music in my head, humming

[gusl]

I'm constantly playing music in my head, mostly Bluegrass, Celtic or other happy catchy tunes. Often, I'll hum it.

This was recently brought to my attention by my housemate's girlfriend, who said it was keeping her up (she must be more sensitive than me!). I was completely unaware of my vocalization, and didn't imagine that hear it could bother anyone (I'm aware that I do it, but not when I'm doing it). Now I have to consciously monitor myself.

I think this is more pronounced in the early mornings and at night. Sometimes I wake up singing... maybe it's related to feeling lazy. Or is it a way of distracting myself from the real world?
It is especially common when I'm thinking, programming (although not too hard).
Repetitive (rhythmic?) things, like cycling, put me in the mood for the music to start playing in my head.
Maybe this music is what keeps my attention inside my head. But why would I try to focus my attention inside my head?

I also think this is strongly correlated to jiggling my legs restlessly. But if I'm watching TV, I won't hum or hear music.

What sucks is when you hate the tune, but it's stuck playing in your head. But this is not often the case.

When does "hearing music" become hallucination?

Comments

[jonathankaplan.livejournal.com]

I used to catch myself humming.
Most of the time that was while I was in a trading pit waiting for trading to happen, some of the time it was after biking (my main exercise at the time), occasionally it happened from some lyrical meaning connection.
In the pit humming, I was usually waiting in a state of concentrated awareness, waiting and listening/watching for something to happen. Traders around me have commented on this subconscious humming, sometimes I caught it myself. It appears I only did it while waiting for trading, not WHILE trading. The distinction is significant to me cause the trading itself would probably have been too intense to allow subconscious actions like this. Furthermore, while actually trading I was already vocalizing. While waiting to trade I'd be standing there quietly, focused.
During biking I would be listening to pump-up music, then later on in the day I could find myself quietly humming one of the tunes I'd been listening to earlier. Rarely would I actually be vocalizing when this happened, though.
And sometimes I'd notice I was humming/singing some lyrics over and over, those lyrics would have some relevance to recent actions in my life.

I don't really know what any of that means, but thanks for talking about it, I've wondered also. That wondering led me to this paper, which speaks to some of this.
Look at the bottom of page 567 (pg.18/26 of the .pdf), Background Mental Representations, for immediate relevance.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

Another theory is that I hum fast music in order to keep my mind going fast.

In my other mode of existence I'm exploratory, going with the wind... but even then, there's music in my head, I think... it's just not as fast, e.g. waltz.

I should take snapshots of my mind at random times throughout the day, documenting what I'm doing (waiting, thinking, planning, acting), what my current goal is and how far from it I am. Like this
I could use the LJ mood & music options to document it too.
It seems like productivity.

One can also use such a method to survey what kind one's inner voice tends to say (not sing).

Since I spend 80% of most days in front of my PC, it shouldn't be hard to find software to alert me at random times.