Do We All Hear Music the Same Way? (The Surprising Science)

[@dabanjo]

Music instructor for over 3 decades, and I can tell you that no one hears anything the same. It goes beyond frequency specturm, loudness, taste, preference, etc. It comes from the core of our being. The way we think. After years of experience, I can predict the strengths and weaknesses of a student based solely on how they describe music and what they are hearing. Many people never can understand frequency, loudness, pick out certain instruments, etc. Others can hear things I cannot without intense scrutiny.

[@deshaebeasley]

Five topics to fix society via discussion: -Anti-natalism vs Natalism -The 3 basic needs/prenatal needs Three things necessary for human evolution that are provided while in the womb which are; food, shelter and medical care. -Platinum rule Do whatever makes one happier unless it interferes with another persons ability to do the same. -MBTI (research yours and connect with others) -Art (pick one and get better at it!)

[@FreakingOutWithBillyHume]

Wow! That's cool!

[@odmusicman]

Amen, me too

[@johannalvarsson9299]

Musicologist here. 1. As far as I am informed, the only transcultural constant in the perception of music is: higher amounts of events relative to time (e.g. something like notes or sounds per second) equals higher exitement and vice versa. It is a pretty hot topic in musicology, specifically the question how people that come from a non-polyphonic background percieve polyphonic music. 2. Ear training, both for pitch and sound, requires permanent intense training over years to come to fruition. Pitch and sound are also located in (very) different parts of your brain, so they need to be practiced individualy. I know noone that could hear compression - unless it was a direct AB comparison - until they used a compressor themselves. And so on. To put it simply, since I do not know what persons do on their own, I don`t really know if they are generally unable to learn given skill, or if they practice in a way that is maybe even counterproductive, or if they maybe just not practice at all. I know someone that I think is beat deaf, but I put that "diagnosis" on them (just in my head ofc) after 10 years of both of us trying hard to solve the problem. 3. I do think that a subject often overlooked when talking about the difference in how people hear music is actually association, and that is a different layer of experience to just hear pitch or rhythm etc. Some examples: When I hear pan flutes, the first thing I see in my head is an obscure videogame from the 90s, because they used, well, the 16bit imitation of a panflute in the soundtrack, and that was my first time hearing this sound. Then, I know a lot of people that can very well understand the "emotional" language of 18th century music, yet the way they hear it is heavily influenced by the quite widespread narrative of "classical" music being essentially music for pretentious snobs. So they hear, let`s say, a mozart piece and undestand it as happy, yet because of said associations, that happiness is coded as "fake" or even "stupid". So, this associative layer of musical experience is really able to heavily alter more "objective" things like you mentioned, aka pitch, timbre etc. I would like to work on that research in the future. Thanks for reading, have a very nice day!

[@theduppykillah]

My guitar player hears tracks completely differently than i do. I hear the totality with almost no deference to vocals, he hears all the weird sounds, the vocals, and the separate guitar tracks, make and model of guitar included

[@michaelanthony9068]

In my 20’s I taught private guitar lessons and I had a student come for his first lesson, paid for his first month of lessons. Raw beginner. I started teaching him how to tune. He couldn’t hear the difference of 2 notes, whether they were 30 cents apart or 3 whole steps apart. We were about done with his 1st 45 min lesson and I couldn’t get him to hear it. I couldn’t help it and I laughed. I tried to cover it up, but I laughed and I know he was embarrassed, and he never came back, never asked for money back. I’m 67 now and I’ve felt guilty about it my whole life. The conditions you describe from that book define my own ignorance and immaturity, since I didn’t know how to deal with the situation, and I guess this seems like an opportunity for me to sort of confess my sin. I still kick myself for that, to this day.

[@FreakingOutWithBillyHume]

Oh no! I still carry guilt for things from a long long time ago. But they probably forgot all about it.

[@michaelanthony9068]

@ God bless you and thank you Billy. I appreciate you !!!

[@Bboypeep]

Hi, this is the student you mentioned. I still remember that lesson, and honestly, I still feel a bit embarrassed about it. I’ve been meaning to ask...would it be possible to get that money back? Thank you, and no hard feelings!

[@johannalvarsson9299]

We were all young, pretty much everyone I know had enough of these moments in their life... Anyway, a thing I came across with people with no training at all, there is this thing where they will mix timbre and pitch. And I know it from myself, because it was the first thing my brain needed to learn when I started from scratch with 16. And I can very reliably reproduce it with a non-trained person and a piano or guitar. Pluck the same note twice, but once in the middle of the string, and once near one of its ends. Then people will be very convinced that I played two different pitches to the point where they are willing to argue with me about that. (Well, luckily I have a tuner, so I can show them.) Just wanted to know if you also observed this. I might still be wrong, because I have no serious data about it.

[@jfo3000]

I'm 63, things were different then. Watch the Brady bunch kids call each other Dumbo and things like that. It was a less empathetic time that we were trained in. You can forgive yourself 98% as being a product of the environment. You've paid the other 2% penance in bad feelings toward yourself. We all need to forgive ourselves for quite a bit. Peace my brother.

[@KSS184]

I’ve been practicing mixing intensely for the last three years, and there have been several occasions when I’ve started a new day, put on my usual headphones to listen to my favorite songs, only to notice they sound completely different. The first time this happened, I was focusing intensely on the subtle nuances of mastering EQ. Suddenly, the next day I heard completely new vocal articulations, slightly out-of-tune notes, entirely new background adlibs rising to the forefront, subtle delays, and so on. It all comes to me without trying to hear those things, without focusing, and it doesn’t fade away. I’ve realized it has something to do with my brain rewiring itself as a result of all the practice.

[@brianfrolo245]

Similarly, when I first heard the 40th anniversary edition of Rush’s Moving Pictures I was like, “What did they do to these songs???” It feels like the uncanny valley of remasters 😮

[@nedim_guitar]

I've listened to a lot of music and it has happend many times that I hear things in songs that I haven't heard before. It just happens suddenly. Sometimes I haven't listened to an album for a few years, and when I revisit it, I hear details that I've never heard (I should remember). Could that be a similar thing?

