What's the scientific explanation for this?

Where did you get your drugs?

More seriously, this isn't anything I've ever heard of or experienced. That's not to say that there isn't an explanation, but just a warning that you may have to search beyond a web forum to get the answer I think you are looking for.

Dont worry its quite normal, i've experienced this aswell - though that might be worrying.

I first experienced it when I was about 14, having awoke, I immediately put on Def Leppards' Hysteria CD reasonably loud, and was lying in bed - when it struck me just how fast the playback appeared - I found it terribly interesting as I laid there and quite a pivotal moment, so much so, that I still remember it 18 years later. Perhaps this incident was the first time it really hit me that consciousness is not a fixed, rigid passage through time and space.

I probably have read why these effects happen, but it escapes me right now, I only woke up half hour ago myself, but dont forget that the brain is the most complex computer we know of, and runs at about 27Mhz!, so perhaps some of your circuits were a bit underclocked the moment you woke up.

Interestingly, I have never been a morning person, it takes me several hours to come up to operating speed, and get progressively smarter during the day and I think I most kick ass during the evening and night - as opposed to some people who wake at the crack of dawn raring to go and wither out during the day.

Perhaps you need to be a late starter to fully appreciate this? Is that like you?

Yeah, it's called concentration. Welcome to being human.

I dont think thats it, -lack of concentration anyway, imagine being totally focussed on your surroundings, evaluating your thoughts and senses, and wondering why the hell something appears to be playing super quick.

Weird. When I wake up in the morning, music seems at most 6% faster. Other sensations feel more subdued, rather then heightened or quickened. The color orange appears distinctly desaturated until about 11:00 AM, and the screams of the dying aren't quite so piercing until after I've eaten lunch.

Drugs are bad, m'kay?



Seriously, I have never experienced what you're talking about, so I can't vouch for it either way.

It is it. When you are concentrating time seems to slow down because you are aware of more of the stuff going on around you. It's very pronounced when you play sports, meditate or are in an emergency situation.

It doesn't.

Obviously its completely escaped him that if you are 'in the zone', and time feels like it is slowing down - thus giving you beyond-limit-capabilities, then its pretty obvious that the music is not going to appear sped up!

I very much doubt that when Hendrix was in the zone, that he felt time was flowing faster than his ability to hit the notes. He would have felt that time had slowed (infact, he wouldnt be conscious of time at all - but think of this from the perspective of an external observer), thus allowing him to become at one with his guitar with ease, and perform feats that seemed impossible to his audience that were still conscious in normal time.

However, when he resumed normal consciousness (im sure theres a clever joke in there) he would have then felt that time had flowed rather quickly, because he would then catch up with the normal consciousness of time flow, which obviously doesn't change at all as far as it is concerned.

So, the fact that you felt the music playing quickly is likely to be the complete opposite of 'flow' or 'zone'. You were most likely still recovering from the sleep, and certain parts of your brain were not functioning at normal capacity thus making you feel that the music was playing quickly.

You could try this in reverse. Play a favourite album as you go to sleep, and you should find that if you defocus yourself from everything and just subconsciously listen to the music while not trying to stay awake, you will find that as your brain starts to shut down, that the music will start to speed up or take on a different dynamic, most probably you will regain normal consciousness at times suddenly - its quite hard to do something and not consciously concentrate on what you are doing -, and will remember the music as a thing that occurred in the murky place between normal consciousness and sleep.

so perhaps we have an answer then no?

think of it like you would an audio sampler. During normal conscoiusness, your brain is sampling its senses at optimal resolution, so time dependant events like music appear normal.

As you're falling asleep or waking up, the brain is sampling its senses less frequently - so as the music is still playing at the same speed, it appears faster. More events happen per sample.

The reverse is 'flow' - a heightened awareness where the brain is sampling its senses more often - could be a stressful event like a car crash where you need maximum concentration to avoid death, or a musician in the zone who has passed into a higher state of consciousness and is sampling the senses more often allowing him to perform magical feats. Less events happen per sample.

