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Music for coding – what do you listen to?

Andrei Rusu on May 29, 2019

I'm almost always listening to music while I am coding, and especially when I am at home, where I don’t need to wear my headphones. I listen to a l...
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Brittney Braxton

Various lofi playlists in YouTube lately. I love how it's a 1-2 hour mix tape.
I've also built up a 600+ song playlist that's for Study/reading/coding that I've been curating since college. This consists of a lot of things: Video game and movie soundtracks, jazz, ambient, chill step, lofi, trip hop, and classical.

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Florian Rand

Nice playlist! listening right now! <3

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Andrei Rusu

Wow that’s pretty impressive! Is it public?

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Brittney

Yes it is! You can follow it here open.spotify.com/user/121392429/pl...

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Andrei Rusu

Great playlist, a lot of good music there.

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Anna Costalonga • Edited

Thanks for the article! I deeply love classical music and listen abundantly to it. When I code, I prefer not to be distracted by the pathos of some Romantic or late Romantic composers - so I would rather not listen to Brahms, Bruckner or Mahler. But I can really enjoy coding while listening to Beethoven, maybe it's the optimism and energy spreading from Beethoven's music that's contagious. Yes, for me coding takes a lot of mental energy and...optimism. You need to be resilient and in a way "heroic" to win over tests that keep failing and you don't know why! :)
So, for me, the best music I can listen to while coding is positive, vibrant, energetic music that doesnt have much pathos in it.
Baroque music, particularly Bach and his family can increase productivity, at least for me. Its rythm, repetition and "arithmetic" quality makes it very suitable for coding, for my tastes. But I cannot listen to Vivaldi, for instance, because there is a melancholy and a nostalgic beauty in this music, that makes me stop coding and just listen to it. After all, listening to music is an aesthetic activity - meaning by that, an activity that wakens your senses up. You just need to find the music that wakens the right senses for what you are doing. A certain type of classical music wakens too many senses up, so to say and it was intended to do so. If you need courage and a great motivation booster, well, probably Beethoven and Wagner are right for you. If you need patience and order, then it's Bach or Händel or even some symphonies or concertos by Haydn and Mozart. Contemporary music is too disruptive to listen while working, IMHO, and with a reason! There is normally a certain amount of protest or eversion to normal aesthetic tastes in contemporary music, that does not make it suitable for working, any work, at all.

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Andrei Rusu • Edited

Interesting, how about the music of Philip Glass - "music with repetitive structures"? I feel that minimalism works quite well while still being contemporary.

I made a playlist recently with some more music for this purpose which includes some contemporary stuff and a bit of jazz:

music.apple.com/no/playlist/figuri...

I recently discovered the music of Dobrinka Tabakova, very beautiful, a fantastic composer.

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Anna Costalonga

ah yes sure! In the end, while it can be generally true that music with repetitive structures can help productivity, choosing one or the other composer with this feature is still a very personal matter. I have listened to some Philip Glass' work, but it does not have that productivity effect on me, for instance...Jazz unfortunately neither :)))
I guess I still need a minimum of variation, otherwise I am distracted by obsessive repetition.
I will check Dobrinka Tabakova, thanks!!

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🌌 Sébastien Feugère ☔

I totally gave up on listening music while coding because I observed that it was perturbing my concentration.

By the past, I was doing things that was very much repetitive and didn't involve the possibility of errors (like very easy HTML and CSS), then I used to listen to all sorts of Brian Eno music, by focusing on the Ambient series when needing to be more productive and I think it had some effect.

Today, for some reason, I don't need the music to achieve this effect, and it would even disturb me.

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Gualtiero Frigerio

Usually no music for me. If I like the song, I find myself distracted by the lyrics. If I'm not fond of the artist or the song, why listen to it in the first place?
In a particularly crowded environment, like an open office plan, I guess music is better than hearing voices, so I may consider putting on headphones. In that case I think I'd go with something with no lyrics like movie soundtracks or classical music.

