbreakdown.com/nhh

And, of course, Girl Talk

This is what I code to, when I'm coding for it: http://www.audiogalaxy.com/mix/11997-The%20Coding%20Zone/

For a second I thought the old audiogalaxy was back. A favorite of mine in the late 90's.

I approve of those mix ingredients. :)

Not available in my country :(

I absolutely love upbeat electronic music and it's awesome to know I'm not the only one on Hacker News! For over six months I've been scouring the music blogs and accumulating a playlist on Spotify. I think you'll love everything I have in here - feel free to subscribe!

http://open.spotify.com/user/czstrong/playlist/2Vw6VBC3BDKGc...

Awesome! Sub'd. Here is mine: http://open.spotify.com/user/whalesalad/playlist/6nRqAHIzMFd...

Many already mentioned by others, but also Madeon and Hood Internet perhaps? 2 Many DJs mixes. Oh, and look up Paris DJs and if you like a bit of variety check out the Molested Laura mixes, especially #6. DJ Z Trip too.

For more chilled stuff, Bonobo and DJ Krush.

Here's recent mix I really enjoy:

http://www.mixcloud.com/alec_empire/alec-empire-atari-teenag...

http://soundcloud.com/sunnyventura

dj's from mars is good as well: http://soundcloud.com/djsfrommars

I LOVE driving to Featurecast: http://soundcloud.com/featurecast

Great recommendation! I've been programming to http://soundcloud.com/jaytechmusic a lot recently. 2 hours of buttery biscuit bass delivered monthly every month for the past four years.

This is a great mix. But it stops around the 20th minute for me. I don't know why.

It has a download link you can use to get an offline file.

If you love Kap Slap you'll love 3LAU:

http://soundcloud.com/3lau/sets/top-10-downloaded-tracks/

agreed. 3LAU is better than Kap...Kap's stuff just feels too 'bro' for me. I like more traditional EDM either way.

Oh my lord I'd maybe be okay hearing that at a club but couldn't imagine coding in one. Give me downtempo to work to any day. R.I.P. DJ Dusty's Afternoon Nap.

Frisky Radio does that for me: http://friskyradio.com

This is great btw. Thanks a lot for sharing!

agreement, kap slap, 3lau, sex ray vision are stables in my programming listen

well said, whale salad. ;)

I think the comments here are responding negatively to the title of the post. True, you're probably not going to spend the rest of the day coding to the music you make in incredibox. But this app is still very cool for what it is: a fun, easily accessible experiment in making music with loops.

I put together a couple of little songs that sounded pretty cool, and the experience was simple and enjoyable. I give props to whoever made Incredibox, and think this general direction is promising for casual music making, an activity that could benefit all of us.

Agreed. I actually laughed out loud when the UI popped up, and again when I dropped a beat on the shirtless skinny white guy.

Novel idea, fun UI. If the minor end-of-loop delay (which another commenter mentioned) were eliminated or mitigated, it'd be downright awesome.

Nice work. Thanks to the creator(s) for the entertainment.

Agreed. This kind of stuff is going to result in a massive amount of new music in the next few years. Very cool.

There's been a slew of these going around lately (I found this cool, simple little one last week: http://www.sembeo.com/media/Matrix.swf). Incredibox is the most fun version yet.

Agree. This app made me smile, a rare thing while coding.

This app also made me smile, but I have to disagree with you - I often can't stop smiling while coding. The feeling of satisfaction when something works out really is unrivalled. Each to thier own though!

My go-to for programming music is Groove Salad on SomaFM, a San Francisco institution going on 12 years. http://somafm.com/play/groovesalad

I was all about Groove Salad until I found http://di.fm/

DI and The Crystal Method were my gateway into electronic music. Over a decade later and I haven't looked back.

Hooking into Groove Salad or Deepvibes Radio http://deepvibes.co.uk/ [320 Kbps] nearly always creates an environment to get lost in the code flow.

Assign a hotkey to each of your favorite stations and jump around without losing your flow.

One way to do this is to trigger the launch of a .pls file. Save the following as deepvibes_320.pls without leading spaces

  [playlist]
  NumberOfEntries=1
  File1=http://deepvibes.co.uk:9106/

groove_salad_130aac.pls

  [playlist]
  numberofentries=1
  File1=http://voxsc1.somafm.com:3000

I'm also a big fan of SomaFM for background music, although which stream I go for varies depending on my mood. I've found Cliqhop better when feeling tired, and Beat Blender more suitable when feeling fidgety.

