Do you ever hear music when no music is playing?

[raccoon]

For instance, I’m sitting here at my kitchen table and I have the fan going. It seems as if I hear some kind of band music playing, as if from a radio with the volume turned very low.
No radio, TV, or any other device is playing in my house.

Anyone else experienced this?

[bucolic_frolic]

1. I think you're just ecstatic

that Trump has faced the music. Enjoy the concert!

[Peacetrain]

2. Actually that happened to me 7 years ago when we moved into our new home

I was downstairs in the family room.. no one else home.. and I swore someone had a radio on.. it was a little spooky...

[TxGuitar]

3. I do, but voices rather than music

I've been hearing these sounds since I was a kid. Whenever it's quiet, like when we're in bed but I haven't fallen asleep yet, I swear I always hear what sounds like a tv on in another room, like someone is watching the news or a documentary with the door closed and the volume down. I can always almost make out words but never succeed. Oddly, I never found it scary or too disconcerting.

[trocar]

49. Yes

[bahboo]

4. always...then again, I write music for a living....

[ProfessorGAC]

8. Beat Me To It

Not writing, but as a player, I often have piano or guitar ideas going through my head.

[2naSalit]

41. That's my thing...

A performer, always have something playing in the inner ear. Some of it is original.

[viva la]

5. I once lived in a house by a freeway--

And sometimes a semi would go by, and somehow it sounded like a cello playing. I almost could hum the melody. Very weird.

[LuckyCharms]

6. Yes. it's very common for that to happen with a fan running.

It's a natural occurrence. I forget what they call this phenomenon. It happens to me all of the time in the bathroom when the exhaust fan is running.

[wendyb-NC]

11. Thank you I thought it was just me.

I thought it was just my hearing.

[dgauss]

15. Here's an interesting article on it.

https://hearinglosshelp.com/blog/apophenia-audio-pareidolia-and-musical-ear-syndrome/

Didn't know it had a name but it makes sense.

[Dear_Prudence]

29. Alternate 'theory'

This medical science explanation makes sense, but there are older explanations such as fairy music. Here is the teaser for a paywalled article "Music Learned from the Fairies" in the Journal of the Folklore of Ireland Society
https://www.jstor.org/stable/20522407

[dgauss]

50. Interesting, thanks.

When I've had the perception of hearing music, it does seem to have a quality of not coming from any particular place, if that makes sense. So I can see how "other worldly" explanations might have arisen.

[duhneece]

53. Interesting article

I’ve wondered if other people hear music or people talking so I’m glad to read about it.
I’m grateful for the original post

[rsdsharp]

7. It happens to me quite often in the summer months.

Although we have central air, we usually have a fan on in the bedroom just to move the air. It often sounds like music at a very low volume, at least to me.

[Dave in VA]

9. Often

I play piano and sometimes I here the melody when different things are making a noise. Such as the fan, or air conditioner, tires on highway when driving, etc.

[dgauss]

10. I've had that experience. I lived in one place where it would happen regularly

when I was trying to get to sleep at night. I ended up figuring it was some faint noise generated from the pipes in the basement or some other mechanical sound. It was very faint and just below the threshold of being loud enough to make sense of. It seemed like my brain was trying to make sense of it and ended up interpreting it as music. Kind of drove me nuts.

[50 Shades Of Blue]

12. Absolutely! Different types of music, and what sounds like radio broadcast voices, too.

Sometimes I've thought somebody else in the house was playing the radio really loud (in the middle of the night?!) but nope! Fan voices. But the freakiest sound I ever heard coming from a fan was my own name, "spoken" in a mechanical sounding voice.

[ProfessorGAC]

13. Yes, But It's Real!

We live only a couple blocks off part of the Route 66 run.
When the bike folks ride through we can hear the music from those high powered stereos they have in their fairings.
Sometimes I can even tell what song they're listening too. From 2 blocks away!

[happybird]

14. Yes

It happens with my window a/c unit quite frequently. What drives me crazy is trying to place what song it is. I know it’s my mind making sense of not-quite-white noise, so the songs or music I hear have to be rattling around somewhere in my brain. Sometimes I do manage to identify them and that makes me happy.

There have been a couple times it’s been so clear that I’ve gone to the deck to check if someone is in the driveway with their car radio on.

[Silent Type]

16. In my rube red area, I hear banjos frequently.

[OAITW r.2.0]

28. Do you hear banjo like this?

https://music.

&si=79yD7TOV1mMaPiSt

[Celerity]

47. I assume they meant like this

[electric_blue68]

17. On occasion in the long stretch of the subway train underground going express the random noise I'd almost hear music

[doc03]

18. I hear cicadas 24/7 thanks to tinnitus nt

[Tommy Carcetti]

19. I sometimes wake up with a song in my head.

Usually it’s one I’ve heard recently but occasionally it’s something random.

[multigraincracker]

20. I mostly hear a loud bass guitar

going down the road I live on.

[Red Mountain]

21. I've heard what sounded like bagpipes multiple times

when an air compressor was running. Got one guy to agree he could hear it too......but he might just have been scared.

[Ms. Toad]

22. Does tinnitus count?

It's quite boring - a single note, about 7854 hz, all day long, but music nonetheless.

[leftyladyfrommo]

23. All the time. I have tinnitus all the time

but certain things make it worse and when it's worse I hear voices far off or music far off.

