Top Music Selections for Students: White Noise, Instrumentals & More!

[glondor]

My 10 year old daughter is going to be allowed to listen to her mp3 player in classes this coming school year. They will allow it as a "sonic mask" to help her to not get distracted quite so easily. The requirements for sound are either white noise, music with no vocals, (ie. classical) or something that will not BE a distraction. Any ideas? thanks.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Hayden is mildly pleasant and more or less innocuous. He wrote a great deal of his stuff to be played in the background as people chatted at soiree's, so much of it is intended to be a non-distracting background sound.

 

[chroot]

A lot of ambient or atmospheric electronic music qualifies. It can be a little tough to find entire albums without any vocals at all, though. It also has the advantage of having far less dramatic changes in volume than most classical music.

- Warren

 

[Math Is Hard]

I hope that helps her. I sympathize. I wear headphones at work everyday because little noises make me insane - and two of my coworkers have picked up the habit of cracking sunflower seeds (shell on) while they work.

There's some new age jazz that might fit the bill. I am a fan of a composer named Jean Michel Jarre, and I started listening to his music when I was about 14 or 15. His songs are mostly pure instrumental works. I don't know if she would like that style or not, but just an idea.

 

[moe darklight]

I don't know if any 10 year old would enjoy these much, but these are some that work for me, she might be into it:

"Boards Of Canada" make good music to work to. It's very spacey electronic music.

"The Desert Sessions 1 & 2" are also great. It's out of print, but there are ways of getting it on MP3.

Pink Floyd "wish you were here" and "meddle" have vocals, but they're not distracting, and it's nice and mellow.

Kid-A from radiohead (if you take out "the national anthem," which might be too intense for working) is also great, it has vocals too, but also not distracting.

A band called "shadowy men on a shadowy planet" (they made the theme song for the tv show kids in the hall), they make really cool instrumental music.

 

[chroot]

Boards of Canada's songs mostly have "vocals." True, they're usually just sampled loops, but they're vocals.

- Warren

 

[moe darklight]

true. it's not distracting the way lyrics would be though, it's mostly short samples. which is why I put pink floyd and radiohead too; they have vocals technically, but they're not up-front and distracting, they just kind of float in the background.

 

[zoobyshoe]

true. it's not distracting the way lyrics would be though, it's mostly short samples. which is why I put pink floyd and radiohead too; they have vocals technically, but they're not up-front and distracting, they just kind of float in the background.

They play radiohead all the time at the cafe where I go to draw and I would like to kill that band.

 

[moe darklight]

They play radiohead all the time at the cafe where I go to draw and I would like to kill that band.

well, you and I are just never going to agree much on anything, are we

 

[turbo]

My suggestion would be to buy a CD set of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos, and rip 'em to the mp3 player. The music is lively, with coherent themes and interesting patterns in pitch and timing.

 

[berkeman]

I'm partial to Vivaldi.

 

[dontdisturbmycircles]

Try Rachmaninoff. Or the Gladiator soundtrack , not sure that she would like it. There is a good website I used to know of that handed out free atmospheric music since the guy enjoyed making it... I want to say one of the albums was called something winter, it will come to me later in the day and I will remember to post the website here.

 

[devil-fire]

there is a lot of electronic music that doesn't have vocals. I'm partial to a DJ named Christopher Lawrence myself.

have you thought about music from different languages? you might be able to get the genre of music your daughter likes from another language so she still enjoys the sound of it but isn't distracted by words she recognizes.

 

[edward]

You might consider American Indian flute music. It is mellow and not disruptive.



Bamboo flute from India is very similar.

Your best bet will probably be to try a mix, but I have a feeling your daughter will eventually prefer and do better with a certain Genre. Most kids seem to.

 

[glondor]

WOW thanks for all the response. I will find some of these and preview them for her, and also get her input. Lots of good ideas. my daughter says thanks all.

 

[glondor]

Is there a source for the classical selections, It is public domain right? All the selections I can find are flac files. Will an mp3 player play a flac file??

