Semi professional musician here. Repetition goes way beyond what the author mentions:
- Most music is highly repetitive, often recycling 2 or 3 short segments (chorus, verse) with minor variations to fill out a whole song. Coltrane is known for his avant-garde composition, and even he repeats (often on a much smaller scale than a pop tune).
- The work of being a musician is repetitive. Learning (memorizing) songs takes reps! Then you've got to keep them fresh, teach them to new band members, etc. You probably have a limited book, and you know what the crowd pleasers are. Unless you're big enough to have a following cutting a song you're sick of isn't a problem, but filling out a set might be. Between rehearsal, gigs and practicing at home I probably play through most of my band's book at least twice a week.
- Being a musician is very physical, which means you're drilling exercises in your daily routine. As a brass player, I run more or less the same set of warmups, range builders and flexibility exercises every day. Drummers do rudiments. String players have their own shtick.
As far as listening to music, I don't typically put something on repeat unless I'm trying to transcribe it. But I'll listen to a song, and there's a chance it'll play on repeat in my head all day (or all week!). Steely Dan and LCD Soundsystem are particular earworms for me. It wasn't until college I realized this isn't true for many people.
I once had a gig playing piano at a restaurant. It was a weekday mid-day stretch and I was scheduled for about 3 or 4 hours, as I recall. I put together about a 90 minute set of stuff out of my fake books that I figured I could do without embarrassing myself and surely no one would stay at the restaurant longer than 90 minutes.
Well, being weekday mid-day, the restaurant was nearly empty and there was some guy who sat there by himself for over two hours. I ended up taking some of my standards and doing what I could to stretch them out, playing lots of repeats, doing extended improvs over the changes. I turned Herbie Hancock’s “Chameleon” which I normally did as about a 4–5 minute piece following the structure of the Maynard Ferguson version which was the basis for the charts that I originally learned the song from into a 10 minute piece with extended improvs and some bonus repeats. “Night Train” turned into another 10-minute number. And this guy just did not leave. Finally, when I was almost out of material, he got up, dropped a twenty¹ in my tip jar and headed out.
⸻
1. I also got paid by the restaurant, but as I recall, he was the only customer out of the single-digit number of diners in the restaurant who left a tip.
> Most music is highly repetitive, often recycling 2 or 3 short segments (chorus, verse) with minor variations to fill out a whole song. Coltrane is known for his avant-garde composition, and even he repeats (often on a much smaller scale than a pop tune).
I'll note that a pop music current that has, I think, even less repetition than someone like Coltrane was the Progressive Rock genre, especially the originals in the early 1970s. Bands like Yes, Genesis, King Crimson, Pink Floyd, Gentle Giant - they were all producing 10-20 minute songs that used repetition sparingly, instead of relying on a typical verse-chorus-verse structure. Not exclusively, mind, but each had quite a few, typically as centerpieces of their albums.
I'm not a professional musician, but I've played and performed in different settings for about 15 years.
Until reading your comment, I didn't realize that many people don't get songs stuck in their head. I often get very long and complex songs stuck in my head for hours to days. Sometimes it's just portions, but sometimes it can be the full song.
I don't quite know how to describe my recollection of music, but it seems to be somewhat akin to eiditic memory, but for sounds. After looking into things, the term eichoic memory seems to come up, but I'm not sure it quite encapsulates what I'm trying to express.
Out of curiousity, do you have aphantasia? I do, and often wonder if the strength of my music recollection comes from a lack of visual recollection in my mind.
Sometimes it takes a few listens to fully memorize a song, but I can revisit music many years later and still have perfect recollection of the piece despite the complexity of the music I tend towards.
For example, my favorite band is Between the Buried and Me (a progressive metal band) and their compositions tend to use a ton of complex and mixed meter, as well as non-repetitive rhythmic patterns. Despite all that, I have perfect recollection of their music—even for songs over 17 minutes long.
Sorry for the long response—your comment just triggered some things I've been thinking about for a while and I wanted to process them and share.