[WmChris]

24. Fan

Our bathroom exaust fan sounds like some kind of low level background music all the time.

[BSdetect]

25. I have tinitus but I often hear what seems like very very faint music.

I want to find out more about acoustic neuroma

[Ms. Toad]

27. oooh - no you don't.

But if you don't believe me, report to your doctor that you have lopsided hearing loss. Apparently ears, unlike eyes, grow deaf at roughly the same rate. So lopsided hearing loss will get you a quick trip to an MRI to rule out an acoustic neuroma. If you catch it early, it is generally easily treated - but the side effects of surgery can be challenging and permanent.

Fortunately, I didn't have one - but I did enough research after my doctor sent me for an MRI that I was really, really hoping that wasn't what I had.

[LastDemocratInSC]

40. I had the very same experience a few years ago.

[Ms. Toad]

46. Mine was more than a decade ago -

And my left ear has caught up with my right ear in terms of hearing loss (both relatively mild, both only in the frequency range of my tinnitus). But I have encountered a fair number of friends who went through the same thing. Which kind of begs the question - if we're all having lop-sided hearing loss is it really that uncommon? Every one I've talked to (both friends and doctors) has the impression it is very rare - and the doctors certainly acted more quickly than they have about anything other than my aggressive cancer diagnosis.

[OAITW r.2.0]

26. A Bertha moment perhaps.

That song plays in my brain when I'm not audio connected. Actually. I hear a lot of different music, when my brain is mixing.

[Attilatheblond]

30. Yep. I figure it's just my brain keeping busy. Parents were musicians, there was ALWAYS music in the house

In my old age, I think my brain tells me I am hearing music to help me not feel so lonely sometimes. It's kinda nice.

BUT..... hearing doorbell when it didn't ring (no response from dog, so I know it's me and not the doorbell) annoys the hell outta me. Also, occasionally hear weird sounds at night that wake me. Again, dog doesn't respond so I know it's my brain waking me up. Then I notice I need to get up to pee. LOL

[mopinko]

31. no, but i've smelled gardenias that werent there.

an olfactory hallucination. cause by seizures. been at least 20yrs, only happened a few times. just recently realized that it was. it was familiar. i’m allergic to perfume, so i knew they werent real. gardenias were my dad’s fave flower, and my mom’s too. some ppl wd think it was his ghost. but most such things r hallucinations.

had a tbi as a kid and had hallucinations for a decade. saw an episode of house where a guy had the same hallucination. occipital lobe seizure.
seizures manifest differently, depending on the area of the brain. it cd just b music rattling around in your head, but it cd b serious. do u have any other sensory oddities? headaches? had a head injury lately?

[rockbluff botanist]

32. Yes. I call it "The Music of the Night" and it's not The Phantom

I wake up in the night because I hear music. I can't tell where its coming from and I can't explain it. I awaken my husband and he can't hear it. He just says, "Led Zeppelin I hope."

[edhopper]

33. I hear music

I hear music and there's no one there
Smell of blossoms and the trees are bare
All night long I'm walkin' on air, I wonder why
I wonder why

[sakabatou]

34. You mean like music in your head, or audible sound?

[cilla4progress]

35. Yes, or people talking imperceptibly - can't tell what they are saying.

Parallel universe.

[Drum]

36. For a fascinating read on things related: Oliver Sacks' book Musicophilia

Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain (2007j

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musicophilia

[DBoon]

37. When I listen to Frank Zappa

sometimes it sounds like music

[PeaceWave]

38. No. But I can groove to the faintest furthest away tune that nobody else hears.

[struggle4progress]

39. It's the ghost of Stephen Foster

[yorkster]

42. Absolutely. And it is usually when I turn on

a fan in a small space. It sounds sometimes orchestral, sometimes choral.
So, some kind of harmonic vibration?.

I used to sing with 2 guys who played guitar. When we were really cooking, I would sometimes hear another instrument,
usually a sax. Strange, no?

[Beartracks]

43. I have sometimes, if I'm laying with one ear on a pillow.

It seems that if only one ear can effectively listen to the white noise, so that I don't have the benefit of binaural hearing, my brain tries to make some "sense" of the sound, and thus interprets some of it as music, or sometimes voices. It always sounds a bit indistinct, as if its coming from another room down a hallway.Weirdly, yeah, I think it's usually band music for me, too.

[2naSalit]

44. Sometimes...

I hear music in the droning of some machine or other. But I also walk a lot and when I am walking, like hiking or trying to get somewhere, I always hear some music. Could be bluegrass, could be Mozart but there's always music.

[Bucky]

48. Every time I walk up a flight of stairs the "Rocky" theme song swirls thru my head

[pandr32]

51. All the time!

There is a rhythm to the ringing in my ears.
When I was young I heard that the kinds of fillings we got in our teeth then could pick up radio signals and put music in the mouth, but I have no idea if it was true.

[MontanaMama]

52. Quite often actually.

I’m forever asking my husband or my son “do you hear that music?” They don’t.

[gay texan]

54. Yes all the time

ADHD thing. Right now i can hear the guitar solo in perfect detail for Steely Dan's "Ricki dont lose that number"

When i was 3 or 4 i could tell if Glen Campbell's "Whicita Lineman" was being played at a different speed on the radio.

The music system in my head...