The prevalence and nature of imagined music in the everyday lives of music students

Abstract

`Musical imagery' is the experience of imagining music in the `mind's ear'. A study was conducted to explore the prevalence and nature of musical imagery for music students in everyday life, using experience-sampling methods (ESM). As a group, music students reported that imagining music was a very frequent form of musical experience. Participants reported individual variation in their imagery experience but also common differences between the strength of imagery for different musical dimensions. For instance, melody and lyrics were rated as being more vivid components of the image than timbre and expression. Another clear pattern was the influence of hearing music on musical imagination, one indicator being that 58 percent of sampled episodes described having heard or performed the music recently as a possible reason for currently imagining it.

Going Gaga: Investigating, Creating, and Manipulating the Song Stuck in My Head

“…But as Berntsen and her colleagues have argued, reexperiencing may be a component of both voluntary and involuntary memories (Hall & Berntsen, 2008;Rasmussen & Berntsen, 2009). Because people also reexperience many music features when they intentionally imagine music (Bailes, 2007;Halpern, 1988a;Halpern, 1988b;Levitin, 1994;Lucas et al, 2010), reexperiencing may be a feature of conscious experience rather than intrusive thoughts.…”

“…Having a song stuck in your head is a commonly experienced intrusive thought that occurs frequently for many people. The phenomenon has been labeled many things: an earworm (Halpern & Bartlett, 2011;Kellaris, 2008;Levitin, 2006), imagined music (Bailes, 2007), involuntary semantic memories (Kvavilashvili & Mandler, 2004), and involuntary musical imagery (Liikkanen, 2008(Liikkanen, , 2012aSacks, 2007). To make explicit the connection to other forms of intrusive thoughts, we refer to the experience as an intrusive song.…”

“…Intrusive songs may also involve a sense of reexperiencing. When people intentionally imagine music, for example, they reexperience many aspects of the music: the song replays over time (Halpern, 1988a;Halpern, 1988b), involves various aspects of the musical experience (Bailes, 2007), includes pitch information (Levitin, 1994), evokes emotion (Lucas, Schubert, & Halpern, 2010), and involves the same brain areas as listening to music (Halpern & Zatorre, 1999;Halpern, Zatorre, Bouffard, & Johnson, 2004;Zatorre, Halpern, Perry, Meyer, & Evans, 1996). The third area of similarity is that intrusive songs appear to include a repetitive quality such that they return frequently to awareness much like some instances of involuntary memories (Berntsen, 1996(Berntsen, , 2001) and intrusive memories (Brewin et al, 1996).…”

“…One consensus finding is that almost everyone has experienced an intrusive song with many people claiming they frequently have songs stuck in their heads (Bailes, 2007;Beaman & Williams, 2010;Halpern & Bartlett, 2011;Kvavilashvili & Mandler, 2004;Liikkanen, 2008Liikkanen, , 2012aLiikkanen, , 2012b.…”

Exploring engagement with music in everyday life using experience sampling methodology

“…In terms of the music being listened to, much of the existing research on everyday listening has employed a relatively short list of predetermined musical categories (Bailes, 2007;North et al 2004;Sloboda et al, 2001). North et al (2004) reported frequencies with which specific styles were heard in music episodes.…”