I have aphantasia, and I also remember songs in multiple parts vividly. I won't go so far as to say it's eichoic--I can't, for example, turn around and just play a version of it on piano like some people I know, and I'm fairly sure I'm recalling an approximation in a lot of cases--but it's a detailed enough recollection I can "listen" to songs that way by recalling them. It's very much in contrast to my non-existent ability to recall even a familiar image.
I've considered cause/effect on this before and personally just decided it was probably coincidence combined with my poor visual memory making the other types seem that much more impressive. There's no particular compensatory mechanism I can think of that would explain remembering sound better because I remember vision worse.
Interestingly, I've never been any better at composition (i.e., imagining novel music) because of this. To the extent I've composed, I still pick stuff out a part at a time and figure out how it fits rather than starting with a finished sound in my head to recreate.
I think this is right. A lot of my favorite music finds ways to rotate what's repeating. It finds a balance of keeping the groove while still playing with the listener's expectations. But, to your point, if there isn't enough repetition, there's not enough to grab hold of. Obviously, it depends on what you're trying to accomplish, but for most applications, you want to give the listener engaged with your music.
Beyond, or beneath, song structure, I've noticed that experienced songwriters repeat notes in their melodies more often than people starting out.
You know that feeling when you wake up in the morning, and the first thought in your head is the sound of the song that's been there for 3 days already? You must have been dreaming the song before you woke up!
I appreciate this. I’ve had days where at work I’ve played a new song I’ve gotten into at least 30 times, sometimes with a few songs to break it up, often not though. I’ve always assumed it was slightly strange, but also probably not that strange. I also relate to the authors explanation. I’ll get tired of a song eventually, for a while, but one day come back to it and get into another usually less intense loop.
I don’t really understand what happens, but to be honest, I’m not really sure I’m bothered by my lack of understanding either. It’s just an experience that I can explain simply “I listened to this song on repeat 37 times today”, and yet I can’t explain it at all “Why does this happen? Why this song from an anime I’ve never seen? Beats me!”
Once you sleep on the song once or twice the enjoyment fades. Like that favorite song from the radio, you listen 4 or 5 times over several days and the excitement is gone. So you mine as well enjoy it 40 times in a row on day one.
I'm the complete opposite. Playing music on repeat ruins it. But if I listen to a song/album relatively rarely, it feels just as good every time. I also notice new subtle details once in a while, and that makes it even better.
I have songs that I absolutely love and have loved for years now. I just make sure not to overdo it.
For me, I think short term this is kinda how it works. Although a point I'd make is that is not that I enjoy it less often, it's just that I move onto other things.
Long term though, songs I loop like this can always return and restart their cycle. So it doesn't completely ruin it for me or anything after a few days.
For me the enjoyment fades only if the song itself is not very good to begin with; I start to notice the flaws and after a while I start to hate it and wonder why I even liked it in the first place. Good songs tend to pass the test of being listened to on repeat for me.
In a year or two, that song might be able to bring you back to that point in time. I've started building playlists by the year I discovered the song. It's a trip.
When I was younger I would get hooked on a CD. I'd do it so much that the current game I was also hooked on and the music I was listening to get intertwined into a single memory (if I see the game I remember the music, and vice versa).
These days with Spotify I get hooked on a single song and will often play that song over and over for a week or two.
I had this with books! I would play one album per book. And still when I pick up the book I hear the music and know where I was when reading it. And the other way around. When I hear the album I see the pages of the book again.
I'm terrified of this. I've no idea why, but if I hear a song too many times in a couple day period I have a night of fever dreaming where I wake up over and over again to the song in my head. It's like my brain has over conditioned the pathway for that song and as soon as it starts trying to dream it falls into it and the dream breaks and I wake up. It happens to me a couple times a year and when I hear any of the songs it's happened with before I feel a deep physical revulsion.
I kind of wonder if it's a symptom of something but am otherwise more or less 100% neurotypical so I think it's just a weird quirk.
I hope you never have to work retail, they often have the same approved songs on repeat all day.
I worked at a gym, and to this day, there are songs I don't even like that pop up in my head. 3 years of hearing them every day just about drove me spare.