[@pyrael668]

wow! That restaurant analogy hit me man. I have this "weird" thing about composing stuff. I hear the completed work in my head, even hear vocals (usually sounds like some famous artist that will never sign my stuff). That's not the weird part though. What IS weird, is that I can rewind, fast forward, solo, loop the tracks I hear in my head. So basically, writing it out is really a matter listening and transcribing. Great vid!

[@jfo3000]

I can also do the instantaneous "tape transport" thing in my head as well. I can compose, sub in different instruments in my mind's ear. Too bad it's so difficult to survive in the music biz.

[@fabianwolf6849]

I'm sorry for having to "uhm, actually" you here, Billy. But the idea of left hemisphere - right hemisphere, logic - creativity split is mostly based on science that is like 40 years old and also highly in question, cuz the methods included split brain patients and the conclusions weren't really consistent with the theory. Nowadays neuropsychologists mostly agree that the whole brain is included in sensory processing, especially if any kind of emotion is at play and that theres more evidence for small clusters spread all over the brain being responsible for how someone experiences their reality, than a clear split in right through the middle. Still, this video gives a surprisingly good overview over the basics of the neurology of auditory processing. Well done, man!

[@FreakingOutWithBillyHume]

You are correct. The main difficulty I had was in researching everything. Even the locations and shapes of parts of the brain was different depending on where I looked. But what you say explains it. Thanks so much!

[@johannalvarsson9299]

Okay, the last seminar I had about neuromusicology was 5 years ago, so I might be totally behind. Did we abbandon the hypothesis that the auditory cortex is the center of proccessing music? Center as in not the only part, but the most concentrated? And what about "sound" in general (timbre and envelope) being mostly proccessed in the cerebellum? Or do you mean that only the "right-left-split" is generally seen as an obsolete idea? Sorry for asking something that probably would require a lot of detail in the explanation.

[@mgd9151]

Science is always right til it isn't. It will change again. They never admit when they don't have a clue, never.

[@silvermineband2719]

Oh sure, and I bet you also think alligators are ornery because of their enlarged medulla oblongata when we all know it’s because they got all them teeth and no toothbrush! 🪥 😜

[@TomSherwood-z5l]

I have determined scientifically that people under 25 hear rap music differently than I do. They seem to derive some pleasure from listening to that.

[@greglocke2712]

I have played guitar since I was 13 years old and music was a tremendous part of my life. In my 40s I began to go deaf and now I’m 60 and close to 60% deaf. Now when I hear music it sounds flat and distorted. It has drastically changed the way I enjoy music. In fact, unless I’m wearing high end headphones, I don’t enjoy the music anymore. Some songs my brain can fill in the missing tones but listening to music on a car radio sounds horrible and flat. It has really made me think about how people hear music and how important it is to your soul

[@goodygoodyfin]

I’m interested to know if there is a difference in what you hear from songs recorded and mixed 40 years ago vs todays music.

[@jmkmusicpedals]

Our ears don't hear the same, just as our eyes don't see the same. But sitting around hearing music, we argue everything like what we hear has to be what everyone else can hear, and that no one can possibly be hearing anything that we don't hear. We don't argue the same with vision because it's easy to line 2 people up, ask them to read a sign at a distance and if 1 of them fails and one succeeds, the results are clear and unambiguous. To test hearing, there needs to be a control in place and not just listening to some music and commenting on what seems like subjective whims. I once tried to use a drum recording as a demonstration of compression to help some people understand, and half the responses was that there was no difference, much to my very big surprise (because the difference was obvious to me and to others). It started getting into an argument, more from the side of the people who couldn't hear it arguing that it was bias confirmation. That's when it really dawned on me. People can only experience the limits of their own hearing and no amount of "trying" can change that. Who knows what I can't hear that someone else can? I no longer write things off if someone says they hear something I don't.

[@woox2k]

Expanding the part on "our eyes don't see the same" It's actually possible for every person to see completely different colors (seeing red as blue etc.) because the colors themselves are interpreted by out brain with no reference on what they should "look like." We just learn to understand that the sky is blue, grass is green and so on no matter what the color actually is in our brain. The same applies to our ears. Sure, sound waves already arrive into every ear differently and it's proven that different parts activate when hearing certain kind of sounds as seen on this video but it still all boils down to how our brain interprets the signals coming from our eardrums. Our brains have no reference when learning new experiences, it has to make up it's own interpretation of it as it goes along. That already kinda proves that everyone will hear sounds differently. Maybe we all have the same music taste but since we all hear sounds differently we need different sounds to trigger the parts of our brains that makes us feel good and like the sound?

[@jmkmusicpedals]

Medical conditions/infections can temporarily effect the hearing pitch, and they can be subtle. I experienced this as I was struck with one that effected me for several months. I was doing backup vocals in a band and we were recording every rehearsal. Things were going well, but after one particular rehearsal I listened to the recording and I was consistently flat the entire time. I could hear it in the recording. I didn't hear this while I was singing. I thought I was just tired or something that day. But it got it worse after that. I just couldn't understand it, I felt like I was singing well when I was performing. Come to find out, I had some swelling that I didn't know about that caused me no symptoms, and it only effected 1 ear. My left hear would hear at the correct pitch and my right ear would be hearing things slightly flat (it also couldn't hear all the low frequencies that my left ear could). As long as both ears were working together while I was listening to music, everything seemed well. I couldn't hear anything wrong and I can enjoy listening. To me, it was exactly like when 1 eye is weaker than they other. You can still read as long as both eyes are open. But if I plugged my left ear, the material I was listening to would immediately drop in pitch some 10's of cents. You can imagine, this was really annoying for me as a musician and an engineer, and I constantly was checking it all the time to see if it was getting any better or worse. This is also what was also causing me to sing flat and not know it at the time. It slowly resolved, thank goodness, but I got a taste of what it must be like to have a physical limitation that prevents you from singing on pitch and not know it. It's exactly like thinking that what you see is totally normal ... until a doctor gives you the right pair of glasses. The only way to experience something different (besides experiencing some loss from one day to the next like I did) is to have a hearing-aid tuned specifically for you, which isn't inexpensive or easy to come by. It's easier to carry on thinking others are "hearing things" that aren't really there.

