Latin Music Not Good for Focused Work/Study

Sabrosura

Sabrosura

Son Montuno
So I've been looking for ways to make my study time more focused and after implementing various strategies, I still felt like my mind was too vulnerable to distractions and not focused enough and I wasn't getting into that "flow" state of mind I was seeking. Finally I decided to try a pretty brutal idea I had considered before, but dismissed: replacing my perpetual Latin music background with other kinds of music, or silence.

Salsa radio channels (and more recently, Cuban music channels :) ) or salsa music from my personal collection have been my main sound background for many years, while at home and at work and travelling and basically all the time, because I love Latin music so much. :) But I have come to realize that it unfortunately seriously undermines my mental focus -- whether that is because my brain can't just "ignore" it and has to devote significant attention to it and away from the task at hand because I have such a strong emotional connection to this music, or simply because it is a complex type of music that demands a certain degree of mental resources and mental energy, thus reducing (rather than increasing) what is available for other mental tasks, or a combination of these two factors, the fact remains that when I turn my background Latin music off and replace it with, say, Irish music, or silence, my mental focus and "flow" state greatly increase.

So I have to (sadly) begin to limit my Latin music listening times to non-study time, which given my current class load is almost nothing. Oh well...maybe this will be an extra incentive to finish homework faster so I can turn the salsa back on :)
 
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I have the same problem although I've had some success from playing the same song (or possibly album) on repeat endlessly.
 
I have a similar problem, but I found a couple of solutions.

Timba played at low to medium volume works well. All the timba songs really have their musicians fill up the space, its a constant stream. All the instruments are cramming in ther sound to the overall sound. Therefore, there isnt the same kind of aural topology that would distract me in salsa dura. You could play Timba as backing music to a nature documentary about worker bees: its energetic, never-ending, and relentless.

The other solution for me is to play slower music that might have more pronounced aural and musical topology ... I have a lot of the albums and projects by people associated with the Buena Vista Social Club stuff. Albums by Ibrahim Ferrer, Ruben Gonzalez, Omara Portuondo, etc. These give me a feeling I like to experience, yet they dont distract when I need to focus.
 
When I hear salsa music, my brain immediately focuses on it. I find it difficult to focus on people talking when salsa is playing in the background, and work is simply impossible. I have this problem with other genres of music too (albeit to a lesser degree), which is why I never play music when I'm working. It's as if my brain has been trained to prioritise music over everything else.
 
for background/study music with a latin twist, I like guitar music from cuba or colombia (you can search for it on youtube) other instruments/voices would be too distracting. It's not the real deal, of course, i'll save that for my free time.
 
An update on this. So after trying to use classical music as background for study sessions, and finding that it worked for the most part but still distracted me (created a strong mental/emotional response) at times, I think I have finally found the holy grail of study music: video game background music. :) It is purposefully designed to not be too distracting to the player and some people apparently figured out that this makes it great for studying, as there are many YouTube compilations of "video game study music", like the one below.

 
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