when they have a song in their head? I can't, except for the guitar and sometimes the bass. The drums are always there, of course, when the whole song is playing along in entirety like a muffled thud (nowhere near replicating the original recording's beat, I presume) but when I try to focus on drums and/or bongos and/or percussion and shut all else out, they disappear and another song takes over, again, in its entirety, until I begin to home in on individual instruments once more. There are people out there with photographic memories, which must be fabtastic, but I'm now spending a lot of time wondering who the syphons of sound are, these beings who can pinpoint a single instrument in their heads when they're playing a song in it while walking along the steet, sitting in a train, at work when you are overtaken by the need to sing the first line of the chorus, much to your collegues collective teeth grind. Those aren't shakers, dude. Those are fillings sparking and dentists dancing.
[Edited 9/6/05 13:26pm]

Sometimes, yes. It depends how well I know the song and if I ever paid attention to the instruments when I actually heard the song, and not just heard it in my head.

EvilGreenAlien said:

Mm. I can hear the drums to the start of The Everlasting Now quite clearly, I suppose.

depends... ifs its a classical piece I can

If you're all so good then, why buy a fucking ipod?

Number23 said:

I don't have an iPod, or any portable player. Maybe that's the reason

EvilGreenAlien said:

You think animals, say crocodiles or porcupines, have songs in their head? Tribal harmonics or something? No, that would be ants or whales.

i can always pick out the bass lines in talking heads songs, because they're always so fun to focus on.

Anxiety said:

I like that one where Byrne's narrating a schitzophrenic who believes he's moulding his face with the power of thought alone into whatever he wants it to look like.But no, when I try to play that song in my head, I can't hear any bass. Just Byrne yelping and a bit of the synth riff.

Number23 said:

is that because you're thinking of the 'stop making sense' version with the boombox and the acoustic guitar?

Anxiety said:

No smartarse, because I'm not thinking of Psycho Killer. I'm thinking of Seen And Not Seen off Remain In Light.
[Edited 9/6/05 16:16pm]

Number23 said:

Are you sure you're not thinking of the version with the boombox? From, uh, that other thing?

Always the bass, yes. Sometimes other parts depending on the song. I usually just hear kazoos in every song irrespective of whether the original featured one. There's a name for the disorder, but I think my friends just seem to call it 'crazy idiot' and 'don't come near me' etc.

This is probably a boring musician thing, but when you've spent a fair amount of time in a recording studio, or you're trying to replicate the sound a band recorded in alive situation, you get pretty good at isolating individual instruments.

The fun comes when two or more musicians hear different things. Case in point - Ringo Starrs' drum fill that signals the start of the outro in "Strawberry Fields Forever". I've worked with about five different drummers who've all sworn blind they have the fill perfectly. And of course they've all played it slightly differently.

That's the human ear for you!