Ok, so now I'm going to let you all know how very strange some people think I am. I happened to mention to some folks at work that I have music running through my mind ALL the time. As soon as I open my eyes I have a tune in my head.
Sometimes it's one I heard on TV in a commercial, my latest lesson tune or just a scale or arp I've been working on. It's not something distracting but always there, like when you hear a catchy jingle and can't get it out of your head.
Am I alone in this or do you have it too?
I always thought this was normal, and now you're saying I'm strange? There's always some tune going through my head, though it's often hard to get rid of those annoying Christmas ones that infect you when you're going shopping.
I always thought this was normal too, the important thing is to carry an emergency back-up tune to counteract outside intruders, especially at Christmas; my current musical pepper-spray is The Cottage/College Groves - lethal.
and the other problem is that whenever there is any musak about, you find it impossible not to listen to it, no matter how awful. I'm constantly getting a slap round the ears during romantic meals with the missis for ingnoring her.
I've felt that for a good portion of my life. Somehow it hindered the romantic moments. When asked, "What are you thinking?" and to respond, "Diddley diddley."
What about when you wake up at night and the godamn tune is still there! - and you realise you've been dreaming it and assimilating it into your greater knowledge of life. So you lie there for awhile trying not to let it grow otherwise you could be awake for some time. With luck you drift back - and then it returns .......
"Oh Mandy, you came and you gave without taking..."
Without Irish trad music, I'd be in a straightjacket from all the crap music trapped in my head.
Even on long road trips, I rarely listen to the radio--it interferes with the tunes airing between my ears. I like my own soundtrack because I can play whatever tunes I want, put one on endless loop, change the tempo or key, even the instrumentation. Show me a radio station or ipod that can do all that....
Anyone seen "Touching the Void"?
Doco about a mountaineer given up for dead. He's dying but can't get Boney M's "Brown Girl in the Ring" out of his head. The thought of dying like that is one of the things that pushes him on.
Like Michael G said, I tune into whatever musak is playing, and strain to hear what it is. I hate soft "unobtrusive" music almost as much as I hate loud recorded music in bars and restaurants. Don't turn it down: turn it off.
I almost always wake up or or find myself at work with a tune I want to learn in my head. Invariably it evaporates, or is replaced with a tune I already know, as soon as I sit down with my mandolin.
I agree Will, Irish music works well (well, most of the time) to keep the rest of the world at bay!
I was in a grocery store once years ago when the some technical glitch occurred at the muzak radio station -- I think the record -player needle got stuck (for you people too young to know what that means, um, ask an adult) and the same few notes of the muzak tune just kept on and on. People continued mindlessly shopping along, while I was rolling around on the floor clutching my head in both arms and screaming...
1. learn a tune
2. completely forget the tune by the time I walk out the door
3. wake up 4 days later with some tune stuck in my head
4. spend half the day going crazy trying to figure out what the tune is that's stuck in my head.
5. realize it is actually the tune that I learned, but couldn't remember
6. work on the tune for a bit to get it committed to memory
7. <see step 2>
As with Zina, Mary Had A Little Lamb is pretty good at knocking another tune out, as is Scotland The Brave, and a blues song called "My Birdie Done Left Me" that we made up in reference to a tee-shirt that Zina wears on occasion.
But I only consciously try to knock tunes out of my head when it's some pop music that got stuck somehow. When it's trad, I usually let it bounce around until it has run its course.
If I don’t hear a tune in my head, I check my pulse to be sure I’m not dead.
In a past career, we had a secretary (remember those?) who didn’t believe that people could actually hear music in their heads. She insisted that I was just “thinking of the notes”, whatever that means. She also didn’t believe there could be thought without words. Must’ve been a very strange place inside her head.
When I really need to quieten the music and chatter in my head, like when I have to concentrate on writing some gnarly software, I put on the headphones and listen to the first “Chant” CD. I can’t explain it, but somehow it soothes in the right places and frees my mind to concentrate. And nothing else seems to work nearly as well, not even the later Chant CD’s. The more modern engineering of the later editions manages to ruin the subtle ambience of a bunch of monks singing in a chapel. There’s an interesting psychoacoustical tangent there, but for another day.
Oh I am so glad I'm not alone. Seriously, I always thought everyone heard music all the time. I was quite shocked to find that most folks don't.
Poor folks, don't know what their missing.
Hey Ptargiman, that's a pretty good likeness of me.
