I was riding with a new coworker to lunch. Trying to get to know him better, I asked what kind of music he likes. Music is such an important part of many people's life that this is often a good opener.

He hesitated for a while and said, "I don't know... quiet I guess?"

I think his response caused a full hard reboot of my cranial OS. It was the first time I'd ever met anyone whose relationship to music was so fundamentally different from mine.

Maybe he only listen to anime soundtracks and was embarrassed to tell you

Or Kpop

This is me. I can't understand why people want to listen to music in their cars when quiet is so much more pleasurable. Though, I also can't understand why people want to listen to music at all. It has no emotional response for me. I'm so glad to know I'm not the only one since it seems like everyone else likes music for some reason.

I feel sorry that you don't gain the joy and pleasure that I get from music, but on the other hand I'm guessing you also don't suffer from the utter distaste and even hatred of boring, repetitious pop music that you get exposed to when out in public.

It has its perks :)

I'd argue enjoying the absence of music doesn't qualify as musical anhedonia. "Enjoyment" is a valent measure so "negative enjoyment" is still enjoyment, but negatively impacted. If the absence of music is pleasurable, then you are perceiving and responding to the sound. Otherwise you could argue there exists "silence anhedonia", "cake anhedonia", or that everyone has passive "breathing anhedonia".

I'd need to read through the article, but the Wikipedia link sounds they are conflating "enjoying" and "responding to". Instead, I'm assuming musical anhedonia is referring more to "apathy of sound".

I disagree. For an example I would say that roadworks or traffic or other people’s conversations do not really elicit an emotional response however many people would likely prefer quiet.

I think it is unreasonable to assume that if someone were to say “well I prefer quiet, I guess,” they mean that they have some great emotional response to being in the quiet making them love it. It would be more reasonable to assume that they are basically indifferent and would rather not have the distraction/noise.

> It would be more reasonable to assume that they are basically indifferent and would rather not have the distraction/noise.

We are actually agreeing; however I'm saying that this is a preference. Wikipedia refers to anhedonia as an inability to have pleasure about something. However, valence [1] as a measurement identifies affect dimensions as a polar system - (to quote Wikipedia) "Stress is negative valence and opposite of this is pleasure or happiness." My claim is that "pleasure" can be positive or negative - in that music would cause happiness or stress. Adding genre only furthers my statement that you could claim someone is "R&B anhedonia", "death metal anhedonia", or "classical anhedonia" if anhedonia only refers to positive affects. I, however, am saying anhedonia should be for the positive and negative degrees of an affect.

"No sound" is still sound - its the difference between null and zero. My original post says I'd say anhedonia is more linked to "null", while preferring no sound is more linked to "zero". Holding a positive or negative preference is a measurable attribute and therefore not what I would claim anhedonia; however, being purely apathetic (void) of preference would.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valence_(psychology)

I disagree. I don’t enjoy or listen to music, but it’s still sound. And I like many people I dislike loud sounds, a subset of which is loud music.

I may not fall into this group. But, I suspect these people still have emotional responses to sounds loud enough to be causing dammage.

So, if I neither like, nor dislike music, but simply don't care whether it exists or not, then that is anhedonia?

Medically diagnosed apathy was the term I was thinking of while driving

Musical apathy? This really only applies to music. I derive great pleasure from other artistic works, just not anything auditory. On a perhaps related note, I can recall almost 100% of what I read, but I can recall only about 10% of what I hear, no matter how closely I am paying attention. Someone can tell me something, but it won't make sense. But if I read the exact same words I will have complete comprehension and recall.

I enjoy music but I realizes that the ROI of listening to music is on uplifting my mood. I rather listen to a podcast or NPR now cause I get something to ponder on or form an opinion about on my commute. I rather listen to music socially with people in the car though.

From the field of neuroscience, we know that music affects the brain like a drug of sorts. I believe Steven Pinker said in a book of his that music releases a "cocktail of neurotransmitters."

That's understandable, but he specifically asked what kind of music his coworker likes. If you asked someone what their favorite movie is and they brought up a completely different activity they enjoy to pass the time, like programming, you'd find their response more than odd, no?

