Some years ago when I was still a young junior programmer, I realized that I get easily distracted by ambient noise while coding. Sounds like cars or birds can pull me away from my deep thoughts, so I started listening to the FM radio. This quickly became a wrong choice as the radio is very attention-grabbing. Rap music, radio commercials, talkative radio djs, etc.. I looked for mp3s and got into Brian Eno’s Music for Airports. I quickly became bored of ambient and tried classical music. Classical is ok sometimes but it gets boring too. So for several years I have studied and experimented on what music works and what doesn’t while I code.
This is my first track review of my favorite programming music.
Reach – Joy Talay, is a fantastic chill-out lounge with a very minimal vocal track. The artist starts the song with a pleasing saturated 3 chord synth intro that sets the entire vibe of the track. Deep house lounge music is my favorite coding genre as it is passive and places itself in the background. The track’s low end has a punchy kick and sets the bass beneath it so you’ll feel a groovy movement while listening. The clap is distorted and probably reduced to a lesser bitrate and has some white noise, also there is very minimal transient. The chords never stop with this track as it is very much the theme of this genre. It only fades out filtered and comes back again much like your usual french house track. I also love the sidechaining and how punchy the feel of the track is. The Hi-hats and percussions are also calming and crunchy to the ears as they beat their rhythm.
The track is easy to listen to as there are no tension chords. It is played on a Db major key as well. Again, there is also no change on the chord progression so the vibe is constant and the listener stays in the good mood throughout
The mixing is heavy on the low end and upper mid. The higher frequencies have a small boost and compression. Then I notice the peaks of the hi-hats are tamed.
Lastly, vocal chops are minimal and set very far as the artist set reverb in a perfect spot location of the imaginary mixing stage. Very professional mix overall and there are no gaps in transitions.