Colour in music.

[zheer]

What colour do you guys see in music, i see green in LVB Apassionata sonata.
I think am not sure bur red for the 3rd mvt in the Tempest sonata by LVB. IS this strange and what the hell does that mean?

[arensky]

It is called synesthesia, it is the association of key areas with certain colors. Ours are the same, it seems, different from Scriabin who experienced this to an extreme, as do I. Friday night at my hotel gig it shut off in the second set; I was alarmed, I have never not experienced this key/color association. I then played a song "Bicyclettes de Belscize" that I don't play much, hoping to experience the maroon of d minor; it came back, thank God. Saturday I was able to turn it on and off at will, very interesting. I just saw your post but unfortunately I am very tired and must sleep. But before I go I will share my own key/color associations, see if yours match up; I'll bet ours do, zheer...

C major    white
c minor     grey
Db major  fuscia
c# minor  steel
D major    red
d minor     maroon
Eb major  light blue
eb minor [ color=Navy]VERY dark blue[/color]
E major    blue
e minor      dark blue
F major      green
f minor       dark green
F# major    peach
f# minor    light metallic green
G major      gold
g minor       orange
Ab major     pink
g# minor     purple
A major       yellow
a minor        opaque, no color
Bb major      brown
bb minor      dark brown
B major        silver
b minor        metallic grey

[zheer]

O my god i cant believe it, yup i also see purple in the g# prelude by Rachmaninoff , dark green in the appasionata, and yeah red/and the otherone you mentiond for the d minor. Thank a lot all the best.

[prometheus]

Its different for everyone.

[BoliverAllmon]

apparently not

[arensky]

Its different for everyone.

And yet some people do not experience this at all...

But I'll bet zheer and I see the same colors on all or most of the keys; what are your associations, Prometheus? And anyone else out there too...

If a piece modulates or changes tonality frequently, or is bitonal pantonal or atonal I may get a mix of colors. If I'm at a live performance and the performer is superb, with a good sense of tone color, I will almost see the color before me, sometimes rising like a weird vapor out of the piano or the stage area. When I am playing, the color is present but I cannot see it, I "feel" it; very interesting...

No I am not dropping acid or smoking or drinking funny stuff. I obviously don't need to...

[BoliverAllmon]

I personally don't see colors, though i would think it would be very sweet indeed. I highly doubt it could be aquired right?

[zheer]

And yet some people do not experience this at all...

But I'll bet zheer and I see the same colors on all or most of the keys; what are your associations, Prometheus? And anyone else out there too...

I dont see all the colors like you do, but come to think of it i did see yellow in mozarts piano concerto in A major.

[lisztisforkids]

I do get wiffs of diferent colors when I hear music. When I listen to Mendelsohns Fingal Cave Overture I get a very strong sense of blue. I get this feeling from different piece to piece, sometimes its strong, but most of the time its not. But usually I see lots of Blues and Grays.

[chopiabin]

I've never taken the time to figure out the relationship between the colors I see and which keys I'm in, but I definitely feel and associate colors with pieces.
Here are just a few color associations that I really like:
Chopin:
Ballade 1 - slate blue, royal blue, with flashes of red, geen, and black
Ballade 2 - mostly various shades of green with flashes of red and orange
Ballade 3 - this one is impossible t explain, it's a mix of so many colors and shapes that I can't really define it
Ballade 4 - burgundy, black, blood red

Scriabin:
Sonata 5 - one of the most beautiful pieces in so many ways - I see brilliant flashes of chartreuse, black, burgundy and red,
Sonata 6 - greys and lavenders, very dark

In the Appassionata, I see various shades of red and black. In the 3rd mvmnt of the 'Moonlight', or in Chopin's 10-1, I see lots of greens.

[superstition2]

n : a sensation that normally occurs in one sense modality occurs when another modality is stimulated.

What is synaesthesia?
Synaesthesia is a curious condition where there is a mingling of the senses due to cross-wiring in the brain.

