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Comment by krylon | Hacker News Reader

I love this album. I often listen to it when programming, Ambient (or more generally: calm, instrumental music) helps me focus.

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> I love this album. I often listen to it when programming

Me too. Its been a coding zone favourite of mine for many years.

The classical/instrumental version by Bang on a Can [1] is good too.

[1] https://www.discogs.com/release/1140705-Bang-On-A-Can-Brian-...

All of his and his brother, Roger's albums are great for this reason. I would recommend Svaneborg Kardyb as well, who are a great instrumental band.

This album helps me wake up, helps me go to sleep, helps me focus, and keeps me centered. Eno's works are so versatile.

Another favorite is Eno's Discreet Music. Gives me chills every time. One of my favorite records to fly to.

Do you have any recommendations?

Absolutely! For instrumental focus music, check out Nils Frahm or Max Richter. Do you prefer more electronic or acoustic sounds?

Not OP but I also often to listen to ambient while programming. A couple recommendations would be "Music for Nine Post Cards" and other works by Hiroshi Yoshimura, and "Music for 18 musicians" and others by Steve Reich.

In fact, the use of loops described in this article reminded me of what Reich called "phases", basically the same concept of emerging/shifting melodic patterns between different samples.

For a good intro the Sleepbot Environmental Broadcast radio is well worth listening to. Also their write up on how and why they produce the broadcast is really interesting.

Biosphere - Shenzhou and Cirque, Stars of the Lid - The Tired Sounds of The Stars of the Lid are favorites of mine. I would also include everything by Microstoria which is not ambient but it works to the same end.

Stars of the Lid are sooooo good, yes! Their entire catalog is amazing.

Drone Zone on SomaFM (free internet radio) was how I discovered a lot of that stuff. Although they don't play the old classics as much these days, it's still good and they have a few similar stations there https://somafm.com/player24/station/dronezone

I generally find Deep Space One more appropriate for most of my coding, though I used Drone Zone a lot many years ago.

I've been supporting SomaFM for more than 20 years now, and am so grateful for it. Not just the ambient stuff, but Secret Agent and several others too.

Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works {85-92,Volume II}.

music for programming podcast: https://musicforprogramming.net/latest/

some of the artists below are not strictly speaking ambient as in brian eno kind of ambient

jogging house, r beny, biosphere, anthony childs (surgeon doing ambient), abul mogard, alessandro cortini, alva noto (glitchy ambient), benoit piouliard, bing & ruth, bvdub, mu tate, jake muir, ulla, log et3rnal, space afrika, heurco s, donato dozzy - plays bee mask, imaginary softwoods, jo johnson, koen holtkamp, mountains, kyle bobby dunn, oneohtrix point never, neel, pendant, romeo poirier, domenique dumont, …

For me - Aes Dana (Season 5 is still my favorite) and Carbon Based Lifeforms (Hydroponic Garden, World of Sleepers, Interloper).

Actually, check out the whole Ultimae catalogue: https://bandcamp.com/ultimae

Carbon Based Lifeforms are amazing.

Their album World of Sleepers is my favourite from them.

Sadly they peaked pre 2010 and then slowly became average.. Was huge fan on the days and saw them live once and DJ set another time..

I guess I agree (used to be a massive 90's EBM collector together with my ex, though I kind of got out of the loop of EBM end of 00's / start of 10's). Seeing a Woob album from 1994 recommended a few comments below <3 for CBL, I do like the track ~42 degrees.

How we used to find music: go to the record store every week to listen to whatever you couldn't afford, look at P2P networks at people who like similar music as you, and browse their collections. Eventually, use Discogs to search. Or simply talk with other people (at parties, on the internet) who also like the same music.

How we can find music nowadays: Spotify (and such). I mean, seriously. Their suggestions can open you up to a plethora of new artists. If you then look at the top 10, chances are you'll like some of their work. I found a lot of music this way, for all kind of genres. As Valve's Gabe used to say: piracy is a service problem. Though I am not sure Spotify is so good for the artists, given they earn pennies via that.

..and it is still nowhere to getting and downloading and listening 24/7 to every new release (or, well... trying to), using SMB to the NAS (which automatically gets the releases from a scene FTP) and Winamp locally to add some .m3u files.

