Karaoke of the Mind?

Subject: Karaoke of the Mind?
From: wysiwyg
Date: 11 Feb 01 - 01:05 PM

Music I love records in my brain like a download to the hard disk. Always has. ("Is it me?")

Do you ever get a recording you've loved embedded in your mind? Where you can hear each note of the arrangement and singer running through your mind? And is that what you "sing along with" when you do that tune, until it becomes your own?

Do you ever sort of reset the mental karaoke to take a song you have absorbed and "run it" through some other performer's style to see how it would go? Like in "Amadeus?"

Do you run it through your own style?

And hey-- how aware are you of what others might call "your sound"?

We were discussing "our sound" in connection with our Saturday night service last night... and this karaoke of the mind is a definite factor for me in absorbing and then creating a lot of the music we do. I know for a fact that the soundtrack to Brother Where Art Thou, which we had been listening to that afternoon, affected how we did tunes we've done for years that are NOT in the soundtrack, but could have been.

So I'm curious how YOU experience this kind of thing.

My apologies for tainting our folk process with the K word. Didn't know how else to make a short, accurate thread title! So I thought we'd redeem the K word by using it OUR way.

~Susan

Subject: RE: Karaoke of the Mind?
From: Matt_R
Date: 11 Feb 01 - 01:09 PM

Lol...I know every Oasis & ELO song exactly like this!

Subject: RE: Karaoke of the Mind?
From: Amos
Date: 11 Feb 01 - 02:34 PM

I've been a walking jukebox for fortfive years.

A

Subject: RE: Karaoke of the Mind?
From: wysiwyg
Date: 11 Feb 01 - 02:54 PM

So "A Penny for Your Thoughts" would be in order?

~S~

Subject: RE: Karaoke of the Mind?
From: GUEST,treaties
Date: 11 Feb 01 - 04:06 PM

when i hear a tune and lyrics that 'hit me' the tune plays as you say like a kareoke till the tune is there ,the words are then learnt in my head in their original key, but when i come to sing it i pitch it down instinctively to my comfort range.

Subject: RE: Karaoke of the Mind?
From: wysiwyg
Date: 11 Feb 01 - 04:32 PM

This is great. Ya know, I don't have people within arm's reach I can ask about this. Where we live..... few peers of any sort. Rural-- sparse, and thinking differently, about music I mean. I appreciate this opportunity to tap into the Great Folk Mind. It really IS like being at a comfy cafe with friends. And others... but msoitly friends.

~S~

Subject: RE: Karaoke of the Mind?
From: Hollowfox
Date: 12 Feb 01 - 10:08 AM

Yeah, I always have a "sound track" running through my mind, unless I'm listening to music from an outside source, or singing.

Subject: RE: Karaoke of the Mind?
From: MMario
Date: 12 Feb 01 - 10:11 AM

yup - the playback in my skull is usually there.

Subject: RE: Karaoke of the Mind?
From: KingBrilliant
Date: 13 Feb 01 - 05:05 AM

My playback is faulty, I just get a plausible version - which turns out subtly (Ok - sometimes its quite unsubtly) wrong when compared to the original. Which I suppose must technically imply that its not a recall of an intact memory, but a reconstruction which is going thru some process. Sort of encrypted & then decrypted. I quite like the plausible-ised versions - but some friends that I sing with get a bit exasperated I think. I just cross my fingers & claim 'folk process'.

I can't do the 'rerun in the style of' thing - but I'm going to try harder - it sounds like fun!

Kris

Subject: RE: Karaoke of the Mind?
From: suzy
Date: 13 Feb 01 - 07:02 AM

Sorry to sound contraversial here but I don't think the K word needs redeeming. Whatever medium you find to express yourself is fine by me. We have to remember and realise that not everyone likes or understands Traditional Folk music but let's not get snobbish about it; personally I can't bear to listen to classical Opera but love Gilbert & Sullivan; i'm sure somewhere along the way, Gilbert & Sullivan were slagged off as being modern & contemporary but we don't think of it that way now! I see the pop music of today (well some of it) being the Folk Music of tomorrow and don't understand why a really good ballad with moving and meaningful lyrics can't be accepted along with the old songs. It is important we encourage people to sing whether on Karaoke, Live Amplified or acoustic, there is no better way to express yourself, so what if is amplified, so what if it is commercial, I wish some of the traditional songs were on Karaoke, I would love to hear my voice sing with a really good Folk band and that is what Karaoke is about!

