“Polyphonic” means multiple sounds produced simultaneously. It’s an essential part of most music.

Even a simple guitar chord is six individual notes harmonized at once.

“Polyphonic perception,” then, would just mean the ability to hear these sounds, right?

Well, it’s hard to say, because it’s not a scientific term. It’s something going around the internet, where the claim is essentially that given a many-layered piece of music, some folks can parse out the individual tones and elements with extreme precision.

There certainly ARE those with perfect pitch, including savants who can blindly name every note in a cluster of dissonant chords. But this doesn’t seem to be that.

I’ll be honest, if this demonstration from TikTok user @iambrelle is anything to go by, then I have “polyphonic perception,” and you probably do too.

“Visual representation of polyphonic perception for me,” reads the caption.
“Watch how many different beats I can catch and respond to.” My Love by Justin Timberlake plays.
Not exactly a Jacob Collier track in terms of complexity, but maybe for illustration purposes it will be helpful.

“I can hear every single component and respond to it differently.”
“There’s at least 3-4 vocals of his stacked on top of the ‘my loveeeeeeee'”
This is the point where I begin to think that I, too, have this magic, as that seemed fairly obvious to me.

“I can even hear his soft ‘ahhhhhh’s in between the melody of his vocal stacks.”
One would question why he might put them there if he didn’t expect most people could hear it.
“Then the Timbaland beat boxing.”
Again, this element is maybe subtle, but absolutely noticeable.

@iambrelle

This is the best way I can describe what its like every time I hear music. #fyppppppppppppppppppppppp #adhd #polyphonic

♬ My Love (feat. T.I.) – Justin Timberlake

People did not seem impressed.

What does this mean you think the rest of us are hearing?

I see what you did there.

There WAS some slightly more nuanced discussion:

I suppose there may be something to that last bit, but it seems safe to say that this way of perceiving music is, at least, not at all rare.

Showing it off strikes me as akin to calling yourself an “empath” because you can relate to people emotionally.

That’s just most humans, y’all.

If you liked that story, check out this one about a delivery driver who gave two weeks notice… so his employer disabled his truck when he was 300 miles from home!