Sleep by Max Richter is great (and very long)

Sunset Mission by Bohren & Der Club of Gore is very very sleepy Jazz (they have released more albums, but this one is my favorite by a wide margin)

Long Ambients 1 & 2 by Moby - he was kind enough to make them available for download free of charge, too

Under Wires and Search Lights by Marconi Union

In A Silent Way by Miles Davis

Pretty much anything by Sigur Rós. It's not strictly speaking instrumental, but the lyrics are Icelandic, which I don't speak, so it's close enough

Cocteau Twins recorded many very ambient-ish albums. Not instrumental, but the "lyrics" are mostly glossolalia, so not distracting (at least for me).

Here that is on spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3d3e49rSmge86cU4D4u8mn

No particular order:

Max Richter, John Cage, Tangerine Dreams, Klaus Schulze, Gavin Bryars, Richard Chartier, Asmus Tietchens, Tomaga, Boards of Canada, Stars of the Lid, William Basiniki, Joanna Brouk, Pauline Oliveros ...

I do way too much coding...

> Pauline Oliveros

Yes yes yes! Finally someone who won't make fun of me for listening to Horse Singd from a Cloud.

You should add Laurie Spiegel to your list, something tells me you'd enjoy.

"Deep Listening" by Pauline Oliveros, Stuart Dempster and Panaiotis is also excellent:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U__lpPDTUS4

> Laurie Spiegel

Just listening to "Appalachian Grove I" - Nice, thanks for the tip :thumbsup:

Excellent recs.

If anyone reading this like Bohren & Der Club of Gore, also check out Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble.

And if you vibe with Sigurd Ros, check out Godspeed You! Black Emperor too.

I've not seen Global Communication mentioned, 76:14 really is masterpiece. (Gamers will recognize a tune featured on GTA IV)

Yeah, everything's interconnected as Tangerine Dream got to work on GTA V soundtrack. There is this note about that track on Wikipedia:

The track "5:23" is included in the 2008 video game Grand Theft Auto IV and appears on the soundtrack album The Music of Grand Theft Auto IV. In the digital release it is listed as "Maiden Voyage". This track is very similar to, but does not credit, the song "Love on a Real Train" by Tangerine Dream from the Risky Business soundtrack. They had remixed the song for a then upcoming Tangerine Dream remix album but had their effort rejected so released it as 5'23 instead.

Here's a playlist list of long-form ambient drone stuff I've been curating for a couple years now:

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGMYnukvmgiXXFxuTKDvZfw-e...

I listen to it while I work.

Aphex Twin's "Digeridoo" is incredible. It's a 4-song EP so it repeats often, but that's a feature for me.

A good place for experimental music is ubu web, in fact Brian Eno is also over there[1].

Edit:

Also if you're a programmer and what to learn a new programming language, then check out SuperCollider[2]. You can use that to create your own ambient sounds. SC has a great library for creating user interfaces along with creating sound.

[1]: https://ubu.com/film/eno_77_interview.html

[2]: https://supercollider.github.io/

There's also Strudel as a programmatic music composing app: https://strudel.cc/

Which, Claude is better than ChatGPT at generating code for.

My personal favourite for online is noisecraft, for example: https://noisecraft.app/1961

now that is fun to watch :)

The best is the instrumentals on David Bowie's Low IMO.

I know people love Music for Airports but I think it is incredibly boring compared to what Eno did with Bowie.

Beyond that the first few albums by The Orb are top notch.

Balam Acab - See Birds and Wander/Wonder are incredible.

I have so many suggestions.

But if I had to pick one: Stars of the Lid - The Tired Sounds of Start of the Lid

Woob 1194 by Woob. Immersive, maybe darker than most would like, but deep and very graphical sound.

https://woob.bandcamp.com/album/woob-1194

I have an 'Ambient Radio' channel on https://ambiph.one, my soundscape generator: https://ambiph.one/?m=1-Ambient+Radio-bf100

There are some great less-well-known artists on there - if you tap the album art it'll link you to their Bandcamp if they have one

If drone with later neoclassical touch then Marsen Jules has delivered very stable and top tier. Brilliant guy.

https://marsenjules.bandcamp.com/

i have a 5hr playlist on spotify called lost in the sea of ambien which happens to have many of the artist recos here. title is a reference to haruomi hosono who said he got lost in the sea of ambient in the 80s after leaving ymo.

https://richardhoughten.bandcamp.com/music

https://domeniquedumont.bandcamp.com/

https://marylattimoreharpist.bandcamp.com/

https://archive.org/details/Tipper-CosmAmbientSet

https://williamtyler.bandcamp.com/

None of these artists are strictly ambient though