My reply to what music do I like is usually... "it depends on my mood". I like many genres so I start listing some of them or ask the other person what they like and steer the conversation in music we have in common.

Listening to silence is different from listening to music? They're both categories of "things you'd want to hear."

If you asked someone what their favorite kind of pizza is and they responded with "chocolate milkshake", you wouldn't be at a loss for words? They're both categories of food.

I think you're missing the point. To me music isn't qualitatively different to any other sound sequence, or lack of sound. "Silence" is something you can listen to, just as much as "running water", "conversational din", or "Beethoven's 5th". Yet because it is structured in the form of certain integer ratio harmonics, 95% of the population treats it as something categorically different. Objectively, that is what's weird here.

If you abstract enough, everything is just the movements of particles; and yet, you can distinguish and categorize certain kinds of such movements, and music is no exception. It's no weirder than any of the categorizations you no doubt assume every day.

If for you, there's no value in that categorization, that's fine, of course.

Correct! Speech, for example, is a category of sound that we've ascribed meaning to by learned convention. It's a purposeful categorical construction. The sounds of the jungle is another -- it's probably good to know it's a tiger when you hear a tiger :)

I say music is "weird" because it doesn't fit into either of these categories of useful natural or constructed forms. People didn't first make music in order to feel good, but because that music made them feel good. They already had an instinctual response. It's more like those odd visual illusions that are due to the freaky things our brains do to correct for visual blind spots in our eyes: a species-specific thing largely without intrinsic survival value. Audio hallucinatory masterbation, essentially.

(Some things probably are evolutionarily driven. Percussion sounds a lot like a moving herd of animals being hunted. Makes sense this would dump adrenaline into your system to make you run faster and harder. But being moved to tears by a violin concerto or lost in ecstasy at a rock concert is categorically something else.)

Anyway, to the point which started this sub-thread if someone asked me "what music do you like?" I'd interpret that question as "what kinds of things do you like to listen to?" since in my experience that's what most people mean by the question. And indeed, I have noise cancelling headphones I don't even bother plugging into my computer because "silence" is what I prefer to listen to when working, thinking, etc. If you get shocked by the answer.. that's the fault of you and your own assumptions. You asked; I answered: I prefer to NOT listen to music, thank you very much.

And turn the radio down, while you're at it.

It's more like saying, "What kind of pizza do is your favorite?" and they respond, "No pizza." which is perhaps not quite the same as saying "I don't like pizza at all."

Maybe he meant smooth jazz, classical, adult contemporary, downtempo type stuff that is quiet music but isn't any genre. People who aren't big into music don't learn all the genre names.

It's possible for someone to enjoy music at times, but not have an instant recollection of the music they like when prompted. A lot of my memory is kind of path dependent - it takes other things to prompt it, not just a simple query.

I know I have listened to a lot of enjoyable music and yet I go for long periods of time not seeking it, not thinking about it, and probably unable to list off things I used to listen to.

For instance, years ago, I was buying any CD with some sort of concerto grosso. These days I am listening to mostly streaming electronic music from the early 2000s. For a while I was listening to FM radio, but not enjoying it much.

I also at times have had a visual imagination connected to music and at other times not.

Anyway, anhedonia/apathy may not be total or one-dimensional, is my point.

It reminds me about John Cage's 4'33''

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4%E2%80%B233%E2%80%B3

- https://youtu.be/JTEFKFiXSx4

An anecdote: when my semiotics professor talked about this composition for the first time, I was recording the lecture, and when colleagues asked for a copy, I sent them only the pauses between the sentences. When art meets sarcasm, it spreads really fast.

I hate when people ask me that! Haha! I like some music, sure, but by and large it doesn't come into my life. I don't go to concerts (don't see the point and when I have, have not enjoyed them anywhere near as much as others who came with me), I don't have spotify, I couldn't tell you the last time I listened to an album, in the car I prefer talk radio to be on.

I wouldn't say I'm fully unable to appreciate music. But... I dunno, I can get by without.

