Don't laugh, but for me, it's Abba. Their entire discography is ~3 hours which is how long I can maintain peak concentration. Their songs are consistently good so that I don't need to skip a song, but not too good that I would stop working and start listening. Plus I've never heard Abba song in any good movie so it doesn't remind me scenes from a movie I would want to rewatch. Of course I don't listen to it every day, only when I really need to, most daily programming tasks can be done with any music.
I play that song too while programming (along with several dozen others on a dedicated programming playlist). Eventually it goes into the background and just covers up outside noise. Some key moments are noticed -- i stop looking at my screen, repeat after the singer, and then go back to working five seconds later.
For real concentration I can't have lyrics but that's a great idea for other flow states. Mozart and Brahms are good for me ... Not slow enough to put me to sleep not fast enough or unusual to make me pay attention to the music.
I vary a lot but when I do classical music Mozart has occupied quite a lot of my stats, in particular a clarinet concerto by Katherine Lucy [1] and also things like Beethoven's 6th (pastoral, it's beautifully featured in Fantasia) or Grieg's morning mood.
Like others have said, for specific types of activity, I'll prefer no vocals or maybe even no music, but if vocals are fine Abba does have a great flow to it. I used to run to Abba too, at times, because it feels upbeat/positive with good enough tempo. Super trouper, for instance, makes for a great booster.
The Winner Takes It All lyrics are great for commits and Pull Requests: I don't wanna talk
If it makes you feel sad
And I understand
You've come to shake my hand
I apologize
If it makes you feel bad
As a dancer it’s funny to me that programming and dancing both seem to be better with a disco soundtrack. Or house, or funk. Anything with a strong backbeat.
No laughter here, my brother in music. This is one of the few vocal groups that I could be in the zone with, except "Fernando", because one must release their inner theater kid with that one.
I like the concept but ambient as a genre doesn't really do anything for me. It makes me want to go take a nap.
Haven't added anything to it in a while, but over the years I built a youtube playlist of songs that help me focus while working. Generally rules are: predominantly electronic, has some kind of beat, zero vocals. I'm up to over 500 songs at this point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dTpQwBMaBI&list=PL2A7B99AB9...
I'm a fan of ambient and instrumental hip hop for programming.
My personal favorites are pretty much anything by Nujabes (including the soundtracks for Samurai Champloo), Fat Jon, and DJ Okawari.
I also like some classic albums in the genre like Donuts by J Dilla, Dr. No's Oxperiment by Oh No, and Endtroducing by DJ Shadow.
I will sometimes go through essential charts I find to dive into new genres, and other times I'll pick a random artist and go through their entire discography start to finish.
I highly recommend doing that with Talk Talk, their transition from 80s pop to experimental is phenomenal.
Based on what you've already mentioned, there's a good chance you're familiar, but on the off chance you're not: "Funkungfusion" (or, really, anything off the Ninja Tune label) might be right up your alley.
>> I've had three main tracks that I've used for the past 8 months or so.
I've had several dozen songs (grown from ~5 in 1998) that I've used for almost 28yrs. They were originally mp3s, eventually cds, then apple music. I'm glad the artists have been getting royalties on the songs, i play them on loop sometimes for hours a day for decades on.
Shoutout to SomaFM's Defcon Radio which has been my go-to programming music for years now. Not too dissimilar to the stuff found on this site. https://somafm.com/defcon/
Could not love SomaFM more! The past few xmas holiday seasons I've been streaming "Department Store Christmas" which is hugely wacky retro Christmas music. Somehow I'd never heard "What Ever Happened to Christmas" a Jimmy Webb song made famous by Frank Sinatra. It was kind of life changing.
I find that the Secret Agent channel is great for my focus nowadays. I recall listening to Groove Salad back in my draftsman years, from 2000-2002. I am still amazed at how SomaFM has continued to exist.
Personally, I still like these defcon sound bites, even though I've heard them plenty of times. They are part of the atmosphere that the stream wants to create.
In the morning I listen to chill electronic music without lyrics: Tycho, Emancipator, Blackmill, Jon Hopkins
Later in the day I listen to more energetic electronic music (a lot of which is from the Hotline Miami soundtrack): M|O|O|N, Dan Terminus, Carpenter Brut, Daniel Deluxe, 1788-L, Pendulum
I tend to like stuff by Will Wood. Always good enough to not skip a song, enough variety I'm not tempted to change to something else, large enough discography to not get distracted by repeat tracks, and insightful lyrics that have "the hacker way" if that makes any sense. Also partial to wendy carlos or whatever The Current (local MN radio station that has really good taste and pulls some deep cuts pretty often) plays
ETA: I forgot to mention gorillaz. Great programming music, and seems to give me good ideas.
