Associating colours and sounds

Tentative Andy

I'm in the Meal Deal
Ok, I guess there's an in-built risk that this could descend into psychobabble. But, bearing that in mind -
Do other people associate the sounds of certain instruments, or of certain areas of the musical sound-spectrum, with certain colours?
Here's how it works for me:
Red - Trumpets and other horns.
Yellow - Guitar, saxophone.
Green - High-end/lead synths. Also things like accordion.
Blue - Piano. Harmonica too, but a slightly different shade, as it were.
Black - Bass
Other things like strings are weird, sometimes I hear them as white and sometimes as green, without really being able to pinpoint why. Except for solo cello which is always brown. Organ too, especially electric organ sounds, seems to migrate between green and blue.
Would be interested to hear other's thoughts on this, as it's actually something of an odd mental phenomena when you think about it.
 

nomadthethird

more issues than Time mag
It's called synesthesia and it's more common than you may think. My boyfriend has it with letters and colors, and music and colors. He never knew that this was weird, he really thought everyone does this, until it came out once and I told him it's a neurological condition or ability that only some people have.

I don't have it at all. :( Seems like it might be interesting to experience music that way. When I hear music I listen to it sort of chained to the tempered system...it's still an abstract system of ordering different tones in my mind but I guess I don't use colors or other aesthetic things to remember them so it's not technically synesthesia.
 

michael

Bring out the vacuum
My brother-in-law sees intervals (changes in pitch) as directions in space. He's fascinated by music theory, learning "our" notation as a kind of second language.

He associates colours and numbers, but definitely associates sounds (timbre) with shapes as well.

Good times, I reckon.
 

DJ PIMP

Well-known member
My brother-in-law sees intervals (changes in pitch) as directions in space.
I often consider pitch as a series of points in space in relation to one another, but I think that's a more a side-effect of listening to too much techno.
 

Agent

dgaf ngaf cgaf
Alexander Scriabin created a whole system of musical annotations based on color associations, He was a self-professed synesthete. everyone has it to an extent. there was an article in NS recently about the genetic roots of synesthesia. it's related to autism:

A region on chromosome 2, which has been associated with autism, exhibited the strongest link. This is particularly intriguing: the autistic savant Daniel Tammet, for example, possesses extraordinary abilities and also has a combination of the two conditions, as do some other autistic savants.
 

Tentative Andy

I'm in the Meal Deal
That's interesting, as I'm on the Asperger's spectrum (personal revelations ahoy! :D). I don't think it's strictly synasthesia in my case though, as, most of the time at least, I don't so much 'see' the music in colours as think to myself 'that sounds very red' or whatever - or perhaps more accurately, the music 'feels red' at a given time, as it's generally a subconscious process for me. The ammount of quotation marks here demonstrates that I still have a way to go in understanding the phenomena.
 

Tentative Andy

I'm in the Meal Deal
Also, it occured to me that one thing I dont assign a colour to is drums. I suspect that's because I don't tend to think of them as playing musical notes as such.
 

littlebird

Wild Horses
Alexander Scriabin created a whole system of musical annotations based on color associations, He was a self-professed synesthete. everyone has it to an extent. there was an article in NS recently about the genetic roots of synesthesia. it's related to autism:

i've read some about this as it relates to autism, and the prediliction to synesthesia with letters and numbers, and also music. Nabakov supposedly was a synesthelete, and Rimbaud and Baudelaire have been noted to incorporate the trait into their writing.

my young son is diagnosed autistic, and he associates colour with everything - numbers, letters, music, certain words and phrases. he also categorizes personal belongings of his by colour.

i also know there has been speculation about whether part of the autistic spectrum is not the transference of senses to be more categorical, mental, visual then reliant on all of the identified senses (aural, visual, touch, smell, taste).

something of possible interest here.
 

Pestario

tell your friends
not colours but sometimes I visualise sounds as flashes of white against a black/dark background and these flashes have a shape and texture which depends on the sound. So I could 'draw' what a snare or hihat sounds like to me. If I relax with my eyes closed (or get stoned) these sensations become clearer.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I don't have it at all. :(

Hmm, well you say that...bear in mind your boyfriend doesn't know what it's like *not* to have synaesthesia, and that while it does sound like it might be quite cool to have a mild case, I think some people have it very strongly and find it quite debilitating.
 

swears

preppy-kei
I tend to associate music with physical or tactile sensations: falling, feeling weight or pressure, swimming though water, touching hard surfaces, being wrapped up in something, a breeze in the face, "coldness" is a big one... it's all pretty random and depends on my mood at the time. Makes a weird sort of sense, though.
 