I'm in between. I do get enjoyment from music, but don't listen to it except when driving, which I didn't do for the six years before last week. I don't actively seek it out or wear headphones for walking/working/exercising.

I think his response was low effort as much as the question. Might have been expecting a different conversation and defaulted to the lowest common denominator.

There's also a small percentage of people (maybe <10%) who experience musical frisson [1][2]. I'm one of them. It's a related, but entirely different phenomenon to ASMR.

In some people who experience it, it can be an absolutely overwhelming experience -- like strapping your brain to wings made out of lightning bolts.

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisson

2 - http://theconversation.com/why-do-only-some-people-get-skin-...

Uh, that second link says studies have reported that from 55% to 86% of people can experience it.

Interesting to know what it's called, thanks. I have a few pieces of music that trigger this for me, up to shivers and tears in the eyes (though not at overwhelming/lightning-bolt levels.)

On the other hand, I'm utterly unresponsive to poetry.

If it makes you feel better, I've never personally run into somebody in real life who's ever admitted to this phenomenon. I think it must be rare enough, and not really spoken of by people who have it.

Childhood was very difficult, the few times I tried to explain it to me parents they thought I just found music very beautiful. It's very hard possessing something so great and never connecting with another person who can also experience it. It's like having a completely different sensory organ and describing what colors are to people who are blind from birth.

The internet has definitely helped me realize we're not alone with this thing!

(I also don't get much out of poetry and pretty much ignore lyrics in music)

Is it the feeling of unexplainable unbridled pleasure ?

I am reluctant to call it similar to an orgasm , because of the sexual connotations. While my body does not respond in a way similar to an orgasm, the "dopamine rush" (I am being liberal with the term) I get when listening to certain music is very similar.

I often have raised hair, tears in my eyes and a general lightheadedness and the biggest grin after such a moment.

First time I put it that way. Hoping it doesn't sound too creepy.

Not at all, that's the feeling exactly.

I get this, sometimes much stronger than others, even for the same music. I donate platelets at the Red Cross which takes a couple hours, so they provide DVD players and a selection of movies to choose from while you are hooked up to the apheresis machine.

I found they had a DVD of Yes' Symphonic tour from around 2001, and I felt like a real idiot because my eyes were seriously watering up during a lot of that concert. It's not crying, although it may look the same.

How does this compare to an orgasm?

I get this too. I call it eargasm and have a folder full of music files that have triggered it. Anytime I hear a new one I save it in my eargasm playlist.

It's a different kind of experience, but definitely clustered in the "feelings of intense pleasure" cluster. I'd say that musical frisson is much more of an emotionally driven feeling that encompasses a much larger part of the body. The intensity ranges all over the place from a small feeling of "nice!" to intense, almost physically disabling, feelings of absolute bliss that have left me weeping like I'd just experienced an overwhelming introduction to an infinite god. But most of the time it happens it's just a crawling feeling of pleasure waves along the upper back, shoulders, back of the neck and arms and a general feeling of happiness and joy.

In my case, there's sometimes feelings of "consciousness expansion", and "universal connection", similar to stories I've read from among various drug users or people who've experienced intense religious experiences -- at times I've felt intense focus, explosive creativity, and an "overclocked" sensation like my brain had been turned up to a faster performance ratio -- often for those moments of he frisson I can be intensely productive in creative pursuits. But it falls away as the frisson dissipates. I do not know if this is universal or not, there's pitifully little understanding of this phenomenon and sharing of information.

It's a very personal feeling, I don't know that I could ever do it with other people around, and it's tied to very specific passages of music that seem unique to the frissoner. As you can guess it's very addictive, and when I was younger I would spend hours auditioning albums looking for "frissonable" moments I would play over and over again for hours -- usually just a few seconds of some passage that would trigger it. However, pursuing this seems to "use-up" the feeling and after a while the passage would lose its triggering power.

If the universe was about to end, and I was allowed to have one final pleasurable experience replayed, selected from any orgasm of frisson I've ever had, I'd definitely pick from among my most intense frissons.