This seems focused on one very particular taste in music of droning semi-random lo-fi synthesizers. I find this unlistenable without any kind of percussion.
The fact that it works for the author, but totally does not for you is a big fat sign that says: search what works for you. More than that: search what works for you in a particular state of mind. You are a special enough snowflake to require a personal playlist, and it's not easily guessable. Sometimes what works best for me is Bach's violin concertos. Other times it's MBR [1]. Yet other times it might be some Keiko Matsui piano jazz, or early Apocalyptica, or Enya, or [...]. Try different things, notice what feels right and when, rinse, repeat.
Not all music I like makes good work music. For instance, I cannot work with code while listening to songs: the verbal center apparently gets overloaded.
Agreed! I like music that can be enjoyed either active or passive listening. The main requirement is that it have no vocals. Here's my go-to Spotify playlist while coding.
If I could code with a piece of music playing in the background and not lose focus means it's not worth listening at all.
Very rarely I use custom-filtered (brownish) noise to help with isolation. Perhaps some kind of Ambient or New Age would work too in such situations, but things I like in those genres require attention and not paying it would be absolutely disrespectful.
I listen to all kinds of music at my dayjob but only during specific activities that do not require much contemplation and I can mostly flow with the music and do the work in the background.
Though, I'm a musician and sound engineer, so my relationships with music in general might be a bit special.
Friend, you're missing out by applying a too-rigid filter. There's a bright-line distinction to be made between this use of music as a tool for cognitive enhancement, vs listening for valid reasons other than focus.
I'm a musician too, and a lifelong student and appreciator / afficianado of music across many genres. And I spend hours every workday listening to tracks from my "flowstate" playlist -- which tracks are excluded from my taste profile. Other use cases include music appreciation (close attention for pleasure), education / cultural literacy (close attention for analysis / learning), performance (close attention for reproduction, typically broken into segments / fragments), dancing (mixed attention, emphasis on rhythm and physical movement), relaxation (minimal attention), meditation (minimal attention), mood-setting / socialization (mixed attention), etc.
Judging a piece of music intended for one of these categories based solely on whether it's "worth listening to" or "[demanding of] respect" in the context of the wrong category will leave you impoverished in the other areas.
EDIT: P.S. That doesn't mean tolerating muzak! I recommend curating playlists limited to tracks that you can appreciate in a given appropriate, narrowed context. For example, here's my "flowstate"
playlist:
For programming, I cannot recommend Soma FM [1] highly enough. There are a huge number of stations, most lyric-free (as to reduce the potential for flow interruption). I personally enjoy Groove Salad Classic and Lush.
If I'd have to make one recommendation it's David August's Boiler Room set [1]. It has such a coherent flow through the whole set, it makes me fly through multiple hours if not days of work.
This site is a gem that has accompanied me on many spikes in the last year :) datasette's original music is top tier too. cognitively stimulating but not attention stealing.
Have you listened to his "business funk" mixes? Too stimulating for work (for me) but so much fun. In my head it's the soundtrack to me striding through an open plan office barking nonsense business jargon.
It's unsurprising to find lots of ambient / electronica here, and generally I'm the same, but I do occasionally like really loud punk or rock if I need some motivation, like the album Feel The Darkness by Poison Idea, or as I said in another comment, I Am A Tower by Swans on a loop. Generally I get my best work done when I can lock into a single track and have it on repeat.
I discovered long ago that psytrance/goa was perfect for me. It works almost as well as caffeine and I can work for hours and hours as long as it’s blaring.
I remember back in 2012, thanks to the playlist #4 by Com Truise, I discovered Boards of Canada. I will always be thankful to Datassette for this project!
I fully credit Autechre's album Exai for deconstructing and reconstructing my brain to learn functional programming back in college (shoutout Racket and BSL).
I'm well aware that I'm in the minority, but I have never been able to focus on anything - especially programming - other than in absolute, total silence.
I don't know if you're in a minority. I think people just don't like a boring answer like "silence".
I was raised in a big family, and I prefer silence when I need truly deep focus. From my experience in open floorplan offices, a majority don't break out the headphones until it gets noisy enough. Some people would even come in early or stay late for exactly this reason.
I too can enjoy the SomaFM/Dublab sounds for work.
