I met my first synesthete when I was at Berklee... she was a piano player, and I was absolutely floored when she talked to me about it... very interesting!
The composer Franz Liszt was a synesthete. While conducting he would often ask the orchestra during rehearsal to repeat play a particular passage "...a little bluer please." The orchestra merely thought he was being artistically metaphorical and not literal, lol. Rimsky-Korsakov was another synesthete. He and Liszt once had a famous and inflammatory debate as to the color of one of Beethoven's(?) works, much to the confusion and bewilderment of everyone else.
Oliver Sacks says no two syntesthetes will ever agree. Both my sister and I have sound to colour synesthesia, and we both see the same colours for the same sounds. D major to us is either dark green or dark brown, and blue is Bb major.
I perceive pieces of music in colour, but not individual notes. When I listen to the album Fragile by Yes, it's a flurry of all colours. When I listen to The Pixies, it's usually a muddy green. Echoes by Pink Floyd is blue. Atom Heart Mother is ochre. Magical Mystery Tour (the song) by The Beatles is purple. Starlight by Muse is light blue. George Harrison's guitar playing on Something by The Beatles is bright yellow. And so on ...
I have synesthesia, but I don"t think "teaching" it is possible. Of course you can make a table and you can decide that for you the violin will have blue color but this doesn't mean that you will actually see blue color whenever you hear a violin.
Yellow for me but I dont have synesthesia. Thats just the first colour that comes up when I think of D major. Blue might be A major. B minor might be violet.
Like most people I don't have perfect pitch at all. I cannot know if something is a D or a C without a reference note ;-). Still, minor tonalities sounds brown to me and major yellow. Jazz chords/tonalities are sometimes even more colorful.
I see music, not only the colours but shapes and texture as well. For example, a sound may be yellow, long and silky for me (high notes) or brown, round and rough (lower notes). I have a feeling that I almost can't hear music, I can only see it.. And it's really hard for me to imagine that other people do not experience these sensations ;] What's interesting, I don't have a perfect pitch, in fact I'm almost tone-deaf ;p I don't know if there's any relationship between synesth.&musicallity..?
i have it and when i told my friends words, letters, and numbers all have genders, colors and personalities, they looked at me like, "what ahve you been eating today? what wrong with you?" i felt like a freak, but then they started going, "what color is my name? wat;s my names personality? wat color is this? wat color is that???" then they FINALLY got over it!! lol
I met my first synesthete when I was at Berklee... she was a piano player, and I was absolutely floored when she talked to me about it... very interesting!
The composer Franz Liszt was a synesthete. While conducting he would often ask the orchestra during rehearsal to repeat play a particular passage "...a little bluer please." The orchestra merely thought he was being artistically metaphorical and not literal, lol. Rimsky-Korsakov was another synesthete. He and Liszt once had a famous and inflammatory debate as to the color of one of Beethoven's(?) works, much to the confusion and bewilderment of everyone else.
Oliver Sacks says no two syntesthetes will ever agree. Both my sister and I have sound to colour synesthesia, and we both see the same colours for the same sounds. D major to us is either dark green or dark brown, and blue is Bb major.
Very interesting, thanks you!
I perceive pieces of music in colour, but not individual notes. When I listen to the album Fragile by Yes, it's a flurry of all colours. When I listen to The Pixies, it's usually a muddy green. Echoes by Pink Floyd is blue. Atom Heart Mother is ochre. Magical Mystery Tour (the song) by The Beatles is purple. Starlight by Muse is light blue. George Harrison's guitar playing on Something by The Beatles is bright yellow. And so on ...
I have synesthesia, but I don"t think "teaching" it is possible. Of course you can make a table and you can decide that for you the violin will have blue color but this doesn't mean that you will actually see blue color whenever you hear a violin.
Yellow for me but I dont have synesthesia. Thats just the first colour that comes up when I think of D major. Blue might be A major. B minor might be violet.
Keep in mind he was 5 years old at the time.
Like most people I don't have perfect pitch at all. I cannot know if something is a D or a C without a reference note ;-). Still, minor tonalities sounds brown to me and major yellow. Jazz chords/tonalities are sometimes even more colorful.
I see music, not only the colours but shapes and texture as well. For example, a sound may be yellow, long and silky for me (high notes) or brown, round and rough (lower notes). I have a feeling that I almost can't hear music, I can only see it.. And it's really hard for me to imagine that other people do not experience these sensations ;] What's interesting, I don't have a perfect pitch, in fact I'm almost tone-deaf ;p I don't know if there's any relationship between synesth.&musicallity..?
i have it and when i told my friends words, letters, and numbers all have genders, colors and personalities, they looked at me like, "what ahve you been eating today? what wrong with you?"
i felt like a freak, but then they started going, "what color is my name? wat;s my names personality? wat color is this? wat color is that???"
then they FINALLY got over it!! lol
N.E.R.D. Seeing Sounds
I would not quite say universal, collective perhaps!
Shirl e Barbara Jennings
OK, two synesthaetes agree. But that's it.