I mentioned in another thread I see chords as colours in my minds eye, and this can actually help me identify which key a tune is played in (which is useful for a bouzouki player).
Here are the colours for the main keys:
D = Dark Brown
G = Yellow
Em = Dark Purple
AM = Beige
Bm = Blue - a sort of greyish blue rather than a sky or bright blue
C = Red
The chords are pretty much the same, but the notes are less well defined - as I learn the whistle it will be interesting to see how the notes express themselves in colour.
So, on the principle of colour mixing, if several people played all the chords at the same time, would you hear the resultant sound as white?
And by the way did you know that Isaac Newton invented toblerone?
found this on grove:
"in Central African societies musical instruments have various functions linked to different musical repertories. First and foremost, instruments are used in ritual and initiation ceremonies, notably in connection with a heightened state of consciousness. The beating of musical instruments in particular, along with song, arouses that heightened state, which manifests itself in trance, auditory drive and/or music-colour synesthesia, allowing communication with the supernatural (often under the psychotropic influence of hallucinogens). Then there are such separate functions as sending messages from village to village by a slit-drum and providing entertainment for a group or an individual. The diversity of the functions of musical instruments is not, however, limited to these main contexts."
so you're not the first to come up with this idea! many western composers also had synesthetic ability... but i cant remember exactly who! i was playing with the colour idea for a while myself and spent time working out a method but in the end, the ear proved more usefull. it would be useful if you were good with colours.. so that if d major was green and if A major was red, then would F sharp minor which lies half ways be yellow? and then if you had d major seventh add 6 it'd be a mixture of other whatever is associated with b minor, dmajor and a major! i couldn't mix all those colours in my head fast enough though! but, if it's something you can do; then cool!
also if you're using that system, do you use the 3 chemical primary colours or the 3 primarys associated with light?! when you get it worked out, i'll pay you to write a tune based on the colours found on anything that steve cooney wears! or indeed myself for that matter!!! now that'd be mad!
cool topic..looking forward to hearing how this progresses!
oh... and is this particular form of synesthesia for use within the relatively narrow tonality of irish music or would it be something you'd use in more complex situations e.g. while listening to jazz?! then also are colours fixed to definate pitches or to sol-fah ways of thinking? because then if a tune is transposed up to e flat from d, does that entail an entirely different series of colours? or are you only hoping to show chordal relationships...
I used to see colours when playing music, but my psychiatrist put me on a strict diet, where I had to cut out LSD, magic mushrooms, skunk and mescaline. I'm ok now but the cocaine and amphetamines mean I still play a bit briskly at sessions.
"often under the psychotropic influence of hallucinogen"
That'll be the bitter in our session pub - it's why so many people drink the mild.
In all honesty I don't have a system, it's just how it works. I see the colour in my mind's eye as I hear the music - I didn't choose the colours, it's what they are. For instance, in one of the pub's I play in there is a fair proportion of English folk music played. If the ITM contingent is thin on the ground on a particular evening the session invariably ends up with loads of English tunes, most of which seem to be played in G. This means I have a yellow night - the whole evening is coloured by the endless yellow of G major morris tunes.
However, some tunes work particulary well. The Connaughtman's Rambles, with it's Bm in the second part adds a nice splash of blue during the tune. The A part (in which the Bm is less dominant - you can leave it out altogether