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Music to Let you Concentrate

focusatwill.com

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Re: Music to Let you Concentrate

#101

Post by epsylon »

michaelgrafl wrote: post #48

Justin Bieber slowed down by 800% makes for some nice ambient noise. Someone should assemble a collection of lame pop music that sounds awesome when piped through Paul's Stretch. Would listen.

For the lazy, here's the song mentioned: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QspuCt1FM9M

This was created using paulstretch [1], a program to transform normal audio using extreme stretches. I've tried it on a few songs I liked and it does really an excellent jobs of creating extremely fluid ambiances.

The triple parentheses on the first video is a nod to Sunn O))) [2], an American drone / noise / ambient metal band which features super long songs with droning saturated guitars (playing on vintage cranked up to 11 Sunn Model T amps) and usually no drums. One of my favorite songs from them and perhaps one of the best introduction to their music for the non-initiated is titled Alice [3], though perhaps it's not as representative of their music as, say, Ra at Dusk [4]. (Sunn O))) was heavily influenced by the pioneer drone metal band Earth, and their mindblowing album Earth²: special low frequency version [5]).

[1] http://hypermammut.sourceforge.net/paulstretch

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunn_%28band%29

[3] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8Djdi6z0m8

[4] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buA_xDQQg74

[5] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ls1OYn_xGzM

Re: Music to Let you Concentrate

#102

Post by JonnieCache »

amitdugar wrote: post #100
JonnieCache wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

76:14 by Global Communication is an undisputed classic of the genre, however you might find it distracting because it's so good. And of course there's Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works 85-92, which should go without saying really. Again, you might not be able to work because it's such a good record. Also, it's not ambient in the sense of having no beats. If you've never heard it before you should probably just stop…

Thank you for suggesting Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works. I'd never heard of this before. Loving it :)

Fun fact: if you believe the title, he wrote some of the tracks when he was 14 years old.

Personally I don't believe it for a second.

Re: Music to Let you Concentrate

#103

Post by shrikant »

jwr wrote: post #73

Be careful. Music engages your creative hemisphere. This doesn't matter much if what you're doing is a simple, repetitive task. But if you're trying to design or program, it might kill your ability to "think outside the box" and invent creative solutions. In my case, listening to music while programming has a very pronounced effect: I will spend 30 minutes crafting a function that will do something. The function will…

I strongly agree with this. Even if it's only ambient music (mentioned here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5872706), I still use it only for situations involving mundane things like documentation. Otherwise I greatly prefer silence.

My SO though, is exactly the opposite. She just can't get any work done in silence, and needs relatively fast music with vocals. Although it does need to be music that she's already familiar with, otherwise she gets distracted by having to listen to the lyrics.

Re: Music to Let you Concentrate

#104

Post by rmrfrmrf »

limmeau wrote: post #17

To concentrate, I use computer game soundtracks (e.g. from Humble Bundle; particularly the one with Eufloria and Waking Mars), and to drown out voices of coworkers whose volume dial got lost in the laundry, text-heavy music in a language I don't understand (alternating between Czech hip-hop and Finnish hummpa).

Agreed. (The Sims 1 Build Mode Tracks/Skyrim OST/Skyrim Atmospheres CD) + RainyMood. Done and Done.

Re: Music to Let you Concentrate

#105

Post by sgift »

throwaway183 wrote: post #80
jwr wrote: post #73

Be careful. Music engages your creative hemisphere. This doesn't matter much if what you're doing is a simple, repetitive task. But if you're trying to design or program, it might kill your ability to "think outside the box" and invent creative solutions. In my case, listening to music while programming has a very pronounced effect: I will spend 30 minutes crafting a function that will do something. The function will…

Music engages your creative hemisphere. Do you have a source for this?

Peopleware, Page 78, "Creative Space":

"During the 1960s, researchers at Cornell University conducted a series of tests on the effects of working with music. They polled a group of computer science students and divided the students into two groups, those who liked to have music in the background while they worked (studied) and those who did not. Then they put half of each group together in a silent room, and the other half of each group in a different room equipped with earphones and a musical selection.Participants in both rooms were given a Fortran programming problem to work out from specification. To no one's surprise, participants in the two rooms performed about the same in speed and accuracy of programming. As any kid who does his arithmetic homework with the music on knows, the part of the brain required for arithmetic and related logic is unbothered by music —there's another brain center that listens to the music. The Cornell experiment, however, contained a hidden wild card. The specification required that an output data stream be formed through a series of manipulations on numbers in the input data stream. For example, participants had to shift each number two digits to the left and then divide by one hundred and so on, perhaps completing a dozen operations in total. Although the specification never said it, the net effect of all the operations was that each output number was necessarily equal to its input number. Some people realized this and others did not. Of those who figured it out, the overwhelming majority came from the quiet room."

(I hope this still counts as fair-use)

The whole part "Creative Space" is longer than my excerpt, so if you have access to Peopleware I recommend reading all of it.

Re: Music to Let you Concentrate

#106

Post by dhimes »

shrikant wrote: post #103
jwr wrote: post #73

Be careful. Music engages your creative hemisphere. This doesn't matter much if what you're doing is a simple, repetitive task. But if you're trying to design or program, it might kill your ability to "think outside the box" and invent creative solutions. In my case, listening to music while programming has a very pronounced effect: I will spend 30 minutes crafting a function that will do something. The function will…

I strongly agree with this. Even if it's only ambient music (mentioned here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5872706 ), I still use it only for situations involving mundane things like documentation. Otherwise I greatly prefer silence. My SO though, is exactly the opposite. She just can't get any work done in silence, and needs relatively fast music with vocals. Although it does need to be music that she's alrea…

For me, 'white noise' - type sounds- sounds of rainfall, waves, etc. [1]- help me focus. I usually work with nothing, bu one day when working in a noisy environment I discovered that putting headphones on and listening to 'sound of nature' tracks worked very well. So well, in fact, that now when I get stuck or am just having trouble focusing for any reason I do this.

[1] I think this is called 'brown noise' these days.

Re: Music to Let you Concentrate

#107

Post by swah »

antoncohen wrote: post #59

Coffitivity works well for me, it's not music, it's ambient noise http://www.coffitivity.com/

But... isn't this exactly like the sound I'm trying to block (coworkers talking!) ? :)

[edit] I just read on their page that their theory is "It's pretty hard to be creative in a quiet space". So while I like the "hotel lobbby" feel for some kinds of work, I disagree that silence is bad.

OTOH, this might work for me because I can't parse engilsh that well.

Re: Music to Let you Concentrate

#108

Post by dhimes »

sgift wrote: post #105
throwaway183 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Music engages your creative hemisphere. Do you have a source for this?

Peopleware, Page 78, "Creative Space": "During the 1960s, researchers at Cornell University conducted a series of tests on the effects of working with music. They polled a group of computer science students and divided the students into two groups, those who liked to have music in the background while they worked (studied) and those who did not. Then they put half of each group together in a silent room, and the othe…

link:

http://javatroopers.com/Peopleware.html#Chapter_12

Re: Music to Let you Concentrate

#110

Post by hexagonc »

JonnieCache wrote: post #102
amitdugar wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for suggesting Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works. I'd never heard of this before. Loving it :)

Fun fact: if you believe the title, he wrote some of the tracks when he was 14 years old. Personally I don't believe it for a second.

I don't find it surprising, especially for someone that is already a musical prodigy. I remember dreaming of beautiful melodies as a kid, but lacking musical talent, I was unable to play them on a musical instrument. Thus, the melodies were just stuck in my head and usually forgotten shortly after waking up.
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