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Synesthesia anyone?

evansorchid	Date: June 27, 2011 @ 9:17 AM Anybody else here synesthetic? I heard about this condition for the first time a couple of weeks ago, and I\'ve become a bit fascinated by this subject.....because it\'s a condition that I believe I must have acquired or developed somewhere along the way. Basically, Synesthesia is a condition that many well-known musicians have reported over the years in which they strongly associate visual colors with the differing auditory tones of the diatonic musical scale. There really hasn\'t been much research on this because apparently different musicians report visualizing different colors for the same musical notes, so it seems to be completely subjective. For me it became clear when I was playing this game with a musician friend of mine. We were just listening to different songs on our computer with our guitars in our laps, and my friend would ask me what musical \"key\" I thought various songs were in. Strangely enough, I\'m rather good at this game. Rather than slide my hand up and down the neck of the guitar and hunt for the root chord of the song, I would try and envision the color that I was hearing......then I would go straight to the tonic root of the song by following this color chart that I\'d made. I\'m not sure where the color associations came from, but these are my personal color associations. A is White Bb is Yellow B is Rust C is Red C# is Metallic Silver D is Green Eb is Copper E is Purple F is Gold F# is Dark Amber G is Orange Ab is Soft Pink What seems to be interesting is how some of the chords come together. For example the chord of C major (C - E - G) becomes a combination of Red, Purple and Orange.....which somehow makes sense to me in an odd intuitive way. The same goes for all the other chord combinations. I was just curious if anyone else here has had similar experiences with colors and music........Acid trips don\'t count.
ShadowMom	Date: June 27, 2011 @ 9:23 AM Well... that lets ME out! ... the word "musician" -- NOT the words "acid trips"!! Sounds fascinating, though, I wonder if it works with words.
evansorchid	Date: June 27, 2011 @ 9:35 AM Actually, I think I did read that some folks do associate numbers and letters with colors as well .....so there may be some mathematicians or maybe some wordsmiths who experience this as well...... but the group that has the highest frequency of this condition occurring, I believe is musicians.
Opossum	Date: June 27, 2011 @ 9:50 AM I have it to some extent, not quite as intense as when younger. I guess my more stranger experiences have been: Having "music" come out of my belly button and feeling blissful after having a stomach ache. Dropping a very heavy book on my foot and not feeling a thing, only seeing a lightning bolt flash in my left eye and saying "ow" even though I felt nothing. As for music, there isn't a way I could establish it to that extent. I WILL agree that A is white and that Eb is copper. However, Ab is not soft pink, but more of a soft pinkish bronze...
Opossum	Date: June 27, 2011 @ 9:52 AM Alphabet-wise, A is red, B is blue, C is orange, D is brown...and so on.
ShadowMom	Date: June 27, 2011 @ 9:58 AM I'm seeing rainbows now. Does that count?
Opossum	Date: June 27, 2011 @ 10:05 AM As long as the colors are in the correct order.
evansorchid	Date: June 27, 2011 @ 10:08 AM Just because they passed the Gay Marriage thing up in New York, doesn't mean that those rainbows you're seeing have any significance at all....especially down in Florida. Oh....and Opossum......I do believe there IS a Bronze hue to my soft pink A-flat.....weird.
ShadowMom	Date: June 27, 2011 @ 10:11 AM It's... the Borg!!!!! Florida is screwed for the time being. Rednecks be damned....
evansorchid	Date: June 27, 2011 @ 10:16 AM .........Borg? What does Star Trek have to do with any of this?
ShadowMom	Date: June 27, 2011 @ 10:23 AM If I have to explain it, the point wasn't made! I'll just take my rainbows and go pout a while Oh NOT!!!
imemine	Date: June 27, 2011 @ 6:27 PM I see a C door and I want to paint it..Uuuuu…F# No black? HOW DO YOU EXPECT ME TO GET ANY WORK DONE AROUND HERE?!!!#&^#%^^$#$!! smashes guitar against wall and storms out
ShadowMom	Date: June 27, 2011 @ 8:12 PM Anger Management 101 is down the hall, the black door on the left.
evansorchid	Date: June 27, 2011 @ 9:25 PM Black is the color of silence. I don't know if Ime can handle that.
