How many songs do you know?

[sufi]

It must be thousands and thousands, our brains have this phenomenal facility for memorising tunes and words, far far better than for e.g. quotes or numbers
we're like little songbirds really isnt it

How do you organise your internal catalog? is it like one huge crate of LPs? do you see the covers? or can you see the videos too - like an endless scrolling youtube,
Can you bring forth from memory by category? go on sing us a country music track by a man from 1980's

Those tunes we picked up as youths are so indelible (like Eden i think i have all the words to Squeeze greatest hits, and god knows what else)

 

[bun-u]

When I get Alzheimer's, I'll still be able to mumble word-perfect every line of Rakim's 'Follow the leader'

 

[martin]

How do you organise your internal catalog? is it like one huge crate of LPs? do you see the covers?

It’s a big jukebox in some shady, smoky pub in my skull, with the Great God Pan playing a fruit machine nearby, saying “Go on, put on the Mariah Carey Xmas song.” No, I don’t want to listen to that – I’m putting on Joy Division. “Go on.” No! It’s my £1 – and then I’ve got Mariah Carey in my head all afternoon.

go on sing us a country music track by a man from 1980's

I've always been different with one foot over the line
Winding up somewhere one step ahead or behind
It ain't been so easy but I guess I shouldn't complain
I've always been crazy but it's kept me from going insane.

 

[bun-u]

Those tunes we picked up as youths are so indelible (like Eden i think i have all the words to Squeeze greatest hits, and god knows what else)

Yes agree with this - some dreadful filler track from a 1983 Depeche Mode tape which I've heard 1300 times vrs my favourite track from last year which I might've heard 14 times

 

[sufi]

I wonder what sort of capacity one hooman brain has for this stuff?
maybe the tunes you hear as a youth fill up the lyrics repository, but i don't think you run out of space for new melodies

and i don't think that you have more quota if you are a musician, though you might well have a whole nother layer of sophisticated classification - i must know 100s of classical muic and hymns which i don't know the name or composer of, let alone any actual musical metadata like what key or what format the tune is - sonata or symphony or whatever

 

[sufi]

is the thing they call a "hook" in a tune (question for @sadmanbarty the musicologist) actually a way to snag that catchiness receptors in your brain (like the covid spike )?

 

[sufi]

It’s a big jukebox in some shady, smoky pub in my skull, with the Great God Pan playing a fruit machine nearby, saying “Go on, put on the Mariah Carey Xmas song.” No, I don’t want to listen to that – I’m putting on Joy Division. “Go on.” No! It’s my £1 – and then I’ve got Mariah Carey in my head all afternoon.



I've always been different with one foot over the line
Winding up somewhere one step ahead or behind
It ain't been so easy but I guess I shouldn't complain
I've always been crazy but it's kept me from going insane.

i wonder if musicians have better control over the earworms

 

[woops]

i wonder if musicians have better control over the earworms

I doubt it

 

[sufi]

It’s a big jukebox in some shady, smoky pub in my skull, with the Great God Pan playing a fruit machine nearby, saying “Go on, put on the Mariah Carey Xmas song.” No, I don’t want to listen to that – I’m putting on Joy Division. “Go on.” No! It’s my £1 – and then I’ve got Mariah Carey in my head all afternoon.



I've always been different with one foot over the line
Winding up somewhere one step ahead or behind
It ain't been so easy but I guess I shouldn't complain
I've always been crazy but it's kept me from going insane.

loving this picture of the smokey boozer in Martin's brain
one for the AI image generator

 

[sufi]

I dunno if you all experienced this but i can remember the phone numbers i memorised in the 90's before i had a mobile, but none since then,
but i don't think that any similar technological replacement has happened in the musical bargain basement section of my brain
what sort of tech would we need i wonder to supplement or swap out our mental jukeboxes

 

[woops]

i wonder if musicians have better control over the earworms

I don't know what your earworms are like but mine always involve figuring out the melody as I'd play it on a piano and what the chord progression might be

 

[sufi]

When I get Alzheimer's, I'll still be able to mumble word-perfect every line of Rakim's 'Follow the leader'

... fish, which is my favorite dish, but without money, it's still a wish ...

different track, but Rakim's lyric is hardwired into my DNA as those who mix metaphors would say

 

[sufi]

I don't know what your earworms are like but mine always involve figuring out the melody as I'd play it on a piano and what the chord progression might be

my brain doesnt have those apps
piano keys are like a broken smile to me and chords are warm trousers

 

[sufi]

my ear worms are just monotonous loops
i have a few really strong ones that i can recall sometimes to supplant more annoying less sticky worms though

 

[sufi]

... i went to Staten Island to buy myself a Mandolin ...
about a thousand million times

 

[woops]

my ear worms are just monotonous loops
i have a few really strong ones that i can recall sometimes to supplant more annoying less sticky worms though

Sometimes I find I can banish the monotonous loop by listening to the record

 

[luka]

Sometimes I find I can banish the monotonous loop by listening to the record

where are you? pub?

 

[sufi]

BUT

The songs that are really hard to keep in your head are the ones you want to hear again, isnt it?
Autotune, or weird newfangled effects, or interestingly garbled lyrics, for instance, can place the tune just out of reach, so your brain wants to hear it one more time and consign it to the archive?
songbirds instincts isnt it?

 

[sufi]

where are you? pub?

Bargain basement of HMV Ken High Street circa 1989, last days of the closing down sale, sleeves and discs and liners strewn around by merciless crate diggers and cast off goth refugees from Hyper Hyper across the road

 

[woops]

was on bus now home