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Comment by duncanmcdowell | Hacker News Reader

Any recommendations on specific music that helps you (artist/album)? I find that Radiohead/In Rainbows is good for me

It depends on my mood. I find productive music to almost always lack vocals. I will list some artists and their respective albums, of the top of my head. (subgenres) Many of these artists have great discographies.

Electronic

1. Glenn Underground - Atmosfear (house)

2. Aphex Twin - Ambient Works 85-92

3. Moby - 18

4. Space Dimension Controller - The Pathway To Tiraquon6 (soul-house)

5. Boards of Canada - Music has the right to Children

6. Ulrich Schnauss - Far Away Trains Passing By

Post-Classical

1. Steve Reich - Music for 18 Musicians

2. Ólafur Arnalds - ...And They Have Escaped the Weight of Darkness

3. Max Richter - Memoryhouse

4. Nico Muhly - Speaks Volumes

Pop/Indie/Jazz

1. Royksopp - Melody AM

2. The Album Leaf - In a Safe Place

3. Sigur Ros - Agaetis Byrjun

4. Miles Davis - In a Silent Way

5. Benoit Pioulard - Lasted

"I find productive music to almost always lack vocals."

Languages you don't speak also work.

LoL!! Try coding to Gangnam!!

I'll echo this sentiment. Been listening to a lot of music from Mali and being really productive with it on. Highly recommend Khaira Arby, Ali Farka Touré and Amadou & Mariam.

I created a Spotify playlist with all of these albums (except Boards of Canada and Nico Muhly, not available):

http://open.spotify.com/user/ryan.aidan/playlist/5ot3B9EqCZF...

Thanks! I will use it myself. Spotify is lacking some great music, that includes BoC. But, in general, I find myself using it more than I thought.

Shameless plug. I released an EP recently. I will be honest only two tracks are, what I consider, finished work. Track 2 and 5. But, still learning... fantasmafigueroa.bandcamp.com

Check out Tycho, which is available on Spotify. Similar to BoC and also excellent.

Thanks for this list, I went through everything you listed and found a few new albums which fit my coding music tastes.

Along the the same lines as fumar's suggestions, I recommend:

1. Music from Braid (yes, the video game)

2. Black Swan (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

3. The Social Network Soundtrack

Inception OST is insane too. Live long, Hans Zimmer!

> I find productive music to almost always lack vocals.

This agrees with generally accepted psychological models. The mind is totally single-threaded in language processing/parsing (compared to incredible parallelism in spatial processing).

This is why I don't understand you can hear voices in the coffitivity vocals, you need music not to catch some (parts of) sentences here and there. I do like it so far though, on the note of music that is nice to code to try out Pretty Lights.

Thanks. I will try it out.

Instrumental/lack of vocals also helps me. I mostly listen to post rock - godspeed you!black emperor, pelican, mogwai.

Got some of those in your list myself. More to include: 1) Eno - Music for Airports <br> 2) Kaen - Interworlds 3) Shulman - Random Thoughts. It's too engrossing the first few times. After that, pretty good for background music.

We enforce this in the rules on our communal listening site, http://codingsoundtrack.org -- we like to think it's something to do with that part of our brains already being dedicated to understanding computer language.

Carbon Based Lifeforms

Would like to add the Ryuichi Sakamoto & Alvo Noto collaborations as well as the pole Red, Blue, Yellow albums to this!

I think you would like everything from Bonobo. Warning: addictive - I often keep his new albums on repeat for many weeks.

I usually put 2 or 3 quiet electronic/trip-hop songs in my playlist and then I use the last.fm similar tracks to fill up the playlist, works quite well:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/177896/WP_Shot.PNG

try these https://soundcloud.com/shawndumas/likes

I can't recommend CAN highly enough. I've written code to their music since 2006 (with pauses when I couldn't stand it anymore). Their music ranges from kinda rock to kinda ambient but they usually have a solid beat which helps me concentrate and somehow makes me type faster since I try to align to it subconciously I guess. They also have minimal vocals, and if there're vocals, there're hard to understand since it is a gibberish of english, japanese, german, and made-up words. I recently created a light playlist of CAN tracks that work well for getting into the music: http://open.spotify.com/user/1218377486/playlist/5I4ZecZgYo9...

Apart from that, these two albums are also good for getting into it:

CAN - Tago Mago

CAN - Future Days

(Also, their music is from 1968 - 1973 but sounds very contemporary) Edit: Lines

Thanks for introducing me to this!

In a similar style Fujiya & Miyagi is great.

Thanks for reminding me. I really liked "Lightbulbs" but haven't listened to it in quite some time.

These guys are great!

They're an amazing group. Krautrock is a great genre and those albums are among the best. I love Kraftwerk as well.

Thanks for the link. I actually have that playing as well as the cafe background noise.

Kind of feels like I'm listening to music in a cafe! Working pretty well so far :)

Great idea to have the cafe noise in the background, too.

I'm surprised this hasn't been listed yet since it's usually a HN fav: http://musicforprogramming.net/ It's my go to at work whenever things get too noisy.

I greatly prefer ambient, and my favorite ambient artist these days is the late Lucette Bourdin: http://www.earthmantra.com/artist-detail.php?id=17

I'm also very fond of Steve Roach.