ShadowMom	Date: June 27, 2011 @ 9:36 PM Place your bets now...
Lamebrother	Date: June 27, 2011 @ 10:40 PM Crap, I see colour in sound
elektronz	Date: June 27, 2011 @ 11:14 PM have heard about this ..dont have it myself ,,not enough room in the old bonce for that got too much weird shit going on in there to accomodate this ... ..shame really as it sounds cool
JennyK	Date: June 28, 2011 @ 8:37 PM I kind of wish I had something like that. I really miss colors. But different sounds make me "see" various levels of brightness. And hitting really high notes when singing can bring on some really weird lights flashing too. Sharp sudden sounds cause sharp bursts of light. Quite freaky at times actually.
elektronz	Date: July 1, 2011 @ 7:49 PM synethesia is a book on how to program keyboards (synth is easier) .....well i fort it were funny
elektronz	Date: July 2, 2011 @ 5:38 AM speaking of synethesia ...... ....
elektronz	Date: July 2, 2011 @ 5:40 AM ive mispelt synesthesia twice ..hmmm
evansorchid	Date: July 2, 2011 @ 7:52 PM Definitely yellow.
JohnWilliams	Date: July 11, 2011 @ 11:13 AM mmm for me its a little bit different, but yet the same in some ways,, see if i can explain= when i started music at about 7 i would see shapes on the keyboards in my mind,,those shapes turned out to be different scales.. at first it was prymids ^ ^ then the tones of the notes, would be assigned a pattern..and then sometimes would be ajoined to a color, like green for example so c minor scale triangle shape with green..there is something to this and it is very interesting.. i see you have green listed as d and where a half step away.. when i close my eyes and daydream or rub my eyes in a certain way,,i see deep rich colors,,one could translate these colors into songs~ its definatly a spiritual thing and has very deep ties into our minds... anyway these things are related and have deep meaning and very interesting subject..
JohnWilliams	Date: July 11, 2011 @ 12:32 PM http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia so it does work in all kinds of ways words / letters = colors too i wonder how/why the makers of guitar hero chose the colors for the notes/chords on that game? there seems to be no commonality or similarity to this.,..but it is there, and different for everyone...kinda like bigfoot and ghosts and ufo's they are there, but no solid proof of them..yet~
JohnWilliams	Date: July 11, 2011 @ 12:41 PM
BOWILLIE	Date: July 11, 2011 @ 1:00 PM i wonder why you never see baby bigfeet
JohnWilliams	Date: July 11, 2011 @ 5:56 PM because the mama bigfeet never lets them out of her site! she protects them, well into young adulthood..by then they are stealthy enough to avoid humans..
evansorchid	Date: July 20, 2011 @ 2:37 PM I'm amending my color list. A is still White Bb is not really Yellow....it's more Saffron B is still Rust, but more of a Rusty Bronze C is no longer red....it's mahogany. C# is still Metallic Silver D is not really green, it's more of a pale chartreuse like the beverage. Eb is still copper E is no longer Purple, but a Deep Lavender F is still Gold F# is still Dark Amber G seem to be more Vermilion Ab is still a hot pink, but it's really really close to fuchsia as well.
JohnWilliams	Date: July 23, 2011 @ 8:47 AM ok shouldn't this formula have only primary colors,, it seems if you go adding or changing the colors then its too random, and makes it more difficult... if you stick with primary colors simple colors then it would make sense,,but changing it to "Metallic Silver" that's not a primary,, gray is a primary.."pale chartreuse" the color list you had up at the start of this thread made a lot more sense..now its just too random,,and makes it more of a "its different for everyone" conclusion.... now i get the feeling your just yanking our chains...
ShadowMom	Date: July 23, 2011 @ 9:46 AM David Eagleman, who co-authored Wednesday is Indigo Blue: Discovering the Brain of Synesthesia with Richard Cytowic, was a guest on Stephen Colbert's show Thursday night, discussing his new book, Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain. Basically, now he's offering up the next criminal defense: I didn't do it, my brain did... Just a quick look at Wikipedia, though-- supports Spike. Every person seems to experience different colors, and I believe he's just trying to be more specific. "Green" is, after all, many different shades. I think I feel a need to visit Amazon, but that may just be my brain's decision, not mine.