Thanks for the thoughtful comment! I experienced a lesser version of this phenomenon relistening to some music I hadn't heard since undergrad with a good friend that passed away. It was like I was transported back to that time and had goosebumps cascading my entire body. It only happens when I haven't heard a track in a while and I can't force it. Music is truly a human experience.

Do you mind sharing what kind of music triggers this in you? The closest to this for me has been late 60's psychedelic music.

Yeah sure, it's a huge range of things that are paradoxically highly specific to a few moments.

Certain classical moments are pretty reliable.

For example, the first few seconds of the Paganini variation here at around 23:00 minutes. https://youtu.be/c33q87s03h4?t=1375 except not this recording. I used to have a recording of it I inherited from my great grandfather and it was that specific recording that used to send me off.

The opening of Beethoven's 7th - 2nd movement (right until the main theme changes up until about 2:30) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgHxmAsINDk

Non-classical:

The main theme of this a about 1:07 https://youtu.be/YQJSnMvIKM4?t=68

Certain long notes in this song (kind of hard to explain, but certain notes she holds in sustenato): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FrWoVC6SZ8&list=PL91bz63WYu...

This William Ackerman song has some great passages https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jles3aPfeI

Some moments in this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iV9Ow4kOA4E

Asucultation by the Antidote used to be a favorite (it doesn't work anymore :() https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWs2R6W5vCc

Many of the pieces of Solar Fields' Movements album are fantastic but especially this song https://youtu.be/yQjove0nzss?t=1096

All I Need by Radiohead, especially the main bridge. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LlfGrP4n6E

Mree's cover of Blood, something with her phrasing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMe_5O0mYj0

Several pieces by Steve Reich seem to hack the phenomenon for me and run just underneath the trigger: Six Pianos, Music for 18 Musicians, etc.

It can also depend on the context, some of the passages won't "work" without other surrounding song context...like the contrast of the triggering passages and the non-triggering is what sort of does it.

There's actually an entire subreddit dedicated to this, but I've not found much in other people's music that kicks it off. https://www.reddit.com/r/frisson

It's an entirely different feeling of liking music or finding it pleasurable, for which I believe I'm fairly conventional.

Thank you very much! I shall investigate these!

It's maybe a little like the aftershocks of one, or someone nibbling on your ear / nipple. It's an all-over skin tingle, felt especially on the arms and scalp, and a transcendental emotional feeling.

> and a transcendental emotional feeling

Yeah, the feelings along those lines are really really powerful...and slippery, they slide away as the frisson goes away. :(

Whoa! I had no idea this was a thing! I'd always thought it was just some weird thing about me. I don't really get a whole lot of pleasure out of music, or get moved by music much. I almost never listen to music. When I do listen, it's usually to drown out external noise or help me focus, but in that case I usually just listen to the same song on a loop.

I'm really curious about this. Have you ever fiddled around, learnt or messed about with any musical instrument, and if so, how did you feel?

I recall that when I was learning my first instrument, and started learning a lot of songs, a lot of the other instruments didn't really make sense. For instance, if I was learning a guitar part from a rock song, the bass/drums/keys sort of sounded like a background mix that I couldn't identify into their individual instruments/parts.

I played the viola and sang in chorus in middle school. I really enjoyed both--especially the viola--but I think my enjoyment was more of the mechanics of it rather than the actual music we were making. I also really enjoyed playing Guitar Hero in college in the same way.

I've thought about taking up the guitar or piano since then, but haven't ever gotten around to it.

You sound like me, I get stuff done in dead silence. Music actually distracts me, playing songs in same loop helps out though. I still like practicing singing in the car though on the way to work, and guitar hero is fun to me too. Looking to learn to play the ukelele. I have like almost no musical intelligence, I can't remember song lyrics very well at all

> Looking to learn to play the ukelele

Funny you should say that - I've been slowly trying to learn guitar for a couple of months now. I picked up a ukulele last week on a whim and can't seem to put it down! It's simpler than a guitar, but there's still so much to learn: the chords themselves, of course, but also how chords are created and how that relates to the way the instrument is strung; strums/rhythm; fingerpicking; the way different types of strings change the character of the sound... it just goes on and on.

