Music to code to

Yes, its that time again. Gfk is slightly tipsy and football is on the telly! :D

Do you listen to musics while you code? If so, what?

This week I have been mostly listening to:

Manic Street Preachers: Generation Terrorists
James: Best Of (not the new one - the one they released about 10 years ago)
Pink Floyd: The Wall
Smashing Pumpkins: Mellon Collie, Siamese Dream, and Gish.

Silence is deafening.

lol

Every version of "You'll never walk alone" I could find

[Trance Techno Dance] CLUSTER D I G I T A L L Y - I M P O R T E D - European Trance, Techno, Hi-NRG... we can't define it!

It works!

Erm, I have a varied selection:-

Razorlight
ColdPlay
Killers
Kasabien
Bedouin Soundclash
John Michel Jarre
Queen
Deacon Blue
Paul Simon
Grimethorpe Colliery Band (I saw them last weekend @ the Grimsby Auditorium)

Amonst others, but their the ones I most frequently listen to while programming!

Dabz

Grimethorpe is about 4 miles from me. :)

Always. This week mostly-

DJ crystl - Perpetual Motion EP
Amon Tobin - The Foley Room
The Soundtrack to 'Wargames'

+generally lots of 'Boards of Canada' and 'Orbital'

I mostly listen to music while programming. This week it's been mostly Johnny Cash and Hayseed Dixie.

Whatever Sky FM's "Top Hits" ShoutCast plays.
(shame it'll likely be dead in a couple months thanks to the increased royalty rates of radio delivered via net -.-)

Here's what Ive been listening too...

http://www.last.fm/user/Uncle_RR/?chartstyle=Awesome35

The background music to whatever my sister is playing on the Wii.

Well, that explains why you're so cheerful. ;)

for thinking & experimenting to:
All trippy stuff from Pink Floyd, jimmi, Credence.C.R., doors, the stones, seamless endless trance, triphop and stuff like that

for getting stuff done fast when i know what im doing and just want to get it done:
SystemOADown, RageATM, P.O.D. Machine head and other metal. Basically anything with hard drums and rockin guitar

Oh, so your from Barnsley, or there abouts! :)

I love the brass band from there, I've been listening to them since I played myself!

I havent blew a note for years, well, since I discovered Merrydown cider! ;)

Dabz

EDIT:

Are you watching the toeball H&K.... I'm routing for ya's (Another 10 mins left... COME ON LIVERPOOL)

Blue Danube by Strauss

Yes I really am an Elite fanatic ;)

Oh well

At least it was never going to be a cricket score like last time.

I think a lot depends on mood. I find it really hard to motivate myself to code stuff in the evenings after a day in an office.

If I need to cheer up I put on 80's/90's stuff like:

The Smiths
Duran Duran
The Cure
Coldplay: X&Y (a lot of their stuff is a bit nasal whiney but this is a really well produced album)
Green Day American Idiot
Smashing Pumpkins 'Gish'

If it's late at night and I've had a beer or two I'd choose:
Coldcut
Anything on Ninja Tunes
Classical stuff (Debussy, Bach, Beethoven)

But if I need to wake up fast I'd chuck on:
Grooverider
Paul Van Dyk
Any old Metallica

So I like a lot of stuff :)

*cricket chirping*

Silence works pretty good too.

I also like silence, but random noise away from me is fine. If music that I like is playing, it distracts me and gets my attention, so I never play music I want to listen to. But if my kids are playing music or something, it does not bother me.

Rock or similar music:
The Shins
Sondre Lerche
The Pixies
Arctic Monkeys
The Strokes
The Killers
My Morning Jacket

Rap and other genres:
Common
Talib Kweli
Mos Def
EMS
Kanye West
Nas
R. Kelly

Probably a ton more that I'm forgetting, but that's what is on my current playlist.

I'm usually listening to streaming 'net stuff, most notably Slay Radio's C64 music remixes, or Digitally Imported's Goa-Psy Trance.

Those two'll keep me going for hours.

