Larches

It seems a common thing to get a song 'stuck in your head' (earworms etc). I have at least one just about all the time, and just occasionally I realise a moment where I haven't got one and it seems quite strange. But it's never long before the next one comes along, and sometimes I feel like I have them all through the night too, or I'll wake up with a song going round prominently in my head.

I get easily 'triggered' by just a few notes and then end up humming or whistling whichever tune was evoked. When I worked in an office, my colleagues used to have great fun seeing if they could set me off. My mind also seems to play association games where it matches up a bar or so of one song with a similar passage in another song, and then mixes them DJ-style in my head, sometimes resulting in an incessant loop of the two songs.

I have idly wondered in the past how common this is, but the thing that really made me curious more recently is how I can't help tuning into random notes I hear from the world around me, not just when someone makes a ch-nking sound with a glass but even in a certain supermarket I go to, where the refrigeration units have a distinctive hum that I feel a compulsion to emulate (just quietly enough that I blend in and don't scare off other shoppers ). It's the same with rhythms sometimes. Who out there can relate to this (guessing not everyone!), and what it is about our brains that causes this?

Most of the time I don't mind or even enjoy it, but there are of course times when I have to ban certain songs from being played in the house because I find them so incredibly brain itchy (quite often whether I like them or not) that they're still driving me crazy several days afterwards. Oh, and if I go for a walk, I don't need to listen to MP3s because I've usually got an internal soundtrack, which ends up synchronising with my walking pace. I also noticed that if I get very tired, I mean really exhausted, or very often when I get ill, the 'volume' and persistence (intrusiveness) of the music increases and I've had fevers where I end up singing just a snippet of whatever the song is because it's so prominent (seems kind of like a delirium!). Oh, and I really do wince if I hear an off-note or an out-of-tune piano.

Maybe this is one for a psychology forum rather than a music one, but anyway, interested to hear your thoughts (as it were)!

(NB: otherwise I think I'm fairly neurotypical, and I'm no musical genius - I can't always recognise a note and I haven't played music since I learnt piano as a kid; I do get immense pleasure from music and I do like singing, but usually only to myself, not always that well, although I can usually recognise when I'm a bit off. )

Norg

can someone sum this up for Norg Plz

Shen_Lo

I'm just recently REALLY studyin music theory (as opposed to just skimmin over some articles and youtube videos related to music theory and thinkin I'm actually learnin somethin.) I wanted to study theory because of somethin a family member mentioned to me before about how certain frequencies can have a major effect on the human psychology. Certain sounds will "trigger" you to act or think in a certain way.
He said that there are those in the music industry who study this wit the sole intention of knowin how to manipulate how the listener feels and moves and thinks. For example, songs played at a certain tempo will make you dance differently. Songs within certain frequency ranges make you feel some kinda way (Happy, sad, nostalgic, etc.) A certain sequence of words will make you think a certain way. This, of course, has positive and negative implications but that's a totally different subject.
Anyway, the way he described this in our conversation made me wonder how much I had been influenced by the music I listen to. Just recently (maybe a few months ago or so) I realized that I had been living by the words in the songs I used to listen to. You know how some people say, "that song just speaks to me?" I felt so in tune wit these songs, wit their frequencies and words that I subconsciously agreed that this is what life is about. This is how I want to portray myself (I hope I'm still makin sense so far.) It's a mysterious thing to realize for me.
From what I understand, the world we inhabit is a living organism that vibrates at a specific frequency (7.83Hz) and humans are beings of frequency and resonance (our hearts beat out a cadence, sending blood to the brain which then responds by sending an electric current throughout the body enabling us to act/react.)
Throughout my day I have music in my head and nine times outta ten the song that's playing will describe whatever I'm thinkin or will be a reply to an internal question or reminder of somethin I need to do.
I hope this answers your question somewhat?

Neapolitan

I gotz my music on my mind, and my mind on my music.

__________________

SGR