5 ms·
Ask HN: What music do you listen to at work?
Startup life, especially during the early days, can be lonely at times. Your emotions go like the roller coasters with every hit and miss. You are constantly chained at the desk, your parents don't understand what you do. Your girlfriend dumps you for not being able to spend more quality time with her and your friends think you are crazy. I found the only remedy is to listen to music that reminds me the good and poignant times in life. My productivity can literally jump 5x to 10x.
What music do you guys listen to at work?
- mirkules 15y agoDuring times that require high concentration (like programming), I listen to drum and bass. I find its repetitive nature combined with high energy resembles something like auditory caffeine without the crash afterwards. Music with words or highly technical music (like jazz or prog) distracts me too much because of my musical background - I want to listen to every intonation, play the notes over in my head, try to figure out the scales, etc. But technical music is perfect during tasks that require only motor skills, like soldering or writing documents (rock, metal, sometimes jazz)
- wyuenho 15y agoI have no music background, but I totally agree with you. In fact, I've been looping Stereophonics' Stone for about 500 times in the past 2 weeks.
- mirkules 15y agoI usually just put on internet radio like bassdrive.com or jungletrain.net A coworker recently pointed me towards a band called Pendulum - it's pretty cool
- ayers 15y agoPendulum is indeed a great band to code to. They have a lot of songs that get me in the mood("zone") to hammer out some code.
- knowledgesale 15y agoMay I recommend here a specific album that goes along your lines in terms of repetitive nature and intense rhythm pattern, of high quality and definetely works caffeine-like for me? It is Toi Doi, Creative Commons licensed and is available for download at http://www.ektoplazm.com/2011/toi-doi-mother-pitch http://www.ektoplazm.com/2011/toi-doi-mother-pitch
- mirkules 15y agoThanks. It's a little dance-y, but pretty good (can't argue with that price either :) I will throw one back at you: Fantastic Plastic Machine. Pretty interesting mixing -- I would describe it as a Japanese version of Fatboy Slim.
- dmc 15y agoInstrumental music, like Pelican, God Is An Astronaut, Japanese Telecom and some Classical music for coding.
- EgeBamyasi 15y agoThanks for pointing out Japanese Telecom.
- evanw 15y agoLately I've been listening to a lot of Turntable.fm's "Coding Soundtrack" station: http://turntable.fm/coding_soundtrack3 http://turntable.fm/coding_soundtrack3 Otherwise, I enjoy things like Trent Reznor/NIN's instrumental stuff (like The Social Network soundtrack), TRON soundtrack by Daft Punk, or anything by Ratatat.
- wyuenho 15y agoDaft Punk is great.
- BillSaysThis 15y agoPreferably uptempo stuff from among Springsteen, U2, Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, Allmans, Beatles, Beach Boys, Little Steven, Bebop Deluxe and Jeff Beck with the occasional Girl Talk and ELP.
- EgeBamyasi 15y agoI find that a lot of Krautrock, especially the more psycadelic and/or electronic flavour is perfect for programming. Try Can, Cluster, Klaus Schulze, Kraftwerk and German Oak. Also, less chaotic Free Improvisation and Free Jazz works very well for me as long as Ive heard the work before. Try NVP(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeRkH7amPl8&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeRkH7amPl8&feature=relat...) and Ornette Colemans Town Hall, 1962
- ejvincent 15y agoSome days I like it more than others, but turntable.fm coding_soundtrack rooms are usually pretty good (http://turntable.fm/coding_soundtrack3 http://turntable.fm/coding_soundtrack3)
- wyuenho 15y agoToo bad it's not currently available outside of the US.
- aniketpant 15y agoI would be different from the rest. I play rock when I am passing time, but when it comes to hardcore coding, my background music is Metalcore. It gives me a kick and my work speeds up :P
- ethank 15y agoWhen I'm coding I listen to movie soundtracks. When I'm doing emails its usually vintage punk music. When I'm in a really really bad mood its really really fast punk. The Lost soundtracks are really good for coding actually.