Inspired by the talking out loud thread, I was wondering if anyone else can “hear” entire songs in your head without actually listening to music?
For example, I could run through maybe hundreds of songs – from start to finish – in perfect clarity. They kind of run in the background without me thinking about it.
Anyone???
Me, too, but I have to concentrate or I’ll end up looping part of the song over and over again. And then it’ll be stuck in my head for the rest of the day…
There are more than several actual songs I can perform in entirety in my own head, and occasionally I can improv in new guitar solos too.
There is also a constant running of some tune in my head, usually something that sucks. Right now, for example, it’s Centerfield by John Fogarty. I hate that song.
This is a very good question with some good responses. Unless a tune (and I’m going with the part of a song that you can hum or whistle) has some very odd intervals I can usually reproduce it within a few missed notes on a piano or a guitar. More often I can hum or whistle or “doot doot doot” it without many errors. But there are some tunes whose accidentals and intervals are so peculiar that I’ll miss badly for several tries and may still not be sure of after I feel I have “got it” close enough.
Just recently I was trying to reproduce a little melody from the days of my Commodore 64 MusiCalc program that was a neat little Latin-flavored ditty that made for a perfect “loop back” (the ending led right back into the opening so that it makes an almost perfect loop type thing). I did pretty well until the actual ending part and I’m still not sure I have it right when I attempt to play it and even when I try to vocalize it.
But I can hear it in my head perfectly!
That thing about getting caught up in a loop of a part of a song really struck a nerve with me. I was surprised aomebody else said that, because I didn’t suspect it would be all that common a thing.
Another aspect of this idea is being able to hum the beginning of the next track on a CD or tape (or even a vinyl record) while it’s playing the gap/silence between tunes. I can’t do it on every record I own, but I can on the ones I play most often.
Phht! Amateurs!
I can pick up an orchestral score for something I’ve never heard before and hear it just by reading it.
Sometimes. 
I think it’s common if you play an instrument to get a loop of a riff or rhythm stuck on repeat in your head.
While I can’t do as tdn boasts, I do walk around with a constant soundtrack in my head. (You know, like family guy) The whole song plays, rarely just a loop.
You’re probably right. What’s the name of that feature of much Latin music where the accompaniment (often on piano) goes into a tight bar or two-bar repeating pattern? I’ve heard montuno or son for it, but have never been sure if either is the correct term. It’s a lot like a vamp.
I was about to barge in with a Hell yeah! but it looks like it’s not a rare ability/affliction, oh well. I hear the whole arrangement and as well as the looping thing, sometimes it skips from one tune to another when there’s a section where the timbre matches exactly (in my head at least) as if the internal player has lost track.
Mostly I don’t get to choose the song, recently it’s often been September Gurls which is a great song but I don’t want it in my head all the time.
For some reason the one that that starts up when I’m out running is Who do you think you are kidding Mr Hitler (the theme from Dad’s Army). This is very odd since I haven’t actually heard the song for well over ten years.
I remember one time I had a way-more-aggressive-than-normal earworm. It was right after my high school valedictory ceremony (AKA the last time I’d see most of my classmates again, ever) and I had one of the later movements from Winter from the Four Seasons stuck in my head - I don’t know the number but it’s the one that makes me think of melting icicles. And it WOULD NOT. GO. AWAY. No matter what I was doing, it would be happily blaring away in the back of my head. I swear, I could practically hear it. Even when I tried thinking of MMMBop instead it just sort of played over it and eventually I gave up. Now my memories of that night are permanently wired to that movement, and every time I hear it I get kind of sad. Anyone else have this?
Same here. Well, I definitely can’t do what tdn does, as I can’t read music. But I always, *always * have music in my head. I can hear every note by every instrument, with the vocals, and oddly, a lot of the time, an entire cd will play in my mind.
I also tend to unconciously (albeit very quietly) sing, which can be pretty hilarious when I’m at work and my boss lets me know that he’s just been treated to Dookie in it’s entirety.
Dookie?
MMMBop?
Winter from the Four Seasons?
Who do you think you are kidding Mr Hitler?
Geesh. Makes me suddenly glad I have “Smoke On The Water” playing in my brain at the moment.
I can hear an entire song in my head without too much trouble if I really want to, but more often I get into a loop. I hear (I think) everything that’s going on on the actual recording.
However, when I try to play it, unlike Zeldar, I get lost pretty easily and then I can’t seem to get the replay mechanism working right again.
This happens to me all day, every day and has for as long as I can remember. I can hear every detail of any song I know, in the right key and tempo and everything. Often, unfortunately, they get stuck on loop. Right now it’s “The Girl From Ipanema” - in which case I don’t really mind. I can learn to play a song on guitar or piano even if I’ve never played it before, just by going over it in my head. I did this recently with “Oh What A Night (December 1963)” and “Lonely Boy.” I can come up with a better arrangement of a song I’ve written the same way, just going over it endlessly. I can’t read music to save my life, though.
One of the greatest “skills” I have ever read about was possessed by Neville Cardus, the first great writer about the sport of cricket. He was also the music critic for the Manchester Guardian. This was early in the 20th century when recordings were few and far between. Cardus could listen to a performance and then compare it, at will, to any other performance he had ever heard. He could sit down, close his eyes and experience again any piece of music he had ever heard just as though it was being played.
Lucky guy.
Yeah, I can hear a song of even a voice of a character in perfect clarity even though there’s no way it can make the translation from my brain to my mouth. Something in the song/voice gets jumbled, but It’s in there, dammit.
Right now, bouncing around inside my melon, is the “Ding Dong Song” by Gunther and the Sunshine Girls. Damned youtube.com and your videos. It also doesn’t help that I’ve been actively trying to get it stuck in the head of every person I’ve come across.
I must not be very popular these days…lol
Yeah, pretty much the same here. In fact, it’s unusual for me to not have a song stuck in my head, and I’ve on occasion managed to get more than one stuck at once (I once treated myself to an interesting rendition of When the Saints Go Marching IN intermingled with Cell Block Tango. It worked pretty well.)
I can hear music pretty clearly in my mind, but there’s still nothing like hearing it through a good pair of speakers–I can notice elements to the music that are subdued and difficult to hear, and which are rarely included in my mental audio files.
Heh. When I’m walking and am in a hurry, the song that comes into my head is Santa Claus is Coming to Town.
You have no idea how much I hate that.
I don’t know the term you’re searching for, but I think musicians break songs they’ve heard down into parts that non musicians might not.
This is true. I can isolate the bass or drums or rhythm guitar in the left channel or the backup vocals, you name it.
That’s the difference between me and my wife, the piano teacher. She tries to play the melody and the accompaniment at the same time, where I play the individual parts that complement the others in a song.