1 minute
Given how noisy planes are, I find that listening to music is a good way to drown out fellow passengers – little and big babies – as well as the drone of the plane itself.
While I have a fairly eclectic taste in music, when I fly I only listen to one genre – downtempo psy-trance. While I would love to listen to some jazz, or even classical, the sounds dynamics are too varied to work as noise insulation. There is always hip hop, rock, and pop which are noisier than jazz and classical but I find it hard on the ears after a while. Also, earworms can lead to befuddled looks from other passengers as you singalong un-awared. Or stranger looks when you guffaw aloud listening to Bill Burr.
Downtempo psy-trance tends to be low tempo chill-out type music with little to no vocals that – importantly – has a consistent heavy beat and dark bass. Thats my definition of it.
When flying I listen to my Spotify playlist – Trance for Writing – which I use when writing, reading, and flying. It is a collection of DJ sets of downtempo spy-trance which most tracks being longer than an hour. The great thing about these DJ set tracks is that for long periods it has a consistent beat per minutes that is low enough to keep things humming, and not so fast it makes you a humming bird. Its dark and heavy beat tends to lull you to forget what going on around you and even fall asleep. Its a great way to create your own noise insulation bubble so that you can concentrate on your reading, or snoozing.