But when I need to mix it up, I switch to FIP (Paris). They manage several different stations, but start with the main one first. It's excellently curated with more of a global palette than your typical station.
I recently discovered Lorn and have been mainlining his back catalogue ever since whilst working. Thoroughly interesting and immersive yet not distracting.
I remember watching an interview with Marco Arment (creator of Overcast and Instapaper) where he mentions that he listens to Phish a lot [1]. He collects every single recording and live show, almost 30 gigabytes of music from this one band. IIRC, he listens to it when working, so he never runs out of "music for programming" this way.
Aim to Head's mix channel is a lot of what I listen to for my design work. 30 min to 1 hour of well mixed tracks. The Witch House tracks are partially helpful in focusing.
When I'm really trying to get shit done I'll put on some German industrial music like Bagger 258. The lyrics don't bother me because I don't understand them. I find the harsh aesthetic helps to keep me from getting distracted with side quests. Those little voices in my head become inaudible over the nonsensical (to me) lyrics.
I like listening to hard rock, EBM and industrial when working. Something with a lot of energy. The lyrics don't bother me at all, I am good at not listening to them, especially if I know the song and what the lyrics are.
The soundtracks for SimCity 3000, 4, and the 5th one titled just "SimCity" are written specifically to be played while doing some fiddly micromanagement tasks.
There are usually no lyrics, there's an absolute ton out there, and something about the music gets my brain flowing better than other instrumental music.
I’ve thought about and experimented with it a lot. The main criteria is no lyrics, or at a minimum lyrics in a language you don’t understand at all, since this hijacks attention from parts of the brain useful for programming in a noticeable way. I find prominent fast percussion seems to help with focus but I am less confident of that.
Most other elements don’t seem to matter too much. Baroque, industrial, ambient, etc are all effectively equivalent in most regards.
That said, I tend to lean toward 1990s atmospheric drum-and-bass (pretty much anything released by Good Looking Records) as a good default. That genre maximizes things that seem to help while minimizing things that seem to detract.
This may be weird.. but I have been listening to a bunch of extended "save room" ambient tracks based on music in Resident Evil.. Someone under the name of Survival Spheres has a crapload of these on YT-music.. They are all about 10-12 mins long.. and they stay of the way mentally..
then you'll adore this "deep progressive techno" mix playlist by artist "Dub Element" with 50 hours of the finest rolling deep pumping oldschool rave techno. Also does d'n'b and dub techno..
I remember downloading music from the hacking e-show “The Scene” way back when - must have been late 2000s? Some great music in there like Newborn Butterflies if I remember the name right. It was nice background music in the show and I’d put it on from time to time.
Everyone is linking the stuff they use, so I will add as well. I like the ambient/electronic as well, but this one might be new/exciting for some of you.
This is an extended edition of "it might just be a one shot deal" from the waka/jawaka album by Frank Zappa. The extended part is the pedal steel played by Sneaky Pete Kleinow.
If you have never heard any Zappa stuff and this is interesting to you, listen to waka jawaka itself if you like instrumentals. If you want something more commercial, listen to the Apostrophe/Overnite Sensation album. If you want more odd, listen to the Bongo Fury album, featuring Captain Beefheart. Happy exploring.
awesome for coding! my fav stations with dub techno chan: Mabu Beatz from Germany, Radio Caprice from Russia & Radio Schizoid from India. Last one has an excellent chillout chan as well, even though the track metadata has been half broken for years (UTF16BE BOM ftw)..
Don't laugh, but for me, it's Abba. Their entire discography is ~3 hours which is how long I can maintain peak concentration. Their songs are consistently good so that I don't need to skip a song, but not too good that I would stop working and start listening. Plus I've never heard Abba song in any good movie so it doesn't remind me scenes from a movie I would want to rewatch. Of course I don't listen to it every day, only when I really need to, most daily programming tasks can be done with any music.
I don't understand how a song like Lay All Your Love On Me doesn't distract you.
I play that song too while programming (along with several dozen others on a dedicated programming playlist). Eventually it goes into the background and just covers up outside noise. Some key moments are noticed -- i stop looking at my screen, repeat after the singer, and then go back to working five seconds later.
For real concentration I can't have lyrics but that's a great idea for other flow states. Mozart and Brahms are good for me ... Not slow enough to put me to sleep not fast enough or unusual to make me pay attention to the music.
Agree about the lyrics. Phillip Glass is one of my favorites for flowing. His style usually involves a lot of repetition, which I find meditative.