Ya know, Mary, I actually took it as a sign of healing from a bad breakup when I woke up with music in my head, and went to sleep with music in my head.
I'm with the others: "If there's NOT music running around through my grey matter, I better make sure that I've still got a pulse!"
Yes, I nearly always have music in my head, usually heard, imagined and even felt as if I were playing it on guitar.
Here's how it works for me: The music is always connected to both my heartbeat and my breathing. Sometimes it is way in the background, but surfaces almost immediately when my attention is not pre-occupied. I have at times noticed that late at night, thetune that was in my mind when I first awoke in the morning will return. Often, whatever is in my mind will be one of the last things that I played on the guitar.
Just a couple days ago I happened across an article about this phenomenom. The article gave a name to it, and considered it to be a non-pathological psychological condition. The name slips my mind right now.
Right now it's Cuil Aoidha jig in G, going into My Dungannon Sweetheart (Graham Townsend's). Yeah pretty well a lot of the time. Going running/jogging also jogs some old faves up to the surface. Must be the increased blood flow or something. BTW, Michael, I do think of other tunes while I'm playing one. Not that I'm particularly good at the point of changeover to the next tune but it probably helps. So I only fluff it 50% of the time!
Yeah, running and tunes are inextricably linked for me too--something I haven't played in ages will burble up as soon as my feet establish a rhythm. The older i get, the more the tempo slows on the uphills though....
Cecilt, that’s very much what it’s like for me. I’m not aware of the music being connected to my heartbeat, but it’s often synched with my breathing – or vice versa, who knows? And I sometimes feel my fingers on the guitar strings and see them going to the notes. I’m getting some of that effect with the fiddle, now that I’m playing more.
I can’t say I’ve noticed an early morning tune returning at bedtime, but the opposite has happened several times, especially with annoying tunes. I’ll go to sleep trying to forget the silly tune and then it’s the first thing in my consciousness next morning. I’ve never had any recollection of dreaming about it in between, so I don’t know where it hides.
I probably shouldn’t admit this, but I often play the rhythm of the hallucinatory tune with my teeth by gently clicking them together, complete with ornaments. Don’t look at me like that. Like you don’t do it…
Right. OK, Mark. I've called an ambulance. They said 15 minutes. Just don't play with any kitchen utensils. You'll be fine, believe me.
Just try and repeat to yourself, "the tunes in my head don't go to school, the tunes in my head don't go to school." And try breathing exercises.
Sorry Mark. It must be the Christmas Silly Season coming on.
Bob, I do the same thing, but not really clicking my teeth, but moving them over each other eith my jaw. It's probably really bad for them, but I can't help it.
Boney M's "Mary's Boy Child" seems to be on everything in the shops at the moment, and I walk away whistling/humming AROUND it. AAAAAAAAArrrrggghhh.
Yes, I have tunes all the time - old trite pop, to ITM. Have a word-association mind, was always humming bits of "Guys and Dolls" when working with Nathan "Good old reliable Nathan, Nathan Nathan Detroit,with his longest established permanent floating craps game in New Yoik"., and similarly with any other stimulus. In my case it's the Tourettes Syndrome - what's your excuses ?
But it's all part of what makes one a musiciann
Further story about muzak - motorway service station where it's on a tape, which is running intermittently slow - only two people notice and go up to the counter and complain, one is a classical violinist, one is a folkie. Yah !
I'm pretty much like this - chordal harmony, often, too ( I hate muzac because it breaks the train of thought). Wonder if an enlightened zen masters quieting of the internal dialogue would include its cessation...
Just a thought..er...not a possibility. With me, anyway.
"I always have the sound of music in my head. God help me "
Hey incomunicado - are talking about the film "The Sound of Music"? And did your parent's take you to that movie too when you were wee? They did to me and my siblings - and I've been mentally scarred ever since. To add insult to injury, they bought my older sister, who is quite tone deaf, the LP of the soundtrack for Christmas. Problem was, she didn't realize she was tone deaf, and sang it around the house for the next ten years or so........
Bob, same here with the teeth, also right hand thumb and fingers. My wife finds the teeth very annoying when trying to go to sleep. I am not even aware that I am doing it until she asks me to stop..........
