Is there anyone else, beside me, who has Musical tinnitus?

[MSC86]

I've had musical tinnitus for a year or so and found it was very difficult to describe the problem to family and friends. I went to a Tinnitus Support group and no one had experienced it. I wrote a light-hearted description of my experiences (some of which might seem a bit spooky) but there's been no response so far.

I'm beginning to think musical tinnitus is much rarer than I thought. I'm getting louder music more often and I'm arranging to see a specialist like an ENT doctor to get advice.

[alpacagirl]

Very rare I should think! Most of us have bog standard annoying tinnitus! Sounds fascinating😀

[MSC86 in reply to alpacagirl]

Hi! Glad to hear from you. We've both got the more common tinnitus but I seem to have had my roaring noises etc swamped by the musical sounds. Right now I've got what sounds like a male chorus of a military march? - familiar but don't know its name.

It was muted at first but has got louder-intrigued at first but you can get very brassed off with hearing even your favourite sounds repeated for hours on end. The music's just changed- still military but can't name that tune. Cheers

[Tintim]

Yes, my wife has had musical tinnitus (MT) for over 6 months now. It started in a fairly innocuous way with her noticing some of her favourite Christmas music (Jim Reeves etc) repeating in her head. Over the months it has morphed into less recognisable music, very often with an electronic or synthesised quality to it. It manifests often with about 4-6 layers each playing and sometimes crescendoing if there is such a word.

Oddly she says she can picture it in different ways and attach colours to each layer.

She’s recently started low dose Amitriptyline to help with sleep but lately the MT seems to be outwitting the sedative effect so back to the Dr on Tues. Some nights she is at her wits end and in tears. I can sometimes get her back to sleep by stroking her head which means sleep deprivation hits us both quite often.

She has mild to moderate hearing loss and also has recent combination hearing aids which seem of limited benefit at this moment. She can hear many everyday frequencies without them.

At the moment we can only assume MT is a true form of tinnitus but there seems to be very little research available for it.

Prof Tim Griffiths a neurologist at Newcastle NHS and a lady called Prof Vicky Williamson seem to be leaders in the field.

I believe they make differentiation’s between earworms and musical hallucinations (which we call MT )

Always interested to hear other’s experiences and hopefully success stories in managing this awful condition