Steve Reich is my favourite of the minimalists. Electric counterpoint and Music for 18 Musicians are regulars in the line up.
I vary a lot but when I do classical music Mozart has occupied quite a lot of my stats, in particular a clarinet concerto by Katherine Lucy [1] and also things like Beethoven's 6th (pastoral, it's beautifully featured in Fantasia) or Grieg's morning mood.
- [1] https://open.spotify.com/album/1R6rh9My8CTK4DqZorJR0V?si=3Ct...
If you have specific song/interpretation recommendations I'd love to hear them.
I've really been enjoying this series of Mozart concertos on Alpha, highlighting young(er) performers: https://outhere-music.com/en/collections/next-generation-moz...
Like others have said, for specific types of activity, I'll prefer no vocals or maybe even no music, but if vocals are fine Abba does have a great flow to it. I used to run to Abba too, at times, because it feels upbeat/positive with good enough tempo. Super trouper, for instance, makes for a great booster.
yeah but see the problem with abba is i just wanna get up and dance and not do any work
> Don't laugh
I laugh (:
But good for you, whatever works. Personally, I can't do music with much lyrics or narrative; I find it distracting.
But to each their own!
Mark Watney sighs deeply
The Winner Takes It All lyrics are great for commits and Pull Requests: I don't wanna talk If it makes you feel sad And I understand You've come to shake my hand I apologize If it makes you feel bad
As a dancer it’s funny to me that programming and dancing both seem to be better with a disco soundtrack. Or house, or funk. Anything with a strong backbeat.
No laughter here, my brother in music. This is one of the few vocal groups that I could be in the zone with, except "Fernando", because one must release their inner theater kid with that one.
ABBA is amazing
It would be impossible for me to not sing along to ABBA
Mamma Mia soundtrack also works well \m/
NTS radio has been incredible for programming music over the years. Deep backlog, an ambient channel (infinite mixtape: https://www.nts.live/infinite-mixtapes/slow-focus), and great selections:
https://www.nts.live/
And they have mobile apps :)
I like the concept but ambient as a genre doesn't really do anything for me. It makes me want to go take a nap.
Haven't added anything to it in a while, but over the years I built a youtube playlist of songs that help me focus while working. Generally rules are: predominantly electronic, has some kind of beat, zero vocals. I'm up to over 500 songs at this point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dTpQwBMaBI&list=PL2A7B99AB9...
I have very similar criteria, but for me at least
> zero vocals
can also be vocals in a language I don't understand. In those cases, the voice is just another instrument and not distracting.
Fab playlist, thank you
I'm a fan of ambient and instrumental hip hop for programming.
My personal favorites are pretty much anything by Nujabes (including the soundtracks for Samurai Champloo), Fat Jon, and DJ Okawari.
I also like some classic albums in the genre like Donuts by J Dilla, Dr. No's Oxperiment by Oh No, and Endtroducing by DJ Shadow.
I will sometimes go through essential charts I find to dive into new genres, and other times I'll pick a random artist and go through their entire discography start to finish.
I highly recommend doing that with Talk Talk, their transition from 80s pop to experimental is phenomenal.
Based on what you've already mentioned, there's a good chance you're familiar, but on the off chance you're not: "Funkungfusion" (or, really, anything off the Ninja Tune label) might be right up your alley.
same. combining the 10 volumes of Special Herbs makes a good 5 hour playlist too
Radio Paradise has a fantastic high-rhythm, excepcionally-curated, sophisticated yet not too extravagant jazz channel called Beyond https://radioparadise.com/listen/channels/beyond
It is pretty much ideal for, as Larry Wall once said, letting music "wash over you" while coding https://youtu.be/SKqBmAHwSkg?si=_vHvP8Ij9lacwhFk
I've had three main tracks that I've used for the past 8 months or so.
The first one is a 1-hour mix of "In Motion" from the soundtrack to The Social Network: https://youtu.be/bCxPmMbZjuk
The second is a 1-hour mix of "It Has to be This Way" from the soundtrack to Metal Gear Rising Revengance: https://youtu.be/jKGDib6qZBo
The third is a 1-hour mix of "Clock Tower" from the soundtrack to Dead Cells: https://youtu.be/plwhysPCxXI
I think you might also like Daft Punk's - Tron Legacy album. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjM8d0Csuk4
I love listening to it while programming, driving, cooking. :)
In Motion is my favorite productivity track as well. Most of the time I just listen to the whole The Social Network soundtrack
> In Motion is my favorite productivity track as well. Most of the time I just listen to the whole The Social Network soundtrack
I love hacker soundtracks too! I play the OST for Mr Robot and Halt and Catch Fire
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLX2MjjP5LxjyxA0Vvws3y...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucSUs3adMQ8&list=PLrvyiZ4XwF...