[@FreakingOutWithBillyHume]

Wow! That's crazy. Glad your hearing came back!

[@nikdrown]

When I was a kid I had an ear infection that literally at holes through both my ear drums. I was deaf for the better part of a year. Sucked really bad. Strangely enough without surgery to the Drs amazement I healed to 100% and at 42 now I still have my dog frequency ability. Gods creation is pretty incredible. It was only projected to come back 60-75% at best with surgery. I don’t take my hearing for granted and often wonder if it would be different had that not happened. Funny too after that was when I knew I wanted to be a musician. Being deaf for a year in elementary school was rough to say the least.

I'm almost 50 and I've noticed that over the years my pitch memory has gone about a half step flat. I used to have perfect C pitch -- I could instantly sing you a C from memory, or identify it. We were trained to do that in HS choir. But nowadays, if you ask me to sing it, I'll probably sing you a B flat unless I remember to pause and adjust it upward before singing. Same with memory of old songs, even my favorites. I'm like "lemme sit down at the keyboard and try to remember Song X from memory and play it" I hear it in my head a half-step flat. Then I find the song online and it sounds weirdly sharp. It really sucks. I don't know if it's "natural" condition of age or the fact I have chronic neuro condition. Probably the latter.

[@valleywoodstudio7345]

My wife's in charge too and schedules everything! Re headphones, I've found popping the voice signal out of polarity has helped as an instant form of eq against the internal head sound they hear naturally. Sometimes it works with pitching, sometimes not! Another thing I've always noticed is that stereo phantom centre on headphones always feels right if the line is just slightly down the left side of my nose - if that makes sense. I recall Hugh Robjohns of SOS saying at the BBC they had specific balance controls for broadcast engineers individual stereo headphone monitoring to account for every bodies perceived differences.

[@Douglas_Blake]

1) It really doesn't matter what each individual hears... we all hear sounds that we learn to identify as the various instruments or songs. It doesn't matter if my saxophone sounds like your steam whistle... we can agree on what we're hearing based on our experiences. 2) As a person with mild Chromesthesia, for me, good music is also a pretty interesting light show. On service calls I used to surprise clients by setting their EQ without test sweeps... I just got the colours right. 😵‍💫

[@glicmathan1771]

Apparently, we lose our ability to hear the upper range with age. So an older friend telling you your mix isn’t bright enough should be contrasted with the ears of your younger friend… is my current thinking. I have somewhat big ears and always crave more bass while others tell me it’s too much. Is that because I need more low end to physically hear it?! Big ears, big speakers? Small ears, small speakers? This is great, thought provoking video! Cheers bro!

[@nuberiffic]

I have to imagine the singer who said he sounded weird through headphones was experiencing that thing we all do when we hear a recording of ourselves. It sounds thin and tinny. When we speak or sing, we're not just hearing the soundwaves going through the air to our ears, we're also hearing the soundwaves going through our skull. This sound has a lot more bass. So to make it sound more normal to him, you made his mix bassier.

[@FreakingOutWithBillyHume]

That is a really good point!

[@timmiller1]

I found that example very interesting since he is talking about a pro singer. That guy surely has had plenty of time to get used to the way his recorded voice sounds. I think there’s more to it than a simple “everyone hates their own recorded voice.”

[@nuberiffic]

@@timmiller1 I( never said it's just that. I would think that he finds it easier to control his voice if it sounds the same through the headphones as it does when he sings normally

[@johannalvarsson9299]

@@timmiller1Sorry, this post is maybe a bit longwinded, but stays on topic in the end... I hope. It is a common misconception that professional musicians are not affected by things other musicians are as well. My father played trumpet in one of the 2 top orchestras here in europe (in his time at least). His ability to intonate almost perfectily and specifically play in rhythm with people that don`t have it is absolutely stunning. You can place a child just starting out on piano next to him, and even if not a single note is "on grid", he is able to play in perfect sync with child. Incredible. Yet still, playing in a room without enough reverb is significantly harder for him, because "it just feels off, and that kills your playing." And sometimes he used a clip on tuner. Because he can intonate by himself, but "why not simply have somthing that can act like a safety net, or in case a diffent instument that is still cold, well I can play a note so quite noone can really hear it in advance and know where its intonation is right now."

[@_nelsoncarmona]

I remember reading this book years ago and it’s amazing his case studies. It was the first time hearing about how music helps people with dementia. Got to read it again.

[@cph2004]

Music is power. Music is my therapy. Music is my drug. I am always chasing that, what makes music sound good? Good video.

[@mikaeljohansson83]

Great observations man. Awesome video👍

[@TSGEnt]

9:53 This makes you a much happier person I'm sure. I relate.

[@buddythecat4675]

Billy, my man, you have really hit the nail on the head with this one. I'm an audio engineer/ producer, and when I listen to music, I can listen to the greater emotional whole of what is being conveyed, but I also pick apart specific tones and variations within a music mix; the key of the song, song structure, etc. Everybody really does hear things differently, and going back a few years, there was the whole "yanni" versus "laurel" argument, which blew my mind at the time. I'm not sure if you remember that or know about it, but if you don't, it was about a guy that was reading words for an audio dictionary (or something like that), and there were people that swore and were adamant that he was saying the wrong word: instead of "laurel", they were hearing "yanni". I personally heard "laurel"; the word that the man verifies that he was reading and recorded it as such. Keep up the great work with the videos, they are inspiring and above all else, positive and open to the possibilities that there are shades in this audio world, not just absolute colors.......which is exactly what we need in this world right now.

