Ask HN: Hacking Music

Right now, The Social Network soundtrack. Before I bought that, M83 or 65daysofstatic. Postrock, mostly, with no goddamn lyrics.

Don’t know if others experience this, but I can’t listen to anything with lyrics while figuring things out because it distracts me, so movie scores work best. (Currently, that’s James Horner, Thomas Newman etc.) When I’m banging work out in the production phase though where I don’t need to think, then metalcore/metal/hard rock.

Do you mean the 5 free ones?

Nope. I actually bought the soundtrack. Only $5 for a lossless download. €3.59, you can't exactly go wrong. http://www.nullco.com/TSN/

Oh no, not again ...

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=61831

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=132026

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=167076

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=367418

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=668087

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=716219

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=769769

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1209378

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1525445

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1734122

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1833040

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And again, from http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=716262 - one of the many times this question has come up ...

None - I can't code while music is on. Ditto conversation, and ditto doing math.

There was something in PeopleWare (I think) about an experiment done with people listening to music. Those listening to their preferred music performed about as well as those who preferred silence and got it, and about as well as those who preferred music, but had silence. The group that preferred silence but had music performed, unsurprisingly, comparatively badly.

The sting in the tail was this. The task they were given had an "Aha!" insight buried in it. Namely, the full set of transforms they'd been asked to implement turned out to be trivial, although the individual components weren't.

All the programmers who had the "Aha!" moment had silence, regardless of their preference. No one with music saw the short cut.

I've since tried to find concrete evidence to support this anecdote, either papers, or first hand accounts, but the recounting in PeopleWare remains the only reference I have.