A lady from New York had no idea what people meant by the term music.

As a child, she was often asked to sing melodies at school but she was always off-key and off-beat. She couldn’t distinguish between a higher and lower note or even identify different musical instruments.

As she grew older, she would go to concerts with her boyfriends more out of a sense of duty than enjoyment. She described these events as excruciatingly painful and incomprehensible. There wasn’t any meaning or pleasure in these sounds so how could she enjoy music at all?

Everything else worked fine in her brain, she just had no ear for music.

Where did the music go?

This neurological disorder is called amusia, the inability to recognize and understand musical elements such as pitch and feel the emotions music usually brings.

In other words, people can’t connect with music and sadly there’s no treatment for it.

Most cases of amusia happen during people’s lifetime, instead of being born with it, and they arise after brain damage (i.e. ictus). Only between 1.5% and 4% of the population has this disease (so roughly around 120 to 320 million people), and there are several types of this disease:

• Motor amusia: the inability to sing, whistle, or perform music.

• Perceptual amusia: the inability to perceive different pitches and/or recognize different beats (co-occurring in 50% of cases).

• Environmental amusia: difficulty recognizing and differentiating environmental sounds, such as car horns or doorbells, which can impact their auditory perception.

• Lyric amusia: difficulty understanding and processing the lyrics of songs. Individuals might struggle to recognize the meaning of song lyrics or remember them accurately.

People have all other areas of the brain working fine, except for some issues regarding speech like vowel perception and emotions in speech. So for someone with this difficulty, speech may sound monotone and lacking in emotional expression.

Looking at this disorder I wonder if it’s more painful never to learn what music sounds like or to lose it after experiencing it.

Freud’s relationship with music

Freud is a legendary psychologist but being so versed in the world of the mind, he never wrote about people’s relationship with music.

Why?

Because he despised it!

In 1914 he briefly commented on this hate relationship with music.

Music was an abstract form for him. He couldn’t understand the effects of music on his feelings so he fled from its influence. It seems he had a fear of not being in control, so he might be scared of music!

This illness is called melophobia.

But maybe he also had some type of amusia.

If he wasn’t able to recognize some musical elements, it may feel foreign to him and just like the lady from New York, it became painful to attend these sound events.

Since he couldn’t understand music or even suffered from it, this reaction might have elicited a more hateful response.

Do you show signs of amusia?

In case you have a strange relationship with music, here’s a brief checklist to help you identify if there’s some degree of amusia in your life:

1. Do you find it challenging to recognize familiar songs or melodies?

2. Do you have trouble distinguishing between different instruments or voices in a song?

3. Is it difficult for you to keep a steady rhythm while clapping or tapping your fingers to a beat?

4. Do you struggle to tell whether a piece of music is happy or sad, even if the lyrics or context suggest a specific emotion?

5. Have you been told that your singing or humming is consistently off-key or out of tune?

6. Do you find it hard to remember or repeat a simple melody?

7. When listening to music, do you feel like some parts of the song are missing or unclear?

8. Are you unable to detect changes in pitch or tone in a piece of music?

9. Do you find it challenging to follow the melody or rhythm of a song, even if you actively try to do so?

10. Has your difficulty with music perception affected your enjoyment of musical experiences, such as concerts or singing along with others?

This list of questions is not a substitute for professional medical advice but it can be a good first step to recognize its symptoms.

As Oliver Sacks, the famous British neurologist and music researcher, said “People often suffer from the feeling that they’re unique” and if you’re able to know what’s happening to you it can be of great relief.

Final thoughts

The brain can act in very weird ways and one of those is being unable to hear music.

Most of us naturally respond to some type of music, but some will never know (or lose) the pleasure music brings to our lives.

I wonder if it’s more painful never to learn what music sounds like or to have experienced it and then lose it?

If you want to learn more about this more experientially, you might consider watching Amusia, a movie that portrays this neurological disorder creatively.

Even if music tends to be an essential part of people’s lives, it’s not for everyone.

Amusia or not, there’s always a place for other arts in life.