[@scottak-4768]

Great information! It finally makes sense. I'm a percussionist and have been told for years that I have an odd sense of harmony.

[@zackersquackers]

My sensory sensitivity, particularly how sound affected me on a day to day basis is what lead to me getting an ADHD diagnosis at 43. I just took it for granted until I was in my late 30s that I wasn't hearing the world the same way as most people. I just assumed my overwhelmed reaction was all on me, like it was just a shortcoming that I couldn't handle what everybody else seemed to ignore. Then I realized, "Holy shit, I'm literally hearing the same sound source but my brain is processing it differently. It sounds silly to think about what should be obvious, but it's not really obvious. Ever since my diagnosis, sensory processing and how it affects human psychology has really gotten me to wonder about how people manage their lives in modernity with daily stresses we didn't evolve to have that are activated so frequently and for extended periods of time. It's taught me a great deal about trying to offer more grace and giving people the benefit of the doubt when there's disagreement, because you can visualize somebody processing the information in discussion in a different way. I love this video, it's such a cool subject. Your description of a social situation is my day to day, I feel you man. Sometimes it's so hard to focus on what someone's talking about when a cacophony symphony of noise is roaring in the ambience around you. I hear humming transistors and I can't stop focusing on it, no matter what interesting conversation is going on... I kind of phase out, unintentionally. Your curiosity is admirable, it's not just great KZbin entertainment, it's a co-learning experience. Thanks!

[@johnbhumphrey]

Wow, this explains so many opinions I have on how I hear things versus how other people hear the same things. That's been bouncing around in my head for decades.

[@soft-round5341]

Hey, the part where you hear everything as if it’s part of the music but can barely focus on one sound feels like "auditory processing overload". It’s often linked to ADHD, where the brain struggles to tune out background noise to focus on a single voice. I have it also and it totally relatable! I also test my ear every year and I work as a sound technician.

[@simoncarswell3515]

That was exactly what I thought, too. I'm certainly not trying to diagnose Billy here, but my experience with ADHD is that there is no such thing for me as "background noise". Everything is foreground. I can't filter it out. If I'm in a fairly noisy environment I can't hear what's being said to me by someone a couple of feet away. If I really, REALLY concentrate and watch their lips I can just about understand them but it's exhausting. It's not a hearing issue, my ears are fine. It's a focus issue. And if there's music playing, forget it. My brain wants to focus on the music to the exclusion of everything else. A REALLY noisy environment is completely intolerable to me. A large group of people in a space all talking at once is an unbearable cacophony. I always liken it to a full orchestra where every instrument is playing a completely different tune. It's excruciating.

[@roxanne_george]

So true, thank you so much. I remember the days when I was 8 years old and my elder cousin used to listen to her Ella Fitzgerald records all day. To me, it sounded like disjointed abstract noise with no pitch at all, like someone cutting wood 😂 And these days I enjoy and appreciate it...

[@giraffemazel]

The story that you told about the restaurant experience really hits home to me. I have kind of an interesting way of processing sounds in crowds, and I can change my mood to make one of the modes more prominent. Usually, if something of interest comes into my hearing range, like a spoken voice, I can separate that voice from all the background voices and hear every word clearly. On the other hand, if it’s an uninteresting situation, I basically can make everybody sound like background noise white noise. I don’t really understand how I can pinpoint a person speaking out of a crowd. It’s like I have a magic parabolic microphone that I can focus in my ear!

[@halk3]

I fail to enjoy music emanating from cars with tinted glass windows.

[@bobnine]

Note that the different lobes in the brain can sometimes take over or learn to process different things when the usual area is damaged, or genetics can mirror everything completely 😅

[@Tapper1969]

Brilliant video. I became a music fan at a very early age. Now in my mid-50s it still dominates my life and I spend hours a week composing, recording and playing music on an amateur level. But despite loving chart music which normally features a singer I naturally discount the singer on concentrate on the music. I hear and love the voice as an instrument but I never ever listen to lyrics and the singer has no more importance to me than the drummer or guitar player. Only in recent years have I come to realise this makes me an oddball. It does mean I know absolutely no lyrics so can never sing along but I can play several instruments and hours of listening experience has helped me understand how they work together. I must add that it’s enthusiasm over skill when it comes to playing in my case 😂

[@ResonanceDeRectitude]

Same since my early 20s. sometimes i find myself "singing" along after i've heard a song hundreds of times, only to realize i have no idea wht the lyrics are and in fact i might not even have realized they are in a language i can't even identify :D. agree we are probably odd balls, but not alone :) Most curiously, i think the human voice is my favorite instrument :)

[@Tapper1969]

@ Thanks for giving your experience. I don’t feel so bad now. I too can listen in any language because I’m not focussed on the words although the rhythm of the voice is important and so language plays a big part; it’s complicated.

[@REDOPTICALCORP]

I can't hear the difference with the in tune and flat that you played. I feel like I must have one of these things! Maybe that's why the music I make sounds so weird to others lol

[@REDOPTICALCORP]

Also I loved this video!!

[@iamdebmiller]

This is a fascinating video! I was also thinking about how music can evoke different feelings in people based on when they first heard the song or a particular sound, and they associate that emotion for future musical experiences. If one person was happily falling in love when a song was being played vs. someone who was listening to the same song while dealing with losing a loved one to terminal illness, for example, that song will create very different reactions in various people even though it's the same song. So, at that point, wow, the possibilities for interpretation, on top of all the interesting points made in this video about how our brains process music, become endless. Cool stuff. I enjoyed this video a lot. Thank you for making it.

[@RandallJBrown]

enjoyed the whole video!

