On Wednesday 22 September 2010 06:25, Brett McCoy wrote: I'm with you. These days I listen to indie pop and stuff like Ben Folds more often than I listen to prog, but I wrote some of my best code with "Fragile" or "Selling England by the Pound" playing. Rob

James Morris wrote: Very cool stuff. I love those tracking scores on YouTube. Thanks ! dp

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 09/22/10 13:27, James Morris wrote: Call me crazy, but a lot of the software I've coded in the last years was written with Gyorgy Ligeti in the background. I simply love the Chamber_concerto_Ramifications_Quartet_no_2_aventures_lux_aeterna "Album". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sWENPaVqR8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnuAaKiX1sg His "Hungarian rock" however is way too distracting. Debugging with Tom Waits. ..and if nothing else helps, I turn to Charlie Parker and Coltrane. The latter are mainly helpful since I tend focus more on the music and not on the other tasks: Take a step back and many things clear up. I recently discovered Avishai Cohen - master of all bass syncopes. fi. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4kc0Aby2vA is very dreamy and gets me in the right mood without distracting too much. At one of my previous work-places we were listening to http://monkeyradio.org/ (Hi Koen & Arnold) all day long while hacking. Anyway, none of these are even close to The Prodigy. If you want to stick to that style: go for Sepultura's Arise: speed coding. Cheers! robin

There is the tomatis method that claims that Mozart is more psychologically healing than any other music. ---------------------- Excerpt from: http://www.tomatis.com/index.php?page=faq&lang=2 After numerous trials with other types of music, we have found that the results obtained by using Mozart's music are amazing, no matter where in the world it is evaluated. In fact, we note that this music is not only very well accepted on every continent but that it also allows listeners to reestablish their own inner equilibrium. In order to understand this effect upon the sense of human balance, we must recall that music is characterized by rhythm, which touches the body; by harmony, which reaches the emotions; and by melody, which calls upon the intellect. According to the classical ideal, these three parameters should be in balance, which is rarely the case, one or the other often being dominant, and, for this reason, producing a rather unusual musical discourse. In the case of Mozart, it seems that this balance was achieved, which may explain the universal character of his music. ---------------------- [As usually happens for anything fringe/alternative the wikipedia article is heavily biased against the Tomatis method]

On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 07:13:10AM -0400, Dave Phillips wrote: Mmm, some of Xenakis' work would actually distract me more than I'd want... It's not clear what the original question referred to: music that *motivates* you to do some programming, or that provides the right background while working... As to motivation, anyone showing a motivation to produce something beautiful could be contagious to me. Last week I recorded some Verdi opera arias. One of them being "D'amor sull'ali rosee" from Verdi's "Il Trovatore". Here's la Callas singing the same: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yf15oAdOPHs> the part I recorded starts at 1:00 and D'amor... at 2:35. Now imagine this being performed a by a tiny 20-year or so Korean girl, a student at the conservatory here. Coming from a completely different culture (where showing emotions in the way it's done in Italian opera is frowned upon) she made an absolutely captivating performance. Today I was finishing this recording, and didn't find the right reverb for it. So I'm programming that now... Ciao, -- FA There are three of them, and Alleline.

Folderol wrote: I tend to agree... Anything new and too 'stimulating' (e.g. Ligeti) my brain will switch to "analytical listening mode'. I have found any instrumental tonal music from the early baroque up to Mozart (not all works and Beethoven onwards tends to distract me) very good to help me concentrate and pleasurable at the same moment. I guess it's the 'reassuring' and 'familiar' aspects of that kind of tonal music which (like it or not) are now hard-coded in my brain. But I also guess there's always a personal quid to it... Lorenzo

On 27 September 2010 09:22, Alex Tinsley &lt;cvtrig(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Yeah, it's quite dreamy, chilled out techno at the moment, thanks. James.

On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 11:12 AM, Niels Mayer &lt;nielsmayer(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Well I just listened to the keyboard solo from "Close to the Edge" around 16:00 in, and perhaps there's a tip of the hat, or maybe that's just what it sounds like soloing & comping around on an organ or e-piano. But I can't dig deeper to scratch that "tune on the tip of my tongue" itch, and I don't have any ELP on MP3 as I find it quite tedious.... Fortunately this one sounds a lot better http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0abSzGuTFH8&feature=related and this one sounds better and looks better too :-) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyMSSb_g-Xc&feature=related (see also http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjFN5P0m6UE ) Part of the problem is that the organ being used in the original example is off in it's wimpy-sounding register until it gets chorded in the midrange and then it sounds almost proper, though wanting in bass. Too bad it couldn't be played on the awesome-sounding organ from Ms. Kateřina Chroboková's performance at the Prague Spring Festival 2010 (surprising to see an organ like that not in a church)... that first organ, makes you think there's also a trained monkey around turning the crank and collecting change for a carny performer. Which is why the MIDI would be nice. Just a little http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karplus-Strong_string_synthesis and some reverb would sound better than the "Barrel Organ" of the aforementioned, IMHO. -- Niels http://nielsmayer.com

On Wednesday 22 September 2010 14:12, Niels Mayer wrote: Well, while all the prog-rock keyboardists liked to lift classical music, "Hungarian Rock" was composed in 1978 from what I'm seeing. The better- known Emerson and Wakeman stuff had been out for 5 years or more by that time. Maybe he was a fan of theirs? Rob

On Thu, Sep 23, 2010 at 09:00:43AM -0400, Sean Corbett wrote : You probably were thinking about the day you'll try to live! -- Aurélien