For as long as I can remember, whenever there is a fan on, or something softly oscillating in the air, I hear music. I’ve never spoken to anyone else who has this experience.
What’s both odd and fascinating to me is that the “music” is never the same, even with all the same conditions. Tonight it was a torch singer. Two nights ago it was an orchestra. I imagine my brain is pulling a memory of something I’ve heard (rather than composing something new). Sometimes it is so beautiful that I’d love to write it down, but I’m sadly not very musical.
It’s quite common - here’s a recent thread on it. I get it a lot myself. For example, when having a bath where I live I often hear what sounds like up-tempo 1970s rock with a heavy bass. If I turn the fan off it stops.
I’m fairly musical and, although I feel as though I can make out the musical key (pitch), tempo, some rhythmic information and sometimes the style of music, it never feels loud enough that I could define a melody out of it.
As noted in the other thread, it’s probably an example of Pareidolia - “a psychological phenomenon involving a stimulus (an image or a sound) wherein the mind perceives a familiar pattern where none actually exists” - and Apophenia - “the human tendency to perceive meaningful patterns within random data”.
Interesting thought. Last few nights we have slept with the fans on high and I have been having dreams of writing songs. Something I don’t think I have ever dreamed about before. I don’t give music much thought as a rule.
I work with several high volume printers and indeed, the very repetitive sounds they make cause me to hear not only music but also phrases. I’m pretty sure the biggest one says: “It’s a matter of choice” over and over.
I sleep with a fan on to drown out other noises. This doesn’t always work because sometimes the fan sounds like it’s picking up a faint radio broadcast.
This doesn’t happen with the box fan I sleep with on now, but it has occurred in the past. It’s not quite the same thing, but just incidentally, my washing machine says, “Can I go?” over and over.
I have heard music when I turn on my fan at night in my bedroom for years. I have even been able to make out the song that’s playing. I have been able to find the song on the radio that I have heard playing with the fan on. Even though the radio is off and in the other room. I had only ever heard it in my bedroom until a couple of years ago. I took a trip to Ohio and I am from Oklahoma. I was staying at some friends house and I turned on the fan and I heard music there. I was able to make out the radio station called The River. When I asked my friends if they had a radio station called that they verified it was just down the street. Everything I have read and what I know to be true is the fan acts like an amplifier.
When I was a child, up to about ten, I heard music and voices in the drone of my dad’s car. It went away, but came back about five years ago, at age 75, but it has diminished somewhat.