Subject: RE: Karaoke of the Mind?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 13 Feb 01 - 12:22 PM

I record in my mind exactly what I hear, and that is how I have to sing it. I apparently allow the same emphasis on the melody, the harmonies, the words, and the music, so that if there is, for instance, an instrumental bridge between verses, I can't get to the other side of the bridge without going through diddledumming the musical part. I can't just go to the next verse. And since I learn my music more from recordings (pick a medium) than from live performances, I often cannot remember the beginning of a song unless I can sing the end of the one before it on the recording. Only the first songs on records can I start at the beginning. And if the harmonies are as loud as the melody I often cannot sing the melody, I just take parts of it and parts of the harmony and sing whatever is loudest on the record, leaving me sounding as if I have no idea what the melody is! And I'm supposed to sing at the talent show next month! That is going to be an eyeopener...

Subject: RE: Karaoke of the Mind?
From: wysiwyg
Date: 13 Feb 01 - 12:40 PM

IT AIN'T BROKE-- DON'T FIX IT!

(Just to forestall any unasked advice.)

Go for it Mrrzy!

~S~

Subject: RE: Karaoke of the Mind?
From: Amergin
Date: 13 Feb 01 - 01:19 PM

Well, I don't exactly hear music playing in my head....I hear the singing...but then I have always been one to focus more on the words than the tune...as if that's any big surprise...

Subject: RE: Karaoke of the Mind?
From: GUEST,Roger the skiffler
Date: 13 Feb 01 - 01:43 PM

I've usually got a tune in my head, usually with half the words mssing! I started a thread about it ages ago, Susan, before you were around here. Today started with "He's in the jailhouse now", change to "Ramblin'boy" about lunchtime and now I just realised it's "Hard ain't it hard". As it is 6.45pm and I'm working till 9 it helps keep me sane!
RtS (?sane?- well for me)

Subject: RE: Karaoke of the Mind?
From: wysiwyg
Date: 13 Feb 01 - 03:03 PM

I'd absorb 4-part oratorio with piano, and then once it was locked in, it would start to morph... all the baroque stuff I'd learned would mix toe=gether and for a frew days if I sang one run (you know, those 32nd note thjingies), it would edge over into one from another piece and then just take off for space.... now I know this will occur with anything I learn and I use it to pull arrangements out of "thin air." Now I just need a program that will record what I hear, by osmosis.

There's one from the other day.... Jim & Vivian Craig were singing something on a tape Art sent me from the late 70's that had this line: I only wanna stand on the banks of the river....." and my mind added from the Dutchman, because even the melody lines up to this point were similar, "where the walls rise above the Zuyder Zee...."

Now today I have gone "down in the river to pray, studying about the good old way/talk about suffering here below...."

It's kinda like a musical thread name game. Go play THAT game sometime! (I want credit if that becomes a thread!!)

"Whispering Hope" also came out of another hymn, Saturday, that is actually very different from it except where they share a certain phrase melodically, "Do you know my Jesus?"

Oughtta have our heads examined, I guess.

~S~

Subject: RE: Karaoke of the Mind?
From: harpmolly
Date: 13 Feb 01 - 06:59 PM

I experience this all the time--in fact, it worries me a little, because I learn a song by ear and then find myself imitating the singer when I perform it. I love Kate Rusby's music with a passion, and when I sing any of her songs, I find myself imitating her vocal patterns a little more exactly than I'd like. It makes it difficult to figure out what MY style is.

On the other hand, those who have seen the wonderful movie "Little Voice," may agree with me that this isn't always a bad thing. :) If I could find a theatre company in America willing to put on the original play ("The Rise & Fall of Little Voice",) I'd do ANYTHING to play that part. Even if I had to murder a Scarborough accent to do it. ;)

Molly

(you can call me "LV". *grin*)

Subject: RE: Karaoke of the Mind?
From: wysiwyg
Date: 13 Feb 01 - 07:52 PM

LV, I used to have that too, but the more "mentors" I absorbed that way, the more they began to blend till my own voice emerged. Might that be true for you as well?