JohnWilliams	Date: July 23, 2011 @ 11:35 AM very intersting....
JohnWilliams	Date: July 23, 2011 @ 11:47 AM http://www.colbertnation.com/full-episodes/thu-july-21-2011-david-eagleman
evansorchid	Date: July 23, 2011 @ 9:56 PM I wasn't trying to pull anyone's chain. I guess I was just trying to be more specific. There are after all many different shades of color.....and for some reason, I seem to be able to relate certain tones to specific colors. I don't really understand your point about how the colors must absolutely be primary colors. If I remember correctly, aren't there only three primary colors.....and grey isn't one of them. Unless you consider the primary colors as the colors of the crayons in a box of twelve crayolas that we were all given in primary school. The changes that I made in the second post clarified the colors for me. I originally had C as red, but upon further study of this odd phenomenon, it seems that mahogany seems a more accurate description of the color; and et cetera for the other color adjustments. Yellow - Saffron; Orange - Vermilion, Purple - Deep Lavender, etc.... I really don't envision flashing of colors of light when I listen to music. That would be overwhelming and a bit distracting. There's obviously a filter that prevents that from happening. But, when I focus on a certain tone, I seem to be able to accurately pinpoint the note's correct name because that tone somehow triggers a color response in my head. It really doesn't seem to be something that is really useful, because it takes me about 3 to 4 seconds to hum the tonic note like a mantra and focus on it, then the color will appear after a few more seconds. For example, when I listen to a song I can hum the tonic note (key signature) in my head for a few seconds and be able to go to my keyboard or guitar correctly place my finger on that note 9 times out of 10. If I'm incorrect, it's only by a half step. I seem to base this on the color that forms inside my head. I was quite shocked when I figured out I could do this. My keyboard and all the music that I record is almost always on a frequency of A = 440. Sometimes I've noticed that many songs that are on the radio weren't recorded with that as the standard. You can tell because a keyboard will sound either sharp or flat when you try to play along with the recording. So those songs still seem to confuse me sometimes and what I might do is press my finger over my ear to adjust the pitch of the sound waves coming into my ear until a clear color comes into focus. What I have found interesting lately about the colors is the way that chords are put together. Let's choose an odd key like Bb which has the notes of Bb, D & F. The color combination is Saffron, Chartreuse, Gold; or basically yellow, green, yellow or a light pale green. Now if you switch that to a Bb minor, it changes the major 3rd (green) to a minor 3rd (silver), so now we have a yellow, silver, yellow combination or a shiny yellow. But, I've discovered that trying to focus on these color combinations seems to confuse the matter. But I have noticed that the chords that are formed with the colors that I've listed seem go together.... they don't seem to clash when dealing with your basic 3-note major and minor chords. I find it interesting, for example that I don't have any shades of Blue that are triggered by a musical note. I'm not sure what that means. Anyway.....
JohnWilliams	Date: July 24, 2011 @ 2:54 PM alright that's fair enough,,i think what i meant by primary colors is this~ a palette or what an artist might use or a painter...since all art is inter related in some way..lol http://www.artsparx.com/colorwheel.asp so you see i am not always super clear in what i say..it was a generalization ... http://www.colormatters.com/colortheory.html i hope this helps you understand what i was getting at... i find this a terribly interesting concept i am also interested in how shapes are assoiciated with different modal scales and chording.. as well as notes...art and music have very strong connections in are brain... forgive my spelling
JohnWilliams	Date: July 24, 2011 @ 2:58 PM art + math + geometry + music + shapes + colors = the key to the universe!!!
evansorchid	Date: July 24, 2011 @ 9:19 PM It's not the key to the universe......it's just yet another fascinating aspect. ....try not to over-think it....let it absorb you....don't try to absorb it.