I'm not expert, but contact me if you want to chat sometime. My username is my real name, which is also my homepage's domain ( plus '.com') and my username on every social media service I use.

I'm down for that :)

I still have a long ways to go, I can barely play basic chords properly

It’s very normal and maybe universal for music to be distracting. The only difference is some people don’t realize it.

Ditto on finding most music distracting! Also, I often sing nonsense songs when I'm doing stuff around the house.

You're not alone. I'm just glad I now know the name for my "condition" (which I sincerely hope there is no cure for).

Just curious why you explicitly "hope there is no cure"? Seems like an odd wish. If music has little to no effect on you now, why would you even care? Furthermore if a "cure" did exist, what would be the downside of trying it?

From what I can see, there is no upside to enjoying music. People spend so much time and money (attending concerts, paying for streaming services, buying music, buying instruments, practicing instruments, listening to the music, etc.) that I'm able to happily use elsewhere. If I enjoyed music I might want to start using my time and money for those things.

> If I enjoyed music I might want to start using my time and money for those things.

If you were enjoying it then how would it differ from any of the other variety of things you already enjoy that you spend money on?

Honestly, I can't tell if the poster is just trying to live up to his/her username or not. The comments make little sense.

I like who I am, and am perfectly happy the way I am. If you step back and look at it, letting vibrations in the air control your emotional state is kinda a scary proposition, no?

> If you step back and look at it, letting vibrations in the air control your emotional state is kinda a scary proposition, no?

How is that different than letting reflections of light off of objects control your emotional state? Do you also have no emotional reaction to art, or even as simple as preferring a certain color?

I'm not them, and don't find that scary at all (speech certainly affects my emotional state!) but I don't have any color preference, or feel like I have anywhere near the emotional reaction to art that other people do.

Are you suggesting visuals of any kind do not create an emotional reaction for you? I'm not sure what the point of your comment is otherwise.

Would painting a room bright pink be no different to you than painting it black? Does looking at roadkill or a corpse feel absolutely no different to you than viewing something most would consider calming like a sunset, flowers or someone who you consider to be beautiful? If you do feel different, then yes, light reflecting off of objects does create an emotional reaction to you.

No, it's great, it's like having a cheap, legal, safe drug that can be used as a downer or upper, and more.

Me too.

And by the way, since HN talked about Anki a few days ago [0], this is a nice little fact which I just entered into my database. Copy&pasted the first line of the Wikipedia article and used the cloze mechanism the ask for the term and its definition. Now I will never forget about musical anhedonia anymore.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17846356

This is fascinating! Can any of you with musical anhedonia watch either of these songs and explain how you feel?

https://youtu.be/SS0NHlWgi5w?t=3m22s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hi5A9OCAyIk

I watched them. Honestly I got nothing out of them. It's just noise. I could see that the guy with black hair on the left in the first video was really getting into it, I just don't know what he was getting out of it.

In the second one, I felt pleasure looking at the pretty girls, but their singing did nothing for me.

The first one is interesting - if I heard it on the radio I wouldn't think twice about it, but seeing a video is different. Watching the guy play the guitar gives me a sense of how difficult it must be to play - which means I appreciate the music because I appreciate the technical skill of the person playing it.

The second one does nothing for me - it's just dull.

Can you explain how you feel when you listen to those songs?

Sure! When I see Derek Truck play guitar in that first video, I feel about his playing how BB King says he feels, like this was one of the best things I've ever heard.

The second one has a bit of a story behind it; the girls on stage are singing their hit song they wrote about Emmylou Harris, who is a famous singer herself and is in the audience. They talk about how she inspired them to sing so it's cool they have the opportunity to play for her. The song is very sorrowful sounding but pleasant and beautifully sung so it brings tears to my eyes.

> I feel about his playing how BB King says he feels, like this was one of the best things I've ever heard.

Thanks for this, it's very interesting. I've realised that I don't really rank music in that way - I don't have favourite songs, in the same way as I have favourite books, movies etc.

> The second one has a bit of a story behind it; the girls on stage are singing their hit song they wrote about Emmylou Harris, who is a famous singer herself and is in the audience. They talk about how she inspired them to sing so it's cool they have the opportunity to play for her.