>> I've had three main tracks that I've used for the past 8 months or so.
I've had several dozen songs (grown from ~5 in 1998) that I've used for almost 28yrs. They were originally mp3s, eventually cds, then apple music. I'm glad the artists have been getting royalties on the songs, i play them on loop sometimes for hours a day for decades on.
You're my kind of person
I think you meant "standing here, I realize, you are just like me, trying to make history"
Shoutout to SomaFM's Defcon Radio which has been my go-to programming music for years now. Not too dissimilar to the stuff found on this site. https://somafm.com/defcon/
Could not love SomaFM more! The past few xmas holiday seasons I've been streaming "Department Store Christmas" which is hugely wacky retro Christmas music. Somehow I'd never heard "What Ever Happened to Christmas" a Jimmy Webb song made famous by Frank Sinatra. It was kind of life changing.
SomaFM is the best! They now have a Groove Salad Classic channel which plays all the great stuff they _were_ playing in the early to mid 2000's.
I've been listening to Space Station to flow for more than 20 years.
I used to work to SomaFM all the time. Then took a break I guess? Then somehow totally forgot it even existed. So thanks for the reminder.
I was a bit annoyed when Somafm got blocked on our corporate proxy
I find that the Secret Agent channel is great for my focus nowadays. I recall listening to Groove Salad back in my draftsman years, from 2000-2002. I am still amazed at how SomaFM has continued to exist.
I love the music on defcon but could really do without the sporadic interruptions. At first it was ok but gets old after a while.
Remember your 3-2-1.
Personally, I still like these defcon sound bites, even though I've heard them plenty of times. They are part of the atmosphere that the stream wants to create.
My defaults are Drone Zone, Synphaera, and The Trip.
These three are very similar to what Defcon sounded like before around 2023 when they started adding more generic hip-hop influenced beats.
Defcon can be alright, but about 25% of their playlist will suddenly take me out of a flow state due to vocals or some obnoxious rhythmic detail.
In the morning I listen to chill electronic music without lyrics: Tycho, Emancipator, Blackmill, Jon Hopkins
Later in the day I listen to more energetic electronic music (a lot of which is from the Hotline Miami soundtrack): M|O|O|N, Dan Terminus, Carpenter Brut, Daniel Deluxe, 1788-L, Pendulum
My go-to is Paronator - Flowers of Life[1]. It makes an hour melt away.
[1] https://www.discogs.com/master/3779840-Paronator-Flowers-Of-...
For me it's the soundtracks to Deus Ex (basically all the games), Mr. Robot, and Halt and Catch Fire.
The soundtracks for those two games are just so so good and perfect for that post-lunch caffeinated focus time.
Carpenter Brut and a ton of caffeine was vibecoding before LLMs.
I tend to like stuff by Will Wood. Always good enough to not skip a song, enough variety I'm not tempted to change to something else, large enough discography to not get distracted by repeat tracks, and insightful lyrics that have "the hacker way" if that makes any sense. Also partial to wendy carlos or whatever The Current (local MN radio station that has really good taste and pulls some deep cuts pretty often) plays
ETA: I forgot to mention gorillaz. Great programming music, and seems to give me good ideas.
Minneapolitan here! Just had to agree that The Current is a treasure.
For the benefit of others, you can stream it here, if you're curious: https://www.thecurrent.org/
Will Wood is such a great artist. Glad to see someone giving him recognition in the wild
I introduced my dad to him recently, he enjoyed it
This seems focused on one very particular taste in music of droning semi-random lo-fi synthesizers. I find this unlistenable without any kind of percussion.
The fact that it works for the author, but totally does not for you is a big fat sign that says: search what works for you. More than that: search what works for you in a particular state of mind. You are a special enough snowflake to require a personal playlist, and it's not easily guessable. Sometimes what works best for me is Bach's violin concertos. Other times it's MBR [1]. Yet other times it might be some Keiko Matsui piano jazz, or early Apocalyptica, or Enya, or [...]. Try different things, notice what feels right and when, rinse, repeat.
[1]: https://masterbootrecord.bandcamp.com/music
For a while and a certain mood, Ostkreuz's album "Motor" worked shockingly well and I coded like in the most focused flow ever...