Another favourite of mine is [http://kohina.com/] -- I definitely find old-school game music helps me focus. Perhaps it's conditioning from the hours on end spent sat in front of an Atari ST in my youth...

Totally ditto this!! Groove Salad has saved so many mornings where I needed to work, and evening commutes where I needed to sleep. It's so relaxing, doesn't capture your mind's thinking, but makes you feel you're living in a future technological utopia.

Sounds like you may enjoy http://epiphanyradio.org/

http://musicforprogramming.net/ is much more useful.

Tried it, but it really didn't work for me.

Didn't hate it, but their aesthetic [1] turns out to be totally wrong for me to program to. Instead of droning and textures without rhythm, I need a heavy beat, vocals, and strong melody (or at least prominent and fast arpeggiated synth). Instead of that I tend to listen to di.fm Vocal Trance, if I'm sick of listening to my collection.

90% of coding for me seems to require that I distract most of my brain. When a problem gets really hard I often just turn off the music. I should try listening to MFP under those circumstances and see if it works better then. :)

Regardless: Glad it works for you. Not trying to dis MFP. Different people need different soundtracks.

[1] http://musicforprogramming.net/?c=aesthetic

I think they really got something right. I tried so many genres but always use their collection when I really need to focus. I especially like the 01(datassette) and 02 (sunjammer) compilations.

Thanks, exactly what i was looking for.

have yall seen Console.fm ? Crawls the web to find the most trending electronic music and sorts by genres.

I have now! cheers :)

this is awesome, thanks!

I think this is a mighty clever app; I'm not really sure why there are so many negative comments.

It would be nice if the url changed with the sample combinations though. It looks like you can record a chunk of the sound and share that, but I'm far more interested in sharing the exact combination that I come up with than I am the sound itself. I'd love to just send a link to a friend so that they could not only see the combination in action but also dive in and make it their own.

IMHO I really do not know how this nerve-racking sound can be endured while programming. Besides it basically is just this classic on steroids:

http://svt.se/hogafflahage/hogafflaHage_site/Kor/hestekor.sw...

I really like listening to online streams like soma.fm or di.fm when coding. Not just because their sounds are great (they are!) and put me into the zone (they do!), but because it keeps me motivated when I get the inner urge to click around the interwebs. Why? Because I know that while I'm listening and trying to stay focused on my coding, somebody else somewhere in the world is listening to exactly the same tunes at the same moment and is being productive. That really keeps my motivation to produce stuff high!

This is really fun. I like the vocals a lot and I like the interface to control each track. The title is incorrect because I don't think the intent of this app is for programmers to make background music to work to.

Every once in a while all of them pause in sync. Try using distinct primes for the length of a musical cycle to create a different sound. Not sure how it would for beats, but I know visually this is useful.

Great and fun application, but these little pauses at the "seams" between the loops are REALLY throwing me off.

You can't stomp your feet to this for more then one whole loop. Too bad, I loved the idea and the implementation!

OK, so no one's going to mention Above & Beyond's Group Therapy Miami set for this year's Winter Music Conference?

http://soundcloud.com/edmtunestv/above-and-beyond-live-group...

http://soundcloud.com/edmtunestv/mat-zo-live-group-therapy-m...

http://soundcloud.com/edmtunestv/arty-group-therapy-miami-wm...

http://soundcloud.com/edmtunestv/andrew-bayer-live-group-the...

http://soundcloud.com/edmtunestv/boom-jinx-live-group-therap...

Or Pretty Lights' The Hot Shit radio show?

http://soundcloud.com/prettylights/pretty-lights-the-hot-sh-...

You're welcome.

Trying to be not petty but I posted this weeks ago and nobody really cared:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3804637

In any case, I really like how they explain how to user can actually use it. I dont know what everyone else thinks, but I feel like everyone in the age braket 18-30 wants to be a dj at a party.

Should be a lesson for you, marketing matters. Your title didn't get people to click and enjoy.

One caveat, my headline can only ask people to click, though enjoyment/fulfillment is mostly dependent on individual preferences, right?

After coming across Incredibox recently, I saw your post and decided not to repost. Guess I should've thrown my hat into the marketing ring...

There's a viral barrier that needs to be breached for things to hit the front page, and then the views shoot up from there.

Your headline is more accurate and descriptive, but this headline knows its audience a lot better. This a lesson about marketing in there somewhere.

Yea I know. Apparently I should be adding hacker, programming, Ask PG, ycombinator application etc to everything I post :)

I think though I did just get a lesson in what makes people click. Kinda like when I see "Kardashian's body and photoshop" headlines in my FB feed...

Also dont you think this headline is a bit misleading?

