Music you listen to while reading? Preferably instrumental.

>>8724331
Basically anything Ambient (the genre, not like sounds of the Amazon or whatever) or IDM. Try Brian Eno (Music for Airports and Music for Film are good albums), Boards of Canada (Music Has the Right to Children and Campfire Headphase are my favorite albums of theirs), or the One on Twoism series (various artists, Volume I is my favorite) are worth checking out.

Also just start looking into "classical" composers and the like and see who you enjoy. Béla Bartók, Aram Khatchaturian, and Sergei Rachmaninoff are among my favorites outside of the obvious and most well-known like Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, etc.

>>8724366
>Also just start looking into "classical" composers and the like and see who you enjoy.

>listening to classical while reading
No, just no. Classical requires a larger amount of concentration than any other type of music. You can do whatever you want but don't pretend you can retain anything from both mediums when listening and reading at the same time. Unless it's something you've listened a hundred times then I don't see much problem.

>>8724381
I'm really sick of this response. Obviously you aren't listening to the music in the same you would as if you were just listening to it alone. It is perfectly ok to use it as background music while reading. It should also be listened to by itself, but there is nothing wrong with having it in the background while you read.

>>8724366
Oh, and Celer. Absolutely beautiful ambient and drone music. Husband and wife duo, unfortunately the wife died several years ago. You can find a series of articles that details their relationship and the background of how they produced their music if that interests it. Their story is as beautiful as their music.

>>8724381
Also
>don't pretend you can retain anything from both mediums when listening and reading at the same time

Don't project your inabilities onto everyone else. I rarely listen to music while reading myself, really only did it when my living situation was such that if I wanted to read while at home I had to have music playing or else be subjected to hearing a roommate drone on with his other creative writing major friends about their shitty poetry and horrible misinterpretations of buddhism, but I have listened to music, classical and otherwise, even compositions I'd never heard before, and not lost any retention in terms of what I was reading. Furthermore, although I was definitely not really concentrating on the music at all, I could tell what I enjoyed and wanted to go back and listen to again when I would only be listening to it. I even found some of favorite compositions in just this way.

Global communication, disintegration loops, Eliane Radigue...

>>8724381
You should just stop treating classical as a specific genre in which all these "listening rules" represent to the term as a whole. Saying that "classical requires a larger amount of concentration than any other type of music" is like saying that a person who enjoys pop rock would enjoy death metal just because they are all rock. You see, those terms are very vague.

>>8724366
>>8724441
Good suggestions.
I also reccomend "For Philip Guston", by Morton Feldman. A really long piece which is really pleasurable and beautiful without activelly demanding your attention. It's the comfiest background to comfy books.

>>8724400
Thank you anon thank you for mentioning Celer. Great stuff.
I woud also recommend William Basinsky, Lustmord, Andrew Liles, Lull, Rober Rich, Soliloqium for Lilith by Nurse with Wound, Coil's Time Machines and ANS.

>>8724331
Sorry budy, I listen to dubstep while I read so I can't help you.

Ambient and drone are the only choice.

Stars of the lid. Doesn't fit every book but then again does anything?

>>8724381
>don't pretend you can retain anything from both mediums
You've missed the point.

Smetana's Ma Vlast
Duke Ellington

you could probably listen to anything at low volume and it could be good reading music.

>>8724400
>>8724415
>It is perfectly ok to use it as background music while reading
Ok fine, my post was a only a suggestion even if it came as "dictatorial" and parted from unmentioned assumptions. My main assumption was that the listener has intention to absorb a piece completely. Do whatever you want but my point is that, while also focusing on something else, you are likely to miss many subtleties that the composer intended. Listening to music while browsing the internet is almost the same as reading a book but only in lesser form, and a lot people (including myself) do this without problem. But you can't deny that plenty of classical pieces (what I've found, based on my experience, is that this applies to most classical, whatever era it may be from) DO require full concentration or, at the very least, repeated listening (e.g. Mozart's Jupiter, Mahler's symphonies, a lot of 20th century) for a full understanding of the piece. Especially when the piece in question uses very non-standard musical elements.

