Music and concentration.

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Personally, I have always found that having music drowning out everything else around me has helped me focus on what I need to do, unless I absolutely love the song, then I find myself finger drumming on the table along to it and resisting the urge to sing along to it.

Anyone else in a similar situation?

It depends on the music and the person I think. For me, the music of Scott Joplin is an excellent background to increased focus (but then I love the music signature of ragtime music). Chopin and Mozart too, though only a certain few pieces (Mozart's piano concertos in D minor). Piano music is the key for me.

Nope, that would drive me crazy.

I am allowed to listen to music during school, as long as I am not using it for something other than music, and if I have one ear not covered by my headphones.

-LegoMaster2149 (Written on September 17, 2017)

It's amazing just how hard this one is to answer. I think it depends on how mindless and boring the task is that I'm trying to accomplish.

If the task I'm trying to accomplish requires concentration and there are no other distractions around, the music itself will become the distraction, make me frustrated, and I'll have to turn it off.

If the task I'm trying to accomplish is completely mindless and boring, the music will distract me from the boringness of the task and I will be better able to accomplish it. But for this to work, the task has to be REALLY mindless and repetitive.

If there are lots of distractions around and the task requires concentration, I once again have difficulty answering the question. I'm really not sure whether the music will help me to ignore the other distractions, or whether it will amplify the distractions and just make it worse.

So far, I have only found one song that can noticeably improve my concentration: "Siegfried's Death and Funeral March" from Richard Wagner's Götterdämmerung, conducted by by Klaus Tennstedt.

But in general, I don't find that music improves my concentration. If I want to drown out surrounding noises, I more often listen to white noise or just use ear plugs.

^
Yes, white (or pink) noise helps me to concentrate by masking distracting background noise too. I've also been able to use some recordings I got from the now-defunct Zen Radio internet station, as they were very smooth, wallpapery sounds with no sudden, unexpected content. But most other types of music distract me from what I'm trying to concentrate on, and I don't usually like playing music that I'm fond of unless I'm free to give it my attention, in case I end up training my ears to ignore it. There are already way too many records that I used to enjoy that have become almost inaudible to me - I put the record on and when it ends I realise I hardly noticed it.