Don't laugh, but for me, it's Abba. Their entire discography is ~3 hours which is how long I can maintain peak concentration. Their songs are consistently good so that I don't need to skip a song, but not too good that I would stop working and start listening. Plus I've never heard Abba song in any good movie so it doesn't remind me scenes from a movie I would want to rewatch. Of course I don't listen to it every day, only when I really need to, most daily programming tasks can be done with any music.
For real concentration I can't have lyrics but that's a great idea for other flow states. Mozart and Brahms are good for me ... Not slow enough to put me to sleep not fast enough or unusual to make me pay attention to the music.
I vary a lot but when I do classical music Mozart has occupied quite a lot of my stats, in particular a clarinet concerto by Katherine Lucy [1] and also things like Beethoven's 6th (pastoral, it's beautifully featured in Fantasia) or Grieg's morning mood.
I play that song too while programming (along with several dozen others on a dedicated programming playlist). Eventually it goes into the background and just covers up outside noise. Some key moments are noticed -- i stop looking at my screen, repeat after the singer, and then go back to working five seconds later.
The Winner Takes It All lyrics are great for commits and Pull Requests: I don't wanna talk
If it makes you feel sad
And I understand
You've come to shake my hand
I apologize
If it makes you feel bad
Like others have said, for specific types of activity, I'll prefer no vocals or maybe even no music, but if vocals are fine Abba does have a great flow to it. I used to run to Abba too, at times, because it feels upbeat/positive with good enough tempo. Super trouper, for instance, makes for a great booster.
As a dancer it’s funny to me that programming and dancing both seem to be better with a disco soundtrack. Or house, or funk. Anything with a strong backbeat.
No laughter here, my brother in music. This is one of the few vocal groups that I could be in the zone with, except "Fernando", because one must release their inner theater kid with that one.
Shoutout to SomaFM's Defcon Radio which has been my go-to programming music for years now. Not too dissimilar to the stuff found on this site. https://somafm.com/defcon/
Could not love SomaFM more! The past few xmas holiday seasons I've been streaming "Department Store Christmas" which is hugely wacky retro Christmas music. Somehow I'd never heard "What Ever Happened to Christmas" a Jimmy Webb song made famous by Frank Sinatra. It was kind of life changing.
Personally, I still like these defcon sound bites, even though I've heard them plenty of times. They are part of the atmosphere that the stream wants to create.
I find that the Secret Agent channel is great for my focus nowadays. I recall listening to Groove Salad back in my draftsman years, from 2000-2002. I am still amazed at how SomaFM has continued to exist.
>> I've had three main tracks that I've used for the past 8 months or so.
I've had several dozen songs (grown from ~5 in 1998) that I've used for almost 28yrs. They were originally mp3s, eventually cds, then apple music. I'm glad the artists have been getting royalties on the songs, i play them on loop sometimes for hours a day for decades on.
I like the concept but ambient as a genre doesn't really do anything for me. It makes me want to go take a nap.
Haven't added anything to it in a while, but over the years I built a youtube playlist of songs that help me focus while working. Generally rules are: predominantly electronic, has some kind of beat, zero vocals. I'm up to over 500 songs at this point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dTpQwBMaBI&list=PL2A7B99AB9...
This seems focused on one very particular taste in music of droning semi-random lo-fi synthesizers. I find this unlistenable without any kind of percussion.
The fact that it works for the author, but totally does not for you is a big fat sign that says: search what works for you. More than that: search what works for you in a particular state of mind. You are a special enough snowflake to require a personal playlist, and it's not easily guessable. Sometimes what works best for me is Bach's violin concertos. Other times it's MBR [1]. Yet other times it might be some Keiko Matsui piano jazz, or early Apocalyptica, or Enya, or [...]. Try different things, notice what feels right and when, rinse, repeat.
Not all music I like makes good work music. For instance, I cannot work with code while listening to songs: the verbal center apparently gets overloaded.
Agreed! I like music that can be enjoyed either active or passive listening. The main requirement is that it have no vocals. Here's my go-to Spotify playlist while coding.
I'm a fan of ambient and instrumental hip hop for programming.
My personal favorites are pretty much anything by Nujabes (including the soundtracks for Samurai Champloo), Fat Jon, and DJ Okawari.
I also like some classic albums in the genre like Donuts by J Dilla, Dr. No's Oxperiment by Oh No, and Endtroducing by DJ Shadow.
I will sometimes go through essential charts I find to dive into new genres, and other times I'll pick a random artist and go through their entire discography start to finish.
I highly recommend doing that with Talk Talk, their transition from 80s pop to experimental is phenomenal.
Based on what you've already mentioned, there's a good chance you're familiar, but on the off chance you're not: "Funkungfusion" (or, really, anything off the Ninja Tune label) might be right up your alley.