>Don't project your inabilities onto everyone else.
If you have great concentration and retention abilities, then cool, but I don't think it's likely that what I've said doesn't apply to a lot of people, if not the majority.

>Furthermore, although I was definitely not really concentrating on the music at all, I could tell what I enjoyed and wanted to go back and listen to again when I would only be listening to it. I even found some of favorite compositions in just this way.
You're proving my point. You had full retention of the book but only a general notion of what the music was about. There's a "workaround" for this, yes, but you can't pretend the issue wasn't there from the start. Some pieces are very dense (like Bach's fugues) or subtle (most Adagio movements) in nature and could easily be dismissed if not paid attention.

Of course, there's different degrees of what I'm saying. You can listen to Vivaldi while doing almost everything and retain a lot from him, I'm not going to deny that, but don't kid yourself and say that listening to Contrapunctus 7 while reading a passage from Aristotle is an easy feat. Most popular music works better as background music because of the repetition and/or (most of the times, excluding some Jazz) simple instrumentation.


tl;dr: you can enjoy classical "normally" but if you want to get the whole of it then don't multitask.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2L-lA0xqzKo

>>8724522
>You see, those terms are very vague.
A lot of Haydn's symphonies play with the listener's expectations, a lot of Beethoven has quotations from past movements in unexpected ways, Bach's manic Counterpoint is dense, Mozart and Chopin often slip some variation(s) of the main theme(s), and plenty of Schoenberg, Stravinsky and Scriabin use non-repeating forms (what Schoenberg referred to "musical prose"). If you're focused on something else and listening for the first time, you are likely to miss many of these things. And, yes, some pieces are easy listening but, more often than not, even the most banal violin concerto has some of the qualities mentioned above (And the more you are educated on music theory, the more things you start looking for, but this is obviously not a requirement).

>>8724331
Pastoral, Beethoven.

Bach's Cello Suites
Beethoven's Late String Quartets A Minor Op. 132 is a particular favorite.
Op. 131 in C sharp minor is pretty too
Ysaye's violin sonatas
Miles Davis Blue in Green
Bill Evans Peace Piece

>>8724366
>Brian Eno
My man.
His ambient are great for reading, but not anything else.
His seventies quartet of rock albums are GOAT.

File: 619Qmor1YrL.jpg (64KB, 500x500px) Image search: [Google]

64KB, 500x500px

Other than the loud beginning the rest is really nice and not distracting at all

Unsurprisingly though one shouldn't actually listen to it when reading Thus Spoke Zarathustra

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFPwm0e_K98

>>8724745
Ok, I think we're on the same page now. Yeah, of course you're not going to grasp the subtleties of the music while reading, you're not going to appreciate it the same as listening to it alone. But I don't think OP was talking about trying to get everything out of both simultaneously as that would obviously be impossible. I took it more as a request for good background music, and classical can certainly be that. I will also reiterate that while I definitely didn't pick up on everything in a composition while reading, I absorbed enough to know that it was something I wanted to make a note of to listen to later when I would give it my full attention. For example, this is how I discovered Bartók, now easily among my favorite composers.

Anyway, thanks for the discussion and sorry if I came on a little strong in my initial response to you.

>>8724978
Damn, one digit away from a hat trick of dubs in this thread...

>>8724978
>and classical can certainly be that
Yes, I just wanted to point out that there's more to classical than a superficial listening. It pisses me off when I see videos like "best classical studying music".

>For example, this is how I discovered Bartók, now easily among my favorite composers.
Bartók works great for this because his development sections are usually different than the rest. His violin concerto no. 2 is a favorite of mine among other of his works.

>Anyway, thanks for the discussion and sorry if I came on a little strong in my initial response to you.
this is 4chan lol, if you piss people off you need to be prepared on being in the receiving end, no worries.

Cheers.

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