I listen to music when designing art assets, but prefer silence when coding (music is a distraction then)

At work I tend to run through the same few albums,
Mezzaine - Massive Attack
Blue Lines - Massive Attack
Protection - Massive Attack
Felt Mountain - Goldfrapp
Demon Days - Gorillaz
Peace Orchestra
Chemical Brothers
Prodigy

Occasionally I'll find something to listen to in the nullsoft net radio lists.

My Winamp playlist just has 15,000 entries in it and it's always on.

Right now, it's There's a hippo in my tub and other songs for kids\Anne Murray - You are my sunshine - Open up your heart.mp3

Though I'm not coding. =]

Its funny, I always used to listen to music while coding. And I would be fairly productive. But now, I'm finding that its very distracting. At least, if I haven't gotten into the "zone" yet, music tends to keep me from getting there quickly.

Once I get that code mindset though, I can ease into listening.

Anyways...Trance, metal, and punk for me mostly.

Hans Zimmer / Vangelis mostly for me, with the occasional dose of J.M. Jarre.

Currently playing : Black Hawk Down

Lately been listening to Young Buck, 50cent, and anything by Timbaland.

Don't suppose you have the 12 Dreams of the Sun video?

Been looking for that for years!

I generally don't listen to anything with lyrics as it confuses the part of my brain that is using language to code. I listen to trance of many kinds, c64 music, mods, and classical music. If I do listen to music with lyrics it's normally blues/rock/metal and normally quite old.

[with regards to Jarre's "12 Dreams Of the Sun"]

I don't have the video, but I have a spare program from the concert...

I like listening to midis from games like all the old Final Fantasies, etc. Other than that I listen to The Ozric Tentacles or some Tibetan chanting or anything without lyrics and that isn't too "demanding" to listen to. Usually it's oldschool game midi's though.

music is a must :)

Bambix
Kittie
Flyleaf
Fabulous Disaster
The Beautys
The Gits
Sahara Hotnights
Gore Gore Girls
Lulabelles
Green Day
Metallica
Motley Crue
Poison

and when the little ones are hanging on me... Laurie Berkner.

You can't beat a bit of Enya

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjWTDh5O79Y

Sound quality is okay... Nice vid! :)

Dabz

That's just one song, though - about 5% of the whole thing.

There was a morning concert too, as well as the main show. Its never been released on DVD (it was recorded with the intention but the picture was poor in places so they never did it), yet somebody is selling it for £17 on eBay claiming it isn't a bootleg.

Wouldn't mind paying that much if it was legit.

For me it's Johnny Cash, Tom Petty and Bob Dylan mostly.

Though, I lose my concentration when listening to music with lyrics (unless I drink a few beers ;)) so alot of the times I have no music on at all or Beethoven.

Tangerine Dream, "The Sorcerer" and "Thief" soundtracks.
Jeff Wayne's "The War Of The Worlds".
Ennio Morricone's "The Thing".
Almost all John Carpenter soundtracks.

But usually I have a movie running in the background on my Powerbook, and my favorites of all time would be John Carpenter's The Thing and George Romero's Dawn Of The Dead. ;-)

Of course, there are also other movies on my charts, e.g. Sergio Leone's Dollar Trilogy, Wolfgang Petersen's Das Boot or Roman Polanski's The Fearless Vampire Killers.

It is a bit cacky they never released that GfK, I think I would of enjoyed that...

I have the Destination Docklands video from yonks ago, and I still stick it on now!

Shame, it is

Dabz

Currently: Malmsteen, "Rising Force". It's not the 2 tracks with (90ies metal) vocals, but all the guitar solos that stimulate my abstraction capabilities when coding.

Winni - respecting that line up you have there.

'The Thing' and 'Dawn of the Dead' are two of my all time faves. Also massive fan of 'Das Boot' - it has to be the full length 5-odd hr version! The Fearless Vampire killers is so far out there... never sure if it was intended to be a spoof or not. Have you seen the 80's remake of 'Night of the Living Dead?' This is a classic, too, directed by Savinni who did the effects on the original Dawn.

Up:
Chosen Lords by Aphex Twin/AFX

Down:
Anything by Stina Nordenstram

Sex Pistols, frequently, mixed with a wide variety of other artists. Never while coding though - prefer just listening to the radio or having complete silence.

I only really listen to CDs in my car these days, since my CD player busted. :/ The poxy speakers on my PC don't really cut it.