Hearing a musical note for example might cause a person with synesthesia to see a particular colour; C is red, F sharp is blue. Or perhaps the number 2 is always green and 5 always blue.
 
Other people may taste spoken words, for example, on hearing the word 'table' they might taste apricots, whereas ‘book’ tastes like tomato soup and ‘telephone’ tastes like earwax.

About 1 in 2000 people have synaesthesia. Recent studies by Simon Baron-Cohen in Cambridge have confirmed synaesthesia is genetic, passed from parent to child.
 
The slightly different genes of someone with synaesthesia appear to cause adjacent areas of the brain to cross-wire.

Colour information is analysed in the fusiform gyrus in the brain’s temporal lobe (area V4).
 
This is very close to the area of the brain that deals with the physical form of numbers (also in the fusiform gyrus).
 
It’s thought that a genetic abnormality causes these two areas to cross- wire.
 
Brain imaging has now confirmed this idea by testing synaesthetes who see numbers as colours. When most people are shown black numbers on a white background, only the number area of their brain becomes active. However, when people with synaesthesia look at the same image, the ‘colour’ area of their brain also activates.

https://www.youramazingbrain.org.uk/images/brainchanges/synesthesia.gif

When you were born, you had far more brain cells than you needed. A period of pruning happens where only the connections and brains cells you need and use survive. This is a normal and vital part of all mammals’ early development.

 
It’s possible that a gene for synaesthesia causes this pruning process to happen differently results in extra connections and cross-wiring between brain areas.

---

Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scans have shown that different areas of the brain are active for synaesthetes experiencing a cross-modal association than for non-synesthetes engaged in the same task. The synaesthetic experience depends exclusively on the left brain and is associated with a decreased blood supply to the neocortex. This results in enhanced limbic expression.

Therefore, we can assume that the system responsible for synaesthesia is located or influenced by the limbic system more than the neocortex, which is not what most people would predict without the evidence from the PET scans. Additional support for this is that there is an emotional aspect associated with a synesthetic experience. In fact, in order to fulfill the diagnostic criteria for synaesthesia an emotional response must be present.

Cases of synaesthesia may be idiopathic (developmental), with the person having experienced synaesthesia as long as they can remember, or non-idiopathic, resulting from a known etiology or mechanism which is acquired and produced synaesthesia.

Non-Idiopathic Synesthesia

Seizure Induced
Drug Induced
Neuron Degeneration Induced
Brain Damage Induced
Spinal Cord Damage Induced
Concussion Induced

Idiopathic Synesthesia

Uninhibited Natural State
Neonatal Synaesthesia Hypothesis
Influence of Genetics
Colored Hearing Theories

https://www.macalester.edu/psychology/whathap/UBNRP/synesthesia/SYNBRA~1.HTM

[arensky]

Thank you superstition2, your post is very informative! 

[BoliverAllmon]

I agree. it is fascinating

[zheer]

Superstisio, mentiond something about brain damage, and its conection. Can someone define brain damage. Because i might of had brain damage when i was young, but not by hiting my head on anything. Thanks.

[rimv2]

Superstisio, mentiond something about brain damage, and its conection. Can someone define brain damage. Because i might of had brain damage when i was young, but not by hiting my head on anything. Thanks.

Brain damage occurs in everyday activity. The severity determines the effect. Concussions and KO's are caused by slight damage. Fuddy talk is cause by more severe damage.



Ah see no colors in music nor distiguish them by ear. However, ah do see two different tints depending on which eye ah look out of. Ah is near sighted in one eye and far sighted in the other (kinda like have two different color eyes).

[phil13]

I can see certain colors in the MOODS of a piece, but often it changes from piece to piece.

A good example:

I feel yellows and blues in Mozart's Rondo Alla Turca (A minor)

Yet I see silver, red and hints of black and blue in Chopin's Winter Wind Etude (also in A minor)

And dark blues and reds with some green in Grieg's Piano Concerto Mvt. 1 (again, in A minor)

Phil

[gorbee natcase]

Thick stodgy treacly colours i'm afraid

[prometheus]

Synaesthesia is just random. Some may thing monday is blue, while others think it is clearly yellow. Some may thing the number 8 is purple while others think it is red.