~S~

Subject: RE: Karaoke of the Mind?
From: harpmolly
Date: 14 Feb 01 - 07:54 PM

Entirely possible, Wysiwyg. I'm working on it.

For what it's worth, I've been told by friends and such that I don't mimic as much as I fear I do. So, I think it's okay. :)

Mollificent

Subject: RE: Karaoke of the Mind?
From: Firecat
Date: 17 Feb 01 - 06:06 PM

Just decidedto do a bit of refreshing and found this.

As to the music in my head, it's always there. If I finish an exam I always end up mouthing song lyrics to myself. it's annoying at times but there you go!!

Subject: RE: Karaoke of the Mind?
From: GUEST, WYSIWYG
Date: 17 Feb 01 - 11:00 PM

What I want to know is, how many people who DIDN'T post to this thread do or do not run sound in their heads?

Is it JUST US??

Or is it most of us? Ask around, wouldja?

~S~

Subject: RE: Karaoke of the Mind?
From: Firecat
Date: 17 Jun 01 - 11:41 AM

Well, my fiance keeps on getting songs he hates stuck in his head.

For example, he got Geri Halliwell's song "It's Raining Men" stuck in his head when we got caught in a thunderstorm the other day!

Subject: RE: Karaoke of the Mind?
From: DougR
Date: 17 Jun 01 - 03:10 PM

I do.

DougR

Subject: RE: Karaoke of the Mind?
From: wysiwyg
Date: 17 Jun 01 - 03:28 PM

Blues Gospel... you dance while walking, no one knows why!

But right now Gaither Homecomong Hour is on cable TV in the US.... gotta go soak up some more southern-fried gospel!

Okray-Dokay?

~S~

Subject: RE: Karaoke of the Mind?
From: hesperis
Date: 17 Jun 01 - 04:06 PM

Yes.

I'm another of the ones who reconstruct it, rather than having it exactly the way it was. But once it's in, it's in.

During high school, I always hated playing different arrangements of the same tune. The first one was always "how it should sound" once I had learned the Horn, 3 Saxes, Flute, and Trombone parts for it.

Then I realized that the second arrangement was hard for me to learn, but the third one wasn't... and it gave me the freedom from "this is how it IS PLAYED" to make my own arrangements of it.

Subject: RE: Karaoke of the Mind?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 17 Jun 01 - 06:48 PM

Yeah, recordings seem to burn themselves into my mind very quickly. I can start playing a recording and take a walk around the block - and when I get back, my mind is at exctly the same place where the CD is, ever though two or three cuts may have played. It can be very hard for me to sing in a key or tempo that's different from the recording I know.
I suppose that our learning songs from recordings could tend to "homogenize" our music, so we all interpret a given song the same way it was interpreted in the recording.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Karaoke of the Mind?
From: wysiwyg
Date: 17 Jun 01 - 10:55 PM

Nah, Joe, I find that once it is planted, it takes root and grows all over, untidy... shifting keys, doing different arrangements, rhythms... buddying up in a medley with the strangest things... learning a sound from one tune and seeing another dissimilar one morph into that sound while the first one morphs into something else... us humans is CREE-AY-TIVE to beat all git-out.

Synthesizer of the mind too... just last night, "Sitting at the Feet of Jesus," a very pretty waltz sung sedately in church, informed me it was now an immoderate blues number, and syncopated. I blame Bill Broonzy. *G*

~S~

Subject: RE: Karaoke of the Mind?
From: Don Firth
Date: 18 Jun 01 - 03:28 PM

There are certain songs that stick in my head, and the playback starts up automatically. Fortunately, most of the time they're songs I really like and want to learn. But unfortunately, my internal playback device tends to mumble. So I get the tune pretty well and some of the words, but not all. This starts the process. I have to get the rest of the words. If they are in DigiTrad, I'm home free! But usually they tend to be a bit different, folk songs being folk songs. If they are not too different, I usually try to reconstruct the song as I originally heard it. If they're too different, or if they're not there at all, I try to find the record or CD. If it's a song I heard a friend sing, I hunt them down and corner them, pen and notebook in hand.