Rustic Overtones ( http://www.myspace.com/rusticovertones ). Their creativity and funk-influenced grooves translate to coding nicely. Check out "Girl Germs" on their MySpace page and you'll see what I mean.

If I need something a little faster, I'll switch to Paranoid Social Club ( http://www.pscmusic.com ) which is actually an off-shoot of that band (same vocals/guitar/bass, minus the horns, plus a new drummer and sampler). The only problem is that the lyrics are too catchy sometimes...

Since I mentioned Grimethorpe, I've dug my Melody Shop CD and have been mostly tinkeringn away at Blitz listening to.... erm.... Grimethorpe Colliey Band... The Melody Shop CD!

Most notably.. Toccata!!! <--- Class

Dabz

No one listens to classic music, like Bach or Mozart? It really calms me down, sucks all my aggression away. I can code hours straight with a drink and some Mozart. That are the moments I get most of my (coding) work done, at daylight I waste my time reading forums, sitting in the library, drinking thea and staring at my code without making progress...

Right now it's GTA San Andreas\Bounce FM.ogg. Still not coding though.

Nomen luni - yep, I know the Savini remake of Night of the living dead and like it at least as much as Romero's original version.

I don't think Polanski ever intended The Fearless Vampire Killers to be one of those dead-serious vampire movies that became so popular thanks to Christopher Lee. But he did an outstanding job to create the typical transsylvanian "horror" atmosphere while at the same time making fun of it - without being disrespectful. And Professor Abronsius is by far one of the most amiable characters that were ever to be seen in a vampire movie. I just love that movie. And it has a great soundtrack, too.

The TV series version of Das Boot: Yeah. It is so well done that time just flies away. The best WWII movie ever.

the Oblivion/Morrowind atmospherics and title music!

<cough>I'm not obsessed</cough>

oh, yeah and the MYST music.

MODs, SIDs, Radiohead, Wagner, Selig, The Doors, Manu Chao, Keith Jarrett, DEVO, my own Nord Lead 3 sessions, ...

By the way i've just listened to Teo&Tea from Jean Michel Jarre and wow this is nothing less than pure amiga music! I've stopped listening to Jarre after Chronologie in 1993. Anything which is worth listening to between 1993 and now beside of his newest album (Grey?)? In my opinion his best album is still Magnetic Fields...

Right now it's the rather excellent Aperitif For Destruction\07-richard_cheese-been_caught_stealing_(janes_addiction).mp3.

Slayer - Reign In Blood.
Whole Lot 'A Rosie - Pure Rubbish (cover).
Rocker - ACDC.
Hosanna In Excelsis - Sabbat.
Touch My Bum - Cheeky Girls.
Die MF Die - Dope.
Grace Kelly - Mika.
Local Cop's A C**T - Kevin Bl**dy Wilson.
Margate - Chaz 'n Dave.

Right now it's the rather soothing mono211.com/mtk147-planet-boelex-03-seed-of-steel.mp3.

Beethoven.

All this modern stuff is just shrieking, jumping about and teenagers wailing about their love lives.

The Levellers: Drunk in public ... What a beautiful day.. hey .. heyy..

The Levellers do promote a kind of 'jumping' atmosphere in a folk-esque kinda way.

James: Laid, theres a tune.

I like listening to ...

http://www.slayradio.org/home.php

CYA !

Seen Anthrax recently in the old smoke, the mosh pit was interesting... is that the same vein (slay / slayer ? ? -- that wouldn't compile...cheers ears.

I quite agree. If you need a laugh, watch the version with English subtitles. It's so poorly done, it's unbelievable. They took the liberty of changing half of what is said (putting a much more 'PC' spin on it) and miss out a bunch of sound effects.

SNES bgm
:)
http://snesmusic.org/v2/

Recently I bought an album of a fake band made by Monty Python called The Rutles. A parody of The Beatles. The album is called Ratology and it is very funny. That's what I am mostly listening this week. If anyone is interested: http://www.rutles.org/

The young ones once had a spoof band called bad news, seen them at the edinburgh playhouse a while back (too long to mention)... not sure if i could code to it - was funny though.