Wow I've never thought about listening to music I like before?????
Not all music I like makes good work music. For instance, I cannot work with code while listening to songs: the verbal center apparently gets overloaded.
Agreed! I like music that can be enjoyed either active or passive listening. The main requirement is that it have no vocals. Here's my go-to Spotify playlist while coding.
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1IKenYEiooONuxxawKtNOm?si=...
If I could code with a piece of music playing in the background and not lose focus means it's not worth listening at all.
Very rarely I use custom-filtered (brownish) noise to help with isolation. Perhaps some kind of Ambient or New Age would work too in such situations, but things I like in those genres require attention and not paying it would be absolutely disrespectful.
I listen to all kinds of music at my dayjob but only during specific activities that do not require much contemplation and I can mostly flow with the music and do the work in the background.
Though, I'm a musician and sound engineer, so my relationships with music in general might be a bit special.
Friend, you're missing out by applying a too-rigid filter. There's a bright-line distinction to be made between this use of music as a tool for cognitive enhancement, vs listening for valid reasons other than focus.
I'm a musician too, and a lifelong student and appreciator / afficianado of music across many genres. And I spend hours every workday listening to tracks from my "flowstate" playlist -- which tracks are excluded from my taste profile. Other use cases include music appreciation (close attention for pleasure), education / cultural literacy (close attention for analysis / learning), performance (close attention for reproduction, typically broken into segments / fragments), dancing (mixed attention, emphasis on rhythm and physical movement), relaxation (minimal attention), meditation (minimal attention), mood-setting / socialization (mixed attention), etc.
Judging a piece of music intended for one of these categories based solely on whether it's "worth listening to" or "[demanding of] respect" in the context of the wrong category will leave you impoverished in the other areas.
EDIT: P.S. That doesn't mean tolerating muzak! I recommend curating playlists limited to tracks that you can appreciate in a given appropriate, narrowed context. For example, here's my "flowstate" playlist:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6UScdOAlqXqWTOmXFgQhFA
-- which bears almost no relation to my favorite artists or the kind of music I make.
For programming, I cannot recommend Soma FM [1] highly enough. There are a huge number of stations, most lyric-free (as to reduce the potential for flow interruption). I personally enjoy Groove Salad Classic and Lush.
[1] https://somafm.com/
If I'd have to make one recommendation it's David August's Boiler Room set [1]. It has such a coherent flow through the whole set, it makes me fly through multiple hours if not days of work.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRfwdJx0NDE
Dark Synth or something like Juno Reactor for regular workload.
French hip-hop/rap to clean head while walking under rain.
Speed metal for for LLMing.
This site is a gem that has accompanied me on many spikes in the last year :) datasette's original music is top tier too. cognitively stimulating but not attention stealing.
Have you listened to his "business funk" mixes? Too stimulating for work (for me) but so much fun. In my head it's the soundtrack to me striding through an open plan office barking nonsense business jargon.
For me, the Bach of electronic music..
Agreed datasette is critically slept on
Flechte is a regular play of mine https://youtu.be/-3HUn6wotvg
It's unsurprising to find lots of ambient / electronica here, and generally I'm the same, but I do occasionally like really loud punk or rock if I need some motivation, like the album Feel The Darkness by Poison Idea, or as I said in another comment, I Am A Tower by Swans on a loop. Generally I get my best work done when I can lock into a single track and have it on repeat.
I discovered long ago that psytrance/goa was perfect for me. It works almost as well as caffeine and I can work for hours and hours as long as it’s blaring.
same.
before it was a job, I was programming exclusively to trance.fm (sadly gone)
Same. To be honest, anything with a303 feels uplifting, but for me, hard acid techno is the winner!
I remember back in 2012, thanks to the playlist #4 by Com Truise, I discovered Boards of Canada. I will always be thankful to Datassette for this project!
Orbital's brown album: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lxa6Yv5dVk0
Aphex Twin, Selected Ambient Works 85-92
Boards of Canada
Mr. Robot Original Soundtrack
I fully credit Autechre's album Exai for deconstructing and reconstructing my brain to learn functional programming back in college (shoutout Racket and BSL).
autechre are my usual favourites for mad scientist coding binges
I'm well aware that I'm in the minority, but I have never been able to focus on anything - especially programming - other than in absolute, total silence.
(Yes, I'm an only child.)
I don't know if you're in a minority. I think people just don't like a boring answer like "silence".
