# Do you hear music left-to-right or right-to-left or neither



## chillbot (Nov 10, 2016)

Every time I bring this up people think I'm crazy. I probably am.

I *hear* stereo music the way I read a book, from left-to-right. I've always been a very visual person so maybe I am not so much hearing it as visualizing it.

So if I have two guitar parts (for example) that I want to pan left and right (whether hard left/right or just a little bit) I always put the part that I want people to hear "first" on the left because that's how I hear it.

Generally that's the melody or higher part but not always. Sometimes I will have two almost equal parts (for example, a melody played on both nylon string and steel string guitar) and I will put the part that I want to be more dominant in the mix on the left because that's how I hear it, even if they are the same volume level.

Occasionally I will put the melody on the right channel instead as an effect, to me it makes the melody less dominant in the mix.

So then I realized, maybe I'm the only one that hears it like this. Or, there might be "lefties" out there that are hearing my mixes backwards!

Or, did this get ingrained into my ears from listening to orchestral music for 40 years where the higher instruments tend to be on the left?

Yes I have had my ears checked, I don't have any hearing loss in the right ear.

EDIT: I should have included a poll but can't figure out how to add it now. Please vote:

o I hear music left-to-right
o I hear music right-to-left
o I am a perfectly centered individual
o More of a top-to-bottom person
o I like to be on bottom
o chillbot is nutso


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## Ashermusic (Nov 10, 2016)

I hear from center-out, much like my politics


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## fritzmartinbass (Nov 10, 2016)

Center - I'm a bassist


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## erica-grace (Nov 10, 2016)

fritzmartinbass said:


> Center - I'm a bassist


Left* and *right - I am a musician.


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## jonathanprice (Nov 10, 2016)

Left-to-right, and I know a few other composers who have said the same. My guess is the association with reading English left to right. It'd be interesting to hear from Arabic/Persian/Hebrew composers who read right to left...if that affects how they weight their sounds. I'm a composer by trade, but I occasionally direct live theatre in LA, and one of the tricks directors use to create an unsettling feeling is to have characters cross right to left (from the audience's perspective). Although I've never done it in music, it seems like you could try the same trick with panning in a film/tv score.


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## chillbot (Nov 10, 2016)

Another thought about training the ears one way or another. I'm not good at being driven around in a car, I can't stand it.... so I would say 99% of the time when I'm in a car listening to music I'm in the driver's seat (left side in the US). I think it has more to do with reading a book though, as you mentioned...


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## sleepy hollow (Nov 10, 2016)

chillbot said:


> EDIT: I should have included a poll but can't figure out how to add it now. Please vote:


Look in the upper right corner --> Thread tools --> Add poll


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## chillbot (Nov 10, 2016)

sleepy hollow said:


> Look in the upper right corner --> Thread tools --> Add poll


I see.... you're one of those _clever_ people. I've heard about people like you. I was looking under "edit post"...


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## pixel (Nov 10, 2016)

-I hear music in all dimensions because I'm sound engineer (so I can't prefer any dimension above another) 

I'm curious how much it depends on being left-right handed.

In normal room temperature sound travel with around 343m/s in 20C degree. It's too fast to recognize difference if your ears are at the same distance from signal source. If your ears are fine then I can bet that it's only your imagination (mind play tricks to all of us). You can teach/develop your brain to think that you can hear sound earlier in your left or right ear, to degree where you actually will hear it (mind trick)


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## chillbot (Nov 10, 2016)

pixel said:


> If your ears are fine then I can bet that it's only your imagination (mind play tricks to all of us). You can teach/develop your brain to think that you can hear sound earlier in your left or right ear, to degree where you actually will hear it


Since you don't hear it, it's hard for me to describe. Hearing it "first" isn't exactly correct, I describe it using that term because I hear music visually like a book. It definitely does not sound louder on either side. I hear things panned left to be more dominant than things panned right, not a mind trick. You might be right about the left-handed and right-handed thing, it feels similar to that how one hand is more dominant than the other. I'm not sure I'll get enough response but I could change the poll to reflect left/right handed and whether you read from left-to-right or right-to-left...