Achievement 3 is awarded for "find the right combination," but there are 137980 combinations (assuming order doesn't matter) and I'm not that patient. :x

Are you not a hacker?

Not in Flash. If it were an HTML5 application I'd have been breaking it apart.

TLDR: The combination is using the first of each sound type

Method:

1. grabbed the .swf file (Chrome Developer Tools -> Network -> one of the 6 .swf files)

2. used the incredible tools to extract and disassemble from https://github.com/CyberShadow/RABCDAsm

3. with luck came across \incredibox-0\incredibox_fla\MainTimeline.class.asasm lines 24827-24840

Took me longer to write this post than to figure it out, but, I am guessing I got lucky. I only decided to attempt checking this out as I started playing around with the RABCDAsm couple hours ago. I've little to no idea how to read those .asasm files yet, but I'm learning more about them.

Edit: extra spacing

This is terrible. Music should stimulate the mind, not dull it. Creepy little men "singing" is not going to make me more focused, but a nice piece of Baroque will certainly do the trick.

1) Go to pandora

2) Start a new channel

3) Type "abakus"

4) vote up/down as desired

5) go on and be productive with an awesome, low-key background soundtrack

Alternatively, grooveshark.com for people currently outside of the U.S.

Why outside the U.S.? I'm in the U.S. and it seems to work fine.

Pandora doesn't work outside the US because of copyright difficulties. However, grooveshark doesn't seem to worry too much about this, and as such it's available outside the US.

Alternative to Pandora for people outside the US.

Wow. Thank you sir/ma'am.

My favorite is http://somafm.com/play/suburbsofgoa

Since people are suggesting online stations here, Notch (he of Minecraft fame) often listens to http://www.di.fm/electro/ and somehow I got addicted to it as well while watching him code his Ludum Dare entry. Kinda high energy though.

I've been a paying subscriber to di.fm for years. It's great.

Honestly, I barely know what the different station names mean; I just flip through the stations until I find one that has a beat/sound that matches what I'm looking for at that moment.

There are a bunch of channels on there though. Some sort of trance might be more your thing: http://www.di.fm/classictrance

I like to listen to my turntable while coding. Getting up every ~15 minutes to flip/change a record actually helps me focus because it gives me constant tiny breaks. The mindless nature of the task also doesn't interrupt my thoughts but does give me a change to stretch my legs.

Great thing. Although I don't think it is the best music to code by, especially as it just loops and loops! I made a similar 'remixer' in about 2003 for my university dissertation, although mine was networked so you could mix with a friend ;) Love the art style though

I've recently been digging Weird Ribs - Frontiers album which can be obtained free from his bandcamp.

http://weirdribs.bandcamp.com/track/space-tourist

If your into minimal/ambient/experimental.

This is freakin' awesome guys! Android/IOS app and maybe facebook will buy you for 1B ;)

Late to the party on this, but I highly recommend the imaginatively titled musicForProgramming(); over here: http://musicforprogramming.net/

I'm partial to http://8tracks.com. Users have posted a ton of "study" mixes and "workout" mixes that I find perfect for when I an designing or coding.

I would like to take this opportunity to make this shameless plug. I use it to play background music while programming. An app that is a full music player but in your browser and 100% html5. It plays local music like vlc or windows media player. It also runs entirely offline and in background (close the tab or browser and music still plays).

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/fddboknafkepdchido...

Looks interesting. Do you have the original URL for those of us not on Chrome?

Well the app is a packaged app. It's just like software. So it is not hosted on any server. I am working on making it a web app but that means it won't be working in background.

Ah, I see. Thanks. I thought it was a hosted web app.

Really bad title, really awesome app.

With all the dubstep links here, I'd be remiss if I didn't include Philly's own Dubsef:

http://soundcloud.com/dubsef/dubsef-filthwater-mix-www

http://soundcloud.com/dubsef/dubsef-broverload-vol-2

http://soundcloud.com/dubsef/dubsef-all-your-bass-are

I think it's funny how [negative] some of these comments are. I think the negative reactions here are a perfect example of Louis C.K.'s joke/rant: [1] "Today's Tech is Wasted on the Crappiest Generation"

[1] http://videosift.com/video/Louie-CK-on-Conan-Oct-1st-2008?fr...

Edit: angry -> negative

Which angry comments?

It's funny, i'm 2/3 of the way down this thread and so far most comments have been of the "i can't believe all these negative comments" ilk. I haven't seen one negative one yet. I guess they're lower down... i think HNers should have more faith in the upvote/downvote process.

true, same experience here often. I'm often reading things here after they've been on for a while, and I often have to read over comments complaining about other people being negative... I would probably agree with them, if only I would have seen any negativity besides the comments about negativity ..

