Interesting animation:
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Very cool. Another variable, but I wonder what colors are represented?
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Best comment in the reddit “ me listening to Yosi Horikawa” So true!
That’s actually conceptually in the ballpark of what happens. Here’s a neurological scan (fMRI):
This explains why I can’t stand most jazz or classical when I need to focus. Too much jumpy jumpy.
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Very interesting…and I’m with you on trying to concentrate while listening to classical. I’m constantly pulled to concentrating on the music rather than what I’m actually doing lol!
I find that I can concentrate with the right classical in the background. I’ll choose something like a quartet or quintet, possibly small chamber. And I’ll then make sure that it will not have great dynamic range because it includes, for example, a harpsicord. That tends to work.
Moving forward from the 16th and 17th century, I can listen to impressionistic piano works, like Debussy at low levels in the background. Jazz is perhaps more difficult. Even if I am playing cool bop or MJQ, I find I may start to pay too much attention. However Sirius radio’s Watercolors station has a fair amount of insipid elevator background jazz.
Not to disparage good background. Brian Eno’s Music for Airports is great working music.
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Those sound like great choices! Me personally, I found movie score music to be the best background music. Scores like LotR, The Hobbit, How to Train Your Dragon trilogy, the three Narnia movies made by Disney, Pirates of the Caribbean, things like that worked really well for me while doing school or some other such project. Nowadays though, my work is working on music lol, so obviously, listening to other music while trying to work on music would be a major issue!
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Explore electronica. Environmental sounds. Auditory collage. The Orb does some of this. I find that too much quiet can be just as disturbing. Movie score music can also work. There’s a nice lounge version of Star Wars music done by the Evil Genius Orchestra. If you know the score well, it can blend into the background.
You also might consider southeast asian classical music. Shubendu Battacharia’s ragas for example. If you want more electronic, Tabla Beat Science at a low volume is quite different from Tabla Beat Science at a high volume. I like to listen to world music also, Ladysmith Black Mambasa’s Shaka Zulu album is excellent. Perhaps even if you are working on music, you might not have an issue with music of an entirely different set of roots than your work.
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Odd to see the title of this thread. As a child I had a pronounced case of synesthesia: I experienced music at least partly as visual patterns…I hallucinated wild, constantly-changing geometric & architectural images when listening to music (any music). I was nuts for classical from toddler age, so often it was longer pieces like Beethoven or Brahms symphonies. Very intense & very pleasurable listening.
Didn’t realize until decades later that not everyone had the same thing.
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