Some may feel that x^2 - 4x + 5 is grass green while others feel it has a lightblue metalish shine.

Synaesthesia is a neurological irregularity. The senses get mixed up somewhere in the brain. For example the brain might interpret data from the ear if it were data from the eye.

[pianistimo]

so it has nothing with being an art connoisseur, or looking at colors or paintings a lot?  it is simply a mixed neurological connection.  or do people kind of practice it by actually trying to see a colour (putting one of those paint color charts in front of you and circling the one that fits a piece) when playing?  also, i am wondering if the color flashes and is gone - or does it stay - or what?  i'm not doubting the phenomenon - just wondering if it is something that just happens - or if it is sort of trained if the talent is allowed.

when i shut my eyes i see all kinds of things if i try - but usually not just one color.  there are many.  when i open my eyes - just black and white for every song.  but, something else affects me.  rhythm and patterns.  i see them in everything.  guess that is pretty common.  i look for music in nature, too.  combining the bird warble with colors of the bird, what it looks like and how it flies.  it is not music standing alone.  so i think i understand synesthesia in a different way.

[zheer]

I see a number of people talking about seeing color with their eyes when listning to music. Thats not the case with me , i dont see it lituraly i see it with my minds eye, sounds strange does'nt. I will give an example, think of a flower that you have smelt in the past, can you still smell it without actually smelling it, i hope yes. When i heard the appassionata when i was young the color dak green fild my head, at the time i new nothing about the connection between music and color.

[pianistimo]

did you do anything to actively stimulate the response.  did you first hear the piece when someone was nearby wearing something dark green?  or, did dark green fill the whole page and all you hear in your mind's eye is dark green?  what significance does dark green have to you (besides the appassionata).  are you very attached to colors?

[rc]

so it has nothing with being an art connoisseur, or looking at colors or paintings a lot?  it is simply a mixed neurological connection.  or do people kind of practice it by actually trying to see a colour (putting one of those paint color charts in front of you and circling the one that fits a piece) when playing?  also, i am wondering if the color flashes and is gone - or does it stay - or what?  i'm not doubting the phenomenon - just wondering if it is something that just happens - or if it is sort of trained if the talent is allowed.

when i shut my eyes i see all kinds of things if i try - but usually not just one color.  there are many.  when i open my eyes - just black and white for every song.  but, something else affects me.  rhythm and patterns.  i see them in everything.  guess that is pretty common.  i look for music in nature, too.  combining the bird warble with colors of the bird, what it looks like and how it flies.  it is not music standing alone.  so i think i understand synesthesia in a different way.

There must be some line between synesthesia and association.

I know people can associate anything with anything, consciously or not. If one wanted to, a person could train themselves to see certain colours for each key, which might be useful. Isn't colour association the basis of those perfect pitch courses?

Without really seeing colours, I've somehow come to recognize G major. A certain feeling that says "oh, this is in G".

You can really have a lot of fun associating different things with music. Play a piece you know, imagining it in different ways. Now it represents a snowy field, a family gathering, stars in space, a pattern of lines... You could make it mean anything.

There might be some universality to certain associations. Like 'light' and 'dark' music, those descriptions come to literally be how a person sees the music, in light or dark hues.

The first time I heard the allegretto from Beethovens 7th symphony, my minds eye saw a sort of moving vine pattern, dark green on black. I have no idea where it came from, the vines automatically started growing when the music began.

[zheer]

did you do anything to actively stimulate the response.  did you first hear the piece when someone was nearby wearing something dark green?  or, did dark green fill the whole page and all you hear in your mind's eye is dark green?  what significance does dark green have to you (besides the appassionata).  are you very attached to colors?

I dont wont to sound too philosophical, but if a blind man asks you what color is the sky you would say it is blue,if he then asks you why is it blue you will say its just what i see it just is.

[prometheus]

If a blind man asks why the sky is blue explain the physics involved. It has to do with light spectrum and how the molecules that make up the atmosphere scatter the photons according to their wave lenght.