My dad still whines about Peter Frampton due to his time on a submarine in the late 70s. Could only take so much vinyl out to sea and I guess shanties were out of fashion haha.
I personally tend to listen to full albums repetitively. Lately it has been Billy Cobham’s Spectrum and some Khruangbin albums. I also play drums and tend to study the same handful of songs for a few months at a time. Ok maybe I’ve been meditating on Stevie Wonder’s Superstition for over a year haha.
Yup, it sucks. For me it isn't even so much the song as it is how it transports me back to that job. Like, I hear the song and can picture myself doing certain tasks in the retail store I worked at while listening to it.
I once had a song stuck in my head every day for over two years! It got to the point I would hear a note from the melody with every step. Walking up stairs was horrible. The worst part was I didn't know what the song was. I figured out the melody on the piano, and once I finally figured out the song, it eventually stopped.
The song? A stupid commercial jingle. "Meow meow meow meow..."
There was a period in my life when a mantra(?) of sorts was stuck in my head. Just a short phrase or word (I think actually for a long stretch the number "256" was stuck in my head). For reasons unknown to me I would repeat the phrase in my mind or under my breath — seemingly as a way to either keep focus on some current thought or to derail the current thought. I don't remember which.
I think I was under a lot of stress then — I have worked on a team or two where the project (and management) were stressful. So likely that is it.
(Also a tell: I began to notice my handwriting when I signed checks was deteriorating to something scrawly, uncontrolled — when I switched teams and made other changes in my life to reduce stress I found my signature return to the more graceful strokes I was used to.)
Musically, there is (still) often a song stuck in my head. But I put music on in the background nearly every day, seems to keep the song in my head moving along to something new....
Exact same thing with me, to the point where I have to deliberately avoid listening to some tracks to avoid insomnia triggers. It wears off with most tracks, but I still can't hear "See-Line Woman".
Ironically, this happened to my daughter after listening to Duran Duran's "Last Night in the City" which starts with the prominent lyric "I'm not gonna sleep tonight"
Wow, surprised to hear this happens to other people! When I discover a new song I love, I'll nearly always have a night where I wake up with the song blaring in my head. Even if I don't know the song that well, my mind somehow reproduces intricate detail and fills in instrumental or lyrical gaps. In my teens and 20s I had really severe ear worms, some lasting for days or weeks. Fortunately that has lessened with age, but the nighttime concerts are still a regular occurrence.
> I've no idea why, but if I hear a song too many times in a couple day period I have a night of fever dreaming where I wake up over and over again to the song in my head.
Do you use stimulants of any kind? I have a pet theory that even high doses of caffeine can lead to earworms or IMI. I think there’s even OTC medicines that are well known to contribute to earworms.
I get it when I substitute methylphenidate with caffeine for a day or so (which is how I keep myself below 20mg MPH a day), and usually just at the crash point.
A song stuck in my head can make me restless all night as well.
One fix I’ve found that often works for me is listening to instrumental jazz every night before bed. It’s variable/random enough that it knocks the stuck song out of my mind without replacing it with another. Search for “jazz for sleep” playlists, there are a few decent ones out there.
As an adult I never experienced this, but I have vivid memories of staring up at the ceiling at 3 AM hearing "Paradise by the dashboard lights" play over and over and over again as a teen.
I've had this happen with various Ace Attorney soundtracks[1]. The best bit of advice I found to beat the earworm was to play the song to the end in my head. Which didn't help a bit, because every song on those soundtracks has a loop point.
Stumbled upon this article while researching reasons why Wes Montgomery is so good; Not because I was looking for an objective fact; Rather, just wanted to read some of the love others have for his voice
While reading this article it struck me how well written the article is. Certainly the subject is relatable and Wes is more of a grace note than the melody of this article, yet the article was written by a human who has found Wes and elevated him to his pantheon of "repeatability", making this article ultimately worth reading and sharing. Maybe even....more than once
You could append “(2016)” to the title if the edit window is still open. Generally older articles that get posted to HN have it so that readers know it’s not new news. /cc @dang
Back in my first job we had a CD drive but somehow only one music CD, so me and the other guy in that office just kept listening to that one all day.