Once I learn the song and start singing it, changes are inevitable. I don't intentionally alter words or tune unless I feel there is a darn good reason — but I have no compunctions about it if I feel there is reason. After all, minstrels did that, and so do traditional, "first source" singers. I have a pretty low voice, so usually I have to change key, and changing keys changes chord voicings, available bass lines, and picking patterns on the guitar. That leads to a different sound. For a while, when the song plays in my head, I hear it as I first heard it. But the more I do the song, the more it gradually morphs into the way I do it.

What can really drive me bughouse is when a song I don't know and haven't heard for a long time starts playing in my head — never made it to CD, the vinyl record is long gone, or the person I heard it from is no longer around. When that happens, it sparks a lot of frantic research, and sometimes I find it!

Other genres play in my head. Recently two soprano operatic arias: Ebben? ne andro lontano from La Wally (sung in the cult movie "Diva") and Song to the Moon from Rusalka. Beautiful stuff (at least to me), but I'm not about to try it. My internal playback unit has just helped me learn Gordon Bok's Bay of Fundy.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Karaoke of the Mind?
From: wysiwyg
Date: 10 Oct 01 - 02:06 AM

refresh

Subject: RE: Karaoke of the Mind?
From: CarolC
Date: 10 Oct 01 - 02:22 AM

I can't hear anything in my head at all. I can feel music in my head, but it's not the same thing. I know, because I have, maybe ten times in my life, heard something in my head.

When I feel music in my head, it lacks clarity and detail. It's really just an impresson of the music. Like a shadow, maybe. So I can't really play with it. But it seems to be there most of the time.

Subject: RE: Karaoke of the Mind?
From: Donuel
Date: 10 Oct 01 - 02:54 AM

I holographicly hear instrumental music perfectly by memory but have no innate ability to integrate lyrics. If I am thinking of Beethovens 9th, the voices are there in harmony and pitch but the precise words are not. Words and music are not integrated in my particular wiring.

Subject: RE: Karaoke of the Mind?
From: Steve Parkes
Date: 10 Oct 01 - 03:42 AM

used to have every Beatles' single and album up to Sgt Pepper in my head once, note for note (and a few other hits of the day, not to mention lots of 78s from the thirties and forties). It was a great way to keep boredom at bay on those long sleepless night s I sometimes had; although it probably kept me awake longer! That was before I was maried, of course. Most (but not all) of them have faded now, but a few new ones have come along.

It's rather like being able to see great (or not) works of art in your head,isn't it? You can enjoy every minute exquisite detail, or step back and see the whole thing. I always found though that it's not possible to copy what you see (or hear) onto paper: you can't "project" the image and trace round it. The pathways in the brain don't connect the bits that would allow you to do this. It's similar to stroke victims who can understand speech but can't get their words into their mouths ...

Steve

Subject: RE: Karaoke of the Mind?
From: The_one_and_only_Dai
Date: 10 Oct 01 - 04:04 AM

I definitely only store metadata about music in my head. I can think of a piece of music that I know very well and quite easily 'construct' a mental facsimile of the original. Attributes that stick easily with me tend to be phrasing and timbre of instruments. This means that if I really, really know one particular recorded version of a piece I am unable to 'experiment' with different styles, artists etc.

Shame, really, I always wanted to hear Swarbs playing the Double Concerto...

Subject: RE: Karaoke of the Mind?
From: GUEST,Roger the Skiffler
Date: 10 Oct 01 - 04:12 AM

I currently have the Blues Band's Wireless" in the car cassette player so the tune in my head at the moment is Jitterbug Swing" played on a resonator guitar.
RtS

Subject: RE: Karaoke of the Mind?
From: GUEST,English Jon
Date: 10 Oct 01 - 06:17 AM

Karaoke of the mind?

A false creation - proceeding from a heat opress-ed brain!

EJ

Subject: RE: Karaoke of the Mind?
From: Ebbie
Date: 10 Oct 01 - 01:17 PM

From the vicinity of my right ear, especially when I'm driving, I can hear and listen raptly to music and lyrics performed by individual bands, orchestras, choirs, duets, whatever; I can even change the selection to another format. I can make it louder, softer; sometimes when I stop listening for a moment, when I tune in again, it has moved on to a different place in the melody, although I can make it start over again.

I have noticed, however, that if I don't know the words in a certain part, 'it' doesn't either. So it appears that I'm not 'hearing voices'. *BG*

Ebbie