I liked Damon's points. I work in a cubicle environment where aural interrupts are frequent and there's nothing like white noise. So something is required. I wear headphones and often fill them with music. I rarely choose specific music, preferring streaming radio for most of the time:
Pandora (mostly my own Wex Eclectic Radio - feel free to listen in) sometimes soma.fm or di.fm - particularly vocal trance, goa, and similar. Sometimes I hit on good DJ mixes. I've been listening to Groovelectric lately (got the "Radiant Day" mix on right now) - http://www.djsteveboy.com/groovelectric.html Thanks for the pointer to Intergalactic FM; I'll give that a try as well. On Sun, Mar 1, 2009 at 10:32 PM, Damon Dimmick <damon.dimm...@gmail.com> wrote: > 1. The music should be well known to you: "New" music requires > processing and some degree of attention, even if is background music. Agree. Familiar stuff falls below my threshold of consciousness most of the time. > 2. Lyrics require an additional level of processing. If you have some > music you like -without- lyrics, that would be better. I think that depends on a lot of factors, including the familiarity of the lyrics. Much electronic music uses lyrics not so much as a coherent narrative track that can capture attention, but more as another instrument in itself, including looping and beat-matching. > 3. More spartan arrangements tend to be better. If you have a song with > a lot of sounds going on, or a delicate but recognizable interplay of > many different instruments, a more spartan composition may be better. > This effect is apparently mitigated in the case of large orchestral > arrangements where instruments are not necessarily perceived > individually, but as part of a larger section. I think your latter point is more important than your first. To the extent that the music produces a coherent ambience rather than individual elements that call attention to themselves it tends to distract me less. > 4. A persistent beat is apparently desirable. Slave to the rhythm! Best, --Alan ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