 

[chroot]

http://www.classicalarchives.com/

Some portable players can play FLAC, but most cannot. You can use a wide variety of software to convert FLAC into mp3, though.

- Warren

 

[glondor]

Is classical music public domain?? It all seems to be flac files, I guess they need to be converted? to mp3. I went thru my files and here's what she gets so far... Neil Young-deadman guitar solo #5 Pink Floyd - shine on you crazy diamond (may have to kik this one, it has words. Richard Strauss - Also sprach Zarathustra, Relaxing nature sounds- gentle rain. Tommy Crow and Richie lawton- Slippery didjas 4 live. Twin Peaks Theme. Eddie Van Halen live guitar solo. Rush_ La Villa Strangiatto. Stevie Ray Vaughn- Little wing live Instrumental. Manheim Steamroller and Mason Williams -Classical gas. Sounds of nature forest piano, rain on the pond and a tropical rain forest and peaceful ocean surf. Metalica with the trans siberian orchestra- carol of the bells...Hows that so far...hmmm need more classical...

 

[turbo]

Go to a local library and check out some recordings, or listen to them there, if facilities permit. Your daughter will probably latch onto some favorites pretty quickly. I suggested the Bandenburg Concertos because Bach's work in this series is cohesive. Once you're familiar with the basic themes, you can let the music slide into the background, and when you're listening to a particularly nice passage, you can engage, and then let it fall into the background again. I would advise against any type of "elevator music" that you can automatically dismiss as "background" - children need to be engaged. The book "Goedel, Escher, and Bach" was a bit too holistic for me, but some of it was spot-on. There is structure, organization, and thematic cohesiveness in Bach's work (especially the Brandenburg Concertos, IMO) that transcend "mere" music (if there is any such thing) and provide a backdrop for pattern-recognition, problem-solving, etc. When I was doing homework or studying Chemical Engineering in the early 70's, I often had this music on the stereo, despite the fact that I played blues and rock at frat parties every weekend.

 

[Math Is Hard]

Is classical music public domain?? It all seems to be flac files, I guess they need to be converted? to mp3. I went thru my files and here's what she gets so far... Neil Young-deadman guitar solo #5 Pink Floyd - shine on you crazy diamond (may have to kik this one, it has words. Richard Strauss - Also sprach Zarathustra, Relaxing nature sounds- gentle rain. Tommy Crow and Richie lawton- Slippery didjas 4 live. Twin Peaks Theme. Eddie Van Halen live guitar solo. Rush_ La Villa Strangiatto. Stevie Ray Vaughn- Little wing live Instrumental. Manheim Steamroller and Mason Williams -Classical gas. Sounds of nature forest piano, rain on the pond and a tropical rain forest and peaceful ocean surf. Metalica with the trans siberian orchestra- carol of the bells...Hows that so far...hmmm need more classical...

Nice taste in guitarists! how about some Satriani?

 

[Thrice]

Soulfly 4tw

 

[Thrice]

Is classical music public domain??

Only if the performer wanted it to be.

 

[turbo]

Here are some Bach MP3s that are supposedly free of copyright. Listen to them, and if your daughter likes them, get a CD compilation and burn her a high-quality MP3 stream to load to her player.

http://www.classicistranieri.com/dblog/articolo.asp?articolo=7870

 

[SugarMagnolia]

Pat Martino, who is a jazz guitarist, is brilliant in my opinion, and the songs have no words. Also, the lord of the rings soundtracks are generally wordless.

 

[glondor]

Great ideas thanks.

 

[Mk]

Try some of Beethoven's piano sonatas! The Tempest, Les Adieux, Hammerklavier, or whatever. Maybe let her sneak in some Waldstein for excitement :)

I don't think anybody is about to check your daughter's ipod or mp3 player unless she's headbanging. Don't base your decisions on the local school system's, if you think she can listen to music, then let her listen to whatever she likes, or you could just say no if you don't think she will be as responsible as you like with it, or don't want her to.