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## pixel (Nov 10, 2016)

Ah I see. My friend refer this to shape of head: that our heads are not equally shaped on left/right side. Also my left ear is a little bit 'flattened' in upper part but it doesn't have any impact on hearing (thank god!). So ears can have also different shape but I don't know does it play any major role as long as ears are not seriously distorted


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## Saxer (Nov 10, 2016)

I listen from prominent events to comping. And mostly I listen from 'up' to 'down'. And I ignore vocalists. I often transcribe complete songs and reproduce them without knowing anything of the words. Most singers are kind of translucent for me.


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## chillbot (Nov 10, 2016)

I realize now that when I listen to music I "see" it on a huge canvas... I never really thought about it before so it never occurred to me that maybe everyone didn't visualize it the same way, though I am sure that a lot of people do (would arrogant to think I was unique). I wish more people would chime in on this.

So I see things panned to the left on the left of the canvas and I see treble more towards the top and bass at the bottom. Since I read words left-to-right I guess it makes sense that I see the stuff panned left first and assign it a higher priority to my ears. I dunno... still trying to figure it out, I just know that I've always heard music left-to-right.

Not as a giant score (wouldn't that be nice)... if it was a score then I would be reading it not seeing it. Can't really describe what I see because it's a mess... sometimes actual notes sometimes instruments sometimes colors sometimes textures, a lot of the time MIDI piano-scroll notes (too much time spent in front of a DAW).

No I don't smoke pot. Nothing against it but I don't do any drugs besides alcohol. I know this comes off as a bit trippy....


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## Mike Fox (Nov 10, 2016)

Ashermusic said:


> I hear from center-out, much like my politics


This!


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## Mike Fox (Nov 10, 2016)

Everything hits both of my ears simultaneously, but I do see colors when I listen to music. Probably normal?


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## constaneum (Nov 10, 2016)

mikefox789 said:


> Everything hits both of my ears simultaneously, but I do see colors when I listen to music. Probably normal?



Wow ! Colors !! Like what? Heavy metal / Rock = Hell Black? Flute = Springy Pink (spring is here and flowers blooms, birds chirping & ......? ), Oboe = romantically Red? Saxophone = Red hot ! mamamia !

LOL!


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## CACKLAND (Nov 10, 2016)

It's called *Synesthesia*


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## Tysmall (Nov 10, 2016)

chillbot said:


> I realize now that when I listen to music I "see" it on a huge canvas... I never really thought about it before so it never occurred to me that maybe everyone didn't visualize it the same way, though I am sure that a lot of people do (would arrogant to think I was unique). I wish more people would chime in on this.
> 
> So I see things panned to the left on the left of the canvas and I see treble more towards the top and bass at the bottom. Since I read words left-to-right I guess it makes sense that I see the stuff panned left first and assign it a higher priority to my ears. I dunno... still trying to figure it out, I just know that I've always heard music left-to-right.
> 
> ...



kind of the same, i decode music with my right ear and then interpret it with my left. I paint pictures of landscapes in my head dependent on the timbre and notes used. I have to actually put thought in to see notes / chord progressions otherwise i just hear a painting. different things denote colors, i am listening to the halo 3 ost right now and i feel like i'm in a the middle of the sea with a purple sky all around and the woodwinds are the only things keeping me safe on this brown plateau of a rock i'm on. Maybe I just have an undiagnosed mental illness, it's weird how creative minds work - quite glad to see other people are almost as strange as me.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Nov 10, 2016)

People normally hear and see important things in front of them. We also walk with our heads centered, read books in front of us, face whatever the most important thing is.

If that's not your default position, there's a good chance you an eye or ear issue and are turning your head to compensate. Duane syndrome causes that, for example (it's a dead nerve causing an eye not to be able to rotate out, and then your head moves to that side so you get more peripheral vision; a person in my family was operated on for that - successfully - as a toddler).

With music, the main performer is always center stage in a concert. Can you imagine a record with the lead vocal off to one side?


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## fritzmartinbass (Nov 11, 2016)

erica-grace said:


> Left* and *right - I am a musician.


Wow! Um, (modern)bass is usually mixed in the center. I'm glad you are a musician.


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## Christof (Nov 11, 2016)

I hear in 3D.Seriously.


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## chillbot (Nov 11, 2016)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> If that's not your default position, there's a good chance you an eye or ear issue and are turning your head to compensate.


I find this plausible but I'm wondering why so many people are quick to dismiss the fact that some people either have a dominant ear or that some people just visually see music from left to right. Does there have to be an acoustical reason for it?