In the morning I listen to chill electronic music without lyrics: Tycho, Emancipator, Blackmill, Jon Hopkins
Later in the day I listen to more energetic electronic music (a lot of which is from the Hotline Miami soundtrack): M|O|O|N, Dan Terminus, Carpenter Brut, Daniel Deluxe, 1788-L, Pendulum
That is so specific, I can't believe there is someone else out there that flows to Deux Ex. I've had whole sessions with Human Revolution on repeat.
You might also like some synthwave: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Gajv2yJt5M
The Moebius FM and Frequency channels have many nice long mixes.
This site is a gem that has accompanied me on many spikes in the last year :) datasette's original music is top tier too. cognitively stimulating but not attention stealing.
Have you listened to his "business funk" mixes? Too stimulating for work (for me) but so much fun. In my head it's the soundtrack to me striding through an open plan office barking nonsense business jargon.
If I'd have to make one recommendation it's David August's Boiler Room set [1]. It has such a coherent flow through the whole set, it makes me fly through multiple hours if not days of work.
I tend to like stuff by Will Wood. Always good enough to not skip a song, enough variety I'm not tempted to change to something else, large enough discography to not get distracted by repeat tracks, and insightful lyrics that have "the hacker way" if that makes any sense. Also partial to wendy carlos or whatever The Current (local MN radio station that has really good taste and pulls some deep cuts pretty often) plays
ETA: I forgot to mention gorillaz. Great programming music, and seems to give me good ideas.
I discovered long ago that psytrance/goa was perfect for me. It works almost as well as caffeine and I can work for hours and hours as long as it’s blaring.
For programming, I cannot recommend Soma FM [1] highly enough. There are a huge number of stations, most lyric-free (as to reduce the potential for flow interruption). I personally enjoy Groove Salad Classic and Lush.
I'm well aware that I'm in the minority, but I have never been able to focus on anything - especially programming - other than in absolute, total silence.
I don't know if you're in a minority. I think people just don't like a boring answer like "silence".
I was raised in a big family, and I prefer silence when I need truly deep focus. From my experience in open floorplan offices, a majority don't break out the headphones until it gets noisy enough. Some people would even come in early or stay late for exactly this reason.
If I could code with a piece of music playing in the background and not lose focus means it's not worth listening at all.
Very rarely I use custom-filtered (brownish) noise to help with isolation. Perhaps some kind of Ambient or New Age would work too in such situations, but things I like in those genres require attention and not paying it would be absolutely disrespectful.
I listen to all kinds of music at my dayjob but only during specific activities that do not require much contemplation and I can mostly flow with the music and do the work in the background.
Though, I'm a musician and sound engineer, so my relationships with music in general might be a bit special.
Friend, you're missing out by applying a too-rigid filter. There's a bright-line distinction to be made between this use of music as a tool for cognitive enhancement, vs listening for valid reasons other than focus.
I'm a musician too, and a lifelong student and appreciator / afficianado of music across many genres. And I spend hours every workday listening to tracks from my "flowstate" playlist -- which tracks are excluded from my taste profile. Other use cases include music appreciation (close attention for pleasure), education / cultural literacy (close attention for analysis / learning), performance (close attention for reproduction, typically broken into segments / fragments), dancing (mixed attention, emphasis on rhythm and physical movement), relaxation (minimal attention), meditation (minimal attention), mood-setting / socialization (mixed attention), etc.
Judging a piece of music intended for one of these categories based solely on whether it's "worth listening to" or "[demanding of] respect" in the context of the wrong category will leave you impoverished in the other areas.
EDIT: P.S. That doesn't mean tolerating muzak! I recommend curating playlists limited to tracks that you can appreciate in a given appropriate, narrowed context. For example, here's my "flowstate"
playlist:
I recently discovered Lorn and have been mainlining his back catalogue ever since whilst working. Thoroughly interesting and immersive yet not distracting.
It's unsurprising to find lots of ambient / electronica here, and generally I'm the same, but I do occasionally like really loud punk or rock if I need some motivation, like the album Feel The Darkness by Poison Idea, or as I said in another comment, I Am A Tower by Swans on a loop. Generally I get my best work done when I can lock into a single track and have it on repeat.
Everyone is linking the stuff they use, so I will add as well. I like the ambient/electronic as well, but this one might be new/exciting for some of you.
This is an extended edition of "it might just be a one shot deal" from the waka/jawaka album by Frank Zappa. The extended part is the pedal steel played by Sneaky Pete Kleinow.
If you have never heard any Zappa stuff and this is interesting to you, listen to waka jawaka itself if you like instrumentals. If you want something more commercial, listen to the Apostrophe/Overnite Sensation album. If you want more odd, listen to the Bongo Fury album, featuring Captain Beefheart. Happy exploring.