[@AndrewUnruh]

I worked for a high technology audio company in the Silicon Valley. We did a lot of audio testing and we found that we were all sensitive to different things. One thing we would do was called bandwidth expansion where we would take an incoming narrowband signal and try to make it sound like a wide band signal by making educated guesses about the missing frequencies. For some reason, I was particularly sensitive to exactly where those frequencies were placed. There were many other examples of these kinds of things where certain people were much better at hearing certain distortions than other people.

[@jameswaddell3348]

Personally, i taught myself how to listen to music, after becoming a musician. Before i just had to like the band or singer. But now i can listen to one person in the band, or just 2 and so on. I don't play guitar, ketboards, or a horn, but those are what catches my ear first. I am a drummer, but it doesn't catch my ear, or does the Bass in a song. I am very good at picking out who in th eband is rushing or playing behind the beat, yes it can be rather annoying if the drummer or bass player is not on the same page! And yes when i hear live music, i am one of those not sitting there enjoying as before, now i hear every little mistake.

[@seabsfam]

Thank you billy. Con-grates on 70 thousand subs long may it continue to rise.

[@EdgarRoock]

This begs the question of how much of your fine tuning as a musician/sound designer/producer actually matters. Could you do a video around this idea? Or have you done one already?

[@guerraemanuel]

Thank you. Finaly, someone who goes to the spot... Where the music realy gains meaning...

[@darylSKYTZOwillis]

Music is a whole different world for me, one I actually prefer. I started out playing records, then instruments, and finally recording and live audio engineering. A lot of what you are saying makes sense. Most times I can tune my guitar by ear and be spot on or at least really close. I just thought hearing different things on each side was due to hearing loss. Frequencies very from left to right. Also I can’t or don’t like recording my own vocals with both ears covered by my headphones. It just sounds weird.

[@brooklynsoundgarage]

10:13 Not only are we not hearing the same thing at all, the brain and the mind are connected so the way your mind works is a conscious decision for how your awareness and brain work together, so most of us aren’t even living in the same reality.

[@JustinAlec90]

Great post brother I love the different topics. When my allergies are full blown I hear things like they are underwater. So frustrating I have to have clear sinus days to mix. I also notice if I have say a nice THC drink I can hear things wayyy different. Anyways great video! ❤

[@DaveZiffer]

I believe that that vast majority of musical taste can be explained only if we presume that the vast majority of humanity has essentially no musical perception in the way we imagine it. READ: "Musicians: What if most people are harmonically deaf?". Use the quotes with the most popular engine.

[@leogolive]

Great video! I love this channel!

[@beingsshepherd]

Ok but whenever I put on a new pair of headphones, at first I hate the difference to my usual ones, but over time grow completely accustomed to their sound

[@billsybainbridge3362]

Nice work! Of course, we are still only beginning to unravel the effect of culture and shared memory on an individual's perception. Look up: 1) The case of the Tsimane Amazonian Aboriginals, who (apparently) do NOT experience Octave Equivalence; 2) The apparent effect of language on Pitch Perception, wherein Asian Cultures have a higher incidence of Absolute Pitch, correlated to the Pitch Discrimination required of speaking properly in those languages.

[@FreakingOutWithBillyHume]

Wow!

[@brianhefflefinger6723]

This was an amazing video Billy.

[@JustinAlec90]

Great post brother I love the different topics. When my allergies are full blown I hear things like they are underwater. So frustrating I have to have clear sinus days to mix. I also notice if I have say a nice THC drink I can hear things wayyy different. Anyways great video! ❤ Also agree about the difference in ears vs right left. I always mix stronger to the right thinking my right ear is worse.

[@FreakingOutWithBillyHume]

Thanks! The under water thing.... once a year.

[@kitty123yw]

Well done. Thoughtful. I know for certain that each member of our family does not hear music the same way.

[@AhmadWtx]

This was awesome information! Thanks for sharing!

[@RichBobo]

Fantastic analysis. I have been a musician and music listener all my life. This made a lot of sense and explained a lot! Great work on the video. ❤

[@ProducerStefanSchnabel]

Awesome Work! Great Information! Thank You for this! 🎶✨✌🏻🙂

[@knudsandbknielsen7226]

Just the tiny differences between my idea of you and my idea of me makes for a good argument, that we are unique. As if I did'nt know already. Thank you for sharing these invaluable points and pieces of knowledge! In an earlier video, you said some things i deeply disagreed on, as well as many I did agree on. This is good!

[@bbfoto7248]

@FreakingOutWithBillyHume Excellent topic and discussion, Billy. This is my first visit to your channel and this video compelled me to Like & Subscribe immediately. 👍 Many thanks for the book recommendation as well. That's golden. I grew up in a "musical family" and am an amateur drummer/percussionist and saxophonist with a simple home studio setup for the last ~14 years. In regards to vocalists using IEMs or headphones while tracking or during a live performance, another thing to consider is the Phase and Time Arrival of what the vocalist hears from their their own vocal chords being transmitted through their tissue and bone conduction to their eardrums vs through their mic & headphones. The Speed-Of-Sound is generally 343 m/s through room temperature air & average humidity....i.e. from a vocalist's mouth, through the microphone, and into their headphones/IEMs. But through human tissues, the speed of sound varies depending on the composition of the tissue. For example, the Speed-Of-Sound through soft tissues such as muscle and fat is around 1,540 m/s. In bone, the speed of sound can be as high as 4,000 m/s! If you plug your ears with your fingertips, you will hear your voice primarily through your bone and tissue conduction directly to your eardrums. And your tissue obviously also acts as a severe low pass filter. So, due to the huge difference in the Speed-Of-Sound through the Air versus direct bone and tissue conduction to our eardrums, what a.vocalist hears through their body tissue when they sing is At Least 4 Cycles AHEAD in Time (and very likely to also be out-of-phase) compared to what the singer hears through their headphones or IEMs. This discrepancy in Arrival Times and Phase Coherency can be extremely off-putting to some vocalists who are monitoring their own performance through headphones and IEMs. It can sound as if a delay has been applied to their headphones or IEMs on just their voice, but not to the guitar they are playing or to other instruments and singers in the band or backing tracks. We obviously can't speed up the propagation of sound through the air to match the timing of what they hear through their own body. But we CAN at least Align the PHASE of the two signals/waveforms, even if the arrival times will still be different. FOH engineer Dave Rat has a recent video on this topic. Similar to ensuring that the phase alignment & coherency between multiple microphones on a drum kit or the top & bottom snare mics are phase aligned, we know how Out-Of-Phase signals/waveforms can affect the spectral balance (especially on the low end), as well as the "timing" of what we hear. Fascinating stuff all around!

