A few years ago, I developed the ability to hear music that wasn’t being played.
After 10 years of constant tinnitus, it is something interesting. It is almost always top 40 crap from 1965 - 1975. Currentlu, Suite: Judy Blue Eyes.
This is NOT a song going through my mind - it is exactly as if there was a cheap record player in the far distance.
I do wish I had not had a liking of really bad music from that era - I cannot turn the damn stuff off, and can only rarely “program” the playlist. And no, it will not fill in the lyrics in places where my concious mind does not know them.
Is there a name for this? Is it a symptom of something?
It’s been a few months, but try reading Musicophilia
It’s a fairly interesting book. Each chapter is a “case study” of a person with a particular interesting music/brain situation.
I think I remember a case study like you describe - where the person could always hear music (really hear, not just play in their head). I don’t recall much beyond that. It was a decently enjoyable read, though.
Something related to synesthesia, perhaps?
I had a similar (but clearly not identical) issue that lasted for years. When I could stand it no more and went to an aural surgeon, it turned out that a muscle or tendon in one ear was damaged and was somehow stimulating the aural nerves. Only when I heard music – never any other kind of sound – did the symptoms appear clearly and overtly. This was a very low frequency rumble that started whenever the music started and ended whenever the music did. No other sound affected me.
But the oddest part was that, when I wasn’t hearing anything but normal environmental background noises, I was always convinced that I was hearing music play! The tune was always completely recognizable, but it was just liminal. If I made a substantial effort to hear it, it would disappear. Thus, this doesn’t appear to match up well with what you’ve described.
The surgeon wanted to operate, but the risk of losing all hearing in that ear was too great for me to accept, so I passed. Good thing I did: It disappeared all by itself, probably as a result of slow bodily self-repair.
Musical ear syndrome, sounds like.
I get loud radio static that passes from one ear to the other over about half a second. And it isn’t regular white noise, it’s proper tuning-an-FM-radio noise. Comes and goes quickly, and can be startling. Happens when I’m sitting or lying quietly before bed or some such. Only happens every other month though.
A second vote for Musicophilia. The book covers exactly what you describe.
The answer sems to be that it is a complex thing, not of itself symptomatic of anything deeper, and that can be anything from mildly amusing to seriously debilitating. That the brain does it as a way of filling in for something it feels it is missing (as a very broad brush statement) seems to happen with some people, and your tinnitus might well be part of the trigger.
The “play list” nature is very common in Sak’s descriptions in the book.
I thoughly enjoy most of Sak’s books, and own almost all of them. They are rather variable, but almost always worth the time.
“Variable” I can quite believe.
I’ve read Hegel and Heidegger, for example, and though it took considerable effort, I manged to make sense of them despite their mind-bogglingly opaque use of language (at least in English translation, anyway).
But The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat struck me as the most vainglorious example of deliberately pretentious show-off-ism I’ve ever encountered. Maybe I was just having a bad day, but I thoroughly *detested *Sak’s style in that book and thus I’ve had no desire to try him again. Give me Ramachandran any day over Saks!
Do you think I might find Musicophilia or some other book of his more tolerable?
My dad had minor sensory hallucinations when his Multiple Sclerosis would flare up. But usually it would eventually go away.
usedtobe, have you gone to a doctor about your tinnitus? At the very least you should do that.
I know what you are talking about. I had it a few times although, oddly, it was only room of the house. I laid down on a guest room bed to hear the faint sound of something like a radio playing but none of it was music that really exists. It went on for hours and I was fascinated although I knew that it was my brain doing it (and no, I wasn’t on any drugs). A lot of the songs were “grand” if that is the best way to describe it and they ranged from pop, to country, to latino, to classical. Some had lyrics but I never could quite make them out no matter how hard I tried. A few were really good and I wanted to write them down but I don’t know how to do that and it would stop if I left the room anyway. It happened when I was laying down a few more times in the same room and I grew to enjoy it. There were no music or other sound sources on in the house at the time. It was late at night and one of the weirdest things I have ever experienced.