Will, same here with running. Who needs a walkman? Also same here with car radio. I almost never turn it on, coz I prefer the music in my head. I often wonder about people who are nearly permanently passively wired to audio / visual media - do they have original thoughts? I don't begrudge anyone, but I just can't fathom the reflex to always have the radio on in the car............maybe those who do so don't have an internal music generator? Do musicians listen to music less due to thinking and making music more? Yet, I think that when we (musicians) listen to music, we are listening more actively than non-musicians.. (is that a duh statement or what?)...........
There was a teenager who crashed his car while he had Wham! in the tape deck. George Michael's duo ffrom the 80s. When they finally got him out of the car he naturally said "I never want to hear Wham! again."
I read about an epileptic whose seizures would be induced by just one thing - Elton John. They parodied that on Seinfeld, Kramer discovered Mary Hart (Entertainment Tonight)'s voice would give him seizures.
Isin't the brain fun!
I can't get the music out of my head either - I'm not so sure about that "non-pathological" bit! Then again there are people who can't carry a tune in there at all and play music anyway...somehow...maybe they're like those CEOs who can't read.
I'm sold on MP3s and huge playlists and Shuffle Tracks. It's like a radio station that just plays what I like! Hard to enjoy those conventional radio stations after that. Oh yes, play Louie Louie again! Now play Stand by Me! There's a very good listener-supported station in Portland but even then you have shows that just aren't your cup of tea.
A pal of mine and his girlfriend (banjo and fiddle respectively) used to frequently ask one another "What tune are you on?" during odd moments, and then lilt a bit of it to each other.
Yes there's something there all the time. Sometimes its an entire song, sometimes its a tune , sometimes its just a phrase going over and over, sometimes its the bit I'm obsessivley learning, sometimes its something strange from long,long ago that I can't possibly remember and can't even think what it is.
The real problem is when it actually comes out . Humming at my desk or on the bus, singing in the corridors, jigging up and down to it at the bus stop. My daughter hates when I sing first thing in the morning.
So currently its a strange mixture of Can't stop lovin' dat man and other Gershwin ( starting to learn Jazz). I wonder what's keeping my true tonight ( Niahm Parson's version) and Forest Flowers ( Boys of Lough version). Now if I could get my mind back on what I'm suppost to be doing today.
After reading this discussion I thought the teeth clicking was very weird indeed but I gave it a try: I can see now how that could become a habit! (For that 'experiment' I had to use “Oh Mandy, you came….” - Thanks, Will! Mary had a little lamb does not help at all!)
Instead of gritting/clicking my teeth I normally move to the music without moving! I kind of imagine myself bobbing up and down….
I don’t remember when the music started but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t always there. It definitely wasn’t there when I started to learn how to play the piano as a child (or rather when I learned the movements) – it was much later that I learned how to listen! And since I learned how to learn by ear the music is there most of the time…. maybe different instruments or accompaniment will be added in a couple of years?….. Does anyone ever hear a wrong note or a chord that doesn’t fit?
Oh and I hate it when someone interrupts me in the middle of a particularly nice tune!
Normal for me is to always have tunes in my head. I enjoy that the repertoire is quite random, as described, from a tv ad to old R&B to ... Tuareg tribal songs... whatever. I love it.
It used to affect my emotions a lot, but with some age I can dissassociate from it. I -can- disconnect from environmental music, tho, and can ignore muzak pretty well, but in general I 'see' ambient music in great detail.
Good and engaging conversation can silence it, but only if I want. Mary Had A Little Lamb doesn't work for me.
Also perhaps a function of maturity, I can keep trad tunes going all day, or late '50's doo-wop songs. In short, I can, to some extent, direct the general repertoire.
I think that when I was about 11 or 12, I made a prayer that I'd never be without music...
"A pal of mine and his girlfriend (banjo and fiddle respectively) used to frequently ask one another "What tune are you on?" during odd moments, and then lilt a bit of it to each other. "
That might well be the most romantic thing I've ever heard.
Always, always have tune in my head.
If it's not my 'tune of the week' (do I need to explain that?' then it's either an irritating commercial jingle, or something associated with thought processes e.g. whenever I drive to Birmingham I pass a house called 'four winds' and find I'm humming 'Four String Winds' before I get much further.
Or worse than all that, a single line of a tune i like but don't know the rest of, so it keeps repeating..... aaarrrgghh!
VERY strange
VERY strange
Ok, so now I'm going to let you all know how very strange some people think I am. I happened to mention to some folks at work that I have music running through my mind ALL the time. As soon as I open my eyes I have a tune in my head.
