Staying Fresh with Amadou and Mariam

Postmarked Friday, February 17th, 2006
Topic: Music (209 words, 3 comments)

OK, I'm taking 30 seconds away from paper-writing time, to, well, talk about paper writing. Kind of.

I'd like to state that for the first time ever, I have been able to write an academic paper while listening to music with lyrics. In the past, it was either pure silence, jazz, or classical. That's it. Anything else made my head spin, as I couldn't not concentrate on the lyrics that I would hear buzzing around...

But, Goldsmiths being the place that it is, there isn't a quiet-area in the library that also offers electric plugs for laptops. Or, me being the person I am, I couldn't be bothered to leave my favorite area to go find one...

So, the moral of the story is: In my mission to drown out the noise of people talking, I discovered that as long as I don't understand what the lyrics are saying, I can keep writing! EUREKA!

In case you're wondering what the lucky CD in this experiment has been, check out Amadou and Mariam's website...

Also, I'd love to hear if anyone out there has any good suggestions for study music that they would care to impart? I feel like I've finally turned a musical corner! hee! :)

Reader Comments

1.

Comment from John Wells (http://www.johndwells.com)

Techno! Fits the requirements: no words, continuous "background" music, and high-energy!

Moby, The Chemical Brothers, The Crystal Method, Fatboy Slim, Royksopp, Saint Etienne, and St Germain are all on my work-hard-mix.

And for some reason, Dave Matthews always works, lyrics or not. :)

2.

Comment from TISHA!

techno makes me dizzy when i am thinking. i groove out to classic rock sometimes because i k know the songs so well it is comforting but my brain doesnt have to process. Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Van Morrison... This is like the mashed potatoes of the music world. that and the blues, of course.

And there are my two cents...

3.

Response from Marjan

Thanks for the great ideas guys!

Tish, I'm with you on the techno... Great for some things (house-cleaning!) but not so good for "academic" musings. Unless you're John, in which case your academic musings look something like this :

001111100011 code code 01010101010101 class

0001111100101 parse, /// web web 00111001

:P

Add A Comment:

Optional Fields
Required Fields
Human Test

Here is a simple test to make sure you're human and not spam. Please re-type your name into the field below. It must match what you've entered above to pass.