I didn’t know anybody had this all the time. I only had it once, when I was really tired at church once. The sermon wasn’t applicable to me, so I got bored and opened the hymnal to read, so I wouldn’t fall asleep. I hit a song I’d never heard before. But, as I was looking at the notes, I realized I could hear it. So I listened to the music in the hymnal while the preacher was preaching, directing it with subtle movements of my finger. It was fun.
But, all the time? That’s got to be annoying. Der Trihs’s link seems to be based on a loss of hearing–did the tinnitus accompany actual hearing loss?
Mine is about the same as the phone ringing, but if I listen for the pause it doesn’t come and I can go back to sleep. Ten years ago my cockatiel could imitate the phone ring precisely, which was extremely annoying when keeping an ear cocked for potential employers. This time of unemployment, and phone, he hasn’t picked it up, so I don’t spend half my life swearing at him. Not that it improves my opinion of him, the sadistic bastard.
FTR: This is the same bird who loves to watch “Jerry Springer.” He got a charge out of me jumping up to answer the phone when it was just him. “Sadism” may be too deep to attribute to a bird, but “That asshole I hate gets pissed when I do it and that’s funny,” is base enough. Slapsick is both the basest of types of humor but also the one most relateable to other species. And the one that will outlast the others for humans. “America’s Funniest Home Videos” is celebrating its 20th year and a football to the nads is as funny today.
I have had audio dreams of the phone ringing. They happened almost nightly over a period of a couple of years. Spouse was up working some of the time so we were able to determine the phone was not ringing. This finally just quit.
Updates:
Yes I asked a couple of doc’s about the tinnitus - one corrected my pronunciation, the other actually used a scope before telling me “no organic reason”
No heating loss when the tinnitus started - am now officially old, so “say fairwell to the things of youth” - hearing, income…
Luckily, the silly “soundtrack of my puberty” playback has faded over the last… IKNEW better than to say it was going away… Suite: Judy Blue Eyes is back, this time just the instrumental parts…
you aren’t alone
I hear music all the time, pretty much constantly. Sometimes it’s a song I know, sometimes it’s a song I’m working on, or maybe even just a riff I like, repeating over and over. Occasionally it’s nothing I recognize, but I have a pretty loose definition of “music” (like I have whole albums of feedback, pink noise, white noise, pachinko machines, city street noises, factory sounds, Wild Man Fischer, etc.). It pretty much never stops, never goes away. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t hear music, even the 2 times I had total hearing loss due to cerumen impactions. I know it’s in my head, but it’s always there, always been there, prolly always gonna be there. I like it. Wouldn’t want to do away with it. I mean, when I’m not listening to what’s in my head, I’m playing CDs or playing guitar.
I like Oliver Saks’ previous books, but hadn’t realized Musicophilia was out. My library doesn’t seem to have a copy, but I put it on my list at Amazon. Thanks for the suggestion, GameHat.
The fan in the bedroom in the summertime. I hear music in the white noise of the fan. I’ve been absolutely convinced that the neighbour next door has her stereo on, and I’m hearing it.
Nope. I am hearing music–usually pop music, and sometimes I even recognise the “song”, in the white noise of the fan.
Brains are weird.
I occasionally hear music when I’m trying to go to sleep, often calliope music. You can’t even begin to imagine how annoying that is.
My brother was being operated on for a brain tumor and he was not put to sleep, but if the surgeon touched a part of his brain he would hear music.
From what I understand it is not unusual.
I live in a flat with a metal framed bed that comes out of the wall. It’s a murphy bed. Anyway when I first moved in the flat I thought I was having audio hullucinations, 'cause I’d hear music or words, then one day I heard “B-96” and I figured out if I sleep backwards on the bed, my pillow is on the metal frame and depending on where the tentant above me keeps a radio the sound filters down through the metal frame.
I tested it by turning the radio sound down and tuning to what I thought was the station, I heared. Then I listened with my head on the pillow which rested on the metal frame and I recorded the radio station with the sound off. Then I compared what I heard to the recording and it was the same.
So I wasn’t hearing things after all 