Now despite access to all the music in the world, I still have per-project playlists. So I might listen to the same ten songs again and again for weeks on end, as starting the soundtrack quickly puts me in the mood to resume work where I last left off.
I've also adopted a mild superstition that it's bad to listen to the soundtrack for a project that failed.
With me it's similar: I don't play individual songs on repeat, I play whole albums (mostly on Spotify however, not on CD). But I change the album once in a while. Listening to new music or one of those endless Spotify playlists doesn't allow me to concentrate on programming, the music has to be familiar.
" And is it cognitively normal -- not to mention socially normal -- to listen to so many songs[...]on repeat, day after day after day?"
Even provided it wasn't normal, how any person engages with art is up to them and it doesn't require someone else's approval. No need for your tastes to be normal.
And as Nabokov used to point out, a good reader, that is an active and creative reader is a rereader. Same goes for music. Many incredibly talented people spend their entire lives studying and playing a handful or maybe only even one composer, so why shouldn't listeners do the same.
Interesting that you bring that up (rereading). I found that the first and foremost reason to learn at least a few poems by heart is that you will be able to "reread" them at will without the printed text: on the bus, in the shower, etc. It helps you appreciate the text so much more.
Active listening is a real pleasure. Qualitatively, it’s a very different experience to having music on in the background while doing some other activity, and it merits listening on repeat.
Mentally separating out the different voices in the composition, listening for how they enter and exit the soundstage, how that layering of sound builds up the texture of the music, not to mention melody, harmony, dynamics, pacing, phrasing, repetition, structure, timbre, rhythm, and the interplay of all these factors.
Everyone should be able to enjoy art in the way they like - but be considerate of the people around you.
The article starts with the anecdote that his son was seriously annoyed by the song - and then goes on to counter him with basically "but it's such a great song, it would be a shame if I could only listen to it for 3 minutes!"
That's the musical equivalent of getting out your Triple Onionator with extra garlic for lunch and, when your coworker complains, shutting him up with "but it's so tasty!!"
Please be nice to your non-repetitionist fellows and wear some headphones.
There are some songs that I think I enjoy because of their brevity. I sort of look forward to the encounter, pine for the song again when it's over.
Rather than put it on repeat though I always shuffle, preferring to (impatiently) await our next visit. (My music library is such now that it can be a while before it comes along again.)
There must be a certain amount of discernment and refinement that comes with savoring songs in such a way... though having built said music library must have been fun.
This reminds me of this classic bit of radio I stumbled onto.
A WFMU DJ playing Bob Dylan's 17 minute long ballad about J.F.Kennedy 'Murder Most Foul' over and over for three hours.
It's archived here. https://wfmu.org/playlists/shows/92415
Readit News
- Most music is highly repetitive, often recycling 2 or 3 short segments (chorus, verse) with minor variations to fill out a whole song. Coltrane is known for his avant-garde composition, and even he repeats (often on a much smaller scale than a pop tune).
- The work of being a musician is repetitive. Learning (memorizing) songs takes reps! Then you've got to keep them fresh, teach them to new band members, etc. You probably have a limited book, and you know what the crowd pleasers are. Unless you're big enough to have a following cutting a song you're sick of isn't a problem, but filling out a set might be. Between rehearsal, gigs and practicing at home I probably play through most of my band's book at least twice a week.
- Being a musician is very physical, which means you're drilling exercises in your daily routine. As a brass player, I run more or less the same set of warmups, range builders and flexibility exercises every day. Drummers do rudiments. String players have their own shtick.
As far as listening to music, I don't typically put something on repeat unless I'm trying to transcribe it. But I'll listen to a song, and there's a chance it'll play on repeat in my head all day (or all week!). Steely Dan and LCD Soundsystem are particular earworms for me. It wasn't until college I realized this isn't true for many people.
