I absolutely can't handle lyrics. I think you're right. Those of us who remember using gopher protocol probably grew up listening to radio hits even if we bought the tape or CD, so it was known and in its own way monotonous. But served the purpose of drowning out my brothers or roommate.

Now I don't own a TV and rarely listen to radio, and my tastes have dramasticly broadened, so I almost never listen to the same song more than a handful of times. I find lyrics are a show stopper. Even overly ambitious classical, jazz, electronica trips me up.

Here's a playlist I've been listening to for a while, seeded by, of all things, gopro surf videos, which has become my go-to study set, usually fed in with Bose QC-15s

http://open.spotify.com/user/grep2grok/playlist/1NcLBwixEKqQ...

More suggestions for you based on what I see in your playlist: Zero 7, Nujabes, Little People, Ludique. Followed you on spotify :)

You like your trip-hop.

For me, 'white noise' - type sounds- sounds of rainfall, waves, etc. [1]- help me focus. I usually work with nothing, bu one day when working in a noisy environment I discovered that putting headphones on and listening to 'sound of nature' tracks worked very well. So well, in fact, that now when I get stuck or am just having trouble focusing for any reason I do this.

[1] I think this is called 'brown noise' these days.

I use:

  sox -r 48000 -n -d synth pink

with noise canceling headphones and a relatively low volume.

I also tend to listen to:

  sox -n -d synth sine %-5 sine %-14 vol 0.5

...but everyone else seems to think it's incredibly annoying.

    play --show-progress -c 2 --null synth 01:00 brownnoise \
    reverb 19 vol 0dB bass 6 treble -3 repeat 558

Adjust bass and treble to match your headphones.

It sounds like a big waterfall, or like a continuous wave crash. And it's stereo. :)

EDIT: Or this:

    play --show-progress -c 2 --null synth brownnoise \
    reverb bass 6 treble -3 echos 0.8 0.9 1000 0.3 1800 0.25

The one with echos is a bit softer and more natural-sounding.

Stupid question: Is it necessary to play something through a pair of noise canceling headphones if you just want to "cancel noise" with them?

Not with the ones I'm familiar with (Bose QC-15). You have to turn the headphones on to engage the 'active' noise cancellation, but you don't have to be listening to anything. In fact, you can unplug the cable from the ear piece completely and still hear (not hear?) the effect.

White and brown noises are slightly different.

You could check them out here http://simplynoise.com/

Excellent link! And the terms are explained, too.

EDIT: I just clicked the link 'simply rain' on that site- that is more like what I listen to.

These days, I tend to listen to this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXtimhT-ff4

I have a music composition and conducting background, so any kind of music ends up distracting me at some level.

Brown noise helps me concentrate a fair bit. Personally, I've got SimplyNoise generating brown noise in oscillation mode which sounds a bit like waves.

> [1] I think this is called 'brown noise' these days.

Yikes. What terrible branding!

"Green noise" is better, sort of honest, and obvious.

They are engineering terms, not marketing terms. The 'colors' are to give you an analogy of sound frequencies in the spectrum: White is a blend of all (audio) frequencies with equal intensities; with pink noise, the intensity falls off at higher frequencies (1/f), and with brown noise the intensity falls off faster at higher frequencies (1/f^2).

Yep. More detail (with samples) here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colors_of_noise

Sorry, I actually knew that -- I spent a few years of my life building production studios and doing audible spectrum tests.

Cheap humor though, I apologize.

> I still use it only for situations involving mundane things like documentation.

I'm sorry, documentation requires less concentration?

I find (I hypothesize) that because I'm doing something which balances the hemispheres more (and requires me to get inside the head of my user) music doesn't work for documentation, it's too distracting. Programming yes, ambient works well, but writing...

For me, at least, that's true. But then, I've written a lot of words in my life.

Now, I will plan the documentation away from music, and I'll edit it away from a computer, but music gives you a "permission to suck" and just get words on the paper. Once you have words on the paper, you have something that can be molded.

I second this, writing good documentation is harder than writing code. I can do both with music I already know, however, but I will sometime go for a walk or a cigarette, both help a lot.