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all my life, music has run thru my head... over and over. I don't get to choose the music most of the time. I can say to myself "why don't you practice the Aminor Bach transcription.. and for days and days all i get is Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah... or an advertisement ditty for Stanley Steamer. "Stanley Steamer gets your home cleaner!"


why? Does this happen to anyone else?

sometimes all goes well and i hear what i want to be playing 'on the brainpod' as i call it. I am trying to switch to the Goldberg Variations.. but Hallelujah - Hallelujah drones on.

aaarrrggh

Welcome to my life. Which is a difficult life and a dangerous one, if you're a composer! Imagine this situation: You are asked to work on a romantic piece, for the moment a hero (in a computer game for example) gets kissed from the princess the first time. All goes well and the producer and developer love it. And then that geeky coder goes along to find that you actually stole that tune from Shrek without actually wanting to do it!

This is how music stuck in your head can lead to serious trouble! :'(

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and yes, I get stuck with various tunes, constantly... The most annoying one is when the air conditioning turns on, in my parents house, which makes a lovely little tune, of 8 notes. I managed to turn that into some kind of fugue while staying there for a few days! Fortunately it's out of my head now, but I'll be there next Tuesday, which can only mean trouble again! Darnit those Japanese and their tunes in their air conditionings!

I had this stuck in my head for a day or so. We have a forum member who uses the name. Funny thing is, the commercial is somewhat related to this forum. Have a look.

Lemon Pledge

I remember my mother dusted in a dress too!

It's called an "earworm". Research shows that OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) people tend to have them, but not always.

http://chipur.com/2011/05/25/earworms-the-music-never-ends/

Yes, I have it too, but can usually change the channel if it's annoying. It bothers me more when I CAN'T hear it.

Sure!

Usually it's a passage from some piece that I'm working on, and usually that's actually productive in some way or another. When it's something else -- and yeah, sometimes it's some stupid commercial -- it's almost always because:

I had too much caffeine.

I'm serious. I'm not suggesting that's what it is for anyone else, but, when I get something stuck in my head besides some piece I'm working on, almost always I've had more caffeine that day than usual.

Remedy: The next day, less caffeine.
But besides that, whatever kind of thing it is, if it's bothersome I try to replace it in my head with some other music, preferably something of a relaxing nature. It has to be some music that I love or else it won't stick. And then that other thing usually runs its course pretty soon, plus it's not bothersome while it's going on. Usually this works.

You're so funny sometimes apple!

How awful that Stanley Steamer one is! But that is what they want with an ad, right?

I often get stuck on a piece I am working on. Right now, Chopin's Etude Aeolean Harp is the piece of the week/month, and parts of it I am hearing often. Show's my obsession when I like something, huh? Thank goodness it is always played correctly in my head, not the mistakes that I often make, live!

I think most people get earworms. I always had music in my head while I was backpacking (5 months straight), and I didn't carry anything for me to listen to music on. The worst was after I'd been out for a couple months and I started getting children's songs stuck in my head. Frere Jacques stuck around for a week. I first only "heard" the single line, then got bored with it and made it into a round, and then added a descant and accompaniment parts to it. Eventually that got boring too, and I remembered that it was in Mahler's 1st symphony. That finally provided an outlet for Frere Jacques, and another song took its place.

the stupid thing is that I always hear music, only not the pece I'm practising, on my bike I hear the 1st mov. of Beethoven 8 f.e., than I play Chopin, Bach, Rach, whatever, and 2 hours later, on my bike again, I happen to be in the 4th mov. of Beethoven 8, don't mention a Bruckner/Wagner-mood...

For me last night it was the last movement of the Sibelius 5th symphony. So I went to IMSLP to see if they had the score. Not only did they have it, there was also a piano reduction of it (!), which I downloaded and took a look at. After I did that, it stopped playing in my head.

When I was a kid, the songs I found most annoying from school music class were always the ones that got stuck in my head!

i think the reason Hallellujah is stuck is because of the teenagers i was playing for were not paying attention. They were all cousins, not in choirs or singing in groups, and having them play close attention was out of the question. One of the cousins was a voice student. I heard so many mistakes from these kids and i would really like to correct them.. none of them were watching me.

all these 12 and 13 year old adorable blonds singly loudly and off key..

we are still practicing in my head.

In my experience, I can always choose to change what music I'm hearing in my mind.

However, it's kind of interesting the music that has appeared completely unbidden and the context in which it has. For instance, once I was playing dodgeball. I hadn't gotten a lot of exercise in a while, so it was very invigorating. Unusually as I was playing I began to hear a rather gloomy but beautiful theme from Act 3 of Parsifal!

A similar repetitive experience. Very often, when I am about to put on a cd, say of Handel concerti grossi, as I put the cd in, a music clip arrives unannounced in my head. You guessed it, that music is the first track. There is no way I can remember all the tracks of all my cds - I couldn't even tell you which piece is first on these sorts of cds, often even when listening to them. (I have a lot of baroque music on cd)

Clearly if I am selecting a major work I would expect one or other theme to come into my head and in the example above I would be expecting Handelian sounds to pour forth. But how/why the exact theme arrives without conscious effort I have no idea.

Yup!! Music is ALWAYS stuck in my head! It is always playing in my head, 24/7... Always has my whole life. Never stops, even if I try, even in my sleep.

My dad is the same way. I guess I inherited it from him, hehe!

actually it's a very common thing. in fact i'm pretty sure 99% of people hear music in their head which can get stuck. just a thing i suppose.
I get it sometimes, but not as much as i used to. i would presume it would be more apparent in the more musically inclined but it can be any sound; I remember once i was taking down a garden shed, and had to break all the windows - that night when i went to sleep all i could hear was cracking glass!

For me, it's often the Overture to "Martha". Or my husband constantly whistles the theme from the Swedish Rhapsody and it stays with me all day.

When I am faced with a long, nasty walk ( e.g. stuck in the rain and the car's a half mile way) I start the Rainbow Girls song and sing and walk to it as fast as I can. It seems to make the time fly as it's a struggle to remember the lyrics.

This is why they sell things to us with musical jingles!

But whatever you do, don't start thinking about "The song that doesn't end" from Lamb Chop's Play-Along. Since I'm kind, I will not provide a link.

You didn't need to .... aaaaugh!

I get earworms all the time....the worst is when I'm doing intensive prep for a piano exam and competition because I'm picking out passages and constantly refreshing my memory to ensure that nothing goes wrong. The worse case senario was last year when I was prepping Mozart Piano Concerto no.25; it was so bad that sometimes I couldn't sleep.

Pieces which I work on all the time get stuck in my head but it thanks to that that I memorise everything easily.

Sometimes earworms literally keep me awake all night!