Through years of trial and error - skipping around internet radio stations, playing our entire music collections on shuffle, or just hammering single albums on repeat, we have found that the most effective music to aid prolonged periods of intense concentration tends to have a mixture of the following qualities:
- Drones
- Noise
- Fuzz
- Field recordings
- Vague memories (Hypnagogia)
- Textures without rhythm
- Minor complex chords
- Early music (Baroque, lute, harpsichord)
- Very few drums or vocals
- Synth arpeggios
- Awesome
- Walls of reverb
Music possessing these qualities can often provide just the right amount of interest to occupy the parts of your brain that would otherwise be left free to wander and lead to distraction during your work.
If someday we all go to prison for downloading music, I just hope they split us by the music genre.
A 3D printed record for the Fisher-Price record player playing ‘Still Alive’ from Portal - can be purchased at Shapeways: http://www.shapeways.com/model/426154/clockwork_record.html?gid=ug
via makersand
(Source: youtube.com)
Saying things like “I don’t know why indies would be different than a major. Maybe because nobody is listening to their music?” not only makes you look like an asshole, but it makes you sound very ignorant of the music world as a whole. Independent labels and musicians are a huge part of our mainstream culture, and that’s obvious unless you’re only looking at half the Grammy winners.
