Re:The Quiet Ones
by gordonguthrie on Monday November 19, 2012 @11:34AM
(#4805076)
I read Oliver Sachs Musicophilia:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Musicophilia-Tales-Music-Oliver-Sack...
In it he points out how some people with Alzheimers or other degenerative brain damage can use familiar music to co-ordinate a sort of 'flow' a rhythm of activity.
When I am coding it is like this. I can put on a familiar record that know back to front and then suddenly it is over and I haven't heard any of it but it has marshalled my flow for me.
Put on an unfamiliar playlist or a 'radio' style thing from last.fm (or the radio even) where I don't know what is going to be played next) and it trashes my flow.
So to get stuff out of Spotify I have to make and learn playlists (as it trashes the order of all the LP's which I have burnt into my head from years of listening to them on vinyl....)
Interesting. I can try that with Metallica's older stuff, as I have been listening to it for over 15 years.
When I'm writing, I can't listen to music with lyrics or podcasts. That's not too surprising, since I'm obviously using the parts of my brain related to processing language for my work, so I can't process language in the background.
When I'm doing grunt-level programming or debugging, I can listen to music with words or podcasts.
But when I'm doing architecture-level program design, I can't listen to music with lyrics or podcasts. For me, this kind of thinking is too similar to writing.