JohnWilliams	Date: July 24, 2011 @ 10:54 PM you are correct sir,, i let everything absorb me... but sometimes its good to absorb as well..like a sponge.. and i overthink thinking sometimes serious tho did the color wheel help your theory?? any..
johncastellain	Date: July 25, 2011 @ 6:01 PM I did a thesis on a similar subject at uni some time ago,and had performers(dancers & actors)respond in any way they felt to some compositions I had created. No verbal instruction was given, just a primary colour lit the stage and music I felt went along with the colour was played.There were three compositions to three colours and the results were: Blue : Depression,sadness,loss,key of Dminor Red : Anger,agression,frustration,key of Adim Yellow : Happiness,Joy,love,key of Fmajor
johncastellain	Date: July 25, 2011 @ 6:02 PM I forgot to say...they actually did respond accordingly,(the performers)
evansorchid	Date: July 26, 2011 @ 6:07 AM I have a friend who was a music major in college (he now sells real estate, but that's another story), who was telling me of this exercise they did in one of his music classes. The instructor would turn his piano so that none of the students could see the keyboard, then the instructor would play a singular note on the piano and ask the students to write down what note they thought it was. Then, he would repeat this 10 different times for 10 different notes. The students would write down their responses on a sheet of paper and turn and pass it to the student next to them to be graded. Each time the class met the instructor would administer this same test, but with a different series of notes. The instructor was attempting to "train their ears". My friend told me that at the beginning of the course that most of the students were terrible at this exercise, but by the end of the semester, the class average was around 80% percent accuracy. This instructor also apparently conducted some experiments in color/musical tone associations as well, but the students were all over the map, so it didn't seem to be a fruitful exercise.....except that it does correlate to the theory that synesthesia is highly personal. On 25th Jul 2012, johncastellain said: Blueepression,sadness,loss,key of Dminor Red:Anger,agression,frustration,key of Adim Yellow:Happiness,Joy,love,key of Fmajor As for the feelings/emotions evoked by colors in this explanation....it sounds like the key to the descriptive emotions are not from the tonic notes themselves, but from the mode, (i.e. minor evoking depression, sadness and loss, Diminished evoking anger, aggression and frustration, and major evoking happiness, joy and love.......which makes sense, but it doesn't evoke those colors because of the key signature. Blue doesn't always evoke sadness, loss and depression. Blue can evoke the happiness expressed by a clear blue sky, or the unlimited possibilities of a deep blue ocean. Same can be said with Red and Yellow. Red can signify excitement and lust and valentine's day love and blood and life. Yellow can signify shallowness and sickness and caution. So I would say that in your example above that the emotions evoked were a result of the major/minor/diminished treatment of the compositions. Anyway.......back to my hidey-hole.
SimonWaldram	Date: July 26, 2011 @ 7:55 AM I have been interested in synesthesia for a while now. I have been trying to integrate into music which is influenced by visual art. For example, I want to make some music which is audiual representation of some of my favourite works of art, specifically paintings by Brett Whiteley and Stuart Sutcliffe and photography by Tamara Dean. I know that nearly all synesthetes see different colours for different sounds, but I thought it would be a good idea to find someone who has this remarkable condition and use their responses as a colour wheel for making music. So, for example, if I were to use Spike's colour list in making a piece of music based on Stuart Sutcliffe's Hamburg Painting No.2... http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/online/exhibitions/beatles/art/hamburg_sutcliffe.aspx ...then then metallic silver colours in the painting would be represented by a C#. Which actually leads me to a question for you, Spike: Do you always see the same shades of colours when you hear a particular note, or do they vary? Also, if you haven't already I would recommend reading an excellent book called 'The Frog That Croaked Blue' by Jamie Ward.
evansorchid	Date: July 26, 2011 @ 9:02 AM That author, Jamie Ward, apparently has his own website as well to promote that book. http://www.thefrogwhocroakedblue.com ....and here's an interesting page from that site.... http://www.thefrogwhocroakedblue.com/areyouasynesthete.asp ....and as for your question Simon......if you read this forum closely, you'll see that I've already tried to get as close to the particular shade that I believe I'm envisioning when I hum a particular note. The color only seems to present itself when I generate the tone with my own vocal chords for about 3 to 4 seconds, NOT by just hearing the note being played on another musical instrument.....but that may be because I've just only discovered recently that I seem to have this ability....and that could change now that I've seemed to tap into this.... But, I do believe that my perception of the shade of a particular color/tone can appear to change based on the function of a particular note in a piece of music. If that C# that you've mentioned functions as a major7th in Dmaj7, my perception would be that the shade would be different if that same C# functioned as the minor3rd in Bbm. But, it's kinda like the optical illusion where you put two or more colors against the same color then the focus color appears to be a shade lighter or darker than the other one, even though they are absolutely the same shade. That theory seems to work auditorily as well.
