What music?

I’m just curious, what music you guys listen to when sketching etc? Just trying to find some stuff that doesnt irritate me or get annoying!

Either heavy, HEAVY metal or freeform instrumental Jazz/funk fusion.

GURU

House music all night long! It sets a pace and makes the hours disappear. It definitely helped me through many allnighters in school.

Dub/Lounge music (think Thievery Corp), Blues, International (African or South American mainly) or Bluegrass.

I like mellow and live albumns when sketching. Two of my favorite albumns to listen to when sketching is a live Marc Cohn and Live from Auston TX Cory Morrow.

The bands that inspires me most while sketching are the ones that have a strong ambient feeling : they help me get motivated while blending into the background.

Bands like Air, Bjork, The Cure, Thievery Corporation, Manu Chao, Tom Yorke’s solo album…etc.

But if you want a good advice you should listen to whatever Karim listens to :

http://www.amazon.com/Karim-Rashid-Newyorkelectronew-Various-Artists/dp/B00009PJNR

I have a huge music collection, but when I need to focus on work, I’ll listen to the Deeper Shades of House podcast.

I think GURU is a Spinal Tap fan…?

Lars is nice, gets you in the zone. I like his stuff more for the wind-down heading home at the end of the day. It helps me come down gradually.

I prefer silence, especially when I need to think. Somehow I always feel my mind wandering when I’m listening to music, either the lyrics carry me away, or the tune reminds me of some show/movie. Either way it’s a distraction.

When I can turn off my mind, like say when rendering, then I just play anything.

darkaudio.co.uk is a great site, i think the founder is actually on core too.

I like to put on stuff without lyrics, to help me get into the zone. classical music or psytrance or other electronica helps me out. i find it very easy to get distracte dby music though…

Quite honestly, it can be really random. Sometimes it’s dance/trance, sometimes hardcore, sometimes classical. Though I think it’s safe to say that rap is not on my list of “sketch music.” But no matter what it is, it has to be the “right” sound at the time, otherwise it throws me off…

I hope I don’t thread jack, but I’m wondering what % of “us” listen to music without lyrics while designing.

Personally I prefer lyric-free or at least a language I can’t understand, so I don’t get caught up in the lyrics.

I suppose it comes down to the Left Brain associating with language, while performing heavily influenced Right Brain tasks such as sketching or form development. It makes it easier to stay in one side of your brain, without having to get them mixed together during the task at hand.

oh yeah definitely. The vast majority of my collection.
It’s like a soundtrack really…

Trance, House, Chillout, or DnB. Basically anything under the EDM genre.

Agreed. I actually have mixes for types of sketch sessions: “concepts mix” upbeat DnB, house, techno, some thrash punk industrial to “refinity mix” of instrumental, allegro-like classical, ambient, dub and jazz. Pandora has been a great sampler and lots of free music from podcast subscriptions

Agreed. That’s why I’ll do classical or house. Some house uses words more as sounds so it’s not distracting although it does make your brain skip a second when you recognize the samples. But generally anything that’s not heavy with lyrics or any pop music.
DnB works also. Jazz most of the times but depending on what it is can throw me off a bit.

I really need music while I’m working, especially when stuck in a CAD hole. In the 90’s I was more into the rave scene (house, trance, dnb) For a while, DnB / breakbeat / house / hiphop mixes used to be my go to staple. In the past five years my choices have grown more eclectic and almost anything with a sexy beat will do, lyrics or no lyrics. I constantly hit up the music blogs for remixes and new releases.

Somedays, a little downtempo like taylor mentioned or completely different fits my mood better. I can’t be jacked up all day! My music collection is huge and spans all genres.

Somedays, I just put it on shuffle and roll with it, like today. The last ten artists I listened to: boot camp clik, tori amos, pinback, bright eyes, yuksek, youth group, mantronix, oi-va-voi, loverboy(yes!), peter bjorn & john :confused:

sketching/brainstorming = any music I like or am not opposed to, it can be anything, lyrics or not, sometimes lyrics in concepting lead word association

cad = anything with a driving beat, become one with the machine

Sigur Ros all the way! +1 for a band that sings in a made up language.

I also find that headphones help out a lot. There is already a headphone thread in Off topic so i won’t thread jack.