Not for everyone, but this is what I often program to http://www.di.fm/play/goapsy

Found in this reddit thread http://www.reddit.com/comments/6l9t9/best_background_music_f...

Balam Acab - Wander Wonder. Textural, ambient, sparse dub beats, sometimes dark, sometimes uplifting. Full album: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiH-O8eU1yg

Lifeformed - Fastfall. I made this! It's my first album, I made it for the indie game Dustforce. It's electronic, chill, fakebit (8-bit chiptune sounds with a modern sheen), with some beats. Full album: http://lifeformed.bandcamp.com/

I agree with a number of these, also want to add:

Brian Eno, any of the Ambient series

Either of the Fripp and Eno albums

Oval

Windy and Carl

Extremely anecdotal, but my silver bullets are jazz (modern soft jazz is great for this, but Kind of Blue [www.youtube.com/watch?v=hB669XXjnUg] has the advantage of being a landmark work AND incredibly relaxing) and really soft indie/folk (Blind Pilot, Iron and Wine, Noah & The Whale, that kind of thing.)

I love coding to jazz. "It can be played as background music, yet it amply rewards close listening" [0]. I collect records too, and jazz is one of my favorite genres to listen to on vinyl (although the distraction of the record flip can be a problem... sometimes I'll forget that it needs to be flipped at all, and I'll listen to the inner/lock groove for like 15 minutes before turning it off).

[0] http://www.allmusic.com/album/kind-of-blue-mw0000191710

I find myself going between Digitally Imported's "Epic Trance", "Vocal Trance", and "Hands up" stations [1], but as soon as I can find my Tron Legacy soundtrack I'll be listening to the "Sea of Simulation" track on infinite loop.

1: http://di.fm/

I like some ambient drum&bass for a similar sound, but a little more energy to keep me focused.

http://www.last.fm/listen/group/Atmospheric%2520Drum%2527n%2... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzoY_eEnnac http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ziP7iMCAok

I've been collecting albums in a playlist, sharing because I don't see any of them here: http://open.spotify.com/user/1216782004/playlist/7Me4IwfD6FV...

I've been adding much more quickly than curating, so probably lots of stuff that's not a good fit; at any rate, a few of my favorites so far:

1. Apparat - The Devil's Walk 2. Washed Out - Within and Without 3. Little People - Mickey Mouse Operation 4. Phutureprimitive - Kinetik

Wow, I listen to these 4 constantly. Really helps me get stuff done. Good choices!

If you have Spotify, I made a playlist that puts me into beast mode:

http://open.spotify.com/user/notmarkus/playlist/6pehPUR4xsO5...

Note that Port St. Willow's album "Holiday" should come right after Tim Hecker's "Ravedeath, 1972".

Holiday isn't on Spotify currently, but it'll be back on in April. If you can find it, give it a listen. On its own, it's great as work music.

The fact that you are the only one on here mentioning Tim Hecker is appalling. If I wanna get stuff done, I throw on Tim Hecker's many albums.

I find a lot of ambient music without vocals is good (Aphex Twin, Boards of Canada, Nettless, etc...). Not too repetitive, but the sounds give a nice "mask" to the external world and lets you focus.

I also found an online radio station called "Moving Through Space" which provides some nice background ambiance when reading (esp. science fiction): http://www.live365.com/stations/atombob

Well, I really doubt this will work for you, but as a metalhead I find abstract and atmospheric death or black metal works quite well for me (Lately I've been on an Agalloch (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4ih3JVrRPE) kick).

Also I find that medium-intensity electronica will put me in the zone - Deadmau5, Justice, etc.

Relax Daily. Good for coding, reading and sleeping. http://relaxdaily.net/relaxation-music-instrumentals/

Here's a mix of most of his previous works. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qycqF1CWcXg

My favorite so far is Phillip Glass's soundtrack to Kundun. Really interesting but not so much that it's distracting.

Anything from Explosions In The Sky. They're awesome and without vocals. Most of their music has made it to YouTube.

LCD Soundsystem - 45:33. I can always get a good flow on with a little caffeine. Works just as well for running.

I've gotten much more done with this one than anything else: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfPHEUZbPnw

An hour long of unchanging audio sort of fades into the background so you are unaware of it.

The best music for me when trying to be productive is music that I least pay attention to and concentrate on enjoying. If the music is too interesting then I get distracted. So for me: techno.

Nine Inch Nails presents Ghosts I - IV: http://ghosts.nin.com/main/home

I for one don't mind the ambient noise approach. But when I need to get into a coding groove, I chuck on Soma FM - Groove Salad :P

My favourites for coding are:

Stephan Micus

John Surman

Kraftwerk

[EDIT: tried to put artist names in different lines ]

I'd strongly recommend any of Cafe del Mar's music 2000's-era music. It's very mellow and ambient, and there's a lot of it.

I always use the soundtrack of the TV show greys anatomy. the series is meh but the music ils always good and diversified

Ambient and drone work well for me. Brian Eno's Thursday Afternoon and Soma.fm's Dronezone stream are favourites.

I've been listening to the Dave Brubeck Pandora station lately, the music goes well with anything.

well, shameless self promotion aside, programming was specifically what I composed my own music for: https://soundcloud.com/shawndumas/likes

DJ Shadow, Blockhead, Bonobo

I've been listening a lot of Hans Zimmer's music lately.

Anything by Queen :)

di.fm is great: try the progressive channel.

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