Some of us don't have the privilege of downvoting :-(

Excellent. Love the interface. Very well-thought out.

I enjoy listening to live streams from clubs around the world thanks to time difference and http://www.awdio.com . On friday afternoons (in Europe) I ended the working week with electro/house from http://www.awdio.com/yumla. Now i'm in Asia myself and this doesnt work anymore :(

:( You guys put us to 300MB/s

That would explain why it was transferring <100kB/sec.

This (or at least the shuffle mode) reminds me of AlgoMusic, a music generator for the Amiga that, back in the day, provided me many hours of coding music:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyUnXjVgx44

I'm going to throw Incredibox into shuffle mode for a while to see how long it takes me to switch back to Daft Punk.

I can't believe your the only one in this thread that mentioned shuffle mode. Very neat.

/\ Just tried it out in an Amiga Emulator very cool

128 bpm just ain't enough these days. ;) Coding at 150 bpm always helps with some electronic music (eg. hardstyle) http://gaming.operationreality.org/groups/music/forum/topic/...

I'm surprised no one mentioned the Buddha Machine -- a physical box that loops sounds and beats to make a similar sort of music: http://www.fm3buddhamachine.com/v2/ This site reminds me a bit of the iPad app, which lets you work half a dozen virtual machines.

There's some really nice links here. Thanks everyone!

I'm old school :) http://livephish.com/radio/listen.m3u

Some good stuff here as well. http://www.radioio.com/genre/eclectic-specialty/

BBC Radio 1 Essential Mix does it for me: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006wkfp

The best DJs from around the world produce mixes every week. Pretty much always top notch stuff that usually doesn't have a lot of lyrics.

Wow, this application has gone even further. I saw it I think two years ago (or last year?) and you couldn't do that much with it.

It's very enjoyable because the loops are great.

Nothing to program to, as I enjoy alternative music (Limp Bizkit anyone?) and playing my playlists in iTunes while coding.

"Find the right combination" huh? Kind of subjective, right? How do you do this?

[edit]: http://www.howtocircle.com/2012/04/incredibox-find-right-com...

Fun to have a little play around in, although I'm not sure how much programming I'd get done playing with this ;).

http://www.incredibox.com/?music=4F9B48F2E5B02

I really like the interface. It's a joy to click around and building little songs!

But if you record a composition and instantly stop the recording, it will delete your whole composition. I think this isn't intentional.

Sorry I prefer old school dj's, they still exists and I don't have to play with an interface ? I'll stay with http://somafm.com/

How can I get at star 3?

Complete star 2 and remove all singers. Then add the first in each category, left to right. (How do I know this? Luck!)

I've wondered for awhile what some good programming music is. I know this could vary but what do some of your playlists consist of? Or even link up good Spotify playlists.

Wow, incredibly addicting. I don't think it is something I would play around with every day, but I spent about an hour trying out different combinations.

This is fun. I want to be able to share my mixes though.

How about this? http://www.incredibox.com/?music=4F9C15381AD42

I also like turn http://turntable.fm/ambient_chillout_trip_hop2

Something happened on my computer where it took like 3 minutes to load. May be an issue with Flash.

Also wasn't able to drop anything.

Using Chrome on Ubuntu.

My go-to coding music is the TRON: Legacy soundtrack, but this is turning out to be a pretty awesome alternative so far.

SomaFM is the key. Cliqhop + Groovesalad. http://somafm.com/

This is amazing, man. But it actually made me stopped coding, instead, I'm enjoying all the combinations.

This many replies and no one has mentioned how creepy their hipster mutation mascot is?!

This is so much fun. Thanks to whomever created this. Will give it a spin starting now.

I am officially addicted. One can't make anything that sounds bad with it! So badass.

Very cool! Next thing: randomly change the tunes every 3-4 mins :)

There's a shuffle button in the top right

This is incredibly cool. Having a blast messing with it.

yeah, i found this to be super fun and i felt like a dj for about 10 mins while i made my beats. job well done.

Flash Blocked!

Props. This is a very cool project.

I absolutely love it! I don't know what else to say.

I'm guessing there are plans to increase the number of different sound types?

Hackers soundtrack :)

the greatest thing about this app is the shuffle mode.

this is excellent - needs to be an iPad app.

great job ... beautiful interface!

I love it.

people still use flash?

You do now there is a place for rich media on the web and it is very popular. Don't you?

that was fun

mind=blown.

really good

spettacolare

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