This poll was created by my buddy Tom Iovino from TomsWorkbench.com.
When I’m in the shop, I usually listen to podcasts or audio books. Once I exhaust that supply or when I need to pay more attention to the woodworking, nothing beats Pandora. I fire up some of my favorite bands and just let Pandora pick the tunes for me.
Depends on how I feel and what I’m doing if its something that I need to get in close and feel what I’m doing then some classical music or something with a steady beat through out the song if I’m doing something like cutting then something a little more up beat or fast paced with my sanding I like to listen to any thing really as long as I can get into it the song and do the job at the same time
I’m Gerald Ford’s son – I can’t walk and chew gum without messing-up both things. The shop is where I think about everything, from woodworking to my retirement savings status – I need this space to have space.
I listen to music on the computer in the shop. 30gigs of music I like and know. A computer in a wood shop? Dust etc! It’s in a cabinet AND its an old remanufactured computer for music and car shop manuals
I found during a 2.5 year rebuild of my son’s 1965 Mustang fastback. That I had to listen to music that I know. Which during the rebuild WITH my teenage son to mean. Not his music ( actually his music was fine ). For him, not my music. But 60-70′s classic rock and roll
I need music that goes in one ear and out the other. I don’t like music I have to listen to, because I don’t know it
My tastes vary from classic rock and roll to classical. To my normal easy listening. David Benoit , Kevin Kern, Billy Joe Walker Jr, etc.
Dave
The Pirate Radio. Good ol’ time music like Genn Miller & His Orchestra, Swing Music.
http://pirate935.com/
Flip on some Citizen Cope and soak in all the fun in the shop. Great music to zone out to.
Raido, a classic rock station. But, over the past couple of years I have found that I really enjoy a local classical station. I can’t say I like the opera type stuff but, some good typical classical is always good. I find it relaxing and I can concentrate on my work and also enjoy listening to music. Getting into a rock’n Zeppelin or Pink Floyd song and I can losing track of what I am doing…….lol…
I had an unused large screen HDTV after I moved recently. It is up on a swivel wall mount, hooked to a local HD tv antenna…
Free TV, with SEC football on while I work in my shop on Saturdays. Good times…
Wow! a lot of you guys listen to audiobooks. My hat, respirator, eyeprotection and headphones are off to you. I can’t stand to have someone talking in my ear when I am in the shop. For me it is very distracting. Talk radio, even NPR? Fuggitaboudit! I have CDs, cassettes(geezer), and Ipods with wireless headphones for music, or nothing at all but noise muffs if I need to work out a gnarly problem. Wide range in taste except metal and other head banger s**t. Old rock n roll, blues, Southern rock.reggae and Americana roots stuff. You never know what you will hear in my shop. What’s really cool is that with the tonal quality of music through speakers with no headphones as opposed to noise from tools, you can still hear the music over the noise even with sound deadening muffs on. I am thinking that one of you sound geniuses out there could explain that to me, not that the reason really matters. Just don’t let your singing drown out the jointer noise. The you KNOW you are probably singing way too loud, and probably very badly.
I use pandora to play music that inspires my creativity… usually movie soundtracks and classical/piano artists
One of our clients asked us to replace his home theatre system. After the replacement he told us that we could keep the old system since he had no use for it! A JBL 1200 watt 16″ subwoofer and 6 120 watt speakers. Truly a dream setup for a musical woodworker.
All wirelessly controlled 80 ft away by Apple’s airport express via airplay. I leave my macbook or ipod inside (dust free environment) with an itunes DJ or playlist or shuffle on… I can use the amplifier remote to turn up or down the volume. I can feel/ hear the music with any machine running with 32 db ear protection on.
the kicker: at any point, my girlfriend can remotely (remote app for IOS) stop the music to alert me that it’s time for dinner, or that I need to come inside, without having to disrupt my work or scare me while i have a sharp knife in my hand. I have saved so much time and energy with the wireless control.
I’m a hobbyist, and only really get to go into my ‘shop’ when my son is napping during the day. So I get to listen to the sound of him sleeping over the monitor half the time. My wife gets the monitor the other half of the time. It does mean I have to work out what tools I can get away with using. If I’m doing a lot of table saw or router work, it’s going to have to be on a non-monitor day.
I used to listen to a lot of baseball games, but mostly just as noise in the background. I love the cadence of sports announcers, especially radio guys. So I’d be in the shop working away and my girlfriend at the time would ask me, “Is that the Red Sox game?”
“Yup”
“Who’s winning?”
“No clue.”
I always listen to WTOR and now the mildly annoying FWW version (those sound effects are childish and distracting) After I am caught up on those it is pandora time. When I was getting started iI would throw in my tapes ofWoodworks and NYW in the old vcr and let it play.
Books on my ipod.
I have a old radio that I found curbside that I fixed in my shop. I rarely use it. I don’t like distractions of any kind, espically while I am working in my shop. I want my brain on my body & what I am doing with it. I don’t need to loose a finger because I’m listening to a piece of music.
TWIT podcasts, local radio, Ingrid Michaelson, stations from across the country for something different.
I crank up my Sonos PLAY:5 in the basement and listen to Pandora or Rhapsody. I had a crappy iPod dock before but it sounded lousy and I got tired of just listening to my own collection – I listen to internet music 100% now (which with Rhapsody also includes everything in my own collection anyway), and the sound I get now is a huge improvement.
Via Sqeezebox, old Yamaha Recv and Klipsch KG4′s:
Rush Limbaugh to Pandora Stations to Tool to Korn to Dire Straights to Clapton to Phish to Dead to Madelelne Peyroux to Alan Jackson to Mr. Cash . . . Needless to say I have a huge variety and it depends on the mood and how well things are going in the shop.
Sometimes I am very surprised the neighbors haven’t said anything.
Some day I’d like to build my own horn loaded speaker cabinets.
Audiobooks, if anything.
For me it’s gotta be talk radio. I can’t wait for noon (in Maine) to come so I can listen the king of talk radio, Rush Limbaugh!!!
either oneplace.com or CBC radio; all on the iPhone with my earbuds
On THIS site of all places, I can’t believe PODCASTS are not a choice! ;^0
I usually listen to the radio or something on Pandora, iHeartRadio, or Vevo.
machinery, or silence
Lately its Nights with Alice Cooper on the classic rock station…Mountaineer football, sometimes the Dead.
With over 30 gigs of music on the iPod, you never know what will play when I’m out in the shop. Rest assured the sweetest musical tones are always those made by the random rhythmic sounds of tools in my hand. :-)