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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

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.

throwaway8879 8y ago
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.
- rimunroe 8y ago
  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.
  - Kagerjay 8y ago
    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
    - rimunroe 8y ago
      Ditto on finding most music distracting! Also, I often sing nonsense songs when I'm doing stuff around the house.
    - LyndsySimon 8y ago
      > 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.
      - Kagerjay 8y ago
        I'm down for that :) I still have a long ways to go, I can barely play basic chords properly
    - akvadrako 8y ago
      It’s very normal and maybe universal for music to be distracting. The only difference is some people don’t realize it.
qznc 8y ago
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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17846356
- drblast 8y ago
  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://youtu.be/SS0NHlWgi5w?t=3m22s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hi5A9OCAyIk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hi5A9OCAyIk
  - irrational 8y ago
    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.
  - qznc 8y ago
    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.
  - jrowley 8y ago
    Nice selection of tunes btw, at least they resonated an emotional response with me, but I love music.
  - firdak 8y ago
    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?
irrational 8y ago
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).
- moyya 8y ago
  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?
  - irrational 8y ago
    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.
    - root_axis 8y ago
      > 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?
      - moyya 8y ago
        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.
  - garmaine 8y ago
    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?
gwern 8y ago
Whenever aphantasia (absence of visual mental imagery) or musical anhedonia (http://www.pnas.org/content/113/46/E7337 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain_asymbolia) or aboulia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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/generalizing-from-one-example https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/baTWMegR42PAsH9qJ/generalizi... http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/17/what-universal-human-experiences-are-you-missing-without-realizing-it/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/17/what-universal-human-ex... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11554894 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11554894 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10148792 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 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floater ; and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-eye_hallucination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-eye_hallucination is probably self-explanatory.
- rimunroe 8y ago
  > Whenever aphantasia (absence of visual mental imagery) or musical anhedonia (http://www.pnas.org/content/113/46/E7337 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.

throwaway8879 8y ago

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.

rimunroe 8y ago
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.
- Kagerjay 8y ago
  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
  - rimunroe 8y ago
    Ditto on finding most music distracting! Also, I often sing nonsense songs when I'm doing stuff around the house.
  - LyndsySimon 8y ago
    > 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.
    - Kagerjay 8y ago
      I'm down for that :) I still have a long ways to go, I can barely play basic chords properly
  - akvadrako 8y ago
    It’s very normal and maybe universal for music to be distracting. The only difference is some people don’t realize it.

qznc 8y ago

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

drblast 8y ago
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://youtu.be/SS0NHlWgi5w?t=3m22s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hi5A9OCAyIk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hi5A9OCAyIk
- irrational 8y ago
  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.
- qznc 8y ago
  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.
- jrowley 8y ago
  Nice selection of tunes btw, at least they resonated an emotional response with me, but I love music.
- firdak 8y ago
  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?

irrational 8y ago

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).

moyya 8y ago
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?
- irrational 8y ago
  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.
  - root_axis 8y ago
    > 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?
    - moyya 8y ago
      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.
- garmaine 8y ago
  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?

gwern 8y ago

Whenever aphantasia (absence of visual mental imagery) or musical anhedonia (http://www.pnas.org/content/113/46/E7337 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain_asymbolia) or aboulia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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/generalizing-from-one-example https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/baTWMegR42PAsH9qJ/generalizi... http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/17/what-universal-human-experiences-are-you-missing-without-realizing-it/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/17/what-universal-human-ex... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11554894 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11554894 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10148792 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 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floater ; and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-eye_hallucination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-eye_hallucination is probably self-explanatory.

rimunroe 8y ago
> Whenever aphantasia (absence of visual mental imagery) or musical anhedonia (http://www.pnas.org/content/113/46/E7337 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.