# Can't get it out of my head ...



## Lang (Sep 30, 2008)

In another thread someone was asking about what the Germans call 'earworms' - tunes you can't get out of your head. I mentioned that the current one for me was a Poulenc song, because I am working on a MIDI version.

But in fact there is _always_ some music going on in my head. It is there all the time that I am awake. I am not always conscious of it, unless my attention is drawn to it. But if someone were to ask me at any time what music is playing, I could name the work and the composer, even if I hadn't been consciously aware of it before. It is not normally a complete work, although the excepts can be long ones.

When I told a non-musician friend about this, she thought I was totally weird, but when I asked a couple of musician friends they said that they experience the same thing.

So I thought it was worth opening the subject up to the forum. Is this something you experience? If I said: "What music is going on now?" and the room was silent, would you be able to tell me the composer and work?


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## R-F (Feb 12, 2008)

Moritz Moszkowski: Spanish Dance No. 5. 

I'm playing this piece on Marimba. Not only is the music going around my head, but the sticking patterns too!

Sometimes when I'm lying in my bed, about to fall asleep, music will pop into my head which I think sonuds really good, but I can never remember it when I wake up the next morning, only the thought that I did listen to some music. I never know whether it is a composer's music that I heard once and forgot, or if it's music I've created. It might not be that good at all- maybe the sleepiness makes me dillusional- but I still think think it would be pretty amazing if they were good tunes, and that was my way of composing! 

I also think it's quite amazing when a tune comes into your head that you've never heard for years. Just that music can make you experience feelings that you felt years ago, when listening to that music.


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## mueske (Jan 14, 2009)

The coda from the first movement of Gershwin's piano concerto in F.


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## opus67 (Jan 30, 2007)

I'm not a musician but this does happen to me. I like it when I discover a new work and it keeps playing in my head for almost the entire day or more. It need not always be the complete work as it's quite difficult to "replay" the whole thing after hearing it only once or twice. For the past few days, it had been the (Royal) theme from Bach's _The Musical Offering_.


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## mueske (Jan 14, 2009)

opus67 said:


> I'm not a musician but this does happen to me. I like it when I discover a new work and it keeps playing in my head for almost the entire day or more. It need not always be the complete work as it's quite difficult to "replay" the whole thing after hearing it only once or twice. For the past few days, it had been the (Royal) theme from Bach's _The Musical Offering_.


Has nothing to do with being a musician I think, I constantly have some kind of music in my head, sometimes it's from other composers, sometimes it's just a theme I myself just imagined. I'm also not a musician.


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## Krummhorn (Feb 18, 2007)

Mostly new themes or improvisations that I've played before. They stay in my head until I get them notated on paper.

When it is time for sleep, the organ piece _Fountain Reverie_ (Percy Fletcher) always seems to be present.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

When I'm walking in the city, the hustle and bustle of the city seems to make me remember the main theme from the final movement of Walton's String Quartet. This has been happening for the last decade or so, since I first heard that work. Similarly, on an overcast day I will often get the opening of Britten's Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge in my head. Maybe a cloudy day seems less bright and colourful, and that work kind of reminds me of a soundtrack to a black and white film.


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## World Violist (May 31, 2007)

Sometimes the march from Tchaikovsky's Pathetique symphony plays itself over and over ad nauseum in my head, and sometimes the Blue Danube Waltz kicks in with no warning and makes itself equally annoying but much faster.


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## Lang (Sep 30, 2008)

In my case the music tends to be random. At the moment it is a snatch from The Four Seasons (not my favourite work).


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## nefigah (Aug 23, 2008)

The main theme of the final movement of Beethoven's C Major piano sonata ("Waldstein")


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## opus67 (Jan 30, 2007)

This could soon become the "What you are listening to in your head" thread.


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## Lang (Sep 30, 2008)

Yes, I was thinking the same.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

Some pieces get stuck in my head and it's as annoying as politics.

I ride home with a co-worker who subjects me to country music every afternoon. I have to purge the bad taste in my brain with some quiet Beethoven when I get home.

But even Beethoven can get stuck in your head in an annoying way. Rage Over a Lost Penny (or Rondo a Capriccio, or whatever the infernal thing is called) is quite insidious in this way.

Mostly though I am like the others above who say there is random music buzzing through their heads at all times. I love this ability. We have our own personal brain iPods.

Currently I have (please don't laugh now) part of the soundtrack to *One Million Years BC *going though my head. I haven't heard this in years but I will always remember the wordless soprano in the soundtrack and the odd primitive percussion sounds. I thought this was very innovative for the time in spite of the cheese factor. I have no idea who the composer was, but I wonder if this soundtrack is available. It's a nostalgia thing.

[Edit: I just looked it up. It's Mario Nascimbene. And it IS available! Good grief - you can get almost anything these days.]


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