I have found I can't listen to music that is too intense or engaging when I program or do level design, I ended up distracted by it. What do you guys like to listen to when you write code? I like a various styles of ambient, glitch and techno. Old stuff like Ghost in the Shell Megatech Body soundtrack is one of my favorites. Some music from video games and anime that can be inspiring for game work. Also electronic stuff like Trentmoeller and DJ Shadow. I want to throw some new stuff on my playlist though, so I thought I'd ask...

My general listening preferences can be found on last.fm. These tend to be affected by any music I've recently acquired; I spent some time over the weekend converting the DOOM and Duke Nukem 3D soundtracks to MP3 for use on my portable media player, and as a side-effect have been listening to them an awful lot.

In general, it's rock, metal or film soundtracks.

Quote: Original post by benryvesI spent some time over the weekend converting the DOOM and Duke Nukem 3D soundtracks to MP3 for use on my portable media player.

Oh have you listened to "The dark side of Phobos" instrumental version of the DOOM soundtrack?
Its great. I prefer Jean Michel Jarre, Tangerine Dream, Gigi d'agostino and Terry Riley.
I love the metal too, but it's so difficult to concentrate on programming while headbanging.

-So i produce better code with ambient music.

Hmm I'll have to check some of those out, not familar with them. The pink floyd icon on benryves profile reminded me of the 8-bit side of the moon. I was listening to that way too much and wore it out. It was like nostalgia in two different ways!

If I'm listening to music while programming I can only listen to techno or classical.

Anything else makes me lose focus.

Anything with strong vocals and noise distracts me. I try to vary it up, but usually it's either Slacker Radio's Classical Light Hits, Chill or Trance playlists, or some relaxing music of my own like Death Cab, Coldplay or Imogen Heap.

Anyone like Mogwai, Explosions in the Sky or Godspeed!Black Emperor?

Its almost 100% instrumental rock.

a) no music or b) my own music. then i get distracted, and work on my music. then i get distracted back to programming. back and forth.

I'm quite the opposite: I listen to progressive/trash metal, Voivod, for example. Okay, a lot of time is spent with air drumming and drooling all over the place, but I don't care. Good ambient/chilling music is not possible for me to ignore and not to pay attention to, the other shit ambients just irritate the crap out of me. I listen to good ones (Rainer Brüninghaus for example), but that means I either pay attention to the music or the code.

So yes, I lose focus a lot but I don't care. Totally focusing on coding is not fun for me. And if I was totally focused on it, why would I need any music that I don't even comprehend?

Video game music at rainwave.cc. More specifically, their OCR station