Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Music for Programming (2011)

musicforprogramming.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 272 posts

Re: Music for Programming (2011)

#131

Post by alecmg »

DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #75
coreyp_1 wrote: post #35

Am I the only person who can't listen to anything while coding? My attention goes straight to the music, and I can't concentrate on the task at hand! When I was in high school, my math teacher would play Mozart during tests, claiming it would help us. It would drive me crazy, and I doubt that my grades improved as a result of the distraction. For what it's worth, I have a BMus in Piano Performance. I love music... bu…

It depends on what my current task is. If it's something tedious, i.e. robotically making some kind of change throughout a code base, then my attention span can handle the additional load and the music may help me not procrastinate. But for anything involving serious thinking, all forms of music I've tried are too much of a distraction. I have ADD, which may be a factor.

Similar for me. Track has to be something very familiar and with a steady rhytm. Task has to be something semi-mechanical, like implementing an idea in code with no additional thinking required.

Haven't been diagnosed, but attention span is pretty short.

Re: Music for Programming (2011)

#132

Post by basq »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #94
tombert wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not the only person; it's why I absolutely despise open offices. I have trouble getting things done with people talking, and "just putting on headphones" doesn't really work because I have trouble focusing on anything but the music. The closest thing I'll do to address my particular problem is find audio of stuff like thunderstorms or waterfalls and more ambient stuff. Personally, I find that much easier to tu…

I think this site does a decent job of avoiding music that can be focused on. They mention on the about page: > we have found that the most effective music to aid prolonged periods of intense concentration tends to have a mixture of the following qualities: Drones Noise Fuzz Field recordings Vagueness (Hypnagogia) Textures without rhythm Minor complex chords Early music (Baroque, lute, harpsichord) Very few drums or…

Pure white noise doesn't quite work for me because my hearing will try to make sense of it anyway. It's akin to looking at tv static and seeing images fuzz & flicker in and out of the signal noise. Interestingly enough, this observation got me into making noise music for awhile, it started with just some noise oscillators running through filters with lfo's on them. Then add in some noise osc's with amplitude envelopes and you can create rhythmic elements, but I digress.

Re: Music for Programming (2011)

#133

Post by TheLastMan »

tomcooks wrote: post #20

Nothing better than Gamelan, the album Degung Sabilulungan vol. 2 in particular[0] The repetitive, gentle sounds put me into a high efficiency mode without putting me to sleep like most ambient. [0]: Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nrgTossoB0

Oh wow, I didn't think i'd see someone mentioning Gamelan, but while were on the subject, have you tried Geinoh Yamashirogumi? Check this out!

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRQiaRrNbCY

Re: Music for Programming (2011)

#134

Post by Porthos9K »

pelliphant wrote: post #21
Porthos9K wrote: post #3

I'm not familiar with any of these musicians, so I'm going to have to check them out. Thanks! I was lucky enough to score a second-hand set of Deutche Grammophon's Complete Beethoven Edition at an estate sale, and I like to crank up the piano sonatas when coding (and save the symphonies for consensual sex and ultraviolence). When I'm not rocking out to the Ludwig van, I've got some other stuff I like to play while co…

> and save the symphonies for consensual sex... mmkay, thats nice, but what do you listen to for non-consentual sex? /s

I might be an arsehole, but I'm not a rapist. If the other people aren't into it, then I'm out of there.

Re: Music for Programming (2011)

#135

Post by peruvian »

coreyp_1 wrote: post #35

Am I the only person who can't listen to anything while coding? My attention goes straight to the music, and I can't concentrate on the task at hand! When I was in high school, my math teacher would play Mozart during tests, claiming it would help us. It would drive me crazy, and I doubt that my grades improved as a result of the distraction. For what it's worth, I have a BMus in Piano Performance. I love music... bu…

How about this - I can't focus with office noise but I can focus while listening to podcasts. Makes no sense!

