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White Noise: Offices: Music: Shit like that

13:33 / 11.10.02

So this week I've been freelancing inside a terminally hip digital agency in South London, and it's like a fucking party. There's a soundsystem bigger than my house, and the whole place vibrates. Actually, it's like a very bad party, where people keep putting CDs on and other people don't like them and put Julio Iglesias or his son on instead. At one point, a fight broke out between the suits (who don't wear suits) and the creatives (who don't wear suits). You know.

I can't think properly when there's loud music. I mean for-writing-thinking.

How about you?

13:37 / 11.10.02

Think? err...Wadya say? I can't hear you!

13:48 / 11.10.02

Yesterday in class, this guy was telling another student how having appropriate music can help you draw a particular scene. I used to feel that way too, until I started drawing in silence. It's unbelievable. My concentration increased, and so did my productivity and my skill. So, now I never listen to music unless I'm at the bar or on my way out to the bar. In my old school, students used to blare music during class, including life drawing! It was madness!

I'm thankful that my current teachers disagree and have disallowed music in the classroom. After class hours, people will bring in a TV and DVD player and have a Disney movie play in the background. I can't imagine a worse nightmare, so I work at home.

The Return Of Rothkoid

16:45 / 11.10.02

I have my headphones on at mindshearing volume anyway, so it doesn't really matter. But that's just because I don't think my coworkers are ready to share the love of Schrei X at 9:30 on a Monday morning...

16:52 / 11.10.02

I work with music on, but I like quiet music anyway... I really like working to music with lyrics in languages other than English though, because I don't understand much of any other language (though I am currently sort of trying to learn German), so the words don't interfere with what I'm writing, if that makes sense...

18:40 / 11.10.02

Always with my headphones on here. Listening to the mighty The Verve now.

18:43 / 11.10.02

The place I worked played this horrid radio station that consisted of Celine Dion, Mariah Carey, the occasional Micheal Bolton and others of that ilk.... Its a good thing I was working the big cutting machine and most of that crap was drowned out... Kegboy and crap music make for a bad working environment,

19:23 / 11.10.02

Aye, Kegboy. I HEAR you.

I am filling in for a sickie today and am forced to listen to a particularly terrible Classic Rock radio station.
I am finding it distractingly irritating.

Oddly enough, at my own desk I tend to listen to my music at rather loud levels with headphones.

Today I am pining for The Smiths.

23:55 / 11.10.02

"Am I standing still? Out of the co-oorner of my eye. Am I standing stii-ill?..."

(pukes blood)

There, now I feel better.

Nelson Evergreen

00:24 / 12.10.02

Pretty much any kind of music is preferable to the desolate sound of one's excess jowl-juice dripping mindlessly on the desk / counter / production line.

Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo

08:13 / 12.10.02

I have background music on when I write, but it's mostly soundtracks which are made to be played in the background. It helps me when I get stuck, since I can close my eyes and use the music to help set mood and allow for the scene to be a bit more "real" in my mind.

At work...

OK, first job in Minnesota was at a magazine/comic/porn shop and whoever was running the main register had control of the radio, based on the fact that it was the shittiest job to have. Problem was, we had a deadhead who would just run the register the whole time he worked so he could listen to his shockingly vast collection of crappy Grateful Dead bootleg recordings. Most of the time, I was able to just work and have the music not enter my mind, but when it was slow, there was the 523rd version of "Sugar Magnolia" playing as if someone was playing it on a bad tape player, a party going on, and a microphone at the other side of the room recording the song for us to be tortured with later. I learned that if someone has a huge tape case, and the tapes only have cities and dates on them and No band listed, run...run like the wind.

At my office jobs, I had radios, and kept them quiet so that no one could hear and be annoyed by the stuff I listened to, and the most I hated the job, the more I would bring in music that I could concentrate on instead of my job...

...but Musak has a special place in my heart because the first phone bank job I had had musak playing, and we would play "name that tune" with it, and whoever got the most songs right got their lunch paid for by the other workers the next day. Kept us all from tearing the speaker out and tossing it at the supervisor.

Our Lady of The Two Towers

09:38 / 12.10.02

Working in a library I don't tend to get a choice in the music/silence question, at home I tend to have some kind of music on, though mainly when I'm on the net or doing newsgroups. If I'm writing then it pretty has to be electronica/ambient because I find stuff with words as an integral part of the proceedings too distracting...

13:49 / 12.10.02

I often have music on at work, since nothing I do there requires any kind of brainwork or creativity. My radio at work's tuned in to Virgin, which seems to be on a 24 hour loop, but it's better than XFM these days, which is quite a disturbing thought.

I once wrote a story while listening to REM. It was the cheesiest, most abysmal thing I've ever come out with. Never again, unless it's wierd soundtracky stuff like Lustmord.