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Abhishek Ghosh

I find post-rock music, which has long continuous tracks of lot of instrumentals and no vocals, helping me. I'd recommend listening to"God is an Astronaut" if someone is looking for something similar.

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Hardaker587

I generally listen to a mixture of Power Metal, EDM/Dubtstep or just all round heavy metal.

It's a strange mixture to hold in a playlist but the constant shift in music types keeps me awake and going, especially on late nights.

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Bruno Goerck Confortin

I like trance (no lyrics) and instrumental piano when coding. I don't have a playlist, I just choose whichever seems good on Spotify.

However, the past few days I've listened to Game of Thrones' (Ramin Djawadi) soundtrack and No Man's Sky's (65daysofstatic) soundtrack.

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Vicente G. Reyes

Lately I've been listening to rock music - KSE, The Contortionist, Deftones & FKJ.

Classical is too relaxed for my muscles. I feel like I can't lift a thing when classical music plays on the background lol

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Andrei Rusu

Yes, maybe the classical which is marketed as "relaxation" music, but the Varèse piece was also one of Frank Zappa's favourites.

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tanjent • Edited

For the most part I need to stick with vocal-free music to really concentrate. I tend to rotate between light/"happy" classical music, Big Band, trance, movie scores, etc. Currently I'm using some electroswing playlists on Youtube.

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Dirk Olbrich

BBC Radio1 Essential Mix - 2 hours of uninterrupted DJ sets:

bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006wkfp

Perfect to get into the flow and a good reminder to take a break after a show is finished.

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Andrei Rusu

I used to listen to that as well back in the day (I used to run a dance music website - beatfactor.net). I still listen to it from time to time, mostly the classic ones - e.g. Nathan Fake & James Holden (2006), Sasha (2005), Future Sound of London (1994) etc. etc. It's an amazing archive. These days I listen mostly to Late Junction on BBC Radio 3 - it's a lot more diverse and experimental.

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David • Edited

Anyone here with a deezer account? We could create our developer-playlist ;)

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Hardaker587

I got a deezer account :D, I'm down.

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David

Hi! And your deezer username? I'm davidgerva :)

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Hardaker587

My username is: Hardaker

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Andrei Gatej

I can’t feel comfortable with any other kind of music but hip-hop/rap or old pop songs that remind me of childhood.

I can hardly stand classical music or any similar kind.

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Andrei Rusu

Hmm yeah, maybe because it's tricky?

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Andrei Gatej

Nah, that’s not my kind. This is something really nice!

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Wilbur Suero

I usually listen to Soma FM, specialy the DefCon station.

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Amirition • Edited

I think soulection radio is a good choice for it. I'm listening to their radio for 5 years now and it always worked for me.

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Elena.NET

I usually listen lo-fi playlists in YouTube, as @mintii says, and also some synthwave mixes, it's great for inspiration!

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Eng Soon Cheah

I listen piano cover song.

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Carlos

I usually prefer progressive house or game/movie ost

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catyler85

For me it's ASMR.

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Nam Mai Anh

I listen to Pink Floyd.
Progessive rock is more sound, less vocal.

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webdeasy.de

I really love it to listen to film soundtracks! <3
There are some greate playlists on spotify! :)

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Vince

Fast Electronic music. Usually some kind of dance music. The fast beat helps keep me focused.

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Ken Darling

Chiptunes/Old school video game music

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Kognise • Edited

A lot of people don't share my taste, but I listen to Pop/EDM while programming. Even with lyrics. You can find my playlist here.

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Abdulkareem Barghouthi

I listen to various types of music such as jazz,lofi, hiphop, blues, experimental music and so it goes.
this is one of my favourite background music to code to
youtu.be/mlUMgZGFCtw

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Florian Rand • Edited

It depends, most of the time I simply listen whatever was listening the day before.

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Alex Oladele

I typically listen to a lot of rap and hip-hop, but as of recent, I've been listening to James Blake's Assume Form album!

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Yev Bronshteyn

The Portal 2 soundtrack. It's free.