I remember watching an interview with Marco Arment (creator of Overcast and Instapaper) where he mentions that he listens to Phish a lot [1]. He collects every single recording and live show, almost 30 gigabytes of music from this one band. IIRC, he listens to it when working, so he never runs out of "music for programming" this way.
I fully credit Autechre's album Exai for deconstructing and reconstructing my brain to learn functional programming back in college (shoutout Racket and BSL).
Impossible to recommend without knowing what works for you. For a one-stop-shop, try SOMA.FM (https://somafm.com/) for a great variety of well-vetted choons in multople genres.
After that, one can build up a list of hundreds of net radio stations in VLC and find one that works for you -today-.
The soundtracks for SimCity 3000, 4, and the 5th one titled just "SimCity" are written specifically to be played while doing some fiddly micromanagement tasks.
When I'm really trying to get shit done I'll put on some German industrial music like Bagger 258. The lyrics don't bother me because I don't understand them. I find the harsh aesthetic helps to keep me from getting distracted with side quests. Those little voices in my head become inaudible over the nonsensical (to me) lyrics.
I like listening to hard rock, EBM and industrial when working. Something with a lot of energy. The lyrics don't bother me at all, I am good at not listening to them, especially if I know the song and what the lyrics are.
Aim to Head's mix channel is a lot of what I listen to for my design work. 30 min to 1 hour of well mixed tracks. The Witch House tracks are partially helpful in focusing.
I too can enjoy the SomaFM/Dublab sounds for work.
But when I need to mix it up, I switch to FIP (Paris). They manage several different stations, but start with the main one first. It's excellently curated with more of a global palette than your typical station.
I listen to psytrance. Mostly full-on. It usually does not have any vocals and has a groove or beat. But nothing really surpasses silence for thinking.
I’ve thought about and experimented with it a lot. The main criteria is no lyrics, or at a minimum lyrics in a language you don’t understand at all, since this hijacks attention from parts of the brain useful for programming in a noticeable way. I find prominent fast percussion seems to help with focus but I am less confident of that.
Most other elements don’t seem to matter too much. Baroque, industrial, ambient, etc are all effectively equivalent in most regards.
That said, I tend to lean toward 1990s atmospheric drum-and-bass (pretty much anything released by Good Looking Records) as a good default. That genre maximizes things that seem to help while minimizing things that seem to detract.
This may be weird.. but I have been listening to a bunch of extended "save room" ambient tracks based on music in Resident Evil.. Someone under the name of Survival Spheres has a crapload of these on YT-music.. They are all about 10-12 mins long.. and they stay of the way mentally..
then you'll adore this "deep progressive techno" mix playlist by artist "Dub Element" with 50 hours of the finest rolling deep pumping oldschool rave techno. Also does d'n'b and dub techno..
I remember downloading music from the hacking e-show “The Scene” way back when - must have been late 2000s? Some great music in there like Newborn Butterflies if I remember the name right. It was nice background music in the show and I’d put it on from time to time.
I remember back in 2012, thanks to the playlist #4 by Com Truise, I discovered Boards of Canada. I will always be thankful to Datassette for this project!
There are usually no lyrics, there's an absolute ton out there, and something about the music gets my brain flowing better than other instrumental music.
awesome for coding! my fav stations with dub techno chan: Mabu Beatz from Germany, Radio Caprice from Russia & Radio Schizoid from India. Last one has an excellent chillout chan as well, even though the track metadata has been half broken for years (UTF16BE BOM ftw)..
I just wish the guy on the right would stop trying to take a shit while he plays. It's hella distracting. But yeah, thanks for the intro to this - me likey.
Don't laugh, but for me, it's Abba. Their entire discography is ~3 hours which is how long I can maintain peak concentration. Their songs are consistently good so that I don't need to skip a song, but not too good that I would stop working and start listening. Plus I've never heard Abba song in any good movie so it doesn't remind me scenes from a movie I would want to rewatch. Of course I don't listen to it every day, only when I really need to, most daily programming tasks can be done with any music.
For real concentration I can't have lyrics but that's a great idea for other flow states. Mozart and Brahms are good for me ... Not slow enough to put me to sleep not fast enough or unusual to make me pay attention to the music.
Agree about the lyrics. Phillip Glass is one of my favorites for flowing. His style usually involves a lot of repetition, which I find meditative.
Steve Reich is my favourite of the minimalists. Electric counterpoint and Music for 18 Musicians are regulars in the line up.
Yes, Music for 18 Musicians is such a wonderful companion for sustained focus. I look forward to checking out Electric Counterpoint more closely.
I vary a lot but when I do classical music Mozart has occupied quite a lot of my stats, in particular a clarinet concerto by Katherine Lucy [1] and also things like Beethoven's 6th (pastoral, it's beautifully featured in Fantasia) or Grieg's morning mood.