I don't know about the tempo, but the perception that the song passed more quickly is easy to explain: You weren't concentrating on it. As a musician it happens to me all the time. It's one reason you won't see me listening to music much...because I like to be able to concentrate on it. It's also VERY distracting to me when I drive. Ever have that feeling that you don't know how you got to where your destination was (especially if you drive that way a lot).

Actually...as for the tempo, I can't explain it but there are times where the same recording sounds a little different to me. I wouldn't say my perception of the speed is all that different, but sometimes it seems more "in the groove" ("center" of the beat) or on the "front edge" of the beat. I just chalk it up to mood. With about 100 billion neurons and 1 trillion total brain cells changing all the time, it's no surprise that sometimes we perceive things differently.

I cant really listen to music while I drive either - it irritates me, as does music when im trying to concentrate on work, and yes, sometimes I just arrive at places with no recolection of how I got there. Just like life really, a big daydream that just passes by!

Its getting worse! A while ago I searched for a really old thread on AI, and was reading through it. I came across a long post and was totally blown away by the content of it. I was thinking to myself, holy shit this person is leagues above me in intelligence and understanding, who the hell wrote that....I scrolled up...I wrote it myself!

What the fuck is going on?

Because you're still waking up.

It's not any % faster, you are just interpreting some consciousness shifts a certain way and want to believe it's profound. It's an interesting novelty, but it's an effect, not an end in itself. If you go learn how to meditate you'll find out how these effects are just minor distractions and if you go into psychology you'll either just end up hyperfocused with narrow studies or end up blinded by therapeutic pseudoscience. Since what you like is the novelty and talking about how weird it is, you might as well get started with hallucinogens since that's the place for it.

While walking the dog this morning, the songs in my Rick Wakeman playlist sounded about 11%maybe 12%longer than normal. Meanwhile, songs in my Jimmy Buffet playlist all felt exactly 2:42 long.

I guess that means you guys are "in the zone" when posting. If only you could use your powers for good.

YES. I know totally what you mean. You see, just like vision, but more so, hearing is one of the senses that is very, very subjective. You don't realise it until, you hear different sounds at different times of the day and with different feelings. Here's a few points. I spent an intense year around 2003-2004 trying to produce dance music in the genre of "uplifting dutch trance" (no it's not a mixtape of a trip to amsterdam)... http://forums.di.fm/showthread.php?t=55556

1. It is well known that your ears are much fresher in the morning. Take some very high quality tracks with high quality earphones. Listen when you just wake up, a few hours after you wake up, then listen at night. You will notice more things earlier in the day.

2a. Music tempo is really a very abstract concept. That's why big symphonies have a conductor. When learning classical piano, yeah, you have a metronome, but during performances or when impressing your family, you don't use the metronome, and somehow the human mind tries to "keep" a tempo of the notes.

2b. A good example is the "beats per minute" a modern DJ uses. Even from vinyl to digital there's always been one main weapon in a good club DJ's arsenal: the RPM (or more relevant, the BPM[Beats Per Minute])... A song is created at a specific tempo (which can vary within a song), yet the DJ is at liberty to play it at whatever tempo he desires, within the range provided to him by his equipment. Roughly for dance music this is 120bpm to 140+bpm, with "hardcore" or "gabba" (not sure about the specifics because I'm not into these genres) running much higher, giving you the feeling like your head is going to explode. Of course, the DJ has to "tune" the BPM to the mood of the crowd. If they're pretty docile, you'd want to warm them up with some smooth but encouraging low-BPM stuff, then gradually increase it. If the crowd is already pretty jazzed you'd want to go in fairly jazzed up.

3a. Same with pitch. This is why many bands, symphonies, etc. spend hours, days, preparing at a venue and before each performance. Tuning is very important. Maybe some of you do know, but I only discovered, Linkin Park plays "out of tune" to some degree a lot of the time: http://www.guitarforbeginners.com/fo...drop-d-tuning/

3b. Some of you may know this, but do you realise that there are many "notes" between the 12 semitones? It's called tuning by cents: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cent_%28music%29) ... Many bands and producers create different "signature sound and feels" by slightly tuning their pitch lower or higher, meaning they never play exactly an A Minor, for example, it would be tuned somewhere in-between an A Minor and A Major... From a piano theory point of view, guitar-wise I'm not sure if I understand this properly yet, see point 3a above.