To your point, when I'm writing I know my head is all over the place... however I have a separate station and separate set of speakers for mixing, which is not typical but it works for me (because I mix on outboard mixers). When I mix I have my chair and speakers calibrated so I know my head is dead center at the right height.

To answer your next question, no my room is not symmetrical though I've done my best to deaden it to my liking. However hearing music left-to-right happens to me everywhere that I hear music, not just in front of speakers. If I am in a department store pumping musak from random crap speakers I still hear it left-to-right.

It doesn't seem like an acoustical phenomenon to me, it doesn't seem like one side is louder than the other, it's just the way I see music. I can't describe it to you any more than I could try to describe the color "blue" to you. Who is to say that my blue is the same as your blue. Cue the "what color is the sky in your world" remarks...


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## pixel (Nov 11, 2016)

Sometimes, but really sometimes when I'm outdoor listening to music on headphones then I feel like center stage is slightly moved to left side (like 5-10%) but left/right is in position. It happens mostly when I have poor junk diet that day.


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## Mornats (Nov 11, 2016)

Definitely left to right for me. I never thought of it until I read your post but it stands out like a sore thumb now.

Also, whenever I listen to music I tend to visualise the sounds. If you've used the visualiser on iTunes where shapes form and change based on the music then this is what I see in my head every time I listen to music. Sometimes when I'm searching for a sound for one of my tracks I will visualise it first then find the sound that matches that. Some sort of synethesia maybe? 

And you thought you were nuts...


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## Chris Hurst (Nov 11, 2016)

Left to right for me. Hard panning anything - always left first. Drums (usually right handers) - always drummers perspective (so hats to the left). For some reason I 'don't like' hearing hats on the right!


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## wbacer (Nov 12, 2016)

Left and right dominance is an interesting concept. It effects ears, eyes, hands, feet and who knows what else.
I remember when I was a kid, I could not catch a ball to save my life and thought that I was just uncoordinated, probably am but...
I didn't learn until I was an adult that although I'm right handed, my left eye is dominant. My eye doctor asked me if I had a hard time catching a ball and said that's the reason. I know some people that are right hand dominant but kick a ball with their left foot. Then again there are people that are ambidextrous who can hit, catch and kick a ball either right or left handed/footed with equal skill. Not surprising that we also all hear in different ways. I guess we're all wired just a little bit differently.


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## pkm (Nov 12, 2016)

I don't hear either as more important than the other, but they're definitely not equal. Some things just sound better on one side than the other and it doesn't feel subjective.

Hearing drums in audience perspective feels a little like watching a movie upside down. Unless it's a lefty drummer!


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## Rodney Money (Nov 12, 2016)

I hear music in the perspective of who has the melody (foreground,) then countermelodies (midground,) and lastly chords, rhythms, textures, and added colors (background.)


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## JJP (Nov 12, 2016)

It sounds like you could be dealing with two things. Both these things have been mentioned here in some form. The first is left or right ear dominance. That's a proven phenonenon and is simply part of how we perceive the world as a product of the way our brains are wired.

The second, and potentially more creatively interesting part may be the way you conceive of music. This is much more abstract in principle but could be very concrete in your perception. Some people have synethsesia which causes people to see things like color when they hear sound, but we can also have cognitive associations with music.

For example, I often tend to imagine music as shapes and textures moving in some sort of space, often in a linear fashion as if they are passing me like a parade. Other times they are more stationary and transform in front of me. This is probably because of a number of things ranging from images I associated with sounds as I first was first exposed to music, to ways I was taught to think about performing music by teachers, to the physical sensations of playing or singing music, to how my brain reconciles the visual medium of notation with the sounds they represent. To describe it literally, I would have to say it's a combination of visual and tactile images in a sonic space. That description is obvoiusly meaningless to almost anyone but me, but there's no real world comparison that I can make. It's all quite abstract, complex, and not always the same.

Perhaps you have particular spacial associations in the way you perceive music. That wouldn't be uncommon. We all process things differently.


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## chillbot (Jul 9, 2017)

Bump for more votes.

As far as actually "hearing" music one way or the other, there is a very strong preference in the poll towards hearing left-to-right. (As I do.) But it's a really small sample size.

