What's playing in your headphones while you code?
Ben Halpern
Jan 18 '17
Updated on Sep 29, 2017
・1 min read
Classic DEV Post from Sep 27 '18
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A mix of ambient, electronic and jazz. Disparition, explosions in the sky, Adam Young, Miles Davis and Antonio Carlos Jobim.
Mostly instrumentals because the lyrics can sometimes distract me and lead to a solo performance that no one needs or wants to hear.
Here are some of those:
There is another kind of music?
Prog Metal. Otherwise you are missing Dream Theater, Devin Townsend, Leprous, Haken. And what kind of life is that?
You're right!
Pirate Metal?
This 😄
soundcloud.com/epicmountain
Almost anything from Beatles to Taylor Swift to Daft Punk to Rachmaninoff when writing boilerplate code or simple stuff, but I need total silence when writing complex algorithms or debugging, so I always carry a couple of rubber ear plugs from hardware stores.
Code Your Face Off playlist on Google Play Music is fun. Although, it helps me only when I know what I'm doing 0_o
open.spotify.com/user/122241197/pl...
And
open.spotify.com/user/122241197/pl...
Jay Z 4:44
My current head space
open.spotify.com/user/darthgoon/pl...
open.spotify.com/user/anotherfanny...
The Dark Knight’s soundtrack
Oh that sounds great
Right now Lost on You by LP. What I listen to varies with my mood and what I am working on.
musicforprogramming.net/
thanks
+1
Thanks! I'm going to give this a listen this morning.
Usually heavy and high-energy. Usually metal. I put together some of my favorites albums and removed anything that wasn't high-tempo: open.spotify.com/user/mikengarrett...
If you're looking for somethign new, here's the best metal releases from 2016: open.spotify.com/user/mikengarrett...
Oh yes, metal, dubstep or anything high energy. An absolute must!
Exactly the same here. It works so well.
Same here, preferably with harsh, mostly indecipherable vocals. Prevents me from getting distracted by the lyrics.
Agreed.... metal of all kinds, though I tend to shy away from doom/black/death...
The entire soundtrack to the Lord of the Rings trilogy is great. A day of writing code can sometimes feel like a bare-footed journey from the comfort of the Shire to an ork-surrounded volcano via the lair of a giant man-eating spider, so it's really quite thematically appropriate: youtu.be/_SBQvd6vY9s
Yes! Bit too dark sometimes but works great anytime after lunch
I usually forget to put headphones on. Once I start coding time flies and I forget about music. When I do remember, I find music without too much lyrics does the trick. Mogwai is a good band to listen to.
You must not work in an open office!
YES. Mogwai all day everyday.
I'm usually creeping my spotify discover playlist for Liquid / DnB tracks, and chill EDM. Nice, ethereal background.
Very similar. Chilled dubstep, a lot of instrumental hip-hop (anything by Blue Sky Black Death!) ambient tracks. I try to stay away from action movie soundtracks because the turns of pace make me anxious.
Try Aso on soundcloud real cool
👌🏿
So you're usually looking for new tracks, or do you listen to the same ones a lot?
It's about a 50/50 split. When I really need to focus, I use songs I know I like from my saved (most of which came from discover). When I can focus a little less, I casually look for new ones.
That's pretty much what I'll do.
Ludovico Einaudi! I love Divenire, especially when I'm frustrated by something. I haven't tried Lindsey Stirling while working, but I'll have to now!
Love the range there. Add the Atmospheric Black Metal playlist from Spotify and Netsky dnb stuff. Mood dependant always.
I recently got into the sound track from The Social Network movie and I find it to be the perfect mix of tempo for me. I definitely recommend it. Great sound track in and of itself, but also reminiscent of a movie all about building a pretty damn popular website.
Likewise. Great choice for coding.
Such a great soundtrack, I can never skip it when it comes on!
Great album, as almost any OST by Trent Reznor. I also enjoy listening to Lost Girl and Before the flood ones.
The Skyrim soundtrack (or any Elder Scrolls ones) as well as electronic or ambient music usually.
This! Spotify has a good collection.
Anything by Jeremy Soule is good.
Hans Zimmer Always!
brain.fm/
Seriously, within seconds into listening to the focus mode, I get thrice the concentration level. In about 30 minutes I'm almost in a trance. I recommend taking breaks from time to time, though; if I listen to it for too long I feel weird and disconnected from the reality.