4. Humans instinctively have some sense of the "mathematics in art". ... However this is dependent on perception, which varies from individual and even varies within an individual. For example, http://www.5cense.com/Edge_Delay.htm

5. Scientifically, it comes down to the brain/ mind. One of the important frontiers of knowledge. IMHO.

Not sure why you quoted me other than to show I had been proven wrong. For what it's worth, I do notice that my ears are more sensitive in the morning, but there's no difference in sound or tempo, just volume. That seems pretty sensible. The change in noticeable tempo, though, is pretty oddball.

Ever see the episode from " Star Trek The Next Generation " Where the android Data is watching a tea kettle boil? In the episode ( while making an inquiry about the phrase " A watched pot never boils " ) he says " No matter how many times I watch it the time it takes to come to a boil is the same ". So Comander Riker who's happens by says " Turn off your internal chronometer. People don't have them. " Data does that and is so preoccupied with what Riker is saying that he misses the time inbetween when the pot comes to a boil. Much his chagrin. When your mind is preoccupied time seems to go faster. So it's all a matter of how focused you are.

Well, I've got more than my share of neurological disorders, but I can't say I've ever noticed anything like that before.

.... You KNOW what that means, of course?

It means I'm gonna go see if I can make it happen.

C

Yeah I didn't do the quoting thing properly. Anyways, ah... not to say that you are wrong, just that for some people music is a very perceptual thing. In your case, your feeling of music is fairly stable. Maybe perceptually you have a more "ordered" sense of things.

More "artistic" people observe the world very differently. You have to do that in creating many forms of art, "reinterpreting" the world.

It's a Matrix kinda thing. What do you think you know you don't know?

I'm no neurologist/ psychiatrist/ psychologiest though...

Try applying a series of electrical shocks to your neckbolts and report back to us.

That's fascinating [/spock]. I'd never heard of that, and I know I've never experienced anything like that.

What surprises me is that it is so noticeable to you, as if it was objectively changing, even to the extent that you can put a percentage change on it. With most illusions of that kind, people adjust and don't notice anything. For example, when someone walks away from you, they get smaller on the retina but you adjust and don't really notice someone "getting smaller." In order to get the illusion to occur, there has to be some trick to change the context.

I'd imagine something similar happens with this - most people don't experience subjective changes in tempo because, well, obviously it's not changing, and so we don't let ourselves notice it even if we may feel it at some level. But it sounds like you are somehow able to put that aside and actually experience the change.

Perhaps he got too close to the event horizon of a very small black hole?

I don't know about that. In fact, I'm pretty sure it depends on the person.


No, it's really not. It's expressed in BPM. However, rhythms and tempos vary substantially, which helps with expressive elements.


No, it's not. The conductor does a lot more than keep time, at least in rehearsal. And actually, large professional symphonies could easily play near the same level without the conductor.


You use a metronome for several reasons, not just to keep tempo. It's an amazingly productive rehearsal tool. It makes for more productive and efficient practice. And yes, you can train yourself to a degree.


I don't know where you got this from. Has it occurred to you that dance music tends to be at these tempos, just like marches are often 120 beats per minute? Also, the DJ would need equipment allowing him to increase the speed without changing the pitch. As far as I know, that can't be done with analog equipment...at least not easily.


Sort of. Tuning can be affected by the physical environment (heat and humidity are prime factors), but it's not necessarily why many groups spend hours and days at a venue. It has more to do with getting used to the acoustics of the overall space. For classical music, it's more about balance and blend then tuning.


And many orchestras do not tune to A-440. Actually though, our Western tuning system is always mathematically out of tune...especially for keyboard instruments. [/quote]

4. Humans instinctively have some sense of the "mathematics in art". ... However this is dependent on perception, which varies from individual and even varies within an individual. For example, http://www.5cense.com/Edge_Delay.htm



5. Scientifically, it comes down to the brain/ mind. One of the important frontiers of knowledge. IMHO.[/QUOTE]



True.

