Around here, we used to have a hearing aid commercial that started “Do you have trouble understanding conversations?” I don’t need a hearing aid, but I do have trouble understanding. It’s just the way my brain is wired. I hear music.
Put me in a noisy store or restaurant, and my brain picks out the background music first. Most people can’t even tell it’s there, but I know exactly what song it is you’re not hearing. And of course, if it is one of my favorites I may even sing along – and I have lots of favorite songs. (Needless to say, whoever I’m actually with may find that somewhat disconcerting.)
I guess it’s something like stuttering – which I suppose would make sense. I’m sure it’s before your time, but back in the 1970s there was a TV show named “BJ and the Bear”. BJ was a truck driver, the Bear was his pet monkey. Anyway, in one episode they were driving around a famous country singer who happens to have a terrible stutter. Talking and singing involve different parts of the brain, and therefore most stutterers have no particular trouble singing. My parents tell me that when I was young they had to coach me to talk slowly because I had a tendency to stutter though I don’t recall it.
Along the same lines though, the store I work at has switched from disks to a streaming music. Yes, they call it “Wal-mart Radio” though it is not broadcast. The disks got repetitive for those of us who work there – even if it’s 6 hours of music (and usually it was shorter) after a few days of hearing the same songs in the same order every day you get tired of it. But the streaming music has a different problem … it doesn’t stick to the correct tempo. I’m not sure how it is actually encoded but it’s not like vinyl or the old audio tapes where if you change the speed the pitch also changes – the notes stay the same, but it just gets faster or slower. To me, that’s even worse than being repetitive as it violates the song itself – though most of the people I’ve mentioned it to say they can’t tell. It’s not sudden, but if you were trying to sing along you’d find it wasn’t quite where you expected it. (Which of course is why it bothers me – even if I’m not actually singing, I am singing along in my head.)
It can take me a few seconds after someone says something to figure out what they said, and sometimes I even have to ask them to repeat it. Maybe I should ask them to sing it?
and we hear really g[u]ood[/u] music all the time. me too. Maybe not Sing along but noise along. or alone. the Gaelic called it making noise with the mouth.
That music is for the employees; let them know how you like it. Nice journal observation of our different realm.