evansorchid	Date: July 26, 2011 @ 9:15 AM It's my perception that the red squares on the right appear to have a bit of an orange shade to them....but they red squares are in actuality the exact same shade of red. It's that way with the color/tone associations as well.
mundale	Date: July 26, 2011 @ 7:41 PM Indubitably, the colors vary more than the above visual example. G can look any shade between green and yellow depending on the key of the song.
SimonWaldram	Date: July 27, 2011 @ 4:07 AM Spike, you seeing an orange shade in the red colours may have something to do with the positioning of the colours themselves (I see it too). In his book 'The Interaction Of Color', Josef Albers teaches that our perception of a colour is album affected by the other colours around it. This is demonstrated in his series 'Homage To the Square': http://josefalbersgallery.blogspot.com/ One of the things I love about Alber's series is how the theories of colour relationships can be related to human releationships. Take this one: [image]http://images.worldgallery.co.uk/i/prints/rw/lg/8/0/Josef-Albers-Study-for-homage-to-the-square--Silkscreen-print--80774.jpg[/image] The way the colours are seen depends on the other colours around them. Just as the we are percieved - and how we act - depends on who is around us and what the situation is. So, the inner red = you, it's surrounding orange = the people around you and the outer yellow = the environment you are in. Take one of things away and everything changes.
SimonWaldram	Date: July 27, 2011 @ 4:08 AM Damn it. Sorry, I thought I'd got the linking right as well.
evansorchid	Date: July 27, 2011 @ 5:08 PM
johncastellain	Date: July 28, 2011 @ 8:16 PM Good point about mode envoking feelings, Its a complex thing,but personally I love they key of D and B for sad compositions(as did Beethoven) And F for pastoral or joyful pieces. I suppose to really test it out a pure sine wave,with no harmonics would have to be tested. But then would the pitch be another issue?
superiorinfe...	Date: July 29, 2011 @ 11:55 AM Yea this stuff is just so interesting. I did a paper on this stuff in college.
evansorchid	Date: July 29, 2011 @ 7:30 PM Maybe I'm off base here.....or simply thinking out loud....but when I'm writing a song, whether it be a happy, sad, upbeat, morose, rockin', pastoral.....or whatever feeling I'm trying to evoke....I don't think one iota about the key signature initially. I believe that I can probably successfully evoke any of those emotions in any musical key based on such factors as: the chord changes, the rhythmic instrumentation, the time signature, the choice of musical instruments, the timbre of the lead melody instrument, the approach in the vocal interpretation, etc, etc, etc. I could probably take a well-known sad song and turn it into a very upbeat happy song with just a few simple tweaks, and the same goes with turning a well-known happy song into sad song simply by playing around with it and doing some variations on a theme. Twisting a major into a minor....tempo changes....hell, the RHYTHM alone plays a HUGE role in how I personally perceive the emotional connections to any song. Rhythm is often taken for granted by us musicians who have a fair understanding of basic music theory. We take it for granted because it's sometimes considered atonal, but I've spent many nights tuning my toms and kicks to my bass line, or increasing the frequency in the splashes and hi-hats to fit better with the implied harmonics in many of my tracks just to give the song that certain cohesiveness that seemed to be lacking. Not to mention the overall ambiance and emotional draw that a good rhythm track can bring to the song. Now that I think about it....there's a track that Frank and I put together last year called Acrobat. It has a drum break in the middle of the song that lasts a good 15 to 20 seconds before other tonal instruments kick in. Every time that I have listened to that drum break, I seem to envision blue water dripping down onto a drum kit and blue water splashing upwards every time the snare it struck. And, I have thought that it would be a neat lighting trick, if we ever had the opportunity to perform that song live on stage, to shine a deep blue light down on the drums during that drum break while simultaneously making it appear that it was raining over the drummer. Hmmmm...so now I'm thinking that Blue might be the color of rhythm....for me anyway.....Hmmmmm. I might have to go listen to Moby Dick now.....hehe.

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