I’m curious what you like to listen to while writing or doing other work that takes a lot of brainpower. For me, that means it’s got to be instrumental, but it may be different for you.
I’m often drawn to jazz musicians like Thelonious Monk, Art Blakey, and Lester Young. I used to have a certain jazz greats playlist that I’d always listen to while writing. A while back, I found the Kronos Quartet and like them for this kind of work (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awl5Fw7UxzA). And I even experimented with those tracks of just certain waves that are supposed to help you focus or be more creative.
Couple years ago my school installed excellent ceiling speakers (despite the building having numerous deferred maintenance issues, lol) and I am all about the right background music for my classroom. Generally—and this also applies to me working in there solo—I like anything high energy instrumental. Lyrics are distracting. But viby and upbeat—often jazz, funk, or of course psychedelic rock—with little to no words are perfect.
Some that I hit often are Khraungbin, STS9, Medeski, Martin, and Wood, Spafford, Circles Around the Sun, super long jams on LivePhish+, and Lettuce.
I also just try to mix it up as a secret objective to expose the kids to more music. When they are doing focused in class writing, usually classical. Freewrites, I love some Daft Punk. Some days I’ll just hit a jazz legend like Coltrane and let it go all day.
At this point Spotify’s Daily Mix robots know what I want and I will sometimes just put it in the AI hands.
Good calls on the MMW and Circles Around the Sun. Those are both go-to groups for me when I want music for this kind of thing. I love your other suggestions, too. Lucky students!
I can listen to almost anything, but the type of work does matter, if I’m writing I do prefer instrumental though. When I’m compiling data or building a geologic model I can have anything on, the louder the better!
Honestly my only usual rule for productivity time music to run through stuff I’ve already heard. Usually instrumental but sometimes I’ll throw on a gizz album or something because it’s so familiar I don’t find myself zeroing in on lyrics too bad. Lately it’s been a lot of hip hop for me, Cosmogramma by Flying Lotus is heavy on my mind.
You are after my heart with the Art Blakey mention though. Him and Bernard Purdie are probably my favorite drummers of all time.
I can and will listen to absolutely anything while at work, but I think probably my favourite/go-to would be the Aussie jazz trio The Necks. They’re possibly something of an acquired taste however!
When I wrote code all day a few jobs back I could listen to anything. But one of the albums that always came up at least weekly was Deltron 3030. For some reason it just puts me in the zone.
Aleksi Perälä
This dude will rearrange your brain waves. In 2022-23 he put out an album every two weeks or so. Unreal output. Designed his own tuning frequency called Colundi. Read about it. Might be bs but interesting. He’s my most listened to artist while doing tedious technical work tasks and wake and bake yoga type shit. Did a deep dive on his Cycles, Gaia, and Children of Light series albums. For the Cycles series each album was recorded live in one setting, usually corresponding with some moon phase. Heady.