As for experiencing synesthesia, something like LSD might work for some, though I wouldn't recommend it.

And you don't see the colours, but you do perceive them, whatever that means. It's a bit like how we think red is hot and blue is cool.

There are also other strange forms of  synesthesia where person experiences a shape while tasting something. Or where the person gets a taste while listening to music. Music might taste like starberries, or like garlic. Or words may have totally random tastes. Or names of people have tastes, colours, or there is an assosiation with geometric shapes, or even quadratic equations. It would be strange if you are introduced to some person and she/he tells you that your name reminds her/him of some quadratic equation.

All these absurd things are possible. I am under the impression that colours with music is a very common one. But then again, I almost always discuss this topic in the context of music.

[rob47]

I see dead people

[pianistimo]

in black and white, or color?

[g_s_223]

You're lucky you don't smell them.

[superstition2]

One might also say the sky is not blue, since blue light is what is reflected, not absorbed. 

[prometheus]

We had this discussion before on this forum? Or was it somewhere else. We label the colour of objects by the light they reflect. The fact that they absorb most photons with wave lengths other than the wave lenght we experience as blue doesn't have anything to do with colours. Absorbing red light doesn't make you more red, obviously.

[leahcim]

It is called synesthesia, it is the association of key areas with certain colors. Ours are the same, it seems, different from Scriabin who experienced this to an extreme, as do I.

There was an interesting program looking at various research done on this yesterday.

They had someone who tasted words, a lady who saw 3D blocks of numbers, and various people who associated numbers with colours, colours with sound and so on.

I missed the first part, but some of theories in the program from those researching were to consider genetic links, the evolutionary point of having the ability and how those same genes may manifest within other people.

Some of the points were stuff like :-

(a) The crossing of the senses is a trait that many people have. It's just significant and marked in people with synesthesia. Experiments linking pitch to colour were far more exact with the synesthesics, but there was still correlation with those without.

(b) One researcher had done some experiements and research looking at whether the crossing of the senses is part of what caused language to develop. An anecdotal experiment in the program had one of the researchers asking people which of 2 different shapes were called 2 nonsense words. It was "Which of these shapes is a kiki and which a booper?" or something. Most of the respondants chose in the same way which he attributed to a similar assocation and crossing of the senses between the sound and an object. He also cited a connection in the activity within areas of the brain concerning arm / hand gestures and mouth / lip movements. He suggested that might explain some elements of language. In the program he gave an example of words like large and enormous compared with words for small, and the corresponding hand gestures we might use to describe those concepts.

(c) They'd done some experiments with numbers that suggested people have a spacial view of numbers similar if not as marked as the lady that saw blocks of numbers arranged in space in front of her.

(d) Some of the theorising suggested that a similar crossing of the senses might explain creativity and metaphor.

Interesting stuff.

[gruffalo]

One question i would like to ask. do the colours come if you dont think about feeling colours? i say feeling, because when i identify notes, i dont know that i can do it, i just can. its instantaneuos.

another question, can people have perfect pitch and synesthesia?

also about the passing down to children would there be a chance of my children gaining perfect pitch aswell through genes?

Gruff

[infectedmushroom]

I don't see any color when I'm hearing a note. I only see a color when I'm thinkig about the note/chord/piece wich is played and it all totally depends on the mood of the note/chord/piece I noticed.... Well, that's what's happends with me.

[pianorama]

This happens to me with some songs. The beginning of Rondo Alla Turca reminds me of maroon. Mind you, I don't see these colours, they simply remind me of that colour. What often happens is that I "see" a colour that isn't really a colour, which makes it impossible to describe with words. Very few songs remind me of a definate colour. In all, probably about 6 or so songs I've heard remind me of colours.

[musicsdarkangel]

I see black and white.


maybe i should stop staring at the keys


Man, I'm so jealous.  I have learned to identify pitches, but I have no idea of what "colors" they are or anything.

That's so neat.

[zheer]

Man, I'm so jealous. 

   Dont be, its of no use.