Sometimes it's one I heard on TV in a commercial, my latest lesson tune or just a scale or arp I've been working on. It's not something distracting but always there, like when you hear a catchy jingle and can't get it out of your head.
Am I alone in this or do you have it too?
(Mad) Mary
# Posted on December 15th 2005 by Antikhntr
Re: VERY strange
I don't -- but I think it must be nice to have a soundtrack for your life.
# Posted on December 15th 2005 by Zina Lee
Re: VERY strange
Good way to put it Zina, I'm going to use that phrase the next time they get on my case about it.
Mary
# Posted on December 15th 2005 by Antikhntr
Re: VERY strange
I always thought this was normal, and now you're saying I'm strange? There's always some tune going through my head, though it's often hard to get rid of those annoying Christmas ones that infect you when you're going shopping.
# Posted on December 15th 2005 by JerryH
Re: VERY strange
yes. sometimes it can be quite distracting. Infact the only time i'm free of it is when I'm actually playing
# Posted on December 15th 2005 by llig leahcim
Re: VERY strange
I always thought this was normal too, the important thing is to carry an emergency back-up tune to counteract outside intruders, especially at Christmas; my current musical pepper-spray is The Cottage/College Groves - lethal.
# Posted on December 15th 2005 by hurleystick
Re: VERY strange
and the other problem is that whenever there is any musak about, you find it impossible not to listen to it, no matter how awful. I'm constantly getting a slap round the ears during romantic meals with the missis for ingnoring her.
# Posted on December 15th 2005 by llig leahcim
Re: VERY strange
I've felt that for a good portion of my life. Somehow it hindered the romantic moments. When asked, "What are you thinking?" and to respond, "Diddley diddley."
# Posted on December 15th 2005 by dwdeacon
Re: VERY strange
What about when you wake up at night and the godamn tune is still there! - and you realise you've been dreaming it and assimilating it into your greater knowledge of life. So you lie there for awhile trying not to let it grow otherwise you could be awake for some time. With luck you drift back - and then it returns .......
# Posted on December 15th 2005 by the wounded hussar
Re: VERY strange
"Oh Mandy, you came and you gave without taking..."
Without Irish trad music, I'd be in a straightjacket from all the crap music trapped in my head.
Even on long road trips, I rarely listen to the radio--it interferes with the tunes airing between my ears. I like my own soundtrack because I can play whatever tunes I want, put one on endless loop, change the tempo or key, even the instrumentation. Show me a radio station or ipod that can do all that....
# Posted on December 15th 2005 by Will CPT
Re: VERY strange
"Mary had a little lamb" is usually sufficient for me to get rid of a tune in my head.
# Posted on December 15th 2005 by Zina Lee
Re: VERY strange
Anyone seen "Touching the Void"?
Doco about a mountaineer given up for dead. He's dying but can't get Boney M's "Brown Girl in the Ring" out of his head. The thought of dying like that is one of the things that pushes him on.
Like Michael G said, I tune into whatever musak is playing, and strain to hear what it is. I hate soft "unobtrusive" music almost as much as I hate loud recorded music in bars and restaurants. Don't turn it down: turn it off.
# Posted on December 15th 2005 by Bren
Re: VERY strange
I almost always wake up or or find myself at work with a tune I want to learn in my head. Invariably it evaporates, or is replaced with a tune I already know, as soon as I sit down with my mandolin.
I agree Will, Irish music works well (well, most of the time) to keep the rest of the world at bay!
# Posted on December 15th 2005 by Keith Dubinsky
Re: VERY strange
Hey, no wonder 'Mad Mary' is 'very strange - have you seen where she lives?
http://www.madmarys.com/
# Posted on December 15th 2005 by Ptarmigan
Re: VERY strange
I was in a grocery store once years ago when the some technical glitch occurred at the muzak radio station -- I think the record -player needle got stuck (for you people too young to know what that means, um, ask an adult) and the same few notes of the muzak tune just kept on and on. People continued mindlessly shopping along, while I was rolling around on the floor clutching my head in both arms and screaming...
# Posted on December 15th 2005 by cuchulain54
Re: VERY strange
Typical scenario for me:
1. learn a tune
2. completely forget the tune by the time I walk out the door
3. wake up 4 days later with some tune stuck in my head
4. spend half the day going crazy trying to figure out what the tune is that's stuck in my head.