Well, being weekday mid-day, the restaurant was nearly empty and there was some guy who sat there by himself for over two hours. I ended up taking some of my standards and doing what I could to stretch them out, playing lots of repeats, doing extended improvs over the changes. I turned Herbie Hancock’s “Chameleon” which I normally did as about a 4–5 minute piece following the structure of the Maynard Ferguson version which was the basis for the charts that I originally learned the song from into a 10 minute piece with extended improvs and some bonus repeats. “Night Train” turned into another 10-minute number. And this guy just did not leave. Finally, when I was almost out of material, he got up, dropped a twenty¹ in my tip jar and headed out.
⸻
1. I also got paid by the restaurant, but as I recall, he was the only customer out of the single-digit number of diners in the restaurant who left a tip.
I'll note that a pop music current that has, I think, even less repetition than someone like Coltrane was the Progressive Rock genre, especially the originals in the early 1970s. Bands like Yes, Genesis, King Crimson, Pink Floyd, Gentle Giant - they were all producing 10-20 minute songs that used repetition sparingly, instead of relying on a typical verse-chorus-verse structure. Not exclusively, mind, but each had quite a few, typically as centerpieces of their albums.
I'm not a professional musician, but I've played and performed in different settings for about 15 years.
Until reading your comment, I didn't realize that many people don't get songs stuck in their head. I often get very long and complex songs stuck in my head for hours to days. Sometimes it's just portions, but sometimes it can be the full song.
I don't quite know how to describe my recollection of music, but it seems to be somewhat akin to eiditic memory, but for sounds. After looking into things, the term eichoic memory seems to come up, but I'm not sure it quite encapsulates what I'm trying to express.
Out of curiousity, do you have aphantasia? I do, and often wonder if the strength of my music recollection comes from a lack of visual recollection in my mind.
Sometimes it takes a few listens to fully memorize a song, but I can revisit music many years later and still have perfect recollection of the piece despite the complexity of the music I tend towards.
For example, my favorite band is Between the Buried and Me (a progressive metal band) and their compositions tend to use a ton of complex and mixed meter, as well as non-repetitive rhythmic patterns. Despite all that, I have perfect recollection of their music—even for songs over 17 minutes long.
Sorry for the long response—your comment just triggered some things I've been thinking about for a while and I wanted to process them and share.
I've considered cause/effect on this before and personally just decided it was probably coincidence combined with my poor visual memory making the other types seem that much more impressive. There's no particular compensatory mechanism I can think of that would explain remembering sound better because I remember vision worse.
Interestingly, I've never been any better at composition (i.e., imagining novel music) because of this. To the extent I've composed, I still pick stuff out a part at a time and figure out how it fits rather than starting with a finished sound in my head to recreate.
Knock knock
Who’s there?
Philip Glass
Knock knock
Who’s there?
Philip Glass
Knock knock
Who’s there?
Philip Glass
I was into his string quartets for a while about forty-five years ago but haven’t heard them since. Maybe it’s time to listen to them again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wse3ZoUXo5M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waQgZEGsUpw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6njANe60Evw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bi0JwXruBig
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2m4341zPZNY
Beyond, or beneath, song structure, I've noticed that experienced songwriters repeat notes in their melodies more often than people starting out.
LCD Soundsystem is great for this.
"A love supreme" immediately sprang to mind.. I guess all that repetition worked.
I don’t really understand what happens, but to be honest, I’m not really sure I’m bothered by my lack of understanding either. It’s just an experience that I can explain simply “I listened to this song on repeat 37 times today”, and yet I can’t explain it at all “Why does this happen? Why this song from an anime I’ve never seen? Beats me!”
You can't believe it; you were always singing along
It was so easy and the words so sweet
You can't remember; you try to feel the beat
-- Regina Spektor, Eet - https://youtu.be/nlK0zYZLBGY
It was good that there were songs that hooked me early because I would wait patiently through the less-appealing songs for those good ones.
Some months or so later, the tracks had flipped — burned out on the hooky songs, loving the once-meh songs.
(I can specifically remember this to be the case with both Murmur and Reckoning when they came out — yes, I am old.)
I have songs that I absolutely love and have loved for years now. I just make sure not to overdo it.