The story is cool, you're right. I understand how it would be emotional to those involved, but I found the description of the story conveyed the emotions involved more than the singing did.

> The song is very sorrowful sounding but pleasant and beautifully sung so it brings tears to my eyes.

It's well sung, but I don't find it technically impressive like the guitar playing. Perhaps because, day-to-day, we are exposed to many good vocalists but very few guitar solos?

Looked a minute into the first one. Did not recognize the song but since I'm not into music, I don't know that much.

I find myself distracted by the body language of the guy on the left (and later the one to the right). It is more interesting to me to watch how people behave than to listen to the music.

Nice selection of tunes btw, at least they resonated an emotional response with me, but I love music.

Emotionally? Nothing really. It's just someone playing music, which doesn't really do anything for me. I appreciate that the person in the first video is doing some neat things with a guitar though. It looks & sounds neat.

Felt probably the same as you would feel if I asked you to watch a youtube clip of paint drying to the din of a noisy train station or other public place.

Really it was just that, noise.

I have a question for musical anhedonics:

Do you find it harder to enjoy movies?

Typically the score does so much _work_ in the name of emotional manipulation, that I wonder if it would make movies less enjoyable.

More specifically I wonder if you would like certain movies (Spielberg) less and other movies (Er, Um. Who doesn't use scores that much?) more?

How would I know if it is harder for me to enjoy movies than for somebody else?

I don't like "music movies" such as High Fidelity, 8 Mile, School of Rock, Blues Brothers. They are just average comedy/drama flicks for me. Maybe normal people like them more?

For a while if someone asked me what music I like, I replied film music. I do enjoy film music but maybe just because the music makes me remember the movie?

I'm definitely affected by the music. Maybe music can still emphasize emotions for a musical anhedonic and it just that music in itself does not do much?

Interesting. I also have mostly soundtracks in my playlists, for when I feel like listening to music at all (usually to drown out distractions). It's all soundtracks of things I've watched and enjoyed, and puts me in the mood of the memory of the movie or TV show its from. The music itself doesn't do very much at all for me directly.

This mirrors my own experience exactly. I too listen to a lot of soundtracks, from movies or from video games that I have enjoyed. Although music doesn't provoke an emotional response on its own, it has an incredible ability to being back emotional memories.

For a similar reason, when choosing music to listen to, I generally listen to the same songs again and again - those which have a connection to my past. It is very hard to feel anything about a new piece of music.

This means that I may regularly listen to one track by a particular artist, but have no interest in any of their other songs. I don't even like listening to remixed or live versions of songs that I enjoy - they are sufficiently different that they do not evoke any memories and hence are uninteresting to me.

How would I know? I don't have an emotional response to music and never have, so what would I compare it to?

You know, I also don't dream. I wonder if there is a name for never dreaming and if there is any link between not dreaming and not having an emotional response to music.

> Do you find it harder to enjoy movies?

Quite possibly. I do enjoy watching a movie on occasion, but there are many other things I would rather do with my time. It turns out that compared to most people, I don't watch many movies - I've seen well under 100 of the "IMDb Top 1000 Movies of All Time" [1].

I've never considered this to be related to music, but I guess it could be.

[1] https://www.listchallenges.com/top-1000-greatest-movies-of-a...

I dunno, I think soundtracks to movies are one of the only places where I ever get any sort of emotional response from music, and it's always because I associate some sequence of sounds in the piece with something that's happening in the film then. It doesn't feel like appreciating the music so much as just being reminded of the part of the movie that happened around that time. Sort of like an aural mile marker.

Whenever aphantasia (absence of visual mental imagery) or musical anhedonia (http://www.pnas.org/content/113/46/E7337) come up on HN, I can count on someone to be surprised to discover that that's what they are and that when other people talked about "seeing things in their mind's eye" or being emotionally moved by a song it wasn't just another idiom or metaphor but quite literal. :)

There's actually quite a lot of this: it takes some people a surprisingly long time to realize that they can't smell things the way everyone else can ('anosmia'), or that they don't see the same colors.