Re: Music for Programming (2011)

#136

Post by aasasd »

travisjungroth wrote: post #51
coreyp_1 wrote: post #35

Am I the only person who can't listen to anything while coding? My attention goes straight to the music, and I can't concentrate on the task at hand! When I was in high school, my math teacher would play Mozart during tests, claiming it would help us. It would drive me crazy, and I doubt that my grades improved as a result of the distraction. For what it's worth, I have a BMus in Piano Performance. I love music... bu…

I’m guessing music transmits a lot more “information” to you than the average person. It’s hard to have something you love as a background. I love scuba diving. If there was a monitor with rotating images of underwater scenes, I wouldn’t just think it was pretty. I’d be glued to it figuring out where they took the shot, wondering how deep they were and wishing I was there. I’m guessing something similar happens with…

There's definitely truth in that. After learning to drive, I found that the sense of vague-but-uninformative flow in the sight of traffic, that ant-like busyness, is gone. Now it all has meanings. Worse, I'm now hypnotized by scenes of cars trying to pass each other in the one-lane driveways below my apartment. A trainwreck of five cars going one way, three the other, and two coming in from the side, might keep me at the window for half an hour.

Re: Music for Programming (2011)

#137

Post by tbirdz »

coreyp_1 wrote: post #35

Am I the only person who can't listen to anything while coding? My attention goes straight to the music, and I can't concentrate on the task at hand! When I was in high school, my math teacher would play Mozart during tests, claiming it would help us. It would drive me crazy, and I doubt that my grades improved as a result of the distraction. For what it's worth, I have a BMus in Piano Performance. I love music... bu…

I can't listen to music at all when I'm designing the code, and I find it very distracting. Designing interfaces/APIs/etc is a higher bandwidth activity for me, and requires more focus, so music is a distraction.

But when I'm implementing the design, I find music very helpful. Just turning the code from design to actual code takes less focus from me, so I can end up getting distracted by other things in my environment if I don't have something else that can "fill up" the remaining amount of mental attention bandwidth. Also podcasts work even better than music for this.

Re: Music for Programming (2011)

#139

Post by bloopernova »

coreyp_1 wrote: post #35

Am I the only person who can't listen to anything while coding? My attention goes straight to the music, and I can't concentrate on the task at hand! When I was in high school, my math teacher would play Mozart during tests, claiming it would help us. It would drive me crazy, and I doubt that my grades improved as a result of the distraction. For what it's worth, I have a BMus in Piano Performance. I love music... bu…

My wife and I have ADD in different areas/amounts. The difference between us in the way we use and react to sound is, in my rather biased opinion, fascinating:

Me: Single source only, absolutely can't listen to music while trying to code or read. I have used https://mynoise.net/ and the Android app to drown out environmental noise when I'm working around others. I'm very easily distracted by noise, especially things like speakerphone conferences. Music to me is a single focus thing, I can't do anything else and have to focus only on the music.

Her: can hold a conversation with me while listening to a podcast and simultaneously playing a phone game. Music is very much something that happens while she is busy doing other stuff, even when it's her favourite songs and she's rocking out singing along.

It was a revelation to her when we discussed this. She was completely unaware that to me, trying to hold a conversation if I was already listening to music was almost painful. She's adjusted her expectations and knows that if my good headphones are on, it's my music time. We both love music so much, it's an integral part of our gen-x upbringing, yet our different attention problems lead us to consume it in very different ways.

(and, yes, she's awesome. I'm amazed daily by her and count myself incredibly lucky to find someone as kind, understanding, funny, loving, sexy and brilliant as her)

sorry if that's TMI.

Re: Music for Programming (2011)

#140

Post by bloopernova »

cheschire wrote: post #90
tombert wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not the only person; it's why I absolutely despise open offices. I have trouble getting things done with people talking, and "just putting on headphones" doesn't really work because I have trouble focusing on anything but the music. The closest thing I'll do to address my particular problem is find audio of stuff like thunderstorms or waterfalls and more ambient stuff. Personally, I find that much easier to tu…

I use bose in-ear noise cancelling headphones with a custom spectrum of noise from mynoise.net playing which is specifically tuned to the same frequency as certain louder individuals in my office. Completely blocks it.

Another vote for mynoise.net and the Android app. I haven't tried it with noise-cancelling headphones though, just some fairly good Sennheiser HD380s.

Also, the idea of you fine tuning certain individuals out is hilarious to me. Nice job on saving your sanity!

Post reply on HN