- [1] https://open.spotify.com/album/1R6rh9My8CTK4DqZorJR0V?si=3Ct...
If you have specific song/interpretation recommendations I'd love to hear them.
I've really been enjoying this series of Mozart concertos on Alpha, highlighting young(er) performers: https://outhere-music.com/en/collections/next-generation-moz...
Thanks. This Is awesome
I don't understand how a song like Lay All Your Love On Me doesn't distract you.
I play that song too while programming (along with several dozen others on a dedicated programming playlist). Eventually it goes into the background and just covers up outside noise. Some key moments are noticed -- i stop looking at my screen, repeat after the singer, and then go back to working five seconds later.
The Winner Takes It All lyrics are great for commits and Pull Requests: I don't wanna talk If it makes you feel sad And I understand You've come to shake my hand I apologize If it makes you feel bad
> Don't laugh
I laugh (:
But good for you, whatever works. Personally, I can't do music with much lyrics or narrative; I find it distracting.
But to each their own!
Like others have said, for specific types of activity, I'll prefer no vocals or maybe even no music, but if vocals are fine Abba does have a great flow to it. I used to run to Abba too, at times, because it feels upbeat/positive with good enough tempo. Super trouper, for instance, makes for a great booster.
yeah but see the problem with abba is i just wanna get up and dance and not do any work
As a dancer it’s funny to me that programming and dancing both seem to be better with a disco soundtrack. Or house, or funk. Anything with a strong backbeat.
No laughter here, my brother in music. This is one of the few vocal groups that I could be in the zone with, except "Fernando", because one must release their inner theater kid with that one.
ABBA is amazing
It would be impossible for me to not sing along to ABBA
Mark Watney sighs deeply
Mamma Mia soundtrack also works well \m/
Shoutout to SomaFM's Defcon Radio which has been my go-to programming music for years now. Not too dissimilar to the stuff found on this site. https://somafm.com/defcon/
My defaults are Drone Zone, Synphaera, and The Trip.
These three are very similar to what Defcon sounded like before around 2023 when they started adding more generic hip-hop influenced beats.
Defcon can be alright, but about 25% of their playlist will suddenly take me out of a flow state due to vocals or some obnoxious rhythmic detail.
SomaFM is the best! They now have a Groove Salad Classic channel which plays all the great stuff they _were_ playing in the early to mid 2000's.
I used to work to SomaFM all the time. Then took a break I guess? Then somehow totally forgot it even existed. So thanks for the reminder.
Could not love SomaFM more! The past few xmas holiday seasons I've been streaming "Department Store Christmas" which is hugely wacky retro Christmas music. Somehow I'd never heard "What Ever Happened to Christmas" a Jimmy Webb song made famous by Frank Sinatra. It was kind of life changing.
I love the music on defcon but could really do without the sporadic interruptions. At first it was ok but gets old after a while.
Remember your 3-2-1.
Personally, I still like these defcon sound bites, even though I've heard them plenty of times. They are part of the atmosphere that the stream wants to create.
I find that the Secret Agent channel is great for my focus nowadays. I recall listening to Groove Salad back in my draftsman years, from 2000-2002. I am still amazed at how SomaFM has continued to exist.
I've been listening to Space Station to flow for more than 20 years.
I was a bit annoyed when Somafm got blocked on our corporate proxy
I've had three main tracks that I've used for the past 8 months or so.
The first one is a 1-hour mix of "In Motion" from the soundtrack to The Social Network: https://youtu.be/bCxPmMbZjuk
The second is a 1-hour mix of "It Has to be This Way" from the soundtrack to Metal Gear Rising Revengance: https://youtu.be/jKGDib6qZBo
The third is a 1-hour mix of "Clock Tower" from the soundtrack to Dead Cells: https://youtu.be/plwhysPCxXI
I think you might also like Daft Punk's - Tron Legacy album. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjM8d0Csuk4
I love listening to it while programming, driving, cooking. :)
In Motion is my favorite productivity track as well. Most of the time I just listen to the whole The Social Network soundtrack
> In Motion is my favorite productivity track as well. Most of the time I just listen to the whole The Social Network soundtrack
I love hacker soundtracks too! I play the OST for Mr Robot and Halt and Catch Fire
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLX2MjjP5LxjyxA0Vvws3y...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucSUs3adMQ8&list=PLrvyiZ4XwF...
>> I've had three main tracks that I've used for the past 8 months or so.
I've had several dozen songs (grown from ~5 in 1998) that I've used for almost 28yrs. They were originally mp3s, eventually cds, then apple music. I'm glad the artists have been getting royalties on the songs, i play them on loop sometimes for hours a day for decades on.