I sometimes wonder what people with pain asymbolia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain_asymbolia) or aboulia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aboulia) make of the rest of us talking abut pain and wanting things.

Some links: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/baTWMegR42PAsH9qJ/generalizi... http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/17/what-universal-human-ex... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11554894 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10148792

Also, while I'm at it: when your nose is stuffy but which nostril it is seems to cycle over the course of the day, you're not imagining it and that's called the 'nasal dilation cycle' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasal_cycle ; those things you see crossing your vision are also real and part of your eye fluid, called 'floaters' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floater ; and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-eye_hallucination is probably self-explanatory.

> Whenever aphantasia (absence of visual mental imagery) or musical anhedonia (http://www.pnas.org/content/113/46/E7337) come up on HN, I can count on someone to be surprised to discover that that's what they are and that when other people talked about "seeing things in their mind's eye" or being emotionally moved by a song it wasn't just another idiom or metaphor but quite literal. :)

That's exactly what's happening to me right now! I always just kind of assumed people were just using overly flowery speech to describe music! I remember one time in high school a kid who was way into music got really mad at me when I said I didn't really like music much. He said that I didn't seem much more than a sack of meat if I couldn't enjoy music.

> it takes some people a surprisingly long time to realize that they can't smell things the way everyone else can ('anosmia'), or that they don't see the same colors.

I've known I had a color vision deficiency since I was really young, but it isn't very strong so I don't run into trouble much. I only really got a strong example (outside of a purpose-built color vision test type thing) recently while playing Dwarf Fortress. Dwarf Fortress has a world map which represents volcanos as little red "^" marks. I was generating worlds repeatedly looking for a volcano near some grasslands. I was getting frustrated because I'd look at a map and wouldn't see anything. But after staring at the grassy areas for a while, I'd slowly start to see them. There were usually quite a few volcanos actually, it just was hard for me to find them. I was kind of confused as to why I wasn't seeing them easily before it hit me that the grassland is shown as green characters.

I tried showing a map to my sibling and my partner, both of whom have normal color vision. They both found all the volcanos immediately with no issues. It was wild!

Fortunately, Dwarf Fortress lets you customize all the colors used by the game. I should be able to make a higher contrast color palette for myself in the future.

> I always just kind of assumed people were just using overly flowery speech to describe music!

Yes! I realised this a few years ago. When people say "that's a sad song", they really mean that the song makes them sad in and of itself.

Whereas, for me, the only way a song can make me sad is if it brings back sad memories - i.e. if I had previously heard the same song on a sad occasion.

Incidentally, one thing I'd like to know about musical anhedonia, which perhaps all the anhedonics here can try out, is whether psychedelics affect it. They are famous for heightening the emotional response to music; do they work at all on anhedonics, and if so, does it bring them up to the normal level? Surely some have tried it a few times, since music is a common accompaniment on trips.

This is me. I can listen to and appreciate music in the same way regular people can learn to appreciate art or fine wine. But I usually prefer listening to silence, and really don't get why people on the whole are so obsessed with music. I've been to a concert exactly once, enough to know it's really not my thing.

Interestingly I'm also clinically tone-deaf, meaning that I'm utterly unable to tell what note is played or make anything resembling song with my voice. Don't invite me to karaoke. I cannot tell that the pitch of my voice doesn't match the song accompanying it.

But don't feel any pity: you guys are the weird ones :P

I absolutely love music as well, I can't imagine living without it, and I generally go to 4-5 concerts every month.

The idea that something I find so pleasurable does absolutely nothing to some people is really interesting to me.

(I think) I'm anhedonic and it's interesting to me that you can get pleasure out of just the music. To me, it's nice to have things on in the background, or to watch people do something they love. Sometimes, when the lyrics of a song are good and the setting is right (like when driving) that's good too. Like, you can sway the car to the beat, and that's fun. But otherwise, I dunno, there really isn't anything there for me, it's the same as a washing machine, or a desk fan, or the birds singing. I've twiddled with a guitar before, and getting the chords right is pretty neat, but more from a 'look, I did a thing' sorta way. I think I've felt the hedonia before, but only a handful of times, and only in extreme environmental/psychological settings.

