Music in Your Head

Something that has always amazed me is how a musical hook repeats in your mind. What is the trigger that catches it and causes the repeat, i.e. why can't we get some music out of our head? The current musical pinball bouncing around in my head is an obscure instrumental surf rock piece entitled, "Tranquilizer" by The Lively Ones.

The bit that makes the whole even more interesting to me is what I read in a Brian Wilson interview. Mr. Wilson said all he did was write down the music playing in his head. Django Reinhardt (see earlier post) could neither read nor write musical notation. When he composed a tune, he had to have someone else write it down for him. I guess that's the difference between them and me, I hear two or three measure bits and they had whole compositions pour out of them. Mine are copies of what I've heard and theirs were new and original. Easy for them, difficult for me. Still I do things such as public speaking (which comes naturally for me) for which I have had people speak to me after a presentation marveling at what I've done and tell me under no circumstances could they even get up in front of their family at Thanksgiving and tell everyone that dinner was ready. In the words of Sly Stone, "Everybody is a star" in their own way.