So far this week:

Biffy Clyro
Tool
Eleven
Ty Tabor

Rock basically. I just usually set the iPod on shuffle.

Right now it's the excellent-to-code-to soothing sounds of mono211.com\carebear-DRIFT.MOD.

BTW thanks@Ziggy, didn't know MP did any albums, other than OSTs. They actually have two The Rutles albums. Couldn't find one called Ratology though.

Right now it's the haunting (OR04)Ghola.mp3, from the excellent Emporer : Battle For Dune.

By the way i've just listened to Teo&Tea from Jean Michel Jarre and wow this is nothing less than pure amiga music!

Jarre = finito.

Chronologie was his last 'real-Jarre' album, after that things went downhill. It's something that seems to plague other instrumentalists as well (Parsons, Oldfield). For some odd reason not everyone can cope with modern technology and/or they don't realize what elements of their music made them popular in the 80's, and just hop in with the next style and music-technological means.

Teo & Tea is a joke..

I quite enjoyed Teo&Tea. Of course it's not compareable with the old albums and you get the impression he wanted to appear in the hitparade with this but the songs feature some Jarre typical sounds and combined with the bumbum they really sound like amiga sounds in 16bit to me. I also like the name of the album. Anyway it was nice to hear some new Jarre after so many years although it does not come close to the old ones.

As for Oldfield i stopped with Amarok which was fantastic and the more okayish Tubular Bells II. No idea if he made something good afterwards...

He revamped TB1 in 2003, it sounds quite as polished and interesting as TB2.. (TB1 was full of performance errors and the revamped version is clean and perfectly mixed/produced with extensive reverbs whereas the original TB1 was quite dry)

TB3 however was crap, a clear example of "not knowing how to survive in the 90's and 00's".

Okay, i will listen into this next time i have some time...

Ahh i still remember when we had a school trip to france and i bought the record of Crisis, recorded it to tape without listening to it before and then later when we were visting a monastery i was blown away by it (Crisis and In High Places)! Jon Anderson also sounded great on this one...

classic!

Shame to hear about Jarre going downhill but I think I detected that around the Waiting for Cousteau era, most of the stuff before was ace. And yeah Oldfield started to loose it.

Hey anyone listened to Sky?

I used to play Moonlight Shadow while playing ye olde Motorace (one of the first games to support 3dfx iirc), ages ago. It's actually that lack of charm and melody that's missing in his modern efforts. Same for Parsons, although that's actually a wrong statement, since Parsons -tho gaining the lion's share of popularity- only produced/mixed/recorded APP concepts, Eric Woolfson actually was the composer, and -iirc- after Freudiana they stopped working together. (could be another album btw, not entirely sure).
Otoh, I also have to spit out that Woolfson's solo album "2003: Poe: More Tales Of Mystery And Imagination" also lacked the old Parsons/Woolfson X-factor.

@Grey

Teo&Tea is not complete rubbish. It just different, a lot of small tracks and too much bumbum here and there but still some nice melodies and cool Jarre like sfx. It's just that it's not this special anymore today like his sound was so many years ago.

You can sneak into it by visiting his site: http://www.jeanmicheljarre.com/
Under portfolio/lp/teo&tea you can listen to snippets of the tracks.

@CS_TBL

Do you know Klaus Schulze? He really made some weird computer music playing a lot in churches...

Have heard of the name yea, but I've not really listened to it. I've the feeling he sits more in the new age corner, a genre I don't listen much. Regarding synth-artists, I listen to Vangelis, Jarre, Parsons, Oldfield. I tried Kitaro, but in the long run that's too new-age'ish as well I think. Other artists that aren't new-age (Kraftwerk and such) are too freaky/robot'ish/mechanical to my liking.

ohwell, taste=Rnd(Earth.peoplecount)

Nope no New Age, if you listen to the right ones as his Live Concert in Poland from 1983 for instance. Really weird. What's also cool is Thomas Wilbrandt's "The electric Vivaldi" or Tomita's Firebird.

Tuamel, thanks will listen.

hot108.com :-)

All i listen to is shoutcast techno. :/

Orbital\Snivilisation\03_-_sad_but_true.mp3 is faring me well right as I type. Apparently I have a lot more laid back stuff than I thought.