[@FreakingOutWithBillyHume]

Thanks! Everything you said makes so much sense. Great explanation!

[@bbfoto7248]

@FreakingOutWithBillyHume Whew! I'm glad all of my rambling seemed to make sense! 😁 My comment was already getting long-winded, but I wanted to add that while many of us may "hear differently" in many regards, through multiple studies conducted by Harman/JBL, when listening to music we all generally prefer the same overall Spectral Balance. Sure, some people have a preference for exaggerated bass and midbass to add impact and "weight/body" to music, but we can all general identify when this frequency region becomes "Boomy" or "muddy". This is partially related to the "Fletcher-Munson Equal Loudness Contour" which shows or plots our hearing sensitivity over the full audible frequency spectrum based on amplitude vs frequency. For example, we can all generally detect when a human voice sounds lifelike and natural, or when it is too bright/harsh, or too dull, or bass heavy. A crying baby or child's scream is always perceived as harsh and grating in order to gain our attention, etc. The same goes for common acoustic instruments such as a piano (extremely wide range), or an acoustic guitar, which most of us have a real world reference to hearing live in-person. Most people recognize when crash cymbals or brass/horns are too bright & harsh, or when they are too dull and lack "brilliance" and dynamics...i.e. are too dull and lifeless. This is how Harman developed their "JBL Target Curve" for the development of headphones and speaker systems. But when playing back music through a speaker system, the Acoustics of the Room have a large impact on the resulting spectral balance that we perceive, which is determined by the frequency response of On-Axis direct sound from the speakers, as well as the speakers' Off-Axis polar response which are responsible for all of the reflected energy that then sums with the direct response. It's neverending, ha! There is an excellent book by Dr. Floyd Toole which is titled, "Sound Reproduction: The Acoustics and Psychoacoustics of Loudspeakers and Rooms". If you decide to purchase it, make sure to get the latest edition. In regards to how what we See influences what we Hear, also search for the following online blogpost: "Audio Musings by Sean Olive: The Dishonesty of Sighted Listening Tests" from 04/2009. Cheers

[@salcarusomusic]

WOW !! Intriguing ... Great video Billy ! I have often contemplated these things . Thanks✌💜

[@FreakingOutWithBillyHume]

Thanks so much! Glad you enjoyed it!

[@EmperorKamikaze]

I also can't sleep with music on. I analyze it... 😵‍💫

[@roxanne_george]

Likewise. I also can't have background music on "to help me focus" because I automatically start to analyze it... it's an awful distraction.

[@GlennJackson-d8e]

Sometimes, I can put music on and go to sleep. Other times, I listen to three or four albums and am wide awake. I don't get much sleep, but I had a great time listening to those albums.

[@cesarlemosdonascimento2712]

I can’t believe I just found your channel!!! Incredible!! Somehow I’ve been perceiving not only music but the whole the same way! 👏🙏👏🙏

[@imslicc]

nice video. finally got convinced to subscribe

[@thomastucker5686]

This video was amazing. I have so much to learn about music and if I can pick up new information regularly, hoping for every day, I think it will pay off. I am saying that at 59.

[@ryanseay509]

This topic has always intrigued me. Thanks for aggregating the info Billy. It has been really cool watching your channels grow and evolve. Please keep doing this sort of thing.

[@Starsweeper-OG]

This was awesome!

[@davelittle7414]

I don't usually bother liking and subscribing, but I have to say your videos are brilliant! No bullshit, never boring or repetative, you are a genuine inspiration Billy. This was a particularly fascinating topic and co-incidentally, I'm just reading Musicaphilia by Oliver Sacks. We defintitely all hear music differently and the effects of listening to different pieces of music can be profound. It is only recently research has started to reveal the fascinating details of this topic.

[@rickfinsta2951]

I had otosclerosis, where my stapes grew into my skull and I was basically deaf (-90dB) in one ear. I have been a musician, singer, and live sound engineer since I was in my teens and the changes were slow enough that I didn't notice until it had gotten really bad. I had a stapedectomy and regained almost all of my hearing in that ear, but my brain had to re-learn how to process the signal since it was used to basically conduction only on that side. My one ear was hearing 40cents flat from the other for around 4-6 weeks before it came back in line. I saw a movie with orchestral arrangement a few days after the procedure and it was like listening to the worst grade school band you've ever heard tuning up. Nothing was in tune. Thank God I had some neuroplasticity still on tap! The resonant frequency of the titanium piece that used for the prosthetic is obvious to me as singing certain notes will make it resonate and it is quite uncomfortable. The doctor that performed the procedure said that most people didn't notice the pitch differences before and after but he had several musician patients report experiences similar to mine.

[@FreakingOutWithBillyHume]

Wow! Until I made this video I never knew about such things. So sorry you had to go through that.

[@rickfinsta2951]

@@FreakingOutWithBillyHume no worries, it is hereditary so I should have seen (heard?) it coming. My grandmother sat to my grandfather's left at the dinner table, my mother sat to my father's left, and my wife sits to my left. Since this is the affected ear, the family joke is the males of our bloodline are exceedingly well adapted to marriage!