[gruffalo]

try composing with it. you compose zheer?

[zheer]

try composing with it. you compose zheer?

 
  Not recently, but if i get into uni i will be composing for exams

[gruffalo]

try composing. you never know what you're capable of. im working with someone at the moment whos hoping to develope my ideas. its a free extra lesson as part of the music program at my college and i am starting to unravle ideas i never knew i could put down.

its well worth a try, its really enjoyable. do you think of music all the time in your head?(as in not music that you have heard).

[elspeth]

Sounds have always had colour in my mind... When I was learning my grade 8 flute pieces I had colours written on my scores sometimes to remind me of the intonation I wanted in certain passages - I played Mozart Concerto no 2 which was mostly blue and green, and a Poulenc sonata which was silver and black/gray.

I've also had singing lessons in the past, and one of the big concepts in singing - as it isn't as quantifiable as instruments, pressing these keys in this combination - is learning to associate what you feel when you make a certain sound, with that sound. The principle being, of course, if you know what a sound should feel like you can reproduce it and know if it's right... anyway, the point being, I always associated colours then, too. Luckily my voice teacher didn't think I was strange as her associations were usually even odder than mine! You also learn to visualise things to help you develop certain techniques, and I found myself combining that with colours... For instance, learning to sing scales, the image was a ball bobbing on top of a jet of water, changing the height of the jet as you go up and down the scale (leaning to support the tone from the diaphragm and having the notes being produced from a stable, controlled, flexible column of air), and then changing the colour of the water to get different tonal quality, rich purple or blue for low notes and yellow or silver for high notes.

I've found myself bringing the concept over into my piano playing... you can get too hung up on 'just' pressing keys in the right order. I still learn scales with a column of coloured water in my head... Learning to feel a piece is something that's very difficult to teach unless you do it consistently, like I did in singing lessons - I learned a lot about myself as well as about my voice! Once I'd learned the basic technique of a piece, the question from my teacher was always on the lines of 'tell me what this piece looks/feels like', so I'm in the habit of always visualising what I hear or play, and changing my playing to make it 'look' how it is in my head. At present, Bach is a firework of electric blue, and Khachaturian dark lilac.

I have to admit my piano teacher thought I was a bit strange when she asked me how I was getting on with the Bach and I told her it had changed colour! (It was green to start with) She did see what I meant when she'd finished laughing at me though... She seems to like teaching me, I'm the only student she has who isn't studying for exams so she can teach me as I need and we can do the pieces we like, I think she finds me rather liberating! Certainly rather different to her other students...

[gruffalo]

what do you mean as singing being less quantifiable?

[elspeth]

It's a curious concept, it took me a while to get used to when I started singing lessons.

When you learn an instrument, while you're learning the basics of your technique, the emphasis is on something totally practical. Press these keys in this order, play your scales with this fingering, and so on. You don't generally start getting to things like interpretation and the 'feel' of the music until you've got those basic manual skills in place and you've learned to coordinate your fingers with the keys and the notes on the page. Even loud and soft are initially practical issues, not interpretive ones.

But when you learn to sing - properly, I learned classical technique even though I ended up branching off into jazz and blues - you don't have that basis to start from. You don't have the instrument in front of you, on which you learn the practicalities of playing and then you start making music. All you have is yourself, your own ears and voice, and in order to learn technique, all you have to go by is the way making any given sound makes you feel. You do the instrumental method backwards, in a way - you learn how the notes feel and you work your technique from that. Sung properly, you can feel each note resonate in your body, and you learn to pitch notes by where you feel that resonance - starting in your chest and moving up through your neck and into the cavities behind your mouth and nose and into your forehead, as you go higher in pitch. You can feel when a note is right, and then you learn to vary that feeling to start playing with tone and dynamics.

That's what I mean by singing being less quantifiable... it feels different to every singer. At the basic level every pianist plays pretty much the same, they press the same keys, often use the same fingering for any given piece. But every singer feels their voice differently... even if two singers use the same music at the same pitch their experience of singing that music will be different - any given note will resonate in a different place in their bodies, it will be physically different for them.

