Ask HN: What do you listen to when you code? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What do you listen to when you code?

48 pointskreeWall51 comments

Individual songs, playlists, artists, all suggestions welcome!

Generally power metal here - Nightwish, Blind Guardian, Helloween, Gamma Ray, Angra, Edguy, HammerFall, Manowar, Kamelot, older Sonata Arctica, Demons & Wizards, etc.

Sometimes I'll venture into some female-fronted metal bands like Within Temptation or Delain too.

Regular heavy metal also is always fine - Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, some Dio.

Dream Theater is also quite a great progressive metal band, as well as their side project Liquid Tension Experiment.

Some solo guitarists make some great stuff - one of my personal favorites is Kiko Loureiro (Angra, Megadeth).

As far as non-metal artists I'll listen to while coding, one of my favorites is Gary Moore - he was an extraordinarily prolific artist, one of the most genre spanning more mainstream artists I listen to. I also like listening to Kate Bush as well.

I've listened to music of a lot of different genres too outside those whose artists I have listed - this might not work for everyone though. If I'm listening to something I like, I'm happy and generally avoid being distracted.

Wes? ;)

Also, ditto - Prog and power metal seems to kickstart my brain and has often helped me out of nonproductive slumps.

All of the above plus System of a Down, Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park and various other nu metal bands.

Digitally Imported has a very wide range of, well, digital music.

They have some free ad supported streams but the annual cost of ad-free $70 is totally worth it in my opinion.

My current favorite channels are Chillstep, Liquid DnB, Nu Disco, Chill & Tropical House. Various levels of repetitive bass to keep your leg and fingers twitching, and differing tempos to either raise or lower your heart rate, depending on what you need in the moment.

Web Browser Flash or mobile apps. http://www.di.fm

I haven't been on di since the early 2000's. Glad to see it's still around.

I like synthwave stuff when I'm programming.

favorites:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DY1s9SmrQRE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3NoYyNKSXQ&t=1672s

I mostly listen to these sets:

https://musicforprogramming.net/

I also like these SomaFM stations:

https://somafm.com/deepspaceone/

https://somafm.com/spacestation/

https://somafm.com/sf1033/

I don't listen to anything when coding. I need the silence, and deep thought. However, when I'm doing trivial things, I listen to classical music. Usually "Essential Classical", or something similar, on Google Music.

It varies. Sometimes I listen to my "stock" music - hard rock and heavy metal of all varieties, with a special focus on 80's era glam metal, speed metal, and thrash metal.

Other times it's various forms of electronic music. House, trance, europop, Hi-NRG, synthwave/darkwave, etc.

And then sometimes I go with classical music. Bach, Vivaldi, Verdi, Wagner, Strauss, Orff, etc.

As far as specifics go, here's some stuff I've listened to lately:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8OELzmpgZo&list=PL7F37BB1A6...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9oTQzwXYXk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hd8Or1RrYs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4oZZhpMXP4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyfL9LC1DC4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajF2NOuYkjk

https://youtu.be/-7Q61fH-03E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGMJ2b-3eCk

One other thing I'll sometimes do is put on a movie in the background, with the volume turned down fairly low... just enough that I hear some babble and noise, but not enough that I get caught up in what's going on. This only works if I use a movie I've seen / heard many times, so I already know what's happening and won't get drawn into the story. So, something like The Matrix, Antitrust, Tron:Legacy, Hackers, Sneakers, The Social Network, etc.

Rarely Heard Ragas by Vilayat Khan (sitar) is very good for listening to while working, IMO. Similarly other mild melodies on stringed instruments. Relaxes you while you work.

https://jugad2.blogspot.com/2013/10/music-video-sitar-vilaya...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilayat_Khan

Edit(s):

Vivaldi's Four Seasons is another good one for this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Vivaldi

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Four_Seasons_(Vivaldi)

Barclay James Harvest. The story of how they got their name is interesting :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barclay_James_Harvest

I generally listen to heavy metal, classic and hard rock that tends a bit towards prog with long sections and a bit of classical, epic feel to them. Something like Dio-era Rainbow, Led Zeppelin and Iron Maiden.

A few favorites:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6CjO0H2j0s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYrW3yONR44

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVid_fLzN5g

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDwotNLyz10

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J51LPlP-s9o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTqv59JXMUk

I love this Spotify list: https://open.spotify.com/user/ruhin94/playlist/0bG1EMQkukEeO...

Over 22 hours of powerful movie, game soundtracks.

Gets updated with new songs all the time.

Deep house, or other kinds of repetitive electronic music. Even though I'm usually a rock/jazz person, this music is perfect some times: very chill parties, dancing alone but surrounded by people, programming. Sometimes commuting.

It's relaxing, rather dronic but with enough variation to not be boring.

Four Tet, Burial, Aphex Twin, µ-Ziq, etc.

Nice choices! Boards of Canada too?

Pinback has recently helped me write a ton of code.

Tool, A Perfect Circle, Ashes Divide for a mellow, metal mood.

Vitamin String Quartet when I want something familiar, but classical in taste

Nicklecreek, Chris Thile, Old Crow Medicine Show, Punch Brothers for a folk fix.

