coding music
Do you listen to music whilst you code or study? If so what do you
listen to the most? I have tried all sorts of genre's and settled
on classical music. Classical music gives me a couple of
advantages. Firstly, not counting Opera or Choral pieces, it has no
lyrics, which might not sound like an advantage but for me it
certainly is.
Lyrics, whether I like it or not, are interpreted by my brain, I am
reading or typing but am conscious of a second stream of
information flowing through my head. For example, there is a
Smith's song that contains the stanza "I've seen this happen in
other peoples lives and now its happening in mine", so there I am
trying to read something about Lisp, atoms and symbols, and
suddenly identifying with that particular chorus and invariably
there goes my mind, wandering out the door, and it takes something
like the song ending or a shake of my head to struggle back to the
task at hand.
Secondly, Classical music for me is largely uncharted waters, sure
there a few really famous compositions that I know and like,
Prokofiev's "Lieutenant Kije" or Holst's "The Planets" but there
are so many more wonderful compositions that I have hidden in
/mp3/Classical waiting to be discovered, which could lead to the
most sweetest of rewards - discovering beautiful music for the
first time.
I have tried Electronica, a broad genre that can also be devoid of
any lyrics but it tends to have to much of a good beat, this leads
to the initial toe tapping, which invariably is followed by the
head bobbing back and forward and/or swaying laterally and then its
only a matter of time before the eyes close and you find your
shoulders alternately thrusting back and forth, at this point you
are pretty much dancing in your chair and not getting any work
done.
I have also tried Country and Western, Bluegrass, Cajun and
traditional Irish/Newfoundland music but with poor results.
Last.fm seems
to favor electronica in general and specifically Enigma but outside
of that Google seems to turn up lots of forums with geeks posting
personal favorite songs which would require a lot of effort to
track down and evaluate.
There is of course another option of complete silence, and to be
honest, I have no problem with that, its just sometimes I can spend
the entire evening in front of my computer and that gets dull and
lonely without some music.
Here are some songs in no particular order that consistently
interfere with my studying:(they will be deleted in a couple of
weeks)
Death_From_Above_1979-Black_History_Month_Girl_on_Girl_Revision.mp3
Doves-Black_And_White_Town.mp3
Goldfrapp-Fly_Me_Away.mp3
Goldfrapp-Ooh_La_La.mp3
Groove Armada Fly Me To The Moon.mp3
Groove_Armada-Suntoucher.mp3
Jungle Brothers-Freakin' You.mp3
LemonJelly-75_aka_Stay_With_You.mp3(a
dancing-in-the-chair-song)
The_Chemical_Brothers-Close_Your_Eyes.mp3
The_Chemical_Brothers-Hold_Tight_London.mp3
The_Magic_Numbers-Love_Me_Like_You.mp3