That's why when you have singing lessons with a good teacher, the basis for your lessons is always about how making a certain sound makes you feel and how you interpret that feeling - you have to be able to put an image or a name on that feeling so you can reproduce it reliably. Coming back to the idea of sound having shape and colour... for instance my voice teacher taught me to project my high notes by visualising the sound as a search light or a laser beam, to make the sound penetrate, and then we changed the colour and direction of the laser beam to vary the tone and dynamics. If you want to teach that to a pianist, you don't teach them about imaginary laser beams, you teach them about how to press the key and/or pedal to make the piano sound louder.

Singing is a completely individual experience right from the start, your voice is your own and you feel it and interpret it in your own way based on your own anatomy and experience. I don't think most pianists can say the same about their initial training. That's why there are endless tutor books of piano exercises as they're all based on manual dexterity, teaching you to press the keys, but there are relatively few voice exercises - they're all pretty much the same, based on scales in different patterns and pitches and using different syllables, but the emphasis isn't on pressing keys, it's on how that scale makes you feel - and then you carry that straight into 'proper' music.

The most basic exercise most singers use is scales in fifths - C D E F G F E D C, done up and down by semitones through the range of the voice with different vowel sounds... it's really simple, but because your focus is on the feeling of singing the scale in order to produce different techniques it's capable of pretty much infinite variations. If you can learn to feel a scale as you play it, they're not such a chore!

[amaryllith]

I am synaesthetic with letters and numbers (I see colors in them) -- and as a result, when I think of, say, C Major, I see in my head 'C Major', and I see yellow in the C and a variety of neutral blue-grayish colors in 'Major', so that C Major becomes intrinsically yellow -- but because of the letter C, not because of the sound of the key. If I just heard the key and didn't know it was C Major, I wouldn't see yellow.

Wasn't that fascinating?

[gruffalo]

ok, im glad you cleared that up elsepth. i thought you meant something different.

Correction on the voice starting at the chest. it starts at the Stomach. the Stomach is your technique, it is your voice and it is how you control your voice. and as you correctly stated before, the way people gain a control of the stomach (known to singers as the "support") is completely different for the individual, ie. different muscle placements, different muscle movements and arrangements.

[elspeth]

Yes, true... although if we're being picky, support for the column of air does start mainly with your abs and back but the vast majority of the usuable resonance takes place from the chest up. Depends how you want to define the word voice, really... the sound itself is chest upwards but of course you use more than that to get all the bits you want to resonate working right.

[pianorama]

On Wikipedia it says that 1 in 10 people have synaesthesia. I find this hard to believe, unless it means what I would call 'partial synaesthesia'. What I mean is that some letters have a colour, maybe a certain sound tastes like something. Very few people have near-complete synaesthesia, i.e. every letter has a colour, every song has a colour or taste, etc.

I am synaesthetic with letters and numbers (I see colors in them) -- and as a result, when I think of, say, C Major, I see in my head 'C Major', and I see yellow in the C and a variety of neutral blue-grayish colors in 'Major', so that C Major becomes intrinsically yellow -- but because of the letter C, not because of the sound of the key. If I just heard the key and didn't know it was C Major, I wouldn't see yellow.

Wasn't that fascinating?

Really? The letter C is yellow to me, too, as well as triangles and the number 3. 2 is definatley blue. Circles are sometimes blue, as well as the letter F when refering to F major. 8 is sometimes black, sometimes maroon.

[amojoam]

What color do you see in atonal music?  

[zheer]

What color do you see in atonal music?  

 
  Brown, dont ask why.

[clef]

What colour do you guys see in music, i see green in LVB Apassionata sonata.
I think am not sure bur red for the 3rd mvt in the Tempest sonata by LVB. IS this strange and what the hell does that mean?

My mum has a friend whoes husband sees different tones in different colours, like a Bb is yellow or a D is a light shade of blue...  interesting...

anyway I have relitive pitch, not quite absolute pitch but a very good ear, and this has never happened to me before...