5. realize it is actually the tune that I learned, but couldn't remember
6. work on the tune for a bit to get it committed to memory
7. <see step 2>
As with Zina, Mary Had A Little Lamb is pretty good at knocking another tune out, as is Scotland The Brave, and a blues song called "My Birdie Done Left Me" that we made up in reference to a tee-shirt that Zina wears on occasion.
But I only consciously try to knock tunes out of my head when it's some pop music that got stuck somehow. When it's trad, I usually let it bounce around until it has run its course.
Pete
# Posted on December 15th 2005 by Reverend
Re: VERY strange
That happened to me once, cuchulain - I just kept putting the same item in and out of my cart for ten minutes until it stopped.....
(Sorry)
# Posted on December 15th 2005 by hurleystick
Re: VERY strange
hee-hee!
# Posted on December 15th 2005 by cuchulain54
We’re all mad!
If I don’t hear a tune in my head, I check my pulse to be sure I’m not dead.
In a past career, we had a secretary (remember those?) who didn’t believe that people could actually hear music in their heads. She insisted that I was just “thinking of the notes”, whatever that means. She also didn’t believe there could be thought without words. Must’ve been a very strange place inside her head.
When I really need to quieten the music and chatter in my head, like when I have to concentrate on writing some gnarly software, I put on the headphones and listen to the first “Chant” CD. I can’t explain it, but somehow it soothes in the right places and frees my mind to concentrate. And nothing else seems to work nearly as well, not even the later Chant CD’s. The more modern engineering of the later editions manages to ruin the subtle ambience of a bunch of monks singing in a chapel. There’s an interesting psychoacoustical tangent there, but for another day.
# Posted on December 15th 2005 by Bob himself
Re: VERY strange
Mary,
Yet another vote from me for the option: "This is not strange, this is the way my brain works, too."
# Posted on December 15th 2005 by AlBrown
Re: VERY strange
Oh I am so glad I'm not alone. Seriously, I always thought everyone heard music all the time. I was quite shocked to find that most folks don't.
Poor folks, don't know what their missing.
Hey Ptargiman, that's a pretty good likeness of me.
Mary
# Posted on December 15th 2005 by Antikhntr
Re: VERY strange
Ya know, Mary, I actually took it as a sign of healing from a bad breakup when I woke up with music in my head, and went to sleep with music in my head.
I'm with the others: "If there's NOT music running around through my grey matter, I better make sure that I've still got a pulse!"
-P
# Posted on December 15th 2005 by Philem
Re: VERY strange
Yes, I nearly always have music in my head, usually heard, imagined and even felt as if I were playing it on guitar.
Here's how it works for me: The music is always connected to both my heartbeat and my breathing. Sometimes it is way in the background, but surfaces almost immediately when my attention is not pre-occupied. I have at times noticed that late at night, thetune that was in my mind when I first awoke in the morning will return. Often, whatever is in my mind will be one of the last things that I played on the guitar.
Just a couple days ago I happened across an article about this phenomenom. The article gave a name to it, and considered it to be a non-pathological psychological condition. The name slips my mind right now.
# Posted on December 15th 2005 by ceciltguitar
Re: VERY strange
Reverend
That memory sequence with 7 steps sound familiar. My brain does a similar thing.
# Posted on December 15th 2005 by McMandolin
Re: VERY strange
Right now it's Cuil Aoidha jig in G, going into My Dungannon Sweetheart (Graham Townsend's). Yeah pretty well a lot of the time. Going running/jogging also jogs some old faves up to the surface. Must be the increased blood flow or something. BTW, Michael, I do think of other tunes while I'm playing one. Not that I'm particularly good at the point of changeover to the next tune but it probably helps. So I only fluff it 50% of the time!
# Posted on December 15th 2005 by Key Maniac Lad
Re: VERY strange
Yeah, running and tunes are inextricably linked for me too--something I haven't played in ages will burble up as soon as my feet establish a rhythm. The older i get, the more the tempo slows on the uphills though....
# Posted on December 15th 2005 by Will CPT
Re: VERY strange
I was imagining tunes in my head all the time at school.
# Posted on December 16th 2005 by Mark Harmer
Re: VERY strange
Cecilt, that’s very much what it’s like for me. I’m not aware of the music being connected to my heartbeat, but it’s often synched with my breathing – or vice versa, who knows? And I sometimes feel my fingers on the guitar strings and see them going to the notes. I’m getting some of that effect with the fiddle, now that I’m playing more.
