What&#39;s playing in your headphones while you code?

A mix of ambient, electronic and jazz. Disparition, explosions in the sky, Adam Young, Miles Davis and Antonio Carlos Jobim.

Adnan Kičin

Oct 3 '17

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:

Eduardo Gómez Vásquez

Black Metal
Trash Metal
Folk Metal
Power Metal
Heavy Metal
Nu Metal
Symphonic Metal
Death Metal

There is another kind of music?

Pirate Metal?

Prog Metal. Otherwise you are missing Dream Theater, Devin Townsend, Leprous, Haken. And what kind of life is that?

Eduardo Gómez Vásquez

Oct 15 '17

You're right!

Jacob Tan 🤓

soundcloud.com/epicmountain

This 😄

Luis Ventura

Oct 4 '17

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.

Jessica Lam

Sep 24 '17

open.spotify.com/user/122241197/pl...

And
open.spotify.com/user/122241197/pl...

Jay Z 4:44

open.spotify.com/user/anotherfanny...

Paul Frame

Nov 27 '17

The Dark Knight’s soundtrack

Author

Oh that sounds great

My current head space
open.spotify.com/user/darthgoon/pl...

Madzz Srestha

Right now Lost on You by LP. What I listen to varies with my mood and what I am working on.

Billy

musicforprogramming.net/

thanks

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...

Ghost

Oh yes, metal, dubstep or anything high energy. An absolute must!

Daniel Mason

Exactly the same here. It works so well.

TPiddy

Agreed.... metal of all kinds, though I tend to shy away from doom/black/death...

Brian Hanna

Same here, preferably with harsh, mostly indecipherable vocals. Prevents me from getting distracted by the lyrics.

Callum Messiter

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

Daniel Waller (he/him)

Yes! Bit too dark sometimes but works great anytime after lunch

Carlton Hanna

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.

Ben Halpern

Author

You must not work in an open office!

Jess Lee (she/her)

YES. Mogwai all day everyday.

Erika Wiedemann

I'm usually creeping my spotify discover playlist for Liquid / DnB tracks, and chill EDM. Nice, ethereal background.

Eric Ekong

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.

sechaba tsotetsi

Try Aso on soundcloud real cool

THREAD

👌🏿

Author

So you're usually looking for new tracks, or do you listen to the same ones a lot?

Erika Wiedemann

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.

THREAD

Gabe Dunn

That's pretty much what I'll do.

Jordan Roskelley

Fastfall Dustforce OST
Tron/Tron Remix
Chipzel/FantomenK/EnV (electronic, not rap)
Dunderpatrullen/Rymdkraft/Bossfight
Lindsey Stirling
Moby (esp Play)
Fatboy Slim
The Glitch Mob
65daysofstatic
Anamanaguchi - Endless Fantasy
Muse
David Guetta - Nothing But The Beat disc 2
Ludovico Einaudi - Divenire
Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (as embarrassing as that is)
Papa Roach/Disturbed/Evanescence ...probably more

Phil

Sep 24 '17

Love the range there. Add the Atmospheric Black Metal playlist from Spotify and Netsky dnb stuff. Mood dependant always.

Kinna Thompson

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!

Ben Halpern

Author

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.

Agustín Ventura Carrasco

Great album, as almost any OST by Trent Reznor. I also enjoy listening to Lost Girl and Before the flood ones.

Matt

Likewise. Great choice for coding.

Adam Kerney

Such a great soundtrack, I can never skip it when it comes on!

Juhi

The Skyrim soundtrack (or any Elder Scrolls ones) as well as electronic or ambient music usually.

pandom

Mar 21 '17

This! Spotify has a good collection.

Anything by Jeremy Soule is good.

Blizzard game Soundtracks
Hans Zimmer
Aphex Twin
65daysofstatic
Celldweller

HawiCaesar

Marcos Felipe Pimenta Rodrigues

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.

Diogo Correia

According to last.fm, I mostly listen to Ambient, Electronic & Jazz. Artists like:

Nils Frahm
Ólafur Arnalds
Gustavo Santaolalla
Floating Points
Rival Consoles
Boards of Canada
GoGo Peguin
Bonobo

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

Depend on the mood but here's my overall genres

Psychedelic Rock
New Age
80's, 70's, 60's and 50's in general
Metal
Classic Music

== Geek Stuff Incoming ==

Movies OST
Video games OST
Anime OST

Anirudh Murali

Am I the only one listening to Interstellar OST? It's pure bliss, it takes us to whole new dimension.

