Arcane Music to Program By

Most of us aren’t lucky enough to have a private office. Instead we are condemned to cubical life, often with noisy co-workers nearby. Coding, serious deep coding, requires intense concentration with a minimum of distraction. Thus a really good pair of headphones (preferably noise canceling) and some good tunes are a necessity of life.

When I’m really trying to get into the “zone” I find audio with words too distracting. Some jazz is nice, but often winds up being more relaxing than stimulating. For those times when I really need to get the code flowing I fire up something orchestral, like a movie soundtrack. Anything by John Williams or Danny Elfman is great. But for those times where I really need to crank out the code, I turn to my Midnight Syndicate collection.

I once heard Midnight Syndicate (http://www.midnightsyndicate.com) described as a group that writes “gothic horror soundtracks to movies that were never made”. Their music is an eerie, spooky, haunting, but most of all it really gets my creative juices flowing. It’s intense, without being too intense and burning you out.

I guess the description isn’t as accurate as it once was, since there are several films due for release in the near future they will be scoring, namely “The Rage” (http://www.theragefilm.com/) and “Sin-Jin Smyth” (http://www.sin-jinsmyth.com/).

A third film, “The Dead Matter” (http://www.thedeadmatter.com/) is being written and directed by Edward Douglas, half of the Midnight Syndicate. Gavin Goszka, the other half of Midnight Syndicate will serve as musical director and together they will create the soundtrack. If the title seems familiar, it’s actually going to be a remake of the 1996 version of “The Dead Matter” which Douglas directed, scored and produced.

I didn’t mean to turn this into a film and music review, I was just listening to my collection while sitting here on my back deck and working on this week’s posts, and decided to toss in a bonus post for the week.

If you are curious, head over to their website and click on “The Music” link over on the right. They list each album, and there’s a “listen to tracks’ link which takes you to their MySpace account where you can get a sampling from their albums. “Gates of Delirium” is probably my favorite, but “The 13^th Hour” runs a close second.

Now, get back to work.

Standard disclaimer: I have no financial affiliation with Midnight Syndicate or Entity Productions, other than being a customer. I receive no consideration of any kind for this mention. I just think it’s some awesome music and wanted to share.