You're my kind of person
I think you meant "standing here, I realize, you are just like me, trying to make history"
I like the concept but ambient as a genre doesn't really do anything for me. It makes me want to go take a nap.
Haven't added anything to it in a while, but over the years I built a youtube playlist of songs that help me focus while working. Generally rules are: predominantly electronic, has some kind of beat, zero vocals. I'm up to over 500 songs at this point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dTpQwBMaBI&list=PL2A7B99AB9...
Fab playlist, thank you
I have very similar criteria, but for me at least
> zero vocals
can also be vocals in a language I don't understand. In those cases, the voice is just another instrument and not distracting.
thanks for this (more than a simple upvote could say)
NTS radio has been incredible for programming music over the years. Deep backlog, an ambient channel (infinite mixtape: https://www.nts.live/infinite-mixtapes/slow-focus), and great selections:
https://www.nts.live/
And they have mobile apps :)
This seems focused on one very particular taste in music of droning semi-random lo-fi synthesizers. I find this unlistenable without any kind of percussion.
The fact that it works for the author, but totally does not for you is a big fat sign that says: search what works for you. More than that: search what works for you in a particular state of mind. You are a special enough snowflake to require a personal playlist, and it's not easily guessable. Sometimes what works best for me is Bach's violin concertos. Other times it's MBR [1]. Yet other times it might be some Keiko Matsui piano jazz, or early Apocalyptica, or Enya, or [...]. Try different things, notice what feels right and when, rinse, repeat.
[1]: https://masterbootrecord.bandcamp.com/music
For a while and a certain mood, Ostkreuz's album "Motor" worked shockingly well and I coded like in the most focused flow ever...
Wow I've never thought about listening to music I like before?????
Not all music I like makes good work music. For instance, I cannot work with code while listening to songs: the verbal center apparently gets overloaded.
Agreed! I like music that can be enjoyed either active or passive listening. The main requirement is that it have no vocals. Here's my go-to Spotify playlist while coding.
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1IKenYEiooONuxxawKtNOm?si=...
I'm a fan of ambient and instrumental hip hop for programming.
My personal favorites are pretty much anything by Nujabes (including the soundtracks for Samurai Champloo), Fat Jon, and DJ Okawari.
I also like some classic albums in the genre like Donuts by J Dilla, Dr. No's Oxperiment by Oh No, and Endtroducing by DJ Shadow.
I will sometimes go through essential charts I find to dive into new genres, and other times I'll pick a random artist and go through their entire discography start to finish.
I highly recommend doing that with Talk Talk, their transition from 80s pop to experimental is phenomenal.
Based on what you've already mentioned, there's a good chance you're familiar, but on the off chance you're not: "Funkungfusion" (or, really, anything off the Ninja Tune label) might be right up your alley.
same. combining the 10 volumes of Special Herbs makes a good 5 hour playlist too
In the morning I listen to chill electronic music without lyrics: Tycho, Emancipator, Blackmill, Jon Hopkins
Later in the day I listen to more energetic electronic music (a lot of which is from the Hotline Miami soundtrack): M|O|O|N, Dan Terminus, Carpenter Brut, Daniel Deluxe, 1788-L, Pendulum
Carpenter Brut and a ton of caffeine was vibecoding before LLMs.
My go-to is Paronator - Flowers of Life[1]. It makes an hour melt away.
[1] https://www.discogs.com/master/3779840-Paronator-Flowers-Of-...
The soundtracks for those two games are just so so good and perfect for that post-lunch caffeinated focus time.
For me it's the soundtracks to Deus Ex (basically all the games), Mr. Robot, and Halt and Catch Fire.
That is so specific, I can't believe there is someone else out there that flows to Deux Ex. I've had whole sessions with Human Revolution on repeat. You might also like some synthwave: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Gajv2yJt5M The Moebius FM and Frequency channels have many nice long mixes.
For me nothing beats 90s ambient dnb for coding. There's something about drum and bass that really gets me in flow.
Also Big Beat, for me. Crystal Method's Vegas reaches into my brain and flips the time to code switch.
Also Fluke - Risotto. Similar vibes.
Definitely my cuppa tea too :)
https://m.youtube.com/@arcologies
Yoooo thanks for the rec this is spot on up my alley.
You might also like mood indigo on SoundCloud, mix of house and DnB been a solid programming session soundtrack for me over the last few years.
https://on.soundcloud.com/5HzXSAKAdM41bxIvdp
Same. My music collection covers a vast range but I find the Good Looking Records catalog to be nearly ideal for getting me into the flow state.
It really sucks that so much of that catalog is no longer available for all intents and purposes.
You thinking like Good Looking Records stuff like Artemis? Love it.
Artemis/Shogun are one of my major go-tos.
