DIMM012: Music (that I relax/study to)
Last blog I talked about what music I listen to.
Along with listening to typical music with lyrics, I do also listen to a lot of ambient music. I don't really listen to it recreationally, but its used as a device to get my brain to go into concentration mode.
This ambient music 70% of the time is lo-fi hip hop beats. Lo-fi hip hop, if you somehow don't know, is just like a basic, chill, boom bap kind of beat with no lyrics, no rapping, just the beat. I originally started listening to it because of this livestream and it really did draw me in as good music to relax/study to. Nowadays I have a playlist that is exclusively for lo-fi hip hop that I listen to almost exclusively for my lofi consumption. It's got 3000 songs, 117 hours of music, and that's great for me when I'm writing. I don't want it to loop, I just want it to be a nice beat in the background to help me focus, that's it.
And I love lofi so much that for my favorite holidays, I have special lo-fi playlists just for them. I'm listening to my spooky lofi playlist as I write this right now, and I also have a christmas themed lofi playlist for when saint nick comes to town in about 2 months. These help a lot with getting me in the mood for the seasons that they're in.
And very recently my two loves of productivity and lofi hip hop came together in a pomodoro lofi hip hop livestream. Every 25 minutes the lofi girl will take a 5 minute break and the music will go quiet, then its back to work for another 25 minutes. I don't really use the pomodoro technique for writing, but I do use it for more menial tasks, and its a cool camaraderie of people all together working. If you happen to fall in that niche I'd recommend it.
The last playlist that I use to work is kinda strange. I just call it loopy music and its songs that I put on repeat one and just listen to for hours. A couple videos have been written and/or edited while I was listening to 500 miles by the proclaimers for hours on end, and I love it.
I don't know what it is about this music in particular that makes me feel like working, but they are just perfect for putting on in the background and gaining immense focus. I think it might be because they all have a continuous beat that goes throughout the whole song that makes it feel like the song is kind of moving along at speed. All of this music is used more as a tool than a pleasurable experience, so I try to only use them while I'm working.
I'll be talking about music even more on Sunday, so join me then!