(publishing an old “incomplete thoughts” draft) We all have a preferred environment and/or music we prefer to hack and learn and work in. Most recently, I spent much time at home practicing and learning in the PWK/OSCP labs and exam, and often to a background of music. I thought I would share some of my interests in this regard. If you read nothing else here, at least go give SomaFM a listen, particularly their DefCon Hacker Radio and Groove Salad stations. I’ve been a regular listener of Groove Salad since around 2003, and it’s absolutely excellent.

When I’m heads-down doing something, most of the time I’m probably listening to one of four types of music.

The most common for me is “chill out” music, largely electronic, but could also be acoustic or traditional. This largely stems from enjoying new age music from the 80s/90s, which then expended into electronic music through the late 90s and on (think Enigma and Kitaro transitioning into Underworld and Sasha). Unless I’m listening to my own stuff, this is where I’ll tune into Groove Salad on SomaFM. I don’t remember how I found the station or why or what led me there, but it definitely solidified “chill out” as a thing that I totally dig. (And I totally geeked out when BackTrack used to include a SomaFM bookmark in their default browser!)

I’ll also enjoy other electronic music, but if it has more intensity or a beat to it, I don’t include it into the chill category, and instead gets lumped all together into my general electronic folder. This encompasses anything from classic trance, goa/psytrance, dubstep, edm, and so on. I tend to stick to my own collection when listening to this, but might queue up a large set of stuff on YouTube, or use SoundCloud to listen to some sets or DJs, or maybe Pandora, or Digitally Imported feeds on TuneIn Radio.

Sometimes, I’m in a really heads-down mood or just want something less electronic, and I’ll turn to either normal classical music, or something less orchestral like cello, guitar, or piano artists doing their own thing. Most of the time when I listen to this, I’m firing up TuneIn Radio and just listening to the Iowa Public Radio Classical station. No ads, decent quality, good variety. Failing that, there’s tons of long collections on YouTube to listen to.

Lastly, I’ve also always enjoyed hard rock which borders into metal, but never really metal. I tend to be pretty picky when it comes to this (Metallica, Tool, White Zombie which betrays my age…), but more lately I’ve gotten into symphonic metal bands. I still have plenty of things I consider to be “harder” rock music (basically anything more intense than “pop” music), and sometimes that’s my mood.