Hate the silence of your own mind? An avid music listener? Is the tranquillity of the library or Virgil Building too much?
Hate the silence of your own mind? An avid music listener? Is the tranquillity of the library or Virgil Building too much? Do you prefer the ambient bustle of a busy café, or a soundscape of gentle ocean waves?
As we exit a tumultuous exam season for many, what music made studying tolerable for you? We asked this question and more to followers of @thedigurb, and today, we finally discuss your habits.
For many, music is motivating. It can improve your mood, sharpen your focus, and relax you; helping you get ready for a mind-numbing revision session. However, music doesn't impact everyone in the same way. Some people prefer total silence, others needing specific genres or pointed set of songs to focus. Studies suggest music does not have an inherent negative or positive impact on quality of study – it is subjective, relating to both type of music and task (Kiss and Linnell, 2021).
Our survey revealed that for many students, music is imperative for an effective study session. Not a single respondent said they never listened to music while studying (although if we consider our sample is followers of @thedigurb, this is not surprising…), with 43% glued to their headphones, and the remaining 57% using music often but not always.
Respondents suggested that the goal here isn’t really to listen to the music in a pointed, or particularly aware way. They use it to dampen the world around them:
"It drowns out distracting thoughts in my head," one student noted, while another highlighted the Pavlovian nature of their playlist: "I know that when [certain] music is playing it's study time, and if not then I can take a break."
A hotly contested topic regarding study music is the use of lyrics. Much of the literature suggests that music with spoken vocals competes with the same part of the brain we use for reading and writing (Vasilev, Kirkby, and Angele, 2018). Our data reflects this debate, with a generally equal split between those who opt for instrumental only and those who allow lyrics.
At a deeper level, the type of task is instrumental for the type of music you listen to. A large proportion of our sample prefer calm instrumental or ambient tracks for sessions that demand rich focus – such as essay-writing, academic reading, or completing problem sheets. More exciting, lyrical music is reserved for repetitive tasks, killing the mundanity of cleaning a dataset in Excel, or organising your progress timeline for your dissertation.
Unsurprisingly, Jazz was by-far the most popular genre selected, representing a quarter of all submissions. Its often-improvisational nature offers something more unique and perhaps inducive to creativity and problem-solving.
Movie scores and video-game soundtracks were also a favoured choice. Video-game soundtracks especially are literally designed to be engaging without being distracting. They help you to focus deeply on the game for hours on end, and this translates easily to five-hour shifts at the Virgil building.
An outlier to the trend of relaxing and gentle music, metal was a well-selected contender. This appears counter-intuitive – how can you stay focused with grinding electric guitar and pounding drums occupying your headspace? However, for many students, heavy music acts almost like a more powerful white noise, drowning out the outside world and supporting you to push on with high-pressure tasks.
Ultimately, our results show that the student soundscape is not monolithic. We are a campus of diverse tastes, using everything from orchestral arrangements to driving guitars to find that elusive flow state.
Some album suggestions from our readers are:
- Third Eye Blind – Third Eye Blind
A 90s alt-rock classic. A fantastic ‘momentum’ album, with repetitive, encouraging percussion, it’s the perfect choice to power you through a session of intense work.
- Sid Meier’s Civilisation VI (Original Game Soundtrack) – Christopher Tin, Geoff Knorr, Phill Boucher, Roland Rizzo
For those long, soul-destroying sessions in the Virgil Building. As we discussed, video-game music is constructed for endurance. This soundtrack, featuring the Grammy-winning "Sogno di Volare," provides an orchestral backdrop that makes finishing a problem sheet feel like founding a city-state.
- The Velvet Underground & Nico – The Velvet Underground
For the student who needs atmosphere, this album is perfect. It is an effective study companion, providing a mostly low-key and steady listening experience. Featuring occasional flashpoints of high energy and noise, it gives just enough to wake you up and keep you from drifting off during a particularly dense reading.
Thank you to all that filled in the survey, your contributions were invaluable to this article.
If you’d like to write your own Groundwork article, feel free to get in touch: @thedigurb on Instagram!
References
Kiss L, Linnell KJ. The effect of preferred background music on task-focus in sustained attention. Psychol Res. 2021 Sep;85(6):2313-2325. doi: 10.1007/s00426-020-01400-6. Epub 2020 Aug 3. PMID: 32748062; PMCID: PMC8357712.
Vasilev MR, Kirkby JA, Angele B. Auditory Distraction During Reading: A Bayesian Meta-Analysis of a Continuing Controversy. Perspect Psychol Sci. 2018 Sep;13(5):567-597. doi: 10.1177/1745691617747398. Epub 2018 Jun 29. PMID: 29958067; PMCID: PMC6139986.