Don't laugh, but for me, it's Abba. Their entire discography is ~3 hours which is how long I can maintain peak concentration. Their songs are consistently good so that I don't need to skip a song, but not too good that I would stop working and start listening. Plus I've never heard Abba song in any good movie so it doesn't remind me scenes from a movie I would want to rewatch. Of course I don't listen to it every day, only when I really need to, most daily programming tasks can be done with any music.
The Winner Takes It All lyrics are great for commits and Pull Requests: I don't wanna talk
If it makes you feel sad
And I understand
You've come to shake my hand
I apologize
If it makes you feel bad
Like others have said, for specific types of activity, I'll prefer no vocals or maybe even no music, but if vocals are fine Abba does have a great flow to it. I used to run to Abba too, at times, because it feels upbeat/positive with good enough tempo. Super trouper, for instance, makes for a great booster.
No laughter here, my brother in music. This is one of the few vocal groups that I could be in the zone with, except "Fernando", because one must release their inner theater kid with that one.
For real concentration I can't have lyrics but that's a great idea for other flow states. Mozart and Brahms are good for me ... Not slow enough to put me to sleep not fast enough or unusual to make me pay attention to the music.
I vary a lot but when I do classical music Mozart has occupied quite a lot of my stats, in particular a clarinet concerto by Katherine Lucy [1] and also things like Beethoven's 6th (pastoral, it's beautifully featured in Fantasia) or Grieg's morning mood.
This seems focused on one very particular taste in music of droning semi-random lo-fi synthesizers. I find this unlistenable without any kind of percussion.
Shoutout to SomaFM's Defcon Radio which has been my go-to programming music for years now. Not too dissimilar to the stuff found on this site. https://somafm.com/defcon/
This site is a gem that has accompanied me on many spikes in the last year :) datasette's original music is top tier too. cognitively stimulating but not attention stealing.
Have you listened to his "business funk" mixes? Too stimulating for work (for me) but so much fun. In my head it's the soundtrack to me striding through an open plan office barking nonsense business jargon.
I'm well aware that I'm in the minority, but I have never been able to focus on anything - especially programming - other than in absolute, total silence.
The soundtracks for SimCity 3000, 4, and the 5th one titled just "SimCity" are written specifically to be played while doing some fiddly micromanagement tasks.
I recently discovered Lorn and have been mainlining his back catalogue ever since whilst working. Thoroughly interesting and immersive yet not distracting.
I remember downloading music from the hacking e-show “The Scene” way back when - must have been late 2000s? Some great music in there like Newborn Butterflies if I remember the name right. It was nice background music in the show and I’d put it on from time to time.
- [1] https://open.spotify.com/album/1R6rh9My8CTK4DqZorJR0V?si=3Ct...
If you have specific song/interpretation recommendations I'd love to hear them.
I laugh (:
But good for you, whatever works. Personally, I can't do music with much lyrics or narrative; I find it distracting.
But to each their own!
https://m.youtube.com/@arcologies
You might also like mood indigo on SoundCloud, mix of house and DnB been a solid programming session soundtrack for me over the last few years.
https://on.soundcloud.com/5HzXSAKAdM41bxIvdp
some personal favourites:
- https://musicforprogramming.net/seventyone
- https://musicforprogramming.net/fiftyseven
- https://musicforprogramming.net/fortysix
(Yes, I'm an only child.)