Good music to study to?

[apsham]

I'm starting up college again within a few weeks - computer programming and what not, either way I have always pretty much sucked at studying and I wanted to try the whole listening to music thing as I was reminded of its existence in a Cracked article last week. Now - I don't know how I feel about listening to classical, as the article stated pretty much anything melodic with few words would be worthwhile to look into.

Right now the only idea I have is Daft Punk since words are scarce in most of their songs and are repetitive enough that I'm hoping it'll just all blend in. Anyone else have suggestions? Something that worked for them, etc?

[Daniel Bryan]

Any of Brian Eno's ambient music is good. I tend to favour Discreet Music myself.

[Dan McG]

Mogwai worth a shout?

[Benjamin]

I did all of my Scout logbooks to Dragonforce, so I tried that for any Maths-related subject I had and it worked like a charm.

If you're going for a more memorising kind of studying, I'd suggest Owl City, Townes Van Zandt or Eels, they seem to good for me.

[fr34k]

I'm not really one for studying advice, but I'd guess that music without/ with few lyrics is pretty neat for this, so basically check out any Ambient, Post-Rock, Math-Rock or stuff like that out. Recommendations:

Explosions in the Sky

Mogwai

This Will Destroy You

And So I Watch You From Afar

If These Trees Could Talk

Brian Eno

immanu el

God is an Astronaut

Long Distance Calling

Maybeshewill

Vessels

Yndi Halda

[=BK=]

White noise. At the right volume it'll help you focus more than anything.

Edited August 25, 2011 by Kirkland

[GoGo Yubari]

Jazz.

[ChrisSteeleAteMyHamster]

I could never study with music and when concentrating I have to turn my music or radio off.

However I would expect that Mogwai, Boards of Canada, Sigur Ros and Amiina would be good study music. Basically ambient, chilled out stuff. Jazz is supposed to make your brain work harder than most music and I'm sure there has been research pointing towards it as good study music.

[Quom]

I liked listening to stuff I liked listening to when studying. Basically anything I knew blended into the background. But anything else I would pay attention to as it was novel. I also think it depends on what you're doing. I could listen to music (even new music) and perform better when writing an essay, I can also read source documents and what not whilst listening to music, but I couldn't read a novel or things with nuance when listening to music.

I think we are all different, if someone forced me to listen to something I didn't like, I think I would perform worse than if I listened to something I liked. I could also listen to anything when studying, the genre didn't matter, just as long as I liked it. I found the mood of the music more important than the music itself. The Magnetic Fields more depressing stuff is fine for some things but didn't help if I was trying to be upbeat.

[Summers]

Apocalyptica.

[METALMAN]

GoGo is correct.

[New Damage]

I definitely agree with music without much lyrics. I'll be honest though, I used to put on Between the Buried and Me's "Colors" album. They're a bit too heavy for me for normal listening, but because the album is one piece of continuous music (and with lyrics I couldn't really distinguish), it helped.

Oh, and I did programming as well.

Edited August 25, 2011 by TheModernWay

[KONGO]

Dirty Three and Earth (especially the newer Earth albums, starting with Hex I'd say) are great.

[apsham]

So far I am checking out Eno, Mogwai and Boards Of Cananda.

It's odd, reading up on BOC because I've always just thought of them as that creepy as shit music from David Firth shorts - I never realized that their work off other albums is a bit more reminiscent of childhood, happier things, etc.

[tristy]

Jet Age of Tomorrow

[apsham]

I just had a thought - NES/SNES/Genesis bit music might be a good idea too.

[Colly]

Always go for something you know, if you pick someones recommendation you'll spend more time listening to the cool new music than studying. My GCSE's, A Levels and degree revision were all done to a backdrop of B list Britpop (Bluetones, Shed Seven etc), the music doesn't matter as long as its not something too intrusive, humming along to something you know won't stop you learning.

[Hellfire]

I usually don't like to listen to music when I'm studying but on the occasions that I do its usually something like Explosions in the Sky and I keep it pretty low.

[F#A#]

El Ten Eleven.

I've never done more work/studying to any other music. The self-titled is brilliant.

Edited September 1, 2011 by F#A#

[Matt]

Apocalyptica.

I came into suggest this.