Some hear voices; I hear music

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And the next post was by Pensieve... how amusing is that?

constant constant constant.....

I'm like you in that playing music in headphones while I'm working, makes it easier for me to focus on what I am trying accomplish, or at least on most tasks. However, music playing in my head doesn't stress me out. It's like it happens in a separate process, and I can enjoy it, or I can ignore it. If I don't like, or am tired of the umpteenth repetition of something, I will intentionally play other music on top of what is stuck until the stuck song stops repeating. It works for me anyway. The CD player in my head will play on it's own when I'm not using it, if I let it, but I can take control of it. I use it to think individual lines of a choral number separately at the same time for instance, or once when a friend told me she sang a solo that was "His Eye is On the Sparrow" sung with, I forget now, some Bach invention or something, and when she said that, I played both in my head at the same time, and heard that they both have the same harmonic structure and rhythm.

There is ALWAYS music playing in my head. It never ends. Usually it's some fiddle tune I've played or picked up from somewhere. Other times it's a full-length song or a section of a song over and over. Just the other night I had the song "I Am Weary" playing in my head until 2 AM. Not good, when you have a test at 8 AM the next morning!

But overall, I don't mind having the music in my head. It's always music I love, so it can be relaxing and reassuring.

Do you ever wake up in the morning, and realize the same music is still playing that was going when you went to sleep the night before?

Yeah, and I'm pretty sure it played straight through the night as I was sleeping!

Once my trainer at the gym was talking about how she couldn't get a song out of her head, and in response I asked her what instrument she played and in surprise she said, "When I entered college, I almost decided to try to be concert pianist. How did you know I was a musician?" I told her it was because she was complaining about a song being stuck in her head.

Once at our local grocery store, as I was walking past the check out, the check out clerk standing there was complaining that she had been working there so long that she was recognizing the music on the PA system, and in response I asked her what instruments she played. She gave me a surprised look and said, "Ummm, violin and cello".

Actually, as often as I can, I like to hear "real" music. I surround myself with music as much as possible. When I´m not listening to something at that moment, usually some song I´ve heard recently is playing in my head. If I know a song well, I can duplicate it in my mind, in all it´s entirety and detail, as if it were really playing.

But if there´s no music playing in my head, I always, always, always, have a rhythm going in my mind! Does anyone else have this? It´s like, a CONSTANT rhythm. I was wondering if this was an "autistic" thing, but the AS people I met in Avignon recently don´t really have that...(one said he has that only sometimes). And some of them were even musicians...

It´s a constant rhythm, which I very often stim to, actually....

Anyone else have this???

Of course... we all know that it's the NSA that does most of the spying inside the country.

(not to totally change the topic, but I wonder if believing you're being spied on still counts as paranoia, given that the laws have changed so that warrants are no longer needed for wire taps, so we all kinda do live with that possibility now.)

Today, I heard Bach's "Jesus, Joy of Man's Desire" on a piano, instead of an organ. It came from nowhere, but that's a common experience for me. Now, I'm hearing a Borodin and Rachmaninoff medley. That last one is odd for me - it started out as Borodin's 2nd Symphony and switched to Rachmaninoff's 3rd Piano Concerto.

You reminded me of something. Sometimes when I have nothing better to do, I will entertain myself by wildly reorchestrating things like for instance imagining what "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desire" would sound like hummed by a children's chorus on gazoos, or Debussi's La Mer performed by the Norman Tabernacle Choir. My imagination will create the sound, image and/or feel of almost anything I ask of it.

I tend to get music stuck in my head all the time- I'm even humming a tune in my head right now! That happens reguarly, and when the tune is constantly playing, I'll randomly sing it underneath my breath. As for images in my head with the tunes...not so much.

If you are interested in music and the brain read Musicophilia by the neurologist Oliver Sachs. There are some amazing stories in it.
I love the fact that I can conjure up my favourite music in my head. There are also some musical stories in The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat


Hi Musicos

My partner asked me once why, although I am musical, don't I listen to music much? Since he pointed that out I have started to listen to more. But to be honest there is enough music in my head to keep me going, I don't have to actually
listen to it, but I really should so that I can add to my mental jukebox (yes it is quite mental).

Like Toucan said, I think the problem is that if I listen to something, even just once, I cannot get it out of my head. If I listen several times especially with headphones, the whole thing replays even more authentically.
At the moment, it's Oscar Peterson's stunning version of I Love Paris (Cole Porter) and also the sweeping but funky Jazz -Rock Horror theme tune from Dracula 1972 AD, with full brass section to lend a note of doom...

I occasionally think up tunes in my head, but then they disappear. Must have a go at writing it down one of these days.

The parent whose son is thinking up new tunes, that's amazing, does he know musical notation to write it down ? In the Sachs book it tells about Bizet who wrote a whole new symphony or something in his head one morning when lying in bed, but fell back to sleep and couldn't remember a single note when he woke up. Oops.


Neil

[quote]Like Toucan said, I think the problem is that if I listen to something, even just once, I cannot get it out of my head. If I listen several times especially with headphones, the whole thing replays even more authentically.[quote]

hi neil, I'm like this (constant mental juke box, head full of tunes) I presumed everyone is like this, is this not the case? Is this an AS thing?

Interesting.

I do this and it goes from one to another that may be similar. Sometimes I have to actively seek out songs to replace them when the current song sucks. I try to get music in other languages because then at least it's only sounds and not associated with images (if I haven't got it translated). I hear music in my sleep all the time too and when i am asleep I can sing along with all the songs perfectly, no matter if they are in Russian or Portuguese or French or whatever, I am singing along in a perfect accent at the top of my lungs. When I wake up and realize it I try to keep doing it but the ability just drifts away like a light dimming before it turns off, and I get really disappointed.

I read like the first 50 or so pages of that book in the library the other day, and I can't wait to go back and finish it xD (don't ask why I didn't just check it out). Great book, fascinating stuff, I enjoy his stories.



This is exactly why I almost never actually have music playing, and Its funny, because its never actually dawned on me that this is the reason