Same... Source Direct - Approach and Identify
I used to have bassdrive on. So good.
This site is a gem that has accompanied me on many spikes in the last year :) datasette's original music is top tier too. cognitively stimulating but not attention stealing.
Have you listened to his "business funk" mixes? Too stimulating for work (for me) but so much fun. In my head it's the soundtrack to me striding through an open plan office barking nonsense business jargon.
Agreed datasette is critically slept on
Flechte is a regular play of mine https://youtu.be/-3HUn6wotvg
For me, the Bach of electronic music..
If I'd have to make one recommendation it's David August's Boiler Room set [1]. It has such a coherent flow through the whole set, it makes me fly through multiple hours if not days of work.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRfwdJx0NDE
I tend to like stuff by Will Wood. Always good enough to not skip a song, enough variety I'm not tempted to change to something else, large enough discography to not get distracted by repeat tracks, and insightful lyrics that have "the hacker way" if that makes any sense. Also partial to wendy carlos or whatever The Current (local MN radio station that has really good taste and pulls some deep cuts pretty often) plays
ETA: I forgot to mention gorillaz. Great programming music, and seems to give me good ideas.
Minneapolitan here! Just had to agree that The Current is a treasure.
For the benefit of others, you can stream it here, if you're curious: https://www.thecurrent.org/
Not revealing where I live, but I'm not too far away from there myself ;)
Will Wood is such a great artist. Glad to see someone giving him recognition in the wild
I introduced my dad to him recently, he enjoyed it
I discovered long ago that psytrance/goa was perfect for me. It works almost as well as caffeine and I can work for hours and hours as long as it’s blaring.
Same. To be honest, anything with a303 feels uplifting, but for me, hard acid techno is the winner!
same.
before it was a job, I was programming exclusively to trance.fm (sadly gone)
For programming, I cannot recommend Soma FM [1] highly enough. There are a huge number of stations, most lyric-free (as to reduce the potential for flow interruption). I personally enjoy Groove Salad Classic and Lush.
[1] https://somafm.com/
<3 music for programming
some personal favourites:
- https://musicforprogramming.net/seventyone
- https://musicforprogramming.net/fiftyseven
- https://musicforprogramming.net/fortysix
I'm well aware that I'm in the minority, but I have never been able to focus on anything - especially programming - other than in absolute, total silence.
(Yes, I'm an only child.)
I don't know if you're in a minority. I think people just don't like a boring answer like "silence".
I was raised in a big family, and I prefer silence when I need truly deep focus. From my experience in open floorplan offices, a majority don't break out the headphones until it gets noisy enough. Some people would even come in early or stay late for exactly this reason.
If I could code with a piece of music playing in the background and not lose focus means it's not worth listening at all.
Very rarely I use custom-filtered (brownish) noise to help with isolation. Perhaps some kind of Ambient or New Age would work too in such situations, but things I like in those genres require attention and not paying it would be absolutely disrespectful.
I listen to all kinds of music at my dayjob but only during specific activities that do not require much contemplation and I can mostly flow with the music and do the work in the background.
Though, I'm a musician and sound engineer, so my relationships with music in general might be a bit special.
Friend, you're missing out by applying a too-rigid filter. There's a bright-line distinction to be made between this use of music as a tool for cognitive enhancement, vs listening for valid reasons other than focus.
I'm a musician too, and a lifelong student and appreciator / afficianado of music across many genres. And I spend hours every workday listening to tracks from my "flowstate" playlist -- which tracks are excluded from my taste profile. Other use cases include music appreciation (close attention for pleasure), education / cultural literacy (close attention for analysis / learning), performance (close attention for reproduction, typically broken into segments / fragments), dancing (mixed attention, emphasis on rhythm and physical movement), relaxation (minimal attention), meditation (minimal attention), mood-setting / socialization (mixed attention), etc.
Judging a piece of music intended for one of these categories based solely on whether it's "worth listening to" or "[demanding of] respect" in the context of the wrong category will leave you impoverished in the other areas.
EDIT: P.S. That doesn't mean tolerating muzak! I recommend curating playlists limited to tracks that you can appreciate in a given appropriate, narrowed context. For example, here's my "flowstate" playlist:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6UScdOAlqXqWTOmXFgQhFA
-- which bears almost no relation to my favorite artists or the kind of music I make.
Radio Paradise has a fantastic high-rhythm, excepcionally-curated, sophisticated yet not too extravagant jazz channel called Beyond https://radioparadise.com/listen/channels/beyond
It is pretty much ideal for, as Larry Wall once said, letting music "wash over you" while coding https://youtu.be/SKqBmAHwSkg?si=_vHvP8Ij9lacwhFk
Aphex Twin, Selected Ambient Works 85-92
Boards of Canada
Mr. Robot Original Soundtrack
I recently discovered Lorn and have been mainlining his back catalogue ever since whilst working. Thoroughly interesting and immersive yet not distracting.