Kid Ory when a need a New Orleans Jazz pick-me-up

Chill stuff/Wave music

https://soundcloud.com/dvrksea/youre-in-my-life

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4w7vgHnrYA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1yBhxn7H5o

Can't listen if I'm venturing into new territory; learning requires quiet. Otherwise it's Wave music. eg wave, vaporwave, synthwave, witch house, future funk, future beats etc

Music with minimal words (which I find distracting) but often with vocals. Usually an album at a time e.g.,

Ibiza chill sessions (annual albums) Melody AM The altogether Little dragon (NPR remix)

a lot of electric guitar - Steve Vai, joe satriani

Mostly various forms of jazz--lately I've been on a roll with Pharaoh Sanders and Sun Ra. But the key thing is I find it distracting to hear voices while I'm trying to work. So mostly music with no vocals.

I feel the same way about vocals but I also try to avoid jazz with horn solos, so I stick to piano jazz like Hiromi, Ahmad Jamal, or Chick Corea.

Autechre. Monolake. Aphex Twin. Boards of Canada. Spahn Ranch. Tycho. μ-Ziq. Loscil. Plaid. Kangding Ray. Emptyset. Shackleton. The Black Dog.

Also an assortment of Psy-Trance, Coldwave, and Industrial generes.

Anything in a language that I don't personally know. I find that the foreign language lyrics just pass through my brain freely whereas an English or Spanish song will sometimes grab my attentions because my brain is picking up the words. So lately it's been a lot of J-Pop and K-Pop. I used to listen to a bunch of German industrial music, but I've recently been learning German and so that's starting to interfere.

A little bit of everything...but when I really need to be productive I always put on the 'Tragic Boogie' album by The Life and Times.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7mReSQ-CZs&list=PLFNYv0PFOF...

It's been my go-to for 7 or 8 years now. Something about it just triggers the best of my skills to come out.

When I access that playlist, it shows the video is not available.

Interesting, it still loads when I try.

It's on bandcamp as well, though: https://thelifeandtimes.bandcamp.com/album/tragic-boogie

Depends on what I'm coding.

Sometimes I will put on old episodes of Retronauts (https://retronauts.com). Otherwise I will usually listen to OCRemix Radio / Rainwave (https://rainwave.cc), a SiriusXM station, or an album I'm familiar with.

I have this weird memory of Tom Hudson, former Atari developer who I think ended up at Autocad, listening to the Rambo II soundtrack while developing. Not sure why this memory stuck. http://www.atarimagazines.com/startv3n3/programunderpres.htm...

Chicago's 911. http://youarelistening.to/chicago For some reason and in my timezone difference to Chicago it puts my brain into coding mode, sometimes hours. I doubt anybody else around me would enjoy that.

http://musicforprogramming.net/

https://soundcloud.com/hex-ane/sets/sojourn-ep

It used to have more but there is still a lot of choice. http://mikesradioworld.com/ Cycle through BBC and Irish stations. Saving regular ones in Rhythmbox or VLC on my phone.

When I want to be super productive I'm listening to The Lord of The Rings Soundtrack. It feels like I'm doing some epic coding things. Just imagine when you are doing git push while there is Themes Of The Rohirrim playing.

Daft Punk - Tron Legacy Reconfigured

Spotify Link: https://open.spotify.com/album/6yT9Q73eTMfx1aDWJiCVIt

Never fails to get me in the mood.

Edit: Add link to album

Anamanaguchi or "Pogo" (https://www.youtube.com/user/Fagottron/) station on Pandora

Grateful Dead shows on the Internet Archive.

They're free. They're long so you don't need to be interrupted to change a track. The really spacey jams put you in a creative mindspace.

Plus, one of the songwriters founded the EFF!

An orchestra of fellow developer fingers dancing on mechanical keyboards!

This one works really well for me, when working (discovered thanks to HN !): https://www.brain.fm

Seconded. Love it.

Classical chamber music, white noise, YouTube videos of people playing video games, the customer service people on the phone sitting 5 feet away from me.

Muchado in the Classic Rock and Techno/Trance genres, and 80s music, but sometimes outside of it too.

From Moby, Pink Floyd, Lindsey Stirling, Disturbed, and M83 are common.

Podcasts in the morning and http://www.di.fm/ in the afternoon.

cat /dev/urandom | sox -traw -r44100 -b16 -e unsigned-integer - -tcoreaudio synth pinknoise band -n 1400 200 tremolo 40 .1 gain 8

I wanted to check it out. Installed sox on Ubuntu 17.04 and it's not working

    sox FAIL formats: no handler for given file type `coreaudio'

You need to replace coreaudio with pulseaudio, try this instead:

    cat /dev/urandom | sox -traw -r44100 -b16 -e unsigned-integer - -tpulseaudio synth pinknoise band -n 1400 200 tremolo 40 .1 gain 8

Anything without lyrics. Classical music is my normal target, but some of Reznor's electronic soundtracks for movies works well too.

Any sound my colleagues make.

Techno and deep house are my go tos. Generally, listening via soundcloud.

Sports Radio - you have to know everything about your favorite teams :-)

Songs similar to the soundtrack from RWBY

My inner voice.

Hans zimmer instrumental.

Tangerine Dream, Vangelis

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