Thanks to APD (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auditory_processing_disorder), most songs sound like that to me (I can only understand fragments of most lyrics unless I google them). I love music and listen to a lot of it, but most of the time I like the sound and not the words.
It's Gibberish, But Italian Pop Song Still Means Something
21–30 of 88 posts
Re: It's Gibberish, But Italian Pop Song Still Means Something
#22Thanks to APD ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auditory_processing_disorder ), most songs sound like that to me (I can only understand fragments of most lyrics unless I google them). I love music and listen to a lot of it, but most of the time I like the sound and not the words.
I suspect that when I was younger, I had a similar issue without realizing it. I used to think all lyricists were higher than a kite any time they wrote anything. After getting a diagnosis late in life for a condition I was born with and getting healthier, as I got healthier, songs began sounding a lot more prosaic to me. Some guy that I thought was trying to catch "a moon train" was really catching the Noon train to meet his girlfriend. Overall, most songs became drastically less intriguing and whimsical-sounding.
Fwiw, songs by The Beatles still sounded the same to me as always. I have wondered if that somehow explains their popularity, that there is something about their music which is fundamentally easier for more people to hear correctly and, thus, it was more widely appreciated and struck fewer people as gibberish.
Re: It's Gibberish, But Italian Pop Song Still Means Something
#23A similar effect can be heard in "Skwerl (How English sounds to non-English speakers)": http://youtu.be/Vt4Dfa4fOEY (speaking starts at 0m30s).
It's not quite as good, is it? I wonder if this effect is easier to achieve in a song or if it's more a case of how much time, talent, and effort goes into making it.
Re: It's Gibberish, But Italian Pop Song Still Means Something
#24Thanks to APD ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auditory_processing_disorder ), most songs sound like that to me (I can only understand fragments of most lyrics unless I google them). I love music and listen to a lot of it, but most of the time I like the sound and not the words.
That's pretty interesting. I feel like I have a hard time understanding people in group settings. It's not uncommon that I have to ask people to repeat themselves, and I feel I do this much more than other people. I'm also not great at understanding song lyrics, but I feel like most people can't figure them out either (based on all the faulty lyrics out there).
In one-on-one conversations, I'm usually fine though. Is this what you experience, or is it much more dramatic?
Re: It's Gibberish, But Italian Pop Song Still Means Something
#25Re: It's Gibberish, But Italian Pop Song Still Means Something
#26I'm amazed at how well he has the sounds down. I'd never peg him as Italian, and I probably wouldn't realize it was gibberish until the backup singers did it slowly; I'd think I was just failing to get it, like listening to Dylan on a bad day. I'm amazed at the contrast with British actors trying to do American accents, which never fool me; is it easier to do it with gibberish, or is he just unusually good at mimicki…
He definitely is incredibly good. Did you ever try to fluently speak gibberish? It's pretty hard to come up with something without repeating yourself, not to mention something resembling an existing language.
Re: It's Gibberish, But Italian Pop Song Still Means Something
#27I'm amazed at how well he has the sounds down. I'd never peg him as Italian, and I probably wouldn't realize it was gibberish until the backup singers did it slowly; I'd think I was just failing to get it, like listening to Dylan on a bad day. I'm amazed at the contrast with British actors trying to do American accents, which never fool me; is it easier to do it with gibberish, or is he just unusually good at mimicki…
As a young man, Richard Feynman was fascinated by the sounds of Italian, and faked Italian sounding gibberish, even to the point of "performing" it in front of his sister's Girl Scout troop.
http://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-surely-youre-joking-mr-fe...
Re: It's Gibberish, But Italian Pop Song Still Means Something
#28This song made its biggest splash three years ago on Boing Boing: http://boingboing.net/2009/12/17/gibberish-rock-song.html
(Google trends graph http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=Prisencolinensinainci... )
Re: It's Gibberish, But Italian Pop Song Still Means Something
#29I'm amazed at how well he has the sounds down. I'd never peg him as Italian, and I probably wouldn't realize it was gibberish until the backup singers did it slowly; I'd think I was just failing to get it, like listening to Dylan on a bad day. I'm amazed at the contrast with British actors trying to do American accents, which never fool me; is it easier to do it with gibberish, or is he just unusually good at mimicki…
> which never fool me
Really never, or do you just never notice?
There was a great YouTube video here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-cAnFbEXY0) - but it seems to have been removed by the user. Not sure if there's any way to find it now. It was Americans speaking gibberish, and it sounded pretty convincingly like language.
Re: It's Gibberish, But Italian Pop Song Still Means Something
#30Thanks to APD ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auditory_processing_disorder ), most songs sound like that to me (I can only understand fragments of most lyrics unless I google them). I love music and listen to a lot of it, but most of the time I like the sound and not the words.
That's pretty interesting. I feel like I have a hard time understanding people in group settings. It's not uncommon that I have to ask people to repeat themselves, and I feel I do this much more than other people. I'm also not great at understanding song lyrics, but I feel like most people can't figure them out either (based on all the faulty lyrics out there). In one-on-one conversations, I'm usually fine though. Is…
People with auditory processing problems are negatively impacted by background noise and tend to supplement their understanding of what was said with lip reading, often without consciously realizing it. So they tend to do much better in one on one discussions, which tend to have less background noise and are typically more conducive to lip reading than group settings.