A ear worm sufferer in Norway. Photo: Edvard Munch [Public domain]
Stuck Music Syndrome (SMS). That condition where you get a tune on endless loop lodged in your head.
Most of us call them earworms, and Hamilton-based composer Bjorn Arntsen has been studying them for his PhD at Waikato University.
He got stuck with one of the worst kind, an earworm he couldn't identify - a little flourish of notes on the violin.
Arntsen was convinced it came from Samuel Barber's violin concerto, but despite listening through to the whole piece dozens of times, he couldn't find it.
Turns out it was from the other concerto on the album, one by Edger Meyer and recorded by the great American violinist Hilary Hahn.
Arntsen's brain strain inspired him to delve into the nature of earworms in the PhD thesis he's working on for Waikato University.
Bjorn Arntsen. Photo: Supplied
But more than that, he reckons he's found a cure for them: recycle them into another piece of music.
That's what he's done with his work "Pinch Points" for piano quartet. He took the five-note earworm from Meyer's piece, then re-arranged it to create a new piece of music.
In the process, he realised the earworm had gone away.
Arntsen, who is a Sámi from the northern Norwegian city of Tromsø, spoke with RNZ Concert's Bryan Crump about this self-medication for his earworm, and his new album Bàrru, which came out on the Atoll label this month.
Crump made the observation that getting rid of an earworm by turning it into a new piece of music is probably an option limited to just a few creative types.
Arntsen says chewing gum is another cure, although folk may not want to be chewing gum all the time.
An RNZ Concert listener, Jo, shared her solution: chose a long word, any word, and make anagrams from it.
Jo reckons the brain power used to re-arrange letters silences the bit of the brain playing the earworm.
Anne, another earworm sufferer texted to confirm Jo's theory.
Initially she tried chewing gum, then she turned the words "chewing" and "gum" into an anagram.
"Weigh Mc Gun and the sound has gone".