Logan Gray

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...

manuel

Oct 25 '17

I like SomaFM. I made a simple page for me to listen Groove Salad :)

wildauer.io/somafm/

Casen

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.

Chris Flores

open.spotify.com/user/complexchris...

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!

Andy Johnson

Electronic. Dubstep, Trance, Techno, whatever. Lots of Lindsey Stirling, actually.

A.D.

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.

Steffen Frosch

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.

Dulan Lawliet~

Oct 4 '17

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
}

Joshua Bemenderfer

Ludovico Einaudi
Mattia Cupelli
Ramin Djawadi
Zack Hemsey
John Powell
Byetheway-May
Iván Torrent
Tartalo Music
Kai Engel
Kevin MacLeod
Harry Gregson-Williams

Yes, I like obscure instrumental artists. Any more anyone can recommend?

Kinna Thompson

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!)

Joshua Bemenderfer

Mar 9 '17

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.

Pavneet Singh Saund

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.

Jessy

Oct 2 '17

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.

Mark

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.

Alexander Kashev

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.

Vicente Jr Yuchitcho

Yes! Love the Shenzhen I/O soundtrack.

avallete

Sep 25 '17

... 
while(programming)
{
    music = randomPickOne([
    "keygens music compilation", 
    "Epic music", // (Hans Zimmer)
    "Game OST remix/compilation", //(mirror edge is awesome)
    "Electro house/chill"
   ]);
   playIt(music);
}

Darshak Parikh

I am a big fan of LukHash. He's a Polish artist who produces chiptune, fused with electro and dubstep. Everything from his tunes to the album and track names put your brain into coding mode.

Have a look at his site: lukhash.com

You can download his discography at jamendo.com/artist/353807/lukhash

Mikel Farley

play.google.com/music/playlist/AMa...

Any time need to get work done, I have a couple small playlists I set on shuffle & swap every 30 - 60 minutes. A mix over lively Irish jig & some-what funky smooth (metro?) Jazz. It's a strange combo but they blend surprisingly over long periods of time on repeat.

Antonio Radovcic

Sep 24 '17

For focussed work I prefer Indie-Game-Sountracks (e.g. C418, Austin Wintory, Disasterpiece), mostly easy and silent stuff.
For easier stuff like styling, markup and handling tickets I listen to podcasts or audio-books.

Arne Mertz

Lots of electronic stuff. EDM, trance, drum'n'bass, dubstep. But also some trip hop, soundtracks, sometimes a bit of metal, even some Americana made in Hamburg!: open.spotify.com/album/6OvZVQQZyW6...

Current favourite: open.spotify.com/track/6hYyiunELXz...

Mixed fav playlist
open.spotify.com/user/1128664007/p...

Paulo H. R. Pinheiro

Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and Itamar Assumpção.

Jonathan Bohorquez

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

Pramod Gangwal

Mostly hans zimmer instrumental. also Braid Soundtrek (Downstream my fav.)
Mainly instrumental only as I don't want to lose my concentration repeating the lyrics.
Different Guitars cover do as well :)

Guillermo Gerard

I usually search for some keywords like dubstep, glitch, gaming, epic music (yes, you already guess it: I'm not a metal guy). I really like how the violin sounds, so right now I'm listening to Lindsey Stirling

aurel kurtula

Oct 31 '17

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

Mark Erikson

Trance, primarily from DI.fm. I'm a big fan of their Vocal Trance and Epic Trance channels. I'm usually either streaming one of those two channels, or listening to songs I first heard on those channels and added to my collection.

Carly Ho 🌈

Nov 27 '17

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.

Gert Sønderby

Dragonforce, Helion Prime, Halestorm, Rise Against, if I want something hard-hitting with guitar and drums.

Danny Baranovsky, MDK if I feel a need for an electronic beat.

Or soundtracks from any number of movies and games (seriously, check out the Horizon Zero Dawn OST, it's gorgeous).

Occasionally some Simple Plan, a bit of J-pop, Tokelauan band Te Vaka comes up, and a weird, eclectic mixture of things.

Charles Reace