[@HecktorPampelmuse]

It is interesting to go on a journey to find out where your own “peculiarities” lie. For example, I have the “problem” that my left ear completely filters reverb. I simply don't hear it on the left. When I flip the channels I can clearly hear that it's there. On the one hand it makes mixing songs challenging, on the other.... It's normal for me and therefore no different with reference tracks that I listen to. So I just mix to the point where it sounds right to me. Experience shows that it also works for most others within the normal range of imponderables. I would like to thank you for this channel, always a great pleasure. Kind regards

[@dgazart]

Wow very insightful.

[@FreakingOutWithBillyHume]

Glad you think so!

[@jonlieberman997]

Excellent job discussing neuroanatomy and neurophysiology. Very thought provoking

[@clicks59]

Very cool video. I especially related to the right ear - left ear thing. I have grown accustomed to having my bass amp on my left side. It just sounds better to me than when it's on my right side.

[@deareeMusic]

I just found an alesis wedge in the trash pile at work, day after watching ur video about old verbs. Grabbed it to try it out haha. Wouldn’t have noticed it if i hadnt checked that vid

[@RocknRollkat]

Interesting presentation, thank you ! Bill P.

[@Ardepark]

I think synesthesia also has something to do with how people process and enjoy music (and sounds generally). Do you have synaesthesia, Billy? It would be interesting to see a video from you discussing that. Some people say they see sounds as colors, and I know a guitarist who says that he composes based on whether the colors of the sounds make sense to him. I don’t see sounds as colors but rather I see them as colorless shapes, textures, and spaces.

[@FreakingOutWithBillyHume]

I don't see colours but I see shapes.

[@Nachtuil36]

So really interesting ! And I do recognize your experience of hearing in every day situations, hearing all sounds all around me, including soft music from remote speakers, while I can't understand conversation nearby, especially when several people are speaking! Yet, a recent hearing test was remarkably good (for my age, haha)! And indeed, I am being woken up by a rooster doing his calls, probably 500m from my bedroom !

[@lindabergeronszefer4878]

We all perceive things differently. Take colours for example: how can you tell whether what you perceive as blue is exactly what someone else is seeing? What they see might look green to you if you could somehow share their vision, but you both were told since childhood that THAT colour is called blue. That might explain the clashing colours some people are wearing. Same thing with sounds; when I watch videos about mixing, for example, sometimes the details are lost on me, but it could be that the transformations between the studio sounds to my speakers (think compression for social media) are erasing some of those details. Have you heard about a new product called Flare by Flare Audio? It comes in two flavour, one is earbuds that you wear with your headphones, the second one you wear for live shows. It modifies the shape of you ear canal and they claim that everybody wearing them would hear about the same thing. It certainly changes the way I hear things when I wear them, everything is clearer, more defined. I don’t know if you would hear the same thing, but I find it very intriguing. The perception of sounds also changes with age, so things you liked a lot as a young adult could sound less interesting now and vice versa. The brain is a beautiful thing...

[@stevesyverson8625]

Dynamics are most important for me. A warm H2O2 ear irrigation is very beneficial also.

[@marcusmarques]

Great video! Thank you for creating this content! Besides identifying with it and recognizing others around me, I learned a lot! Thanks a ton!

[@51bobtube]

Tinnitus sends a harmonic set of high frequency tones to the brain. It's always there. 24/7

[@dawmix]

I have had it happen while driving down the road the different cars and things passing by become visual entities representing different instruments in the song. I know this doesn’t make much sense but it is a strange sensation. As if the movement is part of the connection. This is not like lights blinking in time. It is much stranger than that.

[@FreakingOutWithBillyHume]

I totally get it.

[@Beetovin]

Hi Billy, did you have a relative in Syracuse New York? The first recording I did was with a BIll Hume. He worked with Ampex and my band was one of the first to record on the Ampex 8 track in the mid 60's. I really love your content. I can soooo relate.

[@OrganicGreens]

I feel like even my own ears hear differently week to week. Like sometimes low end really hits but other times I cant really hear it in the same way. Probably depends on how congested or tired I am.

[@tk42won]

Great vid. A personal thought: I have thought about why the "average ear" seems to be so incentive to pitch. Which is a good thing for a music listener I suppose. But it has given some "odd conversations" from time to time, where the person argues that when something sounds similar to them, and I can understand what they mean, but to them this is something rare, but I hear that ALL THE TIME. Anyway, it's all vibrations in the air and like most things in life, you enjoy the music you like.

[@nikdrown]

Great subject

[@buzzsmith8146]

I enjoyed this! Thanks.

[@socialbiscuit1362]

This is a really good video!!!

[@vikingsofvintageaudio7470]

This was really nice, thanks!

[@drumsmut]

it is amazing!!! i used to fall asleep to a ceiling fan that needed rebalancing and i would mentalize rhythms against the lope of the fan, im a drummer so i discovered this as a good conceptual device to practice away from the kit such that it would be like you described here- im hearing all sorts of rhythmical and musical possiblilities in my environment at any given time of day..instead of fixing the fan..i did eventually fix the fan

[@MrKotBonifacy]

A VERY interesting video indeed : ) 6:43 - occipital lobe may be "designed/ predisposed" to process visual information, but then there's this thing called synaesthesia - which is seeing sounds, hearing colours, and such. And yes, all "conditions" are gradual, or "on spectrum" - be it "autism" or "hearing". I myself am pretty much tone deaf but I can still enjoy the music (classical one, mostly) and derive lot of emotions from it - and hear the underlying "themes" (like nature sounds in Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" or an argument between a man and a woman in Beethoven's "Moon Sonata", second movement if memory serves me). But then I'm not very much into anything too 'rhythmy' - which is, unfortunately, the absolute majority of contemporary pop, aka"music" (the more contemporary, the more absolute) - and this nonsense called 'rap' for me is not any music at all (it'd be like calling works of Kazimir Malevich an "art" - or that dadaistic rhyming nonsense a "poetry" - which they are not).