I was raised in a big family, and I prefer silence when I need truly deep focus. From my experience in open floorplan offices, a majority don't break out the headphones until it gets noisy enough. Some people would even come in early or stay late for exactly this reason.
I love all the recommendations here. Great selection that I can add to my personal hacking background music. I can also recommend
- Pure Shakuhachi music (ignore the ones with 'relaxing' background music)
- Brian Eno
- Vangelis
- Hiroshi Yoshimura
<3 music for programming
some personal favourites:
- https://musicforprogramming.net/seventyone
- https://musicforprogramming.net/fiftyseven
- https://musicforprogramming.net/fortysix
I too can enjoy the SomaFM/Dublab sounds for work.
But when I need to mix it up, I switch to FIP (Paris). They manage several different stations, but start with the main one first. It's excellently curated with more of a global palette than your typical station.
For me nothing beats 90s ambient dnb for coding. There's something about drum and bass that really gets me in flow.
Also Big Beat, for me. Crystal Method's Vegas reaches into my brain and flips the time to code switch.
Also Fluke - Risotto. Similar vibes.
Definitely my cuppa tea too :)
https://m.youtube.com/@arcologies
Yoooo thanks for the rec this is spot on up my alley.
You might also like mood indigo on SoundCloud, mix of house and DnB been a solid programming session soundtrack for me over the last few years.
https://on.soundcloud.com/5HzXSAKAdM41bxIvdp
Same. My music collection covers a vast range but I find the Good Looking Records catalog to be nearly ideal for getting me into the flow state.
It really sucks that so much of that catalog is no longer available for all intents and purposes.
You thinking like Good Looking Records stuff like Artemis? Love it.
Artemis/Shogun are one of my major go-tos.
Same... Source Direct - Approach and Identify
I used to have bassdrive on. So good.
I recently discovered Lorn and have been mainlining his back catalogue ever since whilst working. Thoroughly interesting and immersive yet not distracting.
I remember watching an interview with Marco Arment (creator of Overcast and Instapaper) where he mentions that he listens to Phish a lot [1]. He collects every single recording and live show, almost 30 gigabytes of music from this one band. IIRC, he listens to it when working, so he never runs out of "music for programming" this way.
1. https://marco.org/2011/05/26/geek-intro-to-phish
Do not see this one in the thread yet, found this on HN years ago and always in the weekly rotation
https://poolsuite.net/
Happy times, when that was trending...
Aim to Head's mix channel is a lot of what I listen to for my design work. 30 min to 1 hour of well mixed tracks. The Witch House tracks are partially helpful in focusing.
https://m.youtube.com/@aimtoheadmix1915/videos
I just listened to the Matrix OST and that one really gets me into a coding mood!
Illuminoids, has to be.
https://archive.org/details/IlluminationRadio
Pick an episode with your rng of choice.
don't see it in the comments yet so: https://www.brain.fm/
Requires an email address and credit card to even try this, so nope.
The Diablo II soundtrack on repeat
When I'm really trying to get shit done I'll put on some German industrial music like Bagger 258. The lyrics don't bother me because I don't understand them. I find the harsh aesthetic helps to keep me from getting distracted with side quests. Those little voices in my head become inaudible over the nonsensical (to me) lyrics.
I like listening to hard rock, EBM and industrial when working. Something with a lot of energy. The lyrics don't bother me at all, I am good at not listening to them, especially if I know the song and what the lyrics are.
I love instrumental only hip hop beats like shamisen x hip hop https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qi_-RmXz_g
AI is really good with musac
Hey me too! Japanese trap is great.
While working with code, I mostly listen to Playboi Carti or older Thugger
I haven't played the game, but I like to have Baldur's Gate 3 soundtrack in the background sometimes (can be found on YT).
Oliver Huntemann - Propaganda Album
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLscdEjM7jiUsxRPIt7BUjzxpA...
Chillout channel on DI.FM: https://www.di.fm/chillout
ah memories
I didn’t know about this. Worked for me, thank you!
I use gregorian chant for programming
Merzbow. Keep by fidget brain occupied with pure noise while I get real work done.
OPs playlist requires too many faculties used in coding.
Swing or Jazz for analysis and painting diagrams
Heavy Metal for actual development
Bossa Nova for deploying at 1 am
The soundtracks for SimCity 3000, 4, and the 5th one titled just "SimCity" are written specifically to be played while doing some fiddly micromanagement tasks.
This is more like music for relaxation. I can't code without a strong rhythm.
