Your Personal Soundtrack

Reggae is great while trying to get things done around the house. Bob Marley or compilation cds to keep away monotony.

@Ghosthouse: Ahhhh....yes, Sir. "What Your Soul Sings" is good stuff.... ;)

Ballan

"At any given point, music is playing around me" EXACTLY!

After all these years of music and audio, however, I still haven't achieved it. But here are a few ideas:

Early Morning

CPE Bach

Gym

Earth Wind and Fire
Isley Brothers
Jamiroquoi

Studying/Working

Looking for suggestions here, but have also experimented with nature recordings for more interesting "white noise"

Falling Asleep

Keith Jarret Facing You

Any Time

Miles Davis - Kind of Blue
Pink Floyd

Driving

A great activity for music where I need to think more....

What we are trying to get at here is not just "Oh I like smooth jazz with my Starbucks" type of suggestions,

but how you specifically incorporate really great, timeless classics or destined to become classic music into the soundtrack for your life.

Early morning weekdays...chilled electronica but not TOO ambient. Stuff like Kruder & Dorfmeister, tunes from the Ambient Dub series, Klaus Schulze.
Early morning weekends...classic hard bop usually or maybe some classical guitar pieces.
While driving for work I almost always listen to episodes of This American Life. Nothing makes the drive zoom by like those.
I have a little ritual of playing The Smiths-The Queen Is Dead while either cooking or washing dishes.
Hanging out Fri-Sat night wig friend usually means a wellthought out playlist thru iTunes. It's always a very eclectic set that will go thru all the genres I love.
This forum does not like iPhones. I can't even move the cursor to fix a few typos.

Kind of like mellow tubey magic. I have a small collection of 200 albums (1950s to today) but love a warm soundstage and simple playing. For classics, I love the first three Band albums (Chestfever!), most of the early Bob Marley catalog, mid 70s Neil Young (On the Beach and American Stars and Bars), 1980s Los Lobos (Kiko) and Replacements for roots rock. I think that Radiohead has owned the last two decades for interesting and evolving work. For contemporary artists, Dave Alvin and Cat Power seem to best capture that organic sound. I also love everything that Daniel Lanois has produced.