DJ PIMP

Well-known member
Also, it occured to me that one thing I dont assign a colour to is drums. I suspect that's because I don't tend to think of them as playing musical notes as such.

thats got to change! pitching drum samples up and down is great fun. give it a go...
 

oblioblioblio

Wild Horses
interesting topic.

I was very curious of synaesthesia for a while and it was way more fun than the material I was supposed to be reading at the time.

Apparantly in our cererbral blueprints we are all of us synaesthetes, but there is a mechanism which is supposed to localise our perception of sensory information to specific organs at some point during our development. In synaesthetes this machanism is faulty.

It's certainly interesting and one of those topics where you can strip all the information back to the core. After all, the only difference between sound and colour is frequency. Both are vibrations, just colours are much faster. The same goes with taste and smell, though spatial differences are more difficult for me to explain, though I'm sure that somehow they can be expressed with amplitude and frequency. (edit... oh actually it's more obvious to me now how this is the case).

I used to be sad about not being synaesthetic, but nowdays I am happy. Everyone has some unique perceptual quirk. I remember a personal account I read where someone couldn't read Margeret Thatchers name (I think), as it brought about the most disgusting bitter ear wax kinda taste. And that would kinda suck (though obviously has humerous qualities as an outsider).

And of course there are plenty of ways to enjoy free interminglings of the senses. A harmonic sound and visual show for example (not some cheesy lazer business, but performers who are operating at similar frequecies, and are expressing similar things, but using different vibrational canvases). Also there are materials that strip back our ability to filter sensory information (psychadelic or otherwise), and quickly it becomes obvious that in fact to filter sensory information has it's benefits.

Famous synthaesthetes anyone? The only one I can think of is Will Cullen Hart of Circulatory System and the Olivia Tremor Control. There's a great video on this site www.cloudrecordings.com somewhere I think, but this browser is dodgy and the page won't load .('Should a Cloud Replace a Compass')

Actually I suppose it's a little silly listing talented synaesthetes. I don't think there's any correlation between this particular sensory quirk and others, there's still the same capacity to be expressive or not.
 
Last edited:

muser

Well-known member
Im not sure how much of it is just to do with the imagination really, but it is still very interesting. I do get it mildy I think, its not that often a colour will just to me but if I sit and think whilst listening ill visualise some relative colour. I guess the most consistant (and one where it doesnt involve any kind of concentration on the music) is with electronic stuff such as Vex'ds - 'Gunman', Milanese, Atki 2, that clean sort of distorted sound is always silver to me, but who knows if thats not just because of some of the lables on the records? Woodwind/strings being seen as brown, for example, could be demonstrating that its more our own subconscious associations/imagination than anything else.
 
Last edited:

Tentative Andy

I'm in the Meal Deal
From Dan's recent Guardian piece on the new Bristol producers:
"What do they call their genre themselves? If anything, they say, they call it "purple".

"It's not a genre, but purple is the colour we all get along with," says Joker, whose latest release is called Purple City. One of Gemmy's first tracks was called Purple Moon, and a Purple Wow album from the three of them is in the planning stages, in addition to their forthcoming solo albums.

"When you hear a song, you envisage things: soul music is mahogany, basslines are yellow," says Joker. This seems as good a point as any for me to ask if they are aware of synaesthesia, a dissociation of the senses that causes those with the condition to "hear" in colour, or to "taste" sound.

"It doesn't surprise me, because the human brain is extraordinary - we don't even use most of it," says Joker. "I wouldn't say I suffer from synaesthesia, but I can hear a sound and write a colour down. My friend was playing me a tune the other day, and I'm like, 'Your bassline sounds kind of orange.'"

Fuck yeah! :cool:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/jun/12/guido-joker-gemmy-purple-bristol
 

glottis5

Member
From Dan's recent Guardian piece on the new Bristol producers:
"What do they call their genre themselves? If anything, they say, they call it "purple".

"It's not a genre, but purple is the colour we all get along with," says Joker, whose latest release is called Purple City. One of Gemmy's first tracks was called Purple Moon, and a Purple Wow album from the three of them is in the planning stages, in addition to their forthcoming solo albums.

"When you hear a song, you envisage things: soul music is mahogany, basslines are yellow," says Joker. This seems as good a point as any for me to ask if they are aware of synaesthesia, a dissociation of the senses that causes those with the condition to "hear" in colour, or to "taste" sound.

"It doesn't surprise me, because the human brain is extraordinary - we don't even use most of it," says Joker. "I wouldn't say I suffer from synaesthesia, but I can hear a sound and write a colour down. My friend was playing me a tune the other day, and I'm like, 'Your bassline sounds kind of orange.'"

Fuck yeah! :cool:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/jun/12/guido-joker-gemmy-purple-bristol

Stuff sounds yellow to me
 
Top