A look at why "lofi hip hop radio – beats to relax/study to" increases listeners' focus
Music Features Hip hop
It’s a well-established fact that tuning into “lofi hip hop radio – beats to relax/study to” turns the average person into a superhuman academic whose powers of concentration are rivaled only by headphone-wearing cartoon girls sitting at their desks during rainy days. YouTube channel Sabrina & Friends has now decided to investigate this modern miracle by applying science to the question of why the never-ending web station helps listeners focus so well.
The video sees host Sabrina Cruz digging into lo-fi by trying to create her own tracks through artificial intelligence. The results aren’t as great as Cruz had hoped for, but the work involved with the process leads her to find studies on what it is about the genre that makes it so well-suited for studying (/relaxing).
With the caveat that music affects different people in different ways, Cruz explains that the three main building blocks of a lo-fi track—jazzy instrumental, boom bap drums, and environmental noises—make it work exceptionally well as concentration audio by blocking out distracting background noise with predictable rhythms. It’s not unexciting enough music to produce a sense of tiredness, but not mentally overwhelming either. The brain finds slow, lo-fi drum loops “subconsciously predictable” and the “dampened frequencies and environmental noise” of the tracks give the impression of listening in an actual physical space (usually one that evokes feelings of comfort or nostalgia) rather than hearing a recording played directly into the ear.
For a mercifully short amount of time last year, the world was faced with the horrifying prospect of “lofi hip hop radio” signing off for all time. Cruz’s AI beats certainly aren’t a replacement for the eternal music stream, but it’s heartening at least to know that some of our top minds are out there studying the online radio station, preparing for a reoccurrence of the Great Lo-Fi Outage Of 2020 with a robot-assisted contingency plan.
[via Digg]
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18 Comments
Big, big fan. Minimal techno also works. I’ll even throw in some liquid DnB to get a boost. Songs I want to sing along to are out of the question, though. Too distracting.
I listen to way too much Instrumental EDM or Trip Hop on Pandora while working. Yeah, stuff with pronounced singing is distracting.-d
Yeah it’s weird. I can get work done while listening to instrumentals of Portishead’s Dummy, but listening to the actual album is a total no-go for me.It’s like trying to concentrate while random people sing at you. Forget about it.
Vaporwave mixes and all the associated genres have been a Godsend for my productivity when I’m trying to write something.
Lllllllove vaporwave, but with the same caveat when it comes to vocals. I can listen to this while working all day long:
But throw in a track with vocals and I’m boned:
Same here. I’ve also been on a massive dub techno kick when I’m working.
I feel like I’m really weird in that this sort of music really puts me on edge and distracts me. No, seriously, music that people describe as relaxing almost always triggers my fight or flight response. It’s one of the big reasons why I couldn’t bring myself to get past even the 2nd level of Celeste, because the music was creeping me out too much. If I’m going to study, something louder and more raucous and energetic, like punk rock, works a lot better for me. I know every study says that is a terrible idea, but it seems to work for me. I find myself being way more productive when I do that.
You’re very unusual in that respect, but I had friends in HS who were just like you. It’s profoundly weird to me, though. I can’t concentrate if someone’s screaming at me, and listning to punk/metal’s not that different (to me).Plus if I know the lyrics, forget about it. You put on American Jesus by Bad Religion and all I want to do it belt out every verse in unison.
I’m a designer and I’ve found the exact same thing; instrumental edm really helps my process. But not the creation process, the production process. Coming up with an idea, for me, needs to be in a setting where there are no distractions. I’ve come up with some of my best ideas in the shower and in the car, with the radio off. But when I have to pump something out, especially under a deadline then music helps me focus.May I suggest the Cocteau Twins for those who are inclined. There are lyrics but they’re basically nonsense and I’ve found that this really helps me, puts me in a different headspace than just instrumental music.
My rule is: Creative tasks require repetitive music; Repetitive tasks require uplifting music (with or without lyrics) — hell, if I’m doing something repetitively mindless, I can just listen to podcasts.But yeah, I hear you. I often get my best ideas grocery shopping. It’s as if your brain continues working on the task and surprises you with the answer when you least expect it.
I’m weird, in that most music helps me increase productivity. I can switch between hardstyle or lofi and get the same amount of work finished.
I can’t get work done without this kind of music anymore. That or classical. No lyrics. Just something to serve as background music and keep my thoughts at a minimum, y’know? These stations are godsends.
I’ve found the baroque composers to be the best. Corelli, Vivaldi, etc. Not a joke. I’ve been listening to Corelli’s 12 Concerti Grossi since I was probably 7-8 years old and it’s my thinking music. Highly recommend the St. Martins in the Field version.
I’ve noticed the same thing. Baroque music makes for a great mental lubricant.
I’d also suggest synthwave if that’s your thing I have a playlist I occasionally add stuff to it’s all that kinda retro 80’s cheese stuff. I enjoy it while not really having to pay attention to it.
If you like this, I would recommend the Anjunadeep Edition sets on Youtube and Spotify. They are one-hour (sometimes more) continuous mixes of deep house music — essentially trance that you can feel asleep to. Really great to slow down your brain at the end of the day.
This stuff is fine for light reading, late at night when I’m trying to wind down and shut my brain off. If I listen to it for too long, though, I get bored stiff and it can actually begin to annoy me. I find some of the denser ambient stuff by Brian Eno or Morton Feldman works better. Typically I need a little more musicality to hang on to. Bill Evans or the fifties Columbia recordings of Miles Davis are great. A lot of classical does the trick, particularly chamber music from any era. Aaron Copland’s “populist” (in the good sense of the word) music is a personal favorite. Ditto film scores. Bernard Herrmann wrote tons of gorgeously moody stuff. Jerry Goldsmith’s work through the seventies has made a fine soundtrack for my reading and creative pursuits over the years.
Putting the A in AV Club eh?