Normally silence, aided by headphones that play nothing and muffle some of the noise. I often wonder what my co-workers would think if they knew my headphones had nothing playing on them. I am privately amused by their attempts to get my attention by speaking my name repeatedly and loudly even though I can hear them just fine.
I work in an environment where nearly 30 very chatty people are within earshot. Since I have not found a way to tell 30 people to simultaneously shut up, still have a job and be liked by my coworkers, anything I can do to discourage receiving noise helps. And I will remove the headphones to talk with anyone who calls to me or approaches my cube. I am not anti-social, I just like to focus on the job at hand.
Having said that, there are times when silence (or muffled sound) is not on my desired menu for the day. But chit-chat other than my own is never on my desired sounds list so, particularly on Fridays, Pandora allows me to further filter out the chit-chat by listening to everything from Classical to Punk, New Wave and even some more modern stuff (c. 2000+). I like
some of the current pop stuff as well. (I think that music contains a musical version of whatever it is that they put in McDonald's beef to make you like it.) My kids often direct me to music that they think I would like. They are 21 and 23 years old, so you can guess from some of that...
I find any style of music enjoyable, with some exceptions. I don't like screaming, cussing or any genre of music whose name contains words that rhyme with "cr4p".
Ok, ok, I know someone is going to say, "No screaming or cussing, but he listens to Punk?" Well ok, then...99.9% of the time I don't like screaming or cussing in my music. There's a time and place for everything.
I find some mashups to be entertaining. "Boink Bonk/Tik Tok" is a current gamer/pop mashup that I think is pretty amusing. Unfortunately, once you hear it you can't get it out of your head. I have some of that kind of stuff at home. Google it if you are a gamer and think it might be amusing. It's on YouTube.
And Pink Floyd is always on the play list for me.
