I don’t quite understand the top answer in either of these questions. Those would mean you hallucinate when you use your imagination. I would think the world would suck if you couldn’t tell if you were just imagining the sound or if it was real.
Sure, very occasionally, it might happen. But if it happened regularly, I’d think I was going schizophrenic.
My imagination of voices and music is pretty solid – I think that’s why I’m good at impressions, I can always “hear” what someone’s voice sounds like and then imitating it is pretty easy.
As far as music goes, I can “play” a song in my head pretty clearly, music and vocals and all. It’s not like I’m actually hearing it, but it kind of is. Hard to explain, but I guess pretty analogous to my visual imagination where you don’t literally see things when recalling them.
Now that I think about it, I can imagine audio quite a bit more easily and accurately than visuals, which is odd because while I’m a professional graphic designer/art director, I’m a very amateurish musician. I have always thought that if I managed to spend the time to get really good at playing guitar, so well that I could know what note to play just by thinking of it – exactly like I do when I sing or whistle – it would be a blast because I could play the songs that I have memorized and can play so clearly in my head. I suppose that’s true for a lot of people, but it would be a lot of fun.
I have pretty good music visualization/imagination. There is almost always a song playing in my head unless I’m actively listening to something else, but almost never would I mistake it for real life. I can bring some sounds to mind, or combine them and imagine other things if prompted, but it’s not perfect, and can get muddled.
I’m glad I’m not the only one. I used to play guitar (haven’t really touched it in years), and occasionally I have a song in my head that sounded really good to me, but I couldn’t quite get it out into the real world.
Same here. I’m quite good with numbers and design. I’m a GIS programmer/systems analyst. It’s a very visual occupation, with a lot of number crunching.
I thought that would roll over quite easily to playing banjo. Well, my dogs put up with it. That’s about as good as I have got on the banjo.
I have excellent recall of words/lyrics but recall almost nothing except the very basic melody of a tune. It sucks because I often have songs playing around in my head but I simply cannot reproduce the song out loud because I don"t recall the specifics of the tunes.
My excessively vivid audio imagination is the bane of my existence. (As existence-banes go, I guess it’s pretty mild. Not like lycanthropy or a terminal illness.)
After shutting off my alarm clock in the morning (on “beep beep beep” alarm mode) and getting out of bed (and well away from bed), I sometimes hear the alarm go off again. Perfect pitch, perfect beep timing. I’m absolutely certain the damn clock is beeping again.
But it’s not.
Likewise, car horns in traffic, or odd car noises that aren’t there. (The latter is a concern when you’re nursing a 15-year-old clunker that you can’t really afford to replace.)
And I can listen to imaginary (remembered) music with pretty fair fidelity. If it happens spontaneously, it can be annoying (“where the hell is ‘Let it Go’* playing from?”). But it also means I can recall snippets of music voluntarily and with good fidelity. (Picking out a different performance of a particular song than the one I’m familiar with is stupid easy. Sometimes, even a remix.)
*I have a four-year-old daughter with a three-year-old best friend who visits a lot. In consequence of this, Frozen is a recurring media theme in the household.
I can play entire symphonic works in my head (at least for albums I’ve listened to over and over), hearing every cadence and tempo change.
Still, there’s a distinct difference between playing it in my head like that and hearing it play with my actual ears; I would never confuse the two as the OP describes. And there’s a difference in the vividness especially between fully cranked music on good speakers and my best memory of same. If that were not so, I wouldn’t have anywhere near as much use for my MP3 collection!