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Do you hear it too?

No... I'm usually waiting patiently for the well intentioned and naive statement to be made public, where I can promptly turn it around, bend and mold it to my liking, creating sarcastic and cynical genius, the like Hawkeye Pierce has never seen.
 
Thanks for all the replies. I'm so glad to know that others hear the music of the mind.

Now I wonder what non musical instrument players hear in their heads. Old math lectures? How I met your mother reruns? White noise?
 
Do you all hear the music too?

Sure. That's how I became a composer half a century ago: I eventually realized that some of the music I was hearing in my head wasn't a replay of music I'd heard on the radio, and decided to codify it so other people could hear it too.

My wife doesn't understand how I can be so content "doing nothing" for long periods of time...hey, I've got the Infinite Playlist going 24/7, I'm not "doing nothing" I'm listening intently (and hopefully transcribing).
 
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Lots of examples of it in this book. I was hoping the book would explain more about why but it seems more about describing the varieties of experiences people have than explaining the root causes. I'm only about half way into it, so maybe it gets different later. It hasn't been my favorite read, but it isn't bad. I've mostly been disappointed that it feels more anecdotal than explanatory.
Musicophilia - Wikipedia
Musicophilia_front_cover.jpg
 
I hear music in my head all the time. Not like a crazy sort of thing. As far as I'm concerned it's a good thing. If I'm playing my bass, the music coming from my amp are my thoughts translated through my hands. If I'm not playing, music is happening in my thoughts although my hands might be doing something else. A lot of musical inspiration comes from the musical thoughts when not playing. Do you all hear the music too?

not only is there typically something going on in my head, it's stronger if I'm in bed or stoned, and way worse if I'm both lol.

but maybe the weirder, more interesting one: we used a lot of white noise with both of our kids, and with "actual" white noise made up of a wide and dense combination of frequencies, my brain makes 'sense' of it, and makes a loop of these little amelodic snippets..

it's not just my imagination, and that I'm actually latching to the white noise, because it only happens with certain white noise machines that are a looped recording. You can't hear the loop start over or anything, but the snippets reliably repeat. Through a lot of experimenting and observation, I have found a few interesting supporting facts.
-if I leave the room and come back, it will pick up in the middle of the loop. Unlike other situations of musical imagination, I cannot "force it" to change, nor to start at a different time. I am entirely at the behest of the generator and my subconscious
-I started voice recording the snippets (approximated with my voice), and different white noise machines consistently come in with the same timing /length loop -The actual "musical content" is different from day to day, But within a short time span, it will absolutely be one distinct loop that picks up if I come back into the room etc.
-I do not get the same loop phenomenon with a fan, or certain white noise videos that are either generative or perhaps a very long loop.

so it's not just that I am imagining "music," stopped by the white noise back drop, and it's not just that tone-rich white noise stimulates my mind, but rather than my mind attempts to make some sense and patterns out of the white noise, and latches on to a hallucinated excerpt from the white noise, and having latched on, repeats the hallucinated "music" with a stop and start to the loop, attached to the loop timing of the white noise, which I cannot consciously detect. The hallucinated music snippet informs me of the length of the white noise loop, which I otherwise would not be able to detect

So I don't know, it's an interesting phenomenon
 
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The music in my mind seems never ending. Sometimes I wake up hearing music that I've never heard before.

When I was late teens the Pink Floyd record Animals played in my head for 2 days, couldn't make it stop, drove crazy! (I'm not really a Pink Floyd fan)

Once while waiting in the emergency room, very stressed, my wife asked if I wanted to watch tv. My response was no, I'll just listen to what's in my head right now.
 
I hear music in my head all the time. Not like a crazy sort of thing. As far as I'm concerned it's a good thing. If I'm playing my bass, the music coming from my amp are my thoughts translated through my hands. If I'm not playing, music is happening in my thoughts although my hands might be doing something else. A lot of musical inspiration comes from the musical thoughts when not playing. Do you all hear the music too?