Artistic ability is a still quite a mystery. All this resolves is that I have a good sense of time. For what it's worth, I'm also never late.

Yeah it doesn't mean your not "artistic". You are probably creative in many different ways, not in your sense of "playing" with time, perhaps.

That's why I've always admired the Bay Area. For some reason, a hella lot of people that are very left-brain-right-brain balanced. Interactive media, for example, is created a lot by left-brain-right-brain people, as opposed to, painting, which would be more right-brained.

But like you say, it is still all a huge mystery.

Have a listen to this song. Maybe it makes more sense if some of you are more into dance music?
http://youtube.com/watch?v=O-Xva2XqFZ4

When listening to it, there are definitely certain parts of the song where the tempo feels faster and also slower, I wonder if this relates directly to certain parts where the BPM is specifically dropped lower or pushed higher. Or is it just the sound elements which give a feel of "cooling down" and "ramping up"...?

Maybe, overall, because when I was in primary school I did the whole parents-make-you-do-classical-piano-lessions. Also I studied a bit of this - maybe it gave me an interesting sense of rhythm in my early years: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bharatanatyam

So my sense of tempo in music is more like, yes, there are time signatures and metronomes and stuff, but tempo is something that you set as you play the piano. Adagio for example, is only a rough "metronome" range, it is open to interpretation.

Extract from Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempo (some of you probably know all this already)

"...Before the metronome, words were the only way to describe the tempo of a composition. Yet after the metronome's invention, these words continued to be used, often additionally indicating the mood of the piece, thus blurring the traditional distinction between tempo and mood indicators. For example, presto and allegro both indicate a speedy execution (presto being faster), but allegro also connotes joy (from its original meaning in Italian). Presto, on the other hand, indicates speed as such (while possibly connoting virtuosity, a connotation it did not acquire until the late 18th century)...

Additional Italian words also indicate tempo and mood. For example, the "agitato" in the Allegro agitato of the last movement of George Gershwin's piano concerto in F has both a tempo indication (undoubtedly faster than a usual Allegro) and a mood indication ("agitated")..."

The interesting thing about dance music is that tempo is very specific within several bars. Because there are many, many elements that, if not specific enough through the computer/device, everything starts to sound disjointed. Especially with a lot of delay, reverb, effects and so on. Of course shuffling plays a big part too. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuffle_note)

So when listening to electronic music, it is quite immersive and enthralling for me, because in a good track, there are "rigid" elements, then there are a lot of free-flowing parts.

I'm not a sound engineer, but I would imagine different strengths of frequencies can make music actually "feel" faster or slower.

Thanks for your comments, I think you have a lot of advanced musical knowledge. I think you also highlight why I epic failed classical music. I just never "got it" fully, even though I studied some of it. I do, however, love dance music (uplifting dutch trance), and finally, I feel I "get" music. Heh.

On the DJ side, I would comment on this part:

In dance music now there is a lot of difference between adjusting BPM with or without pitch shifting. This is an entirely different cryptic world of gear and jargon, for example: http://www.dallasdancemusic.com/foru...vs-vestax.html

True, almost all modern DJ equipment allows both pitch-shifting and also tempo adjustments with pitch lock, which is now important for spinning "in key":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aUgQEkC9Qc ...The presenter may be a little "jarring" to the dance music crowd "taste" but she makes the point anyways.

Nowadays, it's all about the flow of the music in "harmony" rather than just beat-matching. Of course, in the 90's the real pro DJs did all this with analog vinyl equipment and their ears/ feelings. Imagine, you'd have to blend two songs of different tempos, and adjusting the tempo also changed the pitch, which you also would have to blend. Truly amazing, and something that captivated me more than world-renowned symphony orchestras or choirs. Yes, I was in the choir. I sucked.

I hated using a metronome, rehearsing, and practice. I hated my piano lessons. To be honest, it was torture for me as a kid. There were some minor (lol pun unintended) fun parts though.