According to last.fm, I mostly listen to Ambient, Electronic & Jazz. Artists like:
and many others.
I used brain.fm previously, and while it works it can get tiring after a few weeks of listening to the same drone sounds. Too me what most helps me get into flow is calm, smooth, deep background music.
BoC is perfect
I mostly find any music with lyrics, etc. is sometimes too distracting.
So ambient / electronic is always nice.
Also, I've always found SomaFM Defcon music - is always good.
somafm.com/player/#/now-playing/de...
I like SomaFM. I made a simple page for me to listen Groove Salad :)
wildauer.io/somafm/
Depend on the mood but here's my overall genres
== Geek Stuff Incoming ==
Electronic. Dubstep, Trance, Techno, whatever. Lots of Lindsey Stirling, actually.
Metal, 90's rock (nirvana, pearl jam, alice in chains, etc), tons of hip hop (E40, Too $hort, Snoop, Dre, Biggie, etc), Alt rock/Indie (Coheed and cambria, Spoon, Arcade fire, The Shins, etc), and finally sometimes I will put on various forms of electronic music, but I tend not to pay too much attention to who the artist is.
It can be anything really, mostly pop and hip hop; sometimes k-pop, or classic rock or big band. What I tend to do is play the same songs over and over and over again.
Anytime my music starts up after being stopped, I start at the beginning of one giant Spotify playlist I've been adding to over the years. I know how many times I've been interrupted by how often I've heard the first song today, or how deep into the playlist I got.
Depends on the day, but I really like those lo-fi hip hop streams on Youtube. You know, the ones with the looped old anime backgrounds? youtube.com/watch?v=h8W73zB4VMM
I also enjoy liquid dubstep/chillstep. Anything that's relatively low tempo and mostly instrumental, really.
I tried listening to the music I usually like while working (mostly rock), but felt I was concentrating on the music instead of my work.
Switch(mood){
case 1:
Atmospheric/ Epic/ Ambient Metal
break;
case 2:
Post Grunge/ Stoner Rock
break;
case 3:
Old School Rap/Hiphop/RnB/Pop/Electro
break;
case 4:
The Weekend haha
break;
default:
Shuffle all
}
Am I the only one listening to Interstellar OST? It's pure bliss, it takes us to whole new dimension.
It totally depends on the situation. When i am in a greenfield project i like to hear some electronic tunes. I like things without lyrics like Jean-Michel Jarre or Rival Consoles. Or on other occasions i really enjoy David Hicken (piano artist which if you did not know him you should definitely check it out ).
If i'll have to bugfix something in a legacy code base (it happens from time to time) i sometimes need some energetic or aggressive tunes. E.g. Carpenter Brut or The Algorithm are quite good for this kind of work. Even though sometimes i hear music with lyrics i find it most of the time distracting while coding.
Working in an open office means headsets with noise cancellation is a must. I used to listen to well-known Rock / metal music. I've found more that the more variation there is, the easier it is to et distracted.
After discovering mindfulness I've started enjoying silence, and that's the music of my choice these days: silence (noise cancellation almost works for that)
I've found the TRON / Social Network soundtracks to be quite enjoyable when not doing brain-taxing work.
Noise Cancelling headphones without the music (QC35, previously QC15). I've tried many things like brain.fm, focus zen, simply noise, focusmusic.fm - all of them became boring after 2-3 weeks.
I also have a 'debugging' playlist on spotify - when I need less concentration. 'Fast' music without vocals - liquid Drum 'n' Bass, Daft Punk's TRON: Legacy OST. Sometimes i switch to classical music when I'm working on something frustrating - Tchaikovsky symphony 5, Vivaldi Four Seasons, Camille Saint-Saens or Prokofiev Romeo and Juliet.
I like to thing of myself as die hard death metal fan, but I can't code with this music.
Zachtronics' games soundtracks, e.g. SHENZHEN I/O OST: zachtronics.bandcamp.com/album/she...
Some Ben Prunty, e.g. Cipher: benprunty.bandcamp.com/album/ciphe...
In general, preference for electronica.
Yes! Love the Shenzhen I/O soundtrack.