I can’t say I’ve noticed an early morning tune returning at bedtime, but the opposite has happened several times, especially with annoying tunes. I’ll go to sleep trying to forget the silly tune and then it’s the first thing in my consciousness next morning. I’ve never had any recollection of dreaming about it in between, so I don’t know where it hides.
I probably shouldn’t admit this, but I often play the rhythm of the hallucinatory tune with my teeth by gently clicking them together, complete with ornaments. Don’t look at me like that. Like you don’t do it…
# Posted on December 16th 2005 by Bob himself
Re: VERY strange
Right. OK, Mark. I've called an ambulance. They said 15 minutes. Just don't play with any kitchen utensils. You'll be fine, believe me.
Just try and repeat to yourself, "the tunes in my head don't go to school, the tunes in my head don't go to school." And try breathing exercises.
Sorry Mark. It must be the Christmas Silly Season coming on.
# Posted on December 16th 2005 by Key Maniac Lad
Re: VERY strange
Bob, I do the same thing, but not really clicking my teeth, but moving them over each other eith my jaw. It's probably really bad for them, but I can't help it.
Now that's weird.
# Posted on December 16th 2005 by kjay_bc_box
Re: VERY strange
Yeah, that's how I do it. Maybe we could take this act on the road.
# Posted on December 16th 2005 by Bob himself
Re: VERY strange
Boney M's "Mary's Boy Child" seems to be on everything in the shops at the moment, and I walk away whistling/humming AROUND it. AAAAAAAAArrrrggghhh.
Yes, I have tunes all the time - old trite pop, to ITM. Have a word-association mind, was always humming bits of "Guys and Dolls" when working with Nathan "Good old reliable Nathan, Nathan Nathan Detroit,with his longest established permanent floating craps game in New Yoik"., and similarly with any other stimulus. In my case it's the Tourettes Syndrome - what's your excuses ?
But it's all part of what makes one a musiciann
Further story about muzak - motorway service station where it's on a tape, which is running intermittently slow - only two people notice and go up to the counter and complain, one is a classical violinist, one is a folkie. Yah !
# Posted on December 16th 2005 by Guernsey Pete
Re: VERY strange
I always have the sound of music in my head. God help me
# Posted on December 16th 2005 by lazyhound
Re: VERY strange
I'm pretty much like this - chordal harmony, often, too ( I hate muzac because it breaks the train of thought). Wonder if an enlightened zen masters quieting of the internal dialogue would include its cessation...
Just a thought..er...not a possibility. With me, anyway.
Nial
# Posted on December 16th 2005 by Ff1d1l
Never without it
Music in my head all the time, as long as I can remember... it's a refreshing change from the "voices"... and... I don't need to wear the tinfoil hat.
# Posted on December 16th 2005 by drone
Re: VERY strange
"I always have the sound of music in my head. God help me
"
Hey incomunicado - are talking about the film "The Sound of Music"? And did your parent's take you to that movie too when you were wee? They did to me and my siblings - and I've been mentally scarred ever since. To add insult to injury, they bought my older sister, who is quite tone deaf, the LP of the soundtrack for Christmas. Problem was, she didn't realize she was tone deaf, and sang it around the house for the next ten years or so........
# Posted on December 16th 2005 by Ron P
Re: VERY strange
Yep!
# Posted on December 16th 2005 by lazyhound
Re: VERY strange
Bob, same here with the teeth, also right hand thumb and fingers. My wife finds the teeth very annoying when trying to go to sleep. I am not even aware that I am doing it until she asks me to stop..........
Will, same here with running. Who needs a walkman? Also same here with car radio. I almost never turn it on, coz I prefer the music in my head. I often wonder about people who are nearly permanently passively wired to audio / visual media - do they have original thoughts? I don't begrudge anyone, but I just can't fathom the reflex to always have the radio on in the car............maybe those who do so don't have an internal music generator? Do musicians listen to music less due to thinking and making music more? Yet, I think that when we (musicians) listen to music, we are listening more actively than non-musicians.. (is that a duh statement or what?)...........
# Posted on December 16th 2005 by ceciltguitar
Re: VERY strange
There was a teenager who crashed his car while he had Wham! in the tape deck. George Michael's duo ffrom the 80s. When they finally got him out of the car he naturally said "I never want to hear Wham! again."
I read about an epileptic whose seizures would be induced by just one thing - Elton John. They parodied that on Seinfeld, Kramer discovered Mary Hart (Entertainment Tonight)'s voice would give him seizures.
Isin't the brain fun!
