Symphony in my mind

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How often would you guys say you have music playing in your head. I can honestly say at least 23 of the 24 hours in a day I have music in my head. It's not like having a song stuck because it often isn't music I've heard and it changes all the time. I'll have a violin orchestra one week guitars the next. It also gets louder if I try to ignore it.

I remember reading its common in those on the spectrum. I occasionally have church bells playing in my head and they also get loud if I try ignoring them.

Yeah I definitely get this sort of thing, I've always got some music or other playing in my head. Sometimes it sort of fades into the back of my mind, and other times it is more prominent, but it's always there.
It won't necessarily be a song though, more like the theme of a song or a general piece of music.

i mostly have some tune i wake up with ready for me to think about as i embark upon my day. the effort i apply to the development of the tune is inversely proportional to the other non musical efforts i have to expend during the day. sometimes i have no musical idea to get back to after a "days work", but more often i do.


i develop my tunes and embellish them, and if i do not record them, i keep thinking about them and they bug me eventually. at a certain point, my mind has covered everything i can think of to do with my musical original idea, and it becomes painful to keep thinking about it without playing it.

when i play it, i am like a person who is sneezing in slow motion.
the satisfaction one gets from sneezing is very similar to the satisfaction i get from playing what i think. once it is played, then i can relax and go to sleep. i need no longer worry if my memory can contain the song i think because i can "cast it in concrete" with a recorded expression.

good night.

Drums... always the sound of drums. But not always the same drums. Sometimes, it's a drum-corps style, others it's some piece of electronica I've heard, or a metal drum solo, or... on and on...

But it's always drums. Usually with a base pattern of Qr-Q-Q-8r-8-8-8-Q-Q-Q that embellishes and changes over time. I guess it's my rhythm.

It's like having a perpetual soundtrack, along with all the other layers of images and thoughts. Sometimes I wake up from a dream with the most lush sounds in my mind.

I've been a musician and performer (it seems like a past life now), and I've also studied a bit of music theory and composition. But it's very hard for me hear something and replicate it on an instrument, though I can sing it. (Others can hear a chord progression and jump right in.) Most of my learning has been through musical notation, memorization, and watching others play. It's weird - I can hear and I'm certainly not tone deaf, but I also can't play what I can't see. Is anyone else like this?

Constantly. Sometimes it's a piece I'm working on and other times it's just something random I remembered.
I used to get short riffs or loops stuck in my head for ages but that doesn't seem to happen now.
It's not always recognisable tunes, either; sometimes I have layers of chords or other fairly static, harmonic stuff going on.

When I am fully conscious it's usually music that already exists, but sometimes when I try to get to sleep there's some amazing and original music that goes through my head - if only I could get out of bed and write it!

Never by itself. Only when I consciously try to remember a specific song. And even then it's it's not very coherent.

I either have a full conversation or a tune (all instruments included) in my head at any moment of the day. At my uni graduation ceremony, all the graduates had to sing this song. I found footage on Youtube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=OT4zF9L0XO0 This was 2007, but I graduated 1993. The song and loud organ replayed in my head throughout the night and I never got an ounce of sleep. Listen to it at your peril!

“Symphony” is too kind, more like “cacophony” with all the racing, confused thoughts and music that’s usually rock or metal, but yeah, there’s always something playing.

I have this trait, too. I wonder if Temple Grandin's categorization for thinking types has something to do with it, that is, her second category "music and math mind" would be the one in which people with this trait fall into.

I have difficulties with reproducing any kind of music from my head, although I'm supposed to be a musical person. I took lessons for trombone for years, and was always fascinated by musical instruments. Through trial and error I can reproduce a simple melody, though.


Interesting, I also experience this often times.

Yeah some days I can replicate whats in my head on the guitar. But some days it's like I forgot how to play. Playing is sometimes the only way to turn it off briefly.

Yup. It's far from constant, but I know what you mean.

My mind is a constant soundscape.

I get a lot of music in my head, but it is hardly constant. I've also been getting it more and more since I started playing piano.