If it helps, I REALLY like to dance and have alright rhythm, but I like the dancing not the music. Dancing without music is just as enjoyable to me, personally, but I understand that music hides a lot of the sounds my body makes and that makes it better. Something about the swaying is fun to me: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/01/opinion/slomo.html

I don't know exactly why it is pleasurable, but to me it's sometimes about the sound itself. I just find some sounds pleasing, like the vibration of a cello string being bowed or a dirty electric guitar riff with tons of distortion. Very specifically I love the distortion produced by the Boss HM-2 pedal, which a lot of my favorite metal bands use. Perhaps it's something about the "texture" of certain sounds that I find very appealing.

It's not just the sound itself though, there's also something about a good riff or a well-written chorus. I don't get music that's too free-form, like improvisational jazz or stuff with way too many tempo changes. There has got to be a groove, a rhythm, a flow, a drive and a connection between the instruments, so they're playing together, to create a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

There is obviously also something to be said for emotional connections to specific songs or passages. As an example just off the top of my head, I read The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck as they were published when I was 7-9 years old, they were part of my formative years, as you might say.

So when I listen to Tuomas Holopainen's 2014 concept album Music Inspired by the Life and Times of Scrooge, it just touches something in me, I get all emotional and well up, especially at this song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWwSVOo5K_k

I obviously don't expect other people to have quite the same reaction, but to me, aside from being a hauntingly beautiful piece of music, it also tugs deeply at my childhood nostalgia, and elevates the music to a whole new level for me.

There are also people who can't concentrate while listening to music.

Neither can I but that's because I get very easily overwhelmed by music.

Finally, I have a name for it! If all of music simply disappeared right this second and there was never again a melody, song, etc. forever more, I wouldn't miss it for one second. I understand music evokes something in other people, I just don't understand why or how or what that "enjoyment" consists of. It does absolutely nothing for me. I've tried just about every genre of music that I've been aware of, but it's all just noise.

Interesting I was wondering why there is "ear candy" that would catch me, even though I did not understand most of the song meaning or background or history. And I was caught by the ear candies of different genres except folk. Folk would not catch me much. Most of the 1 hit song of some band or singer would catch me. (lll￢ω￢)

> As someone who gets a significant amount of his daily joy from listening to music...

I, in turn, find this somewhat astonishing. Not only is it so different from my own experience, it's difficult to understand.

When you're enjoying a piece of music, you can at least imagine what it would be like not to feel anything. For me, though, when I see people enjoying music, it's so confusing. What am I "supposed" to be feeling?

You really ought to try acid sometime.

Music is a form of communication. What I experience in certain pieces of music is a connection with a particular set or category of feelings that verbal language is simply unable to describe with an equivalent clarity and it's a sort of empathy shared with the composer.

edit: Can you guess what people might feel from this piece? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XWKq_kg2Ws

> Can you guess what people might feel from this piece? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XWKq_kg2Ws

That's a difficult one. It didn't make me feel anything, so I really do have to guess what other people might feel.

For example, I have to think about occasions on which similar pieces of music are generally used. A solo piano like this piece is often sad, but on the other hand, this piece has a higher tempo than most sad songs.

the beat!

I think I enjoy music, but I've never seemed as interested in it as other people are. I usually find a few things that match a mood and listen to it on repeat. I never listen to music just for fun, and effectively never go to concerts.

I'm also convinced that tone deafness is a spectrum, not a binary thing, and that a lot of people, perhaps most are at least a little bit tone deaf. Or it's possible that tone deafness is a default trait that can only be changed by being exposed to music.

The inevitable trend in pop music to becoming simpler and simpler and more homogenized to me is a symptom of the de-evolution of people's taste in music (on average) because they are not exposed to more sophisticated music, so they never develop a taste for it.

I think it's probably similar to how spelling and grammar seem to get worse every year, corresponding with the decline of reading actual books. But that may be just because I suffer from terminal Grammar Naziism and my sensitivity to it increases overtime.