I love the music for almost every Sufferfest video. That is except for Nine Hammers. I am somewhat of an audiophile, but my music tastes are wide and varied and I can usually appreciate good music in almost every genre. However, for whatever reason, the soundtrack to 9H hits me on all the wrong nails and makes me perform worse.
So I’ve been on a project to create my own soundtrack. Its taken a while, but I’ve finally settled on a list of songs that seem to hit me with all the right hammers. I don’t have them all fully mixed, yet, but when I do I will see how I can share it.
Until then, here is just a small preview from one of the recovery sections.
HHNF is pretty good, but I don’t like the intro song. That one bugs me. But it gets better. Especially with the first song of the first set during Emma Pooley’s breakaway which for some reason is unlisted in the song list.
I was looking last night and apparently I was very close to finding it and didn’t realize it. I got to the Astronauts page, but didn’t see the song. Guess I stopped looking just a bit too soon.
Sounds similar to how I found We Will Run under a different artist name.
A vote to specifically change the song on the 3rd hammer (@20 minutes ish).
The intervals are very difficult and that song is mismatched to the effort. I always turn off music for that one specific set.
I’ve been a Sufferfest user since the DVD days and have done nearly Suff video (54 of 60 completed) am generally very indifferent of music/video while training but that one rubs me the wrong way.
Chapeau mon ami. You wrote the post I never had the courage to share.
I have never used the provided music for the workouts. I use my iTunes in shuffle … For tempo based workouts, I use EDM, for HIIT workouts, heavy metal … Recovery, EDM Chillout …
Some of these are good ones. Unfortunately, I think a number of these that are impossible to find is because they are from royalty free music services. So sometimes the artist name changes when they decide to switch away and change royalty contracts. Or they publish only a couple songs and then disappear or move on to a different band. That makes those songs almost impossible to find unless you pay for the royalty free music service itself.
I have used Pandora and SoundHound to find a number of songs where the band named changed or was written incorrectly in the SUF song listing.
Haha! That was one of the examples I played for my daughter to explain why I was making my own soundtrack. She understood immediately.
I have a big playlist of workout songs I use for my long endurance rides and virtual non-SUF rides. For the SUF rides, some of the older videos have music I don’t care for as much. But most of them - especially the more recent ones and ones where they’re matched well to the intervals and intensity - I find I enjoy quite a bit and they work better than music not fitted to the efforts. Like The Model and Cobbler.
Yesterday I got my 9H alt music track mixed through interval 4. Just 5 more hammers to go!
I don’t find the music in 9H inappropriate. I just quick-played through it because it’s been over a year now since I visited the valley. But no, there is nothing wrong with the music for me, I really like the tunes in recovery sections. And especially the song “Summer” are pretty nice.
Actually, I find the music in most of the SUF videos well chosen. Especially the fact that (even if it’s only for licensing reasons) there are no major hits or famous artists in it makes the music even more engaging for me. Like most people, I often connect certain memories or moods to certain tunes. Thus I would often get too distracted if there were more famous songs in these training sessions. Instead, the SUF music mentally is only connected to engaging in focused training. And that’s a good thing.
But when you’re on the limit and just need to push for 15-20 more seconds, the music motivation can make all the difference between pushing on or stopping early to rest.
I have always found The Shovel to be terribly hard for me, but the difference in music keeps me pushing hard when I feel terrible and I’ve always finished even when I felt like I couldn’t, while the music in 9H doesn’t motivate me in quite the same way.
But again, music is such a personal thing, so one person’s motivating music is another’s cacophony of noise.
Once I finish with my new 9H playlist I’m sure there will be some who will love it and some who will think it worse than the original. And it won’t surprise me either way.
Completely agree. I enjoy the vast majority of the SUF music - including most of the recovery tracks as well - and especially enjoy how much new music I’ve discovered both from the music in the videos themselves as well as the random music recommendations I now get from Apple Music and Spotify based the SUF tunes I’ve saved and listen to on a pretty regular basis even when not doing workouts.
My wife is a TrainerRoad user who will never change because she coaches triathletes and uses the TR group ride feature to train with them two or three times a week during the indoor season. But when they do hard intervals, she mutes TR and plays music on her phone. I’ve been able to give her lots of new (to her) music that I first heard in Sufferlandria.
She understood immediately. 