I can't get the music out of my head either - I'm not so sure about that "non-pathological" bit! Then again there are people who can't carry a tune in there at all and play music anyway...somehow...maybe they're like those CEOs who can't read.
I'm sold on MP3s and huge playlists and Shuffle Tracks. It's like a radio station that just plays what I like! Hard to enjoy those conventional radio stations after that. Oh yes, play Louie Louie again! Now play Stand by Me! There's a very good listener-supported station in Portland but even then you have shows that just aren't your cup of tea.
# Posted on December 16th 2005 by Kevin Rietmann
Re: VERY strange
A pal of mine and his girlfriend (banjo and fiddle respectively) used to frequently ask one another "What tune are you on?" during odd moments, and then lilt a bit of it to each other.
# Posted on December 16th 2005 by kris
Re: VERY strange
Yes there's something there all the time. Sometimes its an entire song, sometimes its a tune , sometimes its just a phrase going over and over, sometimes its the bit I'm obsessivley learning, sometimes its something strange from long,long ago that I can't possibly remember and can't even think what it is.
The real problem is when it actually comes out . Humming at my desk or on the bus, singing in the corridors, jigging up and down to it at the bus stop. My daughter hates when I sing first thing in the morning.
So currently its a strange mixture of Can't stop lovin' dat man and other Gershwin ( starting to learn Jazz). I wonder what's keeping my true tonight ( Niahm Parson's version) and Forest Flowers ( Boys of Lough version). Now if I could get my mind back on what I'm suppost to be doing today.
J
# Posted on December 16th 2005 by jfother
Re: VERY strange
After reading this discussion I thought the teeth clicking was very weird indeed but I gave it a try: I can see now how that could become a habit! (For that 'experiment' I had to use “Oh Mandy, you came….” - Thanks, Will! Mary had a little lamb does not help at all!)
Instead of gritting/clicking my teeth I normally move to the music without moving! I kind of imagine myself bobbing up and down….
I don’t remember when the music started but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t always there. It definitely wasn’t there when I started to learn how to play the piano as a child (or rather when I learned the movements) – it was much later that I learned how to listen! And since I learned how to learn by ear the music is there most of the time…. maybe different instruments or accompaniment will be added in a couple of years?….. Does anyone ever hear a wrong note or a chord that doesn’t fit?
Oh and I hate it when someone interrupts me in the middle of a particularly nice tune!
# Posted on December 16th 2005 by Irina
Re: VERY strange
<i> I thought the teeth clicking was very weird indeed . . .</i>
So did I, so there's at least some gratification in learning that I'm not weird all by myself.
Truely it seems we are all unique individuals the same.
KFG
# Posted on December 16th 2005 by KFG
P.S.
Obviously I've recently been to a forum that supports HTML. . .
And I wonder if you could adapt a shakey egg pickup to teeth.
KFG
# Posted on December 16th 2005 by KFG
Re: VERY strange
Normal for me is to always have tunes in my head. I enjoy that the repertoire is quite random, as described, from a tv ad to old R&B to ... Tuareg tribal songs... whatever. I love it.
It used to affect my emotions a lot, but with some age I can dissassociate from it. I -can- disconnect from environmental music, tho, and can ignore muzak pretty well, but in general I 'see' ambient music in great detail.
Good and engaging conversation can silence it, but only if I want. Mary Had A Little Lamb doesn't work for me.
Also perhaps a function of maturity, I can keep trad tunes going all day, or late '50's doo-wop songs. In short, I can, to some extent, direct the general repertoire.
I think that when I was about 11 or 12, I made a prayer that I'd never be without music...
stv
http://cdbaby.com/Culchies
# Posted on December 16th 2005 by stv culchie
Re: VERY strange
"A pal of mine and his girlfriend (banjo and fiddle respectively) used to frequently ask one another "What tune are you on?" during odd moments, and then lilt a bit of it to each other. "
That might well be the most romantic thing I've ever heard.
# Posted on December 17th 2005 by hurleystick
Re: VERY strange
Always, always have tune in my head.
If it's not my 'tune of the week' (do I need to explain that?' then it's either an irritating commercial jingle, or something associated with thought processes e.g. whenever I drive to Birmingham I pass a house called 'four winds' and find I'm humming 'Four String Winds' before I get much further.
Or worse than all that, a single line of a tune i like but don't know the rest of, so it keeps repeating..... aaarrrgghh!
# Posted on December 19th 2005 by flying tigerpig