[@WilliamAshleyOnline]

music is a language that can include spoken languages - there is clearly a field of meaning and there can be interconnections of points of meaning. For inate physical properties we may be directly effected by a bandwidth of acoustic energy while for learned cultural understanding of the experience of music interpretation of meaning can differ quite a lot. As much as our experiences and cultures may be different, humanity has a lot of commonalities. But 100% our physical differences can create drastic relative differences in how we interpret the world based on the scale of importance in difference we have in our worldview. However the inherited structural culture that shapes our worldview is relatively defined in that sounds have assigned meanings and we are as much experiential of the physical aspects of sound as the assigned meanings to those experiences, much like with written or spoken words. Its important to understand that sound isn't only vibration but how that sound translates to a totality of experience thus neuronal interconnections with field aspect matching and each neural chain and the chemical interactions that are triggered in the system as a result of those stimuli. Of course human experience can transcend the physical and neurological aspects of the human experience such as experience is the meaning delivered rather than occurrence and elements that can be deconstructed from the experience. Temporal occurrence is the end all of existence, its just how we like to make sense of things to provide structure and logic to life.

[@vernmorris8898]

Thank you. This may explain a phenomenon I have observed. It's people humming to themselves but there is no melody to their humming. To me it's just a random series of individual hums at different pitches. Kind of like a child hitting different keys on a piano at random. But maybe they're just hearing it differently?

[@CSProduction12]

This is Amazing! My guitar amplifier sits to the left of my office chair. I have always noticed that when I flip my chair around and the amp is facing my right ear it sounds different, almost like I turned the volume down... I always thought it was just a room issue, now I know!

[@ajaennix]

you the GOAT !!!! even in this Generation !!!! GOAAATTTT yesssir sirskiiii

[@Bojanmarsetic]

Legendary video upload!

[@MariUSukulele]

excellent video

[@auralsonicwaves7170]

One minor correction in your pronunciation of the word "timbre". The correct pronunciation is TAM-bur and not TIM-bur. The word originates from Greek meaning drum. It has evolved to represent the different tonal qualities of music. Love your content!

[@SpacedOutDoonie]

Getting into the IEM hobby made me quickly realize that ppls ears hear differently.

[@billkuhn5155]

I analyze what i hear also. Listening to jazz is not enjoyable. This video was fascinating, Billy. Enjoying your content.

[@AcousticWisdom]

This was fantastic and fascinating.

[@FreakingOutWithBillyHume]

Thanks!

[@JohnMassari]

Excellent video!

[@FreakingOutWithBillyHume]

Thanks! I'm glad you enjoyed it!

[@artemmelnik7965]

I don't really have any congenital conditions, but at certain circumstances I really suffer from "amusia" of various severity. Usually it is a noisy environment, it makes me lose the pitch perception, especially in the lower register - in other words the bass notes start to sound pretty random, distorting the entire harmony by shifting it, usually noticeably higher 😨 In worst case, I also lose the ability to perceive the tempo, which completely distorts the rhythmic perception. At very few occasions, I experienced the mentioned total disintegration of the music - a very well-known song started to sound like a chaotic birds chirping 😰 It was actually pretty scary, I thought that maybe I was having a stroke.

[@audiodude]

Very interesting and informative I really enjoyed this video

[@FreakingOutWithBillyHume]

Thanks!

[@FrankRizzo-ts6gt]

Great video!

[@TheBluemanBenny]

That was an amazing instructional video! That might explain why I like Jazz and my wife hates it! LOL

[@ModusVivendiMedia]

This is really interesting. It occurred to me a long time ago that people who don't appreciate the music of Brahms may not hear or understand harmony to any significant degree. Since so much of the emotional content of his music depends on harmonic progressions and modulations, his music could just sound boring to people who aren't processing the harmony. In a different way, I can tell my hearing now must be very different from how it used to be. When I was younger, I listened to my music through a combination of stereo speakers and AKG K-240 headphones, and thought they sounded great. Now I almost entirely listen to music, YT videos, Netflix, etc. on wired Apple Earbuds. Now when I try to listen on the K-240s, or go into a stereo store and try to listen on their very expensive speakers, it all sounds very bass heavy and muffled, with little or no upper midrange or treble. I feel like I really can't hear anything, and hate how it sounds. This is sort of a challenge when mixing or mastering, because the earbuds may not have the best sound (and particularly don't represent the bass barely at all), but I just can't hear or make decisions very well when listening through other devices. I figure as long as is match what I'm doing to how I expect other recordings to sound (and check the bass separately, as well as stereo imaging through speakers), I'm probably ok. This is maybe similar to taste: some people think plain yogurt tastes basically the same as sour cream. But to many other people (including myself), plain yogurt has a very strong (and quite unpleasant) flavor that is totally unlike sour cream. (I also don't like blue cheese or feta at all, for a similar reason, but other people don't think they taste at all unusual.) It seems possible that some people don't have the same taste receptors, or maybe don't neurologically process the tastes the same.

[@ericlineback6848]

As you conclude, music is magic, it's MAGIC!

[@SteveSingsThings]

Great video. I think this is true for all the senses . It leads to subjectivity but that’s beautiful. How boring it would be if we all experienced things the same way. Subjectivity leads to creativity and new possibilities. This is something that AI may never fully grasp.

[@laserfloyd]

I have a friend who can't listen to, or rather, enjoy music with no lyrics. She just doesn't understand the appeal of music without someone singing words. They have to be words because even a song like Pink Floyd's Great Gig in the Sky doesn't resonate with her. She doesn't "get it" so to speak, lol. I'm kind of the opposite I guess? I'll listen to vocal-less music well before I listen to some with vocals. I love lyrics also but music resonates with me much more than words. So, it's interesting how we all hear differently, both physically and psychologically. I think the more we understand that, the more we can understand each other, I believe. I also do the thing where I'll hear sounds while out and about and associate them to parts of a song. 😆