It's unsurprising to find lots of ambient / electronica here, and generally I'm the same, but I do occasionally like really loud punk or rock if I need some motivation, like the album Feel The Darkness by Poison Idea, or as I said in another comment, I Am A Tower by Swans on a loop. Generally I get my best work done when I can lock into a single track and have it on repeat.
Everyone is linking the stuff they use, so I will add as well. I like the ambient/electronic as well, but this one might be new/exciting for some of you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lnk_b_7trII
This is an extended edition of "it might just be a one shot deal" from the waka/jawaka album by Frank Zappa. The extended part is the pedal steel played by Sneaky Pete Kleinow.
If you have never heard any Zappa stuff and this is interesting to you, listen to waka jawaka itself if you like instrumentals. If you want something more commercial, listen to the Apostrophe/Overnite Sensation album. If you want more odd, listen to the Bongo Fury album, featuring Captain Beefheart. Happy exploring.
I just listened to the Matrix OST and that one really gets me into a coding mood!
I remember watching an interview with Marco Arment (creator of Overcast and Instapaper) where he mentions that he listens to Phish a lot [1]. He collects every single recording and live show, almost 30 gigabytes of music from this one band. IIRC, he listens to it when working, so he never runs out of "music for programming" this way.
1. https://marco.org/2011/05/26/geek-intro-to-phish
While I'm not surprised at the general tastes here in the comments (as I mostly share them), I am surprised at the lack of any mention of classical?!
Johann Johannsson and Max Richter are my go-tos.
Orbital's brown album: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lxa6Yv5dVk0
I love instrumental only hip hop beats like shamisen x hip hop https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qi_-RmXz_g
While working with code, I mostly listen to Playboi Carti or older Thugger
Hey me too! Japanese trap is great.
AI is really good with musac
I fully credit Autechre's album Exai for deconstructing and reconstructing my brain to learn functional programming back in college (shoutout Racket and BSL).
autechre are my usual favourites for mad scientist coding binges
Iron Maiden for me :)
Metal for me as well, though I prefer more of the screamy-scream variety (Summoning, Judas Iscariot, Darkthrone,...).
Try Agalloch :)
Thanks, I'll see if I can find them on Bandcamp or 7Digital.
Also Rage (germany), etc
Didn't know about this one, it's excellent. Thanks.
Impossible to recommend without knowing what works for you. For a one-stop-shop, try SOMA.FM (https://somafm.com/) for a great variety of well-vetted choons in multople genres.
After that, one can build up a list of hundreds of net radio stations in VLC and find one that works for you -today-.
The soundtracks for SimCity 3000, 4, and the 5th one titled just "SimCity" are written specifically to be played while doing some fiddly micromanagement tasks.
Which brings us to: SpaceChem's soundtrack.
Chillout channel on DI.FM: https://www.di.fm/chillout
ah memories
When I'm really trying to get shit done I'll put on some German industrial music like Bagger 258. The lyrics don't bother me because I don't understand them. I find the harsh aesthetic helps to keep me from getting distracted with side quests. Those little voices in my head become inaudible over the nonsensical (to me) lyrics.
I like listening to hard rock, EBM and industrial when working. Something with a lot of energy. The lyrics don't bother me at all, I am good at not listening to them, especially if I know the song and what the lyrics are.
Aim to Head's mix channel is a lot of what I listen to for my design work. 30 min to 1 hour of well mixed tracks. The Witch House tracks are partially helpful in focusing.
https://m.youtube.com/@aimtoheadmix1915/videos
Sharing a spotify link for one of my favorite playlists : https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5jQQ19MndPFIVqsvDrvJyG?si=...
Merzbow. Keep by fidget brain occupied with pure noise while I get real work done.
OPs playlist requires too many faculties used in coding.
I too can enjoy the SomaFM/Dublab sounds for work.
But when I need to mix it up, I switch to FIP (Paris). They manage several different stations, but start with the main one first. It's excellently curated with more of a global palette than your typical station.
I listen to psytrance. Mostly full-on. It usually does not have any vocals and has a groove or beat. But nothing really surpasses silence for thinking.
I’ve thought about and experimented with it a lot. The main criteria is no lyrics, or at a minimum lyrics in a language you don’t understand at all, since this hijacks attention from parts of the brain useful for programming in a noticeable way. I find prominent fast percussion seems to help with focus but I am less confident of that.
Most other elements don’t seem to matter too much. Baroque, industrial, ambient, etc are all effectively equivalent in most regards.
That said, I tend to lean toward 1990s atmospheric drum-and-bass (pretty much anything released by Good Looking Records) as a good default. That genre maximizes things that seem to help while minimizing things that seem to detract.
