I hear music

I wasn’t sure where to put this topic.

While I have hearing loss in both ears, and wear hearing aids, my left ear loss is much worse than my right ear loss.

I hear music in my left ear; almost all the time. With hearing aid in, and with it out. Monks chanting. Symphony. 4 piece Jazz band. Marching bands. Big Band Sound bands. Nothing with words, no vocals other than the monks intoning. Soaring violins. Wailing saxophone. Trumpets. Drum beats. This has been going on for months.

At first I thought the sound was coming from the house behind mine. Eventually I realized, all this glorious music is in my head! How I wish I knew how to transcribe it; these are NOT songs I know, not songs I have heard before. If I had any idea how to transcribe these beautiful tunes, I could be rich!

Thoughts?

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This thread may fit for your topic.

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I’m wondering if your brain is working to make sense of the tinnitus sounds. That’s fascinating!

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Cool, thanks, I enjoyed going through that thread from 2023. “Grandpaw” seemed to have heard things most similar to what I hear. I guess the good news is 1. my mood doesn’t seem impacted or perhaps because I hear upbeat stuff, my mood is not impacted, and 2. in time (a year?) it goes away.

I do appreciate the link, nice to know I am not the only person experiencing this. I put off even posting for months as I didn’t want to sound crazy.

Finally, former musician here, and now all music sounds off key so I don’t enjoy it any longer. But these sounds in my left ear are spot on! So I am enjoying them except when trying to get some sleep.

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@birdcountry99 @firenzel @Freedom

I think you’re right. My esteemed ENT told me that tinnitus is the brain trying to make sense of the sounds you can’t hear anymore. And he said that hearing aids would help with tinnitus.

Granted there are probably lots of people—and people on this forum that still have tinnitus, and some to a painful degree. I think he meant that it would help, but not necessarily make it go away. Probably it’s worse when you go to bed, or in the quiet of the night, if we don’t have our aids on.

@firenzel That is good that it’s been replaced with snippets of songs. But for a former musician, it must be hard to not be able to hear music anymore. I know how hard this would be for my husband, who’s a musician, and for me as a former dancer, who lives for music and dance.

But I absolutely hear music in my head, and always have, but I don’t think it’s from tinnitus, it’s because I love it and know it so much.

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It’s a recognised condition. My FiL used to suffer from it.

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Wow that is incredible. I don’t have that, but I do have about 8 or so notes of tinitus in each ear now and the patterns they make are really weird. sometimes I wake up and genuinely think I’m on the starship enterprise because I hear a low rumbling like the engines of a big spaceship in my head. if I just sit there it honestly feels like I’m inside some giant machine.

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That is exactly my scene! 24x7 tinnitus, but luckily it’s a flat tone in both ears. Only when the weather (or pressure) changes do I get some lively tunes like: “BONG! BONG! BONG-BONG-BONG-BONG!” So at least I can inform my hubs that “Rain’s comin’!”

During the day, with aids IN, I’m barely even aware of the tinnitus. Right now, my right ear’s flat tone is a bit noticeable … and dontchaknow, rain IS coming here by tomorrow.

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@Weirb @Freedom @firenzel @Xonic83 @1Bluejay

Thank you, @Weirb for posting that article. Yes, it is a known phenomenon.

I just remembered that, yes, I have had that a lot in the past when I was in bed at night, and would hear either the old building’s sounds, or sounds from outside that I couldn’t decipher, and it would turn into internal music. I had forgotten, because it hasn’t happened in quite a while. It was also made worse by meds that I had to take for pain and sleep.

Now, having HAs, it has gone away, except, of course, I don’t wear them to bed, so that issue could still happen. But the fact that I don’t have undecipherable sounds so much of the time helps a lot.

We have a friend who is now 90, who was hearing military marching music in his head, despite never having been in the military. He has a lot of hearing loss, so that is the cause.

They are trying to get HAs for him, but it’s difficult because he is not mobile on his own, and it would be in a wheel chair, which he doesn’t use in his assisted living place.

Plus, I don’t think that he could adequately manipulate the HAs and the programs, changing the sound levels, etc. He would get really aggravated with all of that. Difficult. Aging is hard!

A number of years ago, I was talking to him, and noticed that he frequently didn’t know that I had said something. I tried to talk to him about hearing loss and aids, but it just didn’t enter. Besides not hearing, I think he just wasn’t ready to hear it and deal with it.

Ah, my husband said he gave up on the HAs. He said, I don’t need HAs! I think he meant, it’s too much to deal with at his age. Sigh.

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