Long term though, songs I loop like this can always return and restart their cycle. So it doesn't completely ruin it for me or anything after a few days.
In a year or two, that song might be able to bring you back to that point in time. I've started building playlists by the year I discovered the song. It's a trip.
These days with Spotify I get hooked on a single song and will often play that song over and over for a week or two.
I kind of wonder if it's a symptom of something but am otherwise more or less 100% neurotypical so I think it's just a weird quirk.
I worked at a gym, and to this day, there are songs I don't even like that pop up in my head. 3 years of hearing them every day just about drove me spare.
I personally tend to listen to full albums repetitively. Lately it has been Billy Cobham’s Spectrum and some Khruangbin albums. I also play drums and tend to study the same handful of songs for a few months at a time. Ok maybe I’ve been meditating on Stevie Wonder’s Superstition for over a year haha.
The song? A stupid commercial jingle. "Meow meow meow meow..."
I think I was under a lot of stress then — I have worked on a team or two where the project (and management) were stressful. So likely that is it.
(Also a tell: I began to notice my handwriting when I signed checks was deteriorating to something scrawly, uncontrolled — when I switched teams and made other changes in my life to reduce stress I found my signature return to the more graceful strokes I was used to.)
Musically, there is (still) often a song stuck in my head. But I put music on in the background nearly every day, seems to keep the song in my head moving along to something new....
Do you use stimulants of any kind? I have a pet theory that even high doses of caffeine can lead to earworms or IMI. I think there’s even OTC medicines that are well known to contribute to earworms.
One fix I’ve found that often works for me is listening to instrumental jazz every night before bed. It’s variable/random enough that it knocks the stuck song out of my mind without replacing it with another. Search for “jazz for sleep” playlists, there are a few decent ones out there.
I've had this happen with various Ace Attorney soundtracks[1]. The best bit of advice I found to beat the earworm was to play the song to the end in my head. Which didn't help a bit, because every song on those soundtracks has a loop point.
[1]: example here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-QiKy-iEkQ
Stumbled upon this article while researching reasons why Wes Montgomery is so good; Not because I was looking for an objective fact; Rather, just wanted to read some of the love others have for his voice
While reading this article it struck me how well written the article is. Certainly the subject is relatable and Wes is more of a grace note than the melody of this article, yet the article was written by a human who has found Wes and elevated him to his pantheon of "repeatability", making this article ultimately worth reading and sharing. Maybe even....more than once
You could append “(2016)” to the title if the edit window is still open. Generally older articles that get posted to HN have it so that readers know it’s not new news. /cc @dang
Now despite access to all the music in the world, I still have per-project playlists. So I might listen to the same ten songs again and again for weeks on end, as starting the soundtrack quickly puts me in the mood to resume work where I last left off.
I've also adopted a mild superstition that it's bad to listen to the soundtrack for a project that failed.
Even provided it wasn't normal, how any person engages with art is up to them and it doesn't require someone else's approval. No need for your tastes to be normal.
And as Nabokov used to point out, a good reader, that is an active and creative reader is a rereader. Same goes for music. Many incredibly talented people spend their entire lives studying and playing a handful or maybe only even one composer, so why shouldn't listeners do the same.
Mentally separating out the different voices in the composition, listening for how they enter and exit the soundstage, how that layering of sound builds up the texture of the music, not to mention melody, harmony, dynamics, pacing, phrasing, repetition, structure, timbre, rhythm, and the interplay of all these factors.
The article starts with the anecdote that his son was seriously annoyed by the song - and then goes on to counter him with basically "but it's such a great song, it would be a shame if I could only listen to it for 3 minutes!"
That's the musical equivalent of getting out your Triple Onionator with extra garlic for lunch and, when your coworker complains, shutting him up with "but it's so tasty!!"
Please be nice to your non-repetitionist fellows and wear some headphones.
Rather than put it on repeat though I always shuffle, preferring to (impatiently) await our next visit. (My music library is such now that it can be a while before it comes along again.)
There must be a certain amount of discernment and refinement that comes with savoring songs in such a way... though having built said music library must have been fun.