Random Access Memories.
Alive 2007
This may be weird.. but I have been listening to a bunch of extended "save room" ambient tracks based on music in Resident Evil.. Someone under the name of Survival Spheres has a crapload of these on YT-music.. They are all about 10-12 mins long.. and they stay of the way mentally..
I love progressive techno for this. No vocals and sounds are in the lower frequency range. Easy to tune out.
then you'll adore this "deep progressive techno" mix playlist by artist "Dub Element" with 50 hours of the finest rolling deep pumping oldschool rave techno. Also does d'n'b and dub techno..
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAb7rS-Wvyr0AZdUlgaCg...
I survived my Microsoft internship in 2001 by listening to Weezer blue, pinkerton, green album on a continuous loop.
Oliver Huntemann - Propaganda Album
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLscdEjM7jiUsxRPIt7BUjzxpA...
I remember downloading music from the hacking e-show “The Scene” way back when - must have been late 2000s? Some great music in there like Newborn Butterflies if I remember the name right. It was nice background music in the show and I’d put it on from time to time.
Currently, the best music for programming is the Artemis II live stream. It's music to my ears, and I'm over the moon!
(but usually progressive trance with no lyrics is my preference)
This is more like music for relaxation. I can't code without a strong rhythm.
When too much rhythm is never enough: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3KgZlxTz8g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PIzzMYWp0U
I love all the recommendations here. Great selection that I can add to my personal hacking background music. I can also recommend
- Pure Shakuhachi music (ignore the ones with 'relaxing' background music)
- Brian Eno
- Vangelis
- Hiroshi Yoshimura
I’ve found instrumental + slightly repetitive tracks work best for me — anything too dynamic pulls my attention away.
Lately it’s been a mix of ambient electronic and lo-fi, especially for longer deep work sessions.
Do not see this one in the thread yet, found this on HN years ago and always in the weekly rotation
https://poolsuite.net/
Happy times, when that was trending...
Illuminoids, has to be.
https://archive.org/details/IlluminationRadio
Pick an episode with your rng of choice.
Here is some long-play stuff I do with code that helps write code https://lowveld.bandcamp.com/
I remember back in 2012, thanks to the playlist #4 by Com Truise, I discovered Boards of Canada. I will always be thankful to Datassette for this project!
dub techno, e.g. https://www.youtube.com/@Scienide1995_Deep_and_Dub
I listen to post-rock.
There are usually no lyrics, there's an absolute ton out there, and something about the music gets my brain flowing better than other instrumental music.
I haven't played the game, but I like to have Baldur's Gate 3 soundtrack in the background sometimes (can be found on YT).
Dark Synth or something like Juno Reactor for regular workload.
French hip-hop/rap to clean head while walking under rain.
Speed metal for for LLMing.
I personally love my classic/progressive rock and am happy to listen to it while working. It seems odd to limit music for programming to only lo-fi.
This is music for programming: https://velato.net/ (or music as programming??)
Look up Dub Techno.
awesome for coding! my fav stations with dub techno chan: Mabu Beatz from Germany, Radio Caprice from Russia & Radio Schizoid from India. Last one has an excellent chillout chan as well, even though the track metadata has been half broken for years (UTF16BE BOM ftw)..
https://www.radio-browser.info/search?name=dub%20techno
Swans is good for programming. And good for gnosis.
I occasionally have I Am A Tower on a loop when I really need to break through some kind of mental / coding block.
I use gregorian chant for programming
The Diablo II soundtrack on repeat
I also recommend Datassette which is the 1-man band of the artist behind this.
Swing or Jazz for analysis and painting diagrams
Heavy Metal for actual development
Bossa Nova for deploying at 1 am
my go to coding playlist for years https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVuvGj-9l_yXpuZwSqo...
Di.fm (Digitally Imported) has been my companion throughout the years
My vibe coding playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFcwd2lzu8tujlF-tPg1EfXPU...
don't see it in the comments yet so: https://www.brain.fm/
Requires an email address and credit card to even try this, so nope.
I didn’t know about this. Worked for me, thank you!
This sight got me through many projects in college :)
Haha cool, very specific music though
JimTV on YT is great too
soma.fm Channel: DEFCON Radio Best programming music!
For another genre suggestion: handpan music. It's rhythmic and repetitive, but warmer than electronica, and fades nicely in the background:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qafSm6N5bkc
I just wish the guy on the right would stop trying to take a shit while he plays. It's hella distracting. But yeah, thanks for the intro to this - me likey.
synthwave
for me is breakcore
this is so much fun!
kushsessions
minecraft music is peak and takes all :)
Can we play it for my LLM?
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Morbid Angel - Altars of Madness
Nice! \m/
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