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As a music listener I will point out the obvious flaw in the study: the “choice” of music was from pop genres. I find music with distinguishable lyrics in a lan
by manicdee 9y ago
As a music listener I will point out the obvious flaw in the study: the “choice” of music was from pop genres. I find music with distinguishable lyrics in a language I understand to be distracting while music with no lyrics, or lyrics indistinguishable from noise (cf Rammstein, Björk, Enya) are far less distracting.
I use music to mask open office noise including customer support personnel on phone calls, ops people discussing equipment failures, and political trolls discussing my preferred party.
Industrial, death metal, and recordings of rainfall all work just as well for me. Though in the case of rainfall I find about twenty minutes of the same sound is about my limit before I need more texture in my auditory diet. Silence just makes my ears ring louder until after a few minutes it is physically painful to not have some noise.
The issue of masking background conversations was not covered. I find that wearing isolating earphones, earmuffs, etc only serves to strain me further since I can still hear conversations but I have to listen harder to make out the words.
Perhaps I have some undiagnosed anxiety or paranoia but for me, isolation/silence does not work as well as masking.
- swimfar 9y agoI agree regarding music without lyrics. But I never thought of including incomprehensible lyrics in that group. Below is a selection of playlists that I listen to often while working. There are occasional lyrics or talking, but not too often. I also like that the music style has a bit of variation in it. http://musicforprogramming.net/ http://musicforprogramming.net/
- jackaroe78 9y agoThese mixes are brilliant! Boards of Canada get in that same type of headspace https://youtu.be/ksWPFwHwlwY https://youtu.be/ksWPFwHwlwY
- scns 9y agoEpisode 33 is my favorite
- themarkn 9y agoI listen to this when working sometimes too, especially if I'm struggling to focus because of other distractions.
- metaobject 9y agoHere's one more data point: I enjoy a full range of musical genres and I typically go in cycles. I'll go for a week or two on trance/progressive (A State of Trance Episodes 300-450). Then I might switch to technical death metal for a bit. Even though they typically sing in English, it turns out that the lyrical content of this type of music is hardly discernable. I also happen to enjoy a lot of punk and hardcore music. I find that if I already know the words to the music, then sometimes it's not as distracting as other lyrically-heavy genres. Also, I'd suggest investing a pair of good over-the-ear headphones (if you can tolerate them) or at least a pair of good in-ear earphones. You might also consider an amplifier as well. With my iPod classic, an amp, and my Beyerdynamic DT-770s, the music sounds so damn good. The seal on my ears is so tight that I'm basically isolated from my environment.
- anfilt 9y agoActual like to listen to a foreign music for this reason. If I can't understand the lyrics it does not distract or I listen to a lot instrumental music. If there are lyrics I can understand I will focus on them.
- zeta0134 9y agoSoftware Developer and... I guess I do this Linux Administration thing now? Anyway, I couldn't agree more. I can work in quiet, but more often than not I like to have music playing just to block everything out and focus on what I'm doing. It's immensely helpful in our open office floor plan, or even when I'm just at home and my roommates want to have a lively discussion or play some of their own music. I don't think this is unusual at all; heck, my musical upbringing tends to mean that if there isn't music playing, my brain fills in the gap with one song on loop. Sometimes I need to switch the mental track, y'know?
- barsonme 9y agoI'm the same way. My doctor said it's likely a symptom of my ADHD. It's funny, because as a kid I couldn't deal with small noises (tapping a pen and such) but I was totally fine listening to music while I worked. Same now, as an adult, although obviously it's much easier to have self-control and ignore noises as an adult :-)
- saas_co_de 9y ago> Industrial, death metal, and recordings of rainfall all work just as well for me Death metal is surprisingly conducive to productive work. I mostly like music with a heavy repetitive beat and minimal lyrical content. The music I find effective drowns out surroundings and distracts the mind a bit while being very simple and repetitive so that it does not engage too much mental energy. I really like classical music but find it to be no good for programming because it is to varied and complex and so i will get distracted in appreciating the musical composition.
- ericdykstra 9y agoI'd also like to point out that giving listeners a new music experience rather than listening to familiar music is a flaw in the study. There's an obvious difference between listening to the same albums or playlists that one always listens to while working or studying, and a new aural experience.
- Terr_ 9y agoMy pet theory for this is that some important parts of your brain are getting co-opted into the code reading/writing process. Hearing other people talking (musically or otherwise) competes for some of the same neurons.
- Steve44 9y agoMy anecdote. When I was deep in programming I tended not to listen to music I really liked but ones with a fairly steady volume & pace and also quite rhythmic. Dance music such as The Shamen worked well. I wouldn't be actively listening and enjoying the music but if I needed a little mental break I could mentally drop into the music without the risk of losing my thought train. When concentrating I often listen to classical piano now, composers such as Erik Satie. I found the modern music was great for coding but if I was writing the classical was better, I suppose the vocals muddled my language train for writing.