Sharing my personally curated EDM/Electronic music playlist here (has almost 600 songs and growing. I also update it almost every day). I listen to it everyday and it works well for me!
open.spotify.com/user/complexchris...
Yes, I like obscure instrumental artists. Any more anyone can recommend?
You don't have Max Richter or Yann Tiersen on this list? I'm surprised. Also: Johann Johannsson, Nathan Barr and the Sunshine OST (John Murphy!)
Oh hey look, my playlists just grew by a couple hundred songs! Thanks a ton!
I actually do have some stuff from John Murphy. I just didn't stick it on the list because the number of songs was so low compared to those other ones.
Tycho. Always, Tycho.
In my office we don't use headphones because it encourages individualism, but we always have background music. Monday and Tuesday we have quiet music like reggae, rock or pop, Wednesdays and Thursdays we listen more moved music as house or reggeton and Friday pure party music.
Gazelle Twin, Disasterpeace, Andy Stott, Headless Horseman, soundtracks that fall into the "weird electronica/ambient" category (e.g. Arrival, Mr. Robot, Stranger Things, We Know the Devil)—I figured out a while back that I do best working to music that's like... slightly jarring white noise that's minimally distracting but not too soothing.
Either that or really bright upbeat K-pop. I don't really have an in-between, ha ha.
I listen to instrumentals of christian music especially: youtube.com/watch?v=rvo4P0SfBOw&li...
Recently I'm hooked to some Nigerian gospel mix: youtube.com/watch?v=fHWCE054TEM
Progressive metal, usually. Either instrumental or with near-undecipherable growls--lyrics are distracting. Animals as Leaders, Cloudkicker, Fallujah, The Atlas Moth, Opeth, Vektor. The list could go for days. Sometimes I'll switch it up and listen to video game soundtracks, or occasionally, some podcasts if I'm doing something lighter
If I listen to anything (I work from home pretty much exclusively, so usually not) it has to be something I know so well my brain won’t be distracted. As a former music major, even classical music can distract me if it’s unfamiliar because my brain begins trying to analyze it, understand its structure, etc. So, I have some go-to albums or pieces that I can listen to while coding because I know them so well, mostly from my college years when I still had time to listen to new music. Here are a few:
In the absence of this, I will sometimes also put on Coffitivity as a sort of hum of noise if I’m in a noisy environment. coffitivity.com/
Vitamin string quartet is my go-to when programming. They do instrumental covers of popular songs. You get all of the catchy beats/rhythms without any of the distracting words.
I also try to have Coffitivity running as well just to give that ambient noise creative boost.
while coding or writing i find that i can't listen to people saying words; that includes podcasts or new music. but i can listen to music that i've known for a long time -- i can even sing along with stuff i know by heart, while i type new writing or code.
I like to code with rock (heavy metal, power metal, progressive, rock and roll, Psychedelic) but sometimes when the coding session is intense I switch to electronic. I think the difference relies on the tasks and my mood. I'm big fan of Armin Van Buuren, Tiesto, Paul Van Dyk; and of course good music comes with a nice pair of headphones. I recommend Bose QC25 or QC35
It depends. There are days, where I listen to Deep House / Tropical House Mixes and on other days I need something that pushes me more, then it'll be Drum and Bass or some Hardrock.
From my experience, songs without vocals - or songs with vocals that are harder to understand work better for me, since I find it very distracting if I subconsciously listen to the lyrics :)
Currently, I like this playlists:
Most of the time nothing. You know, you have the headphones on but you forget that for some reason or another you forgot to turn the music on.
A while back I read a post where Oliver Emberton shared his music list on spotify and so I have been using that. The main attraction is they most are instrumentals so they do not distract me
All sorts of music, depending on my mood. Heavy metal, ambient (8bit ambient is pretty cool), classical music...
I find soundtracks to be particularly immersive, especially video game soundtracks - Bastion, Sword and Sworcery and Journey are amongst my favorites.
Usually either nothing, some random psycore (mostly from ektoplazm.com/style/psycore - music on CC licences), or various Japanese music from my own collection: Maeda Jun, Yaginuma Satoshi (fripSide / ALTIMA), Kawada Mami, Gin'iro Haruka OST, YUI, Hayashibara Megumi, Hamasaki Ayumi.