I continually mix with what I want to be predominantly heard on the left side until proven otherwise?


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## Jeremy Spencer (Jul 10, 2017)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> With music, the main performer is always center stage in a concert. Can you imagine a record with the lead vocal off to one side?



The Beatles did this all the time, it's a whole new experience when you listen to their stuff with a good set of headphones.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Jul 10, 2017)

Wolfie, they did that because they were bouncing between tape machines. That was in the early days of multitrack recording, never mind stereo.

But there are always exceptions that prove rules, and George Martin defined both!

***

Reading chillbot's original question again, answering in context, I don't think it makes any difference. Should drums be panned from the player's or audience's position? How about stereo piano? We've all heard both without giving it a thought.


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## creativeforge (Jul 10, 2017)

I mix the stereo placement for piano left-bass right-treble. Sometimes with arpeggio runs. I will favor having more prominent bass to the left, and so on. But I hear the music in whatever way is comes to me. 3D sounds about right if I have a good system.


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## Anthony (Jul 10, 2017)

Generally left to right.

Just yesterday I swapped the panning of two hard-panned guitars so that the brighter one was panned left, so as to be heard 'first'. I suspect this decision was an artifact of having learned to read left to right.

There are a lot of commonalities between language and music. Some have even argued that music is (formally) a language given that it possesses something akin to linguistic syntax and semantics. And just as language uses prosody to communicate affective information, you can do something similar in music via articulations. But most important, music, like language, is "generative" meaning that you can create a large number of 'sentences' (melodic phrases) given a fixed and relatively small number of 'words' (notes/chords/scales) through a process of concatenation.

Of course these parallels only go so far. For example, individual notes/chords/scales do not carry definite meaning the way words do. Nonetheless it is interesting to compare music and language in this way, and the process may provide insights not obtainable by considering just one system alone.


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## Ben E (Jul 20, 2017)

Left to right when composing. When listening I think I hear it holistically. If someone has composed right-to-left it doesn't register as unusual. But it feels uncomfortable for me to do it that way. Especially in band arrangements (guitars, etc.)


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## hummingbird (Jul 21, 2017)

I'm one of the "others" lol


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## babylonwaves (Jul 21, 2017)

i spent to much time in clubs. stereo is overrated


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## AdamAlake (Jul 21, 2017)

Grew up in China so top to bottom.


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## VinRice (Jul 31, 2017)

We 'hear' with our brains not our ears so all sorts of strange effects can occur. I definitely have a left bias, not in volume but in 'importance' though I like dead-centre as well. When I listen to stuff I like I can visualise players playing it unless it's purely synthesised when I tend to visualise as shapes and colours (interesting implication for hybrid scores, and probably age-biased.). When I'm improvising I feel like I can 'taste' the music but I suspect it's the feeling of involuntarily sub-vocalising lines. When I listen to my own stuff I can hear every goddam imperfection and microsecond timing issue. Lots of psycho-acoustic research potential to still be explored I think.


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## Michael Antrum (Jul 31, 2017)

I am completely deaf in my left ear- I have been since birth. Musically it has been somewhat difficult, but you learn to adapt and to try and imagine what others are hearing. It makes it impossible to locate sound- I can use the 'find my iphone' and I can't tell where in the room the bloody thing is.

It tends to make me concentrate more on the music rather than the sound. When it comes to mixing, well, it's like a one legged man running the marathon, which is why I don't post much of my music - it could be out of phase and the strings could be coming out of the conductors backside and I wouldn't really be able to tell. I'd know they are there, but where exactly would be beyond me.

It does, however, have some advantages. As my hearing is effectively mono, a lack of clarity in sound seems to be more pronounced to me. I understand the Brian Wilson had the same problem as me, and so I am in good company - it certainly never held him back. But again, talent and success have never been particular bedfellows.

When I was in my late thirties, I decided to consult a hearing specialist to see if anything could be done. It turned out that he too was completely deaf in one ear. After being told that all the could be done was to drill rather big holes in my skull to install all sorts of ironmongery, I decided that discretion was indeed the better side of valour on this occasion.

As I was about to leave, he asked me if I was married. I told him I was. 

"In that case," he said, "I have no need to tell you about the many benefits of being completely deaf in one ear..."


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## Joram (Aug 11, 2017)

When I mix orchestral music I see a score. It's odd, but i do.


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