1. Irrelevant speech / sounds tends to reduce memory capacity for the task at hand[a].
2. People with ADHD self-stimulate by, e.g, squirming. Music can help them with attentional tasks by providing stimulation [b].
Overall, I'm not that familiar with studies specifically on music, but I'd guess that it's a trade-off between arousal (e.g. rock music or something to pump you up) and dividing attention. Music could also set a context (e.g. put you in programming "mode"), which tends to have a small positive effect on performance on a number of cognitive tasks.
It's almost like I need to keep part of my brain busy so the other "quieter" part can work.
Music, driving, pacing around, and to a lesser extent fidgeting or tapping can all "placate" that part of my brain so the other can actually do work. I'll even do things like play music while listening to a talk or presentation while working, because without the music keeping me "busy" I just can't focus on the topic of the talk.
So my "focus" playlist is post-bop Jazz with things like Chick Corea (especially Three Quartets), Steps Ahead, Keith Jarrett's Standards Trio stuff, early Wynton Marsalis. Some Coltrane, but not so much his meditative stuff - things like Giant Steps make my brain engage.
I can't multitask like that though - I can't have two auditory sources. When I'm talking to people, I have trouble picking out voices when surrounded by a crowd, or with several people talking at once. It's like I'm trying to make sense of all the background noise and can't pick up what's being said directly to me.
But the multitasking thing is a bit different for me, it's more one-sense-at-a-time for me. My wife has laughed at me before because she'll come home and i'll be watching a youtube talk on one screen, playing music over the speakers, and programming something mundane all at the same time, but if 2 people are talking at the same time I have trouble hearing anything.
Interesting how everyone has a personal threshold of not engaging enough / too engaging.
I wish there was some reliable resource I could go to to find 3-5 hour blocks of edm type music.
ATTN paki123: I can't reply to your comment but you should visit and read http://addforums.com/ for support, drug reviews/experiences and tips
I can second sosuke, addforums.com was a great resource. I haven't been there for a long time though.
I read them over, nothing looked overtly spammy or troll-ey, so I vouched for this comment as it seemed genuine.
I do think it's an anti-spam or anti-troll measure, but it looks like it's a mishit in this case.
That being said, is there anyone where we read up on what vouching/dead/etc... means on HN? Maybe one of the mods or someone can help explain some of it (or let me know that they won't explain it for anti-spam purposes...).
That doesn't explain exactly how vouching works, and I think the "strength" of a vouch might be changed per-user (it no longer seems to do the same thing it used to, for me, at least).
I do have a problem with focus while working. One thing which really helps me is if I put on some audiobook I don't really care to focus on too much about, or some podcast or lecture, but it helps me focus. Not all the time, but say I am working on solving a coding challenge, then the part where I figure out which solution would work, I can't listen to anything and I need to focus, but the part where I actually implement the solution(especially if I have implemented something like that many times) then I can only do it if there is something else to distract other parts of my mind.
If I need silence let there be silence, otherwise I enjoy some podcasts or music that pumps me up.
Subjectively, I find that instrumental music is much better for me than the alternative.
Concerning tasks that do not involve auditory targets, studies with adults have consistently shown that especially short-term memory is sensitive to negative effects of noise. Immediate serial recall of visually presented verbal items is reliably impaired by task-irrelevant sounds (for reviews see Hughes and Jones, 2001; Beaman, 2005; Schlittmeier et al., 2012). Impairments occur with single talker speech and non-speech sounds such as tones or instrumental music, but not with continuous broadband noise or babble noise. This so-called irrelevant sound effect (ISE) occurs reliably even with low-intensity sounds, with meaningless speech (e.g., speech in a language unknown to participants), and when sound presentation is confined to a rehearsal phase after encoding of the list items. However, the ISE magnitude is determined by inherent properties of the irrelevant sound. Recall performance is specifically impaired by sounds with a changing-state characteristic, i.e., by auditory streams which consist of distinct auditory–perceptive objects that vary consecutively. For example, irrelevant sounds consisting of different syllables or tones evoke an ISE, whereas steady state sounds, e.g., continuous broadband noise or repetitions of single syllables or tones, have a minor or no effect.
In general, I've seen the argument that removing the effect can happen through habituating to repeated sounds, but also seem to recall some people showing that prolonged exposure to the irrelevant speech/stimuli before a task can also remove the effect--so maybe people wouldn't suffer as much with stimuli they're familiar with playing in the background. (there's also the issue of the things people actually do vs laboratory tasks).
When I program in my favorite roastery and coffee shop (http://www.roesttrommel.de/info/laufer-gasse.html) I want people, noise and background music. I can concentrate on my my code very well.
However, when I'm at home and I have to concentrate - on the exact same code - I need complete silence. If I leave music running or anything else I can't concentrate.
So there seems to be higher-level processing involved in the brain so that the complete context matters, and not just something as simple as "music/no music" (medium level processing).
I wish I was like von Neumann sometimes. He was known to do his best work on quantum mechanics in the living room with his whole family sitting around talking and the television blasting.
It can be a confidence builder for me to "successfully perform" in a noisy, busy setting. Perhaps someone looked at me working just now, but I didn't flinch! Knuckling down and blocking out the world in a setting like that may help get you into the productivity zone.
I've noticed that in my open office plan just putting my headphones on helps me concentrate, no need for music. I know others will be less apt to interrupt me because I have signaled to them that I'm shutting them out and getting work done. I can devote less awareness to others and more to my tasks.
I tend toward electronia (usually) without vocals. I'll find a suitable artist and get several of their albums and listen to all the albums on loop. For me this is enough to quickly gain that familiarity you mention, hearing the same songs in the same order all day long.