From a very early age. My parents and 3 older siblings said I was singing simple melodies pretty well, identifying song preferences that came radio by age 2. My mother said I'd just sit listening and if something I liked came on I'd get excited. After I heard a song a couple of times, she'd hear me singing identifiable parts of the song that were not the melody. Of course I don't remember any of that. From my recollection, that sort of thing just was always there.

By the time I got to music theory class, the first 2 years of class work, for the most part I just learned the names of things I already knew, "Oh, so that's what that is called" moments.

Fast forward to 2002, before I bought a digital recorder, I was the praise and worship leader at a good sized church that drew about 1,500 a week. The band had as many as 10 participants, not to mention singers. A lot of Sunday afternoons were spent lying on the sofa replaying the services in my head for "quality control" purposes.

You have a gift. Musical recall. Very few have it. To make good use of it, if you haven't don't this yet, I strongly suggest taking some music theory courses learning nomenclature so your can effectively communicate with other musicians. Learning keyboard skills is also a huge plus.
 
I'd say I have music playing in my mind about 75% of the time. It takes many forms. Sometimes I'll be working on a riff or a phrase, playing it in my head over and over, differently each time. Sometimes I play a tune in my head such as Ghost Riders in the Sky, and make up my own lyrics, usually obscene. Once or twice I've written a tune after dreaming about it.

The other 25% of my mind is devoted to world conquest.

Tom
 
not only is there typically something going on in my head, it's stronger if I'm in bed or stoned, and way worse if I'm both lol.

but maybe the weirder, more interesting one: we used a lot of white noise with both of our kids, and with "actual" white noise made up of a wide and dense combination of frequencies, my brain makes 'sense' of it, and makes a loop of these little amelodic snippets..

it's not just my imagination, and that I'm actually latching to the white noise, because it only happens with certain white noise machines that are a looped recording. You can't hear the loop start over or anything, but the snippets reliably repeat. Through a lot of experimenting and observation, I have found a few interesting supporting facts.
-if I leave the room and come back, it will pick up in the middle of the loop. Unlike other situations of musical imagination, I cannot "force it" to change, nor to start at a different time. I am entirely at the behest of the generator and my subconscious
-I started voice recording the snippets (approximated with my voice), and different white noise machines consistently come in with the same timing /length loop -The actual "musical content" is different from day to day, But within a short time span, it will absolutely be one distinct loop that picks up if I come back into the room etc.
-I do not get the same loop phenomenon with a fan, or certain white noise videos that are either generative or perhaps a very long loop.

so it's not just that I am imagining "music," stopped by the white noise back drop, and it's not just that tone-rich white noise stimulates my mind, but rather than my mind attempts to make some sense and patterns out of the white noise, and latches on to a hallucinated excerpt from the white noise, and having latched on, repeats the hallucinated "music" with a stop and start to the loop, attached to the loop timing of the white noise, which I cannot consciously detect. The hallucinated music snippet informs me of the length of the white noise loop, which I otherwise would not be able to detect

So I don't know, it's an interesting phenomenon
Pot is eye/ear opening.

Aphantasia - Wikipedia
for visual imagination, this exists. I'm probably a 4 or 5 for visual and musical.
2880px-Aphantasia_apple_test.png
Followed the links. Enlightening. Thanks.
 
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We had a soundman very briefly on the road who thought it was funny to sing songs during setup or tear down that he knew everyone would hate. That may have been where I developed the habit to replace any horrible song that had become stuck in my head with "My Woman from Tokyo" by Deep Purple.
 
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I hear music in my head all the time. Not like a crazy sort of thing. As far as I'm concerned it's a good thing. If I'm playing my bass, the music coming from my amp are my thoughts translated through my hands. If I'm not playing, music is happening in my thoughts although my hands might be doing something else. A lot of musical inspiration comes from the musical thoughts when not playing. Do you all hear the music too?
I go through whole albums in my head. Yes, Bowie, Neil Young, the Beatles, Wilco, Silversun Pickups, The New Pornographers, The Clash, and on and on. I fall asleep listening to music so there is a lot of stuff in my subconscious.
 
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