When too much rhythm is never enough: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3KgZlxTz8g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PIzzMYWp0U
Random Access Memories.
Alive 2007
Here is some long-play stuff I do with code that helps write code https://lowveld.bandcamp.com/
dub techno, e.g. https://www.youtube.com/@Scienide1995_Deep_and_Dub
I listen to post-rock.
There are usually no lyrics, there's an absolute ton out there, and something about the music gets my brain flowing better than other instrumental music.
I’ve thought about and experimented with it a lot. The main criteria is no lyrics, or at a minimum lyrics in a language you don’t understand at all, since this hijacks attention from parts of the brain useful for programming in a noticeable way. I find prominent fast percussion seems to help with focus but I am less confident of that.
Most other elements don’t seem to matter too much. Baroque, industrial, ambient, etc are all effectively equivalent in most regards.
That said, I tend to lean toward 1990s atmospheric drum-and-bass (pretty much anything released by Good Looking Records) as a good default. That genre maximizes things that seem to help while minimizing things that seem to detract.
This may be weird.. but I have been listening to a bunch of extended "save room" ambient tracks based on music in Resident Evil.. Someone under the name of Survival Spheres has a crapload of these on YT-music.. They are all about 10-12 mins long.. and they stay of the way mentally..
I’ve found instrumental + slightly repetitive tracks work best for me — anything too dynamic pulls my attention away.
Lately it’s been a mix of ambient electronic and lo-fi, especially for longer deep work sessions.
I love progressive techno for this. No vocals and sounds are in the lower frequency range. Easy to tune out.
then you'll adore this "deep progressive techno" mix playlist by artist "Dub Element" with 50 hours of the finest rolling deep pumping oldschool rave techno. Also does d'n'b and dub techno..
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAb7rS-Wvyr0AZdUlgaCg...
Iron Maiden for me :)
Metal for me as well, though I prefer more of the screamy-scream variety (Summoning, Judas Iscariot, Darkthrone,...).
Try Agalloch :)
Thanks, I'll see if I can find them on Bandcamp or 7Digital.
Also Rage (germany), etc
Didn't know about this one, it's excellent. Thanks.
I remember downloading music from the hacking e-show “The Scene” way back when - must have been late 2000s? Some great music in there like Newborn Butterflies if I remember the name right. It was nice background music in the show and I’d put it on from time to time.
I personally love my classic/progressive rock and am happy to listen to it while working. It seems odd to limit music for programming to only lo-fi.
This is music for programming: https://velato.net/ (or music as programming??)
my go to coding playlist for years https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVuvGj-9l_yXpuZwSqo...
My vibe coding playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFcwd2lzu8tujlF-tPg1EfXPU...
Everyone is linking the stuff they use, so I will add as well. I like the ambient/electronic as well, but this one might be new/exciting for some of you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lnk_b_7trII
This is an extended edition of "it might just be a one shot deal" from the waka/jawaka album by Frank Zappa. The extended part is the pedal steel played by Sneaky Pete Kleinow.
If you have never heard any Zappa stuff and this is interesting to you, listen to waka jawaka itself if you like instrumentals. If you want something more commercial, listen to the Apostrophe/Overnite Sensation album. If you want more odd, listen to the Bongo Fury album, featuring Captain Beefheart. Happy exploring.
Look up Dub Techno.
awesome for coding! my fav stations with dub techno chan: Mabu Beatz from Germany, Radio Caprice from Russia & Radio Schizoid from India. Last one has an excellent chillout chan as well, even though the track metadata has been half broken for years (UTF16BE BOM ftw)..
https://www.radio-browser.info/search?name=dub%20techno
Swans is good for programming. And good for gnosis.
I occasionally have I Am A Tower on a loop when I really need to break through some kind of mental / coding block.
While I'm not surprised at the general tastes here in the comments (as I mostly share them), I am surprised at the lack of any mention of classical?!
Johann Johannsson and Max Richter are my go-tos.
I also recommend Datassette which is the 1-man band of the artist behind this.
kushsessions
This sight got me through many projects in college :)
Haha cool, very specific music though
For another genre suggestion: handpan music. It's rhythmic and repetitive, but warmer than electronica, and fades nicely in the background:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qafSm6N5bkc
soma.fm Channel: DEFCON Radio Best programming music!
synthwave
Di.fm (Digitally Imported) has been my companion throughout the years
this is so much fun!
Can we play it for my LLM?
Morbid Angel - Altars of Madness
Nice! \m/
minecraft music is peak and takes all :)
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