I apply one more trick, that I got from some self help book once: my energy level is not always the same, and too little energy is a problem for concentration but so is too much energy. If it's just right, I'll likely be able to find the flow and then the music matters less.
Rage Against the Machine and Rammstein can improve energy levels. Very quiet music (current favorite Carrie & Lowell by Sufjan Stevens) can quiet me down so I can concentrate.
Like "techno" or "dubstep", this word can mean very different things for different people.
Arovane - Tides (2000)
Tim Hecker - Virgins (2013)
Donato Dozzy - K (2010)
Autechre - Amber (1994)
James Holden - The Inheritors (2013)
Andy Stott - Faith In Strangers (2014)
Jon Hopkins - Immunity (2013)
Recondite - On Acid (2012)
Lemon Jelly - Lemonjelly.ky (2000)
Max Graef - Rivers Of The Red Planet (2014)
Pantha Du Prince - Black Noise (2010)
Plaid - Reachy Prints (2014)
Rival Consoles - Sonne (2014)
Shlohmo - Bad Vibes (2011)
St Germain - Boulevard (1995)
Traumprinz - Mothercave (2013)
Valerio Tricoli - Clonic Earth (2016)
Romare - Projections (2015)
Space Dimension Controller - Orange Melamine (2016)
Actress - R.I.P (2012)
Massive Attack - Mezzanine (1998)
Rob Clouth - Clockwork Atom (2014)
And shouts out to Datassette who appears to have done a bunch of the instalments on the music for programming site (mixes/playlists, whatever they are. I've never listened to any of them). This EP is gorgeous:
Datassette - The Aviatrix (2009)
I agree with this a ton, there are certain songs and albums where I've listened to them hundreds of times and familiarity plays a huge role in helping me focus.
> A certain kind of loud, wall-of-sound rock music which is very heavy on distortion with subdued vocals works well but only at night.
Couldn't agree more! See my other comment:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12849064
We should trade music!
[1] Example: http://streamer.psyradio.org:8030/ And make sure you have headphones with a good bass response or a subwoofer. I find the music loses a lot without its bass line.
Bonobo radio on Spotify is a great starting point for laid back EDM that isn't anxiety-inducing but keeps energy up.
I love all forms of jazz too much to listen to it while I work, because I start listening critically and getting into musician mode not coder mode.
Your #1 and #3 definitely work, especially in harmony, but I have found that I do well with songs in langauages that I don't know at all but I like the general style. For example, when I need enegry and work, I listen to Rammstein or The Pillows (Japanese). If I need to relax a bit and work, Seeed (german reggae) or something french are my go to. There's a lot more and sometimes I just put on a Spotify international playlist. The randomness and lack of understandable lyrics helps me, as long as I don't try to learn what they are saying.
EDM) Menno de Jong
https://soundcloud.com/mennodejong/menno-de-jong-live-at-luc... https://soundcloud.com/mennodejong/menno-de-jong-cloudcast-0...
Like other continuously mixed, mostly-ambient EDM but favors minor mode and affected arps that keep my brain occupied in it just enough to avoid distraction.
Japanese Drums) The Ondekoza, or any competent group
https://www.amazon.com/Haru-Ichiban/dp/B003P5RMBM
Pure rhythmic impulse, monotonic yet with remarkable complexity.
Classical) Glenn Gould's Bach, Mozart
https://www.amazon.com/Glenn-Gould-plays-Bach-Chromatic/dp/B...
Julian Bream, Bach, Lute http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/julian-bream-plays-j-s-bach-...
Jonas Nordberg, de Visee et al, Theorbo https://itunes.apple.com/es/album/jonas-nordberg-visee-weiss...
Perhaps too much for deep flow sessions but extremely stimulating for more inspirational, breaking-down-the-problem "aha" moments.
When it comes to `classical` music, keep in mind that the term encompasses hundreds of years of evolution and dozens of genres or utilities that the music was composed to serve. For our purposes, we may want to stick to "salon" style solo or small ensemble compositions which were made by the masters with the express purpose of stimulating the logical and emotional mind. Church music and large symphonies for example are a completely different animal, but get unfortunately rolled in under this catch-all term.
"When Randy gets back to his cell, he sits crosslegged on his bed with the Walkman and begins dealing out the CDs like cards in a solitaire game. The selection is pretty reasonable: a two-disc set of the Brandenburg Concertos, a collection of Bach organ fugues (nerds have a thing about Bach)"
So I thought 'why not' and got a two-disc set of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos. And sixteen years later I still listen to it when I'm working and have never tired of it. Great music for focus.
On the bright side, I'm now listening to Bach's Brandenburg Concertos and grateful for the explicit choice in music for my afternoon. I'm EDM-d out lately.
http://webistem.com/acoustics2008/acoustics2008/cd1/data/art...
Sounds like you're describing My Bloody Valentine...
Lush, I only discovered about four weeks back, but I went in head over heels, they are just great.
And, yes, I agree, there is a certain affinity between this kind of music and dim lighting. It doesn't work in broad daylight. ;-)
1. Music I first got into during my teenage years when I was sitting up all night coding assembler (OK, I admit it, Pink Floyd) works well because I think my mind is conditioned in an almost Pavlovian way to go into programming mode when I hear it;
2. Ambient EDM works well because it is very repetitive and doesn't have any strong lyrical structure - my trouble is, as an old fart, I find only a very small subset of the vast range of EDM that I actually like.
3. A certain kind of loud, wall-of-sound rock music which is very heavy on distortion with subdued vocals works well but only at night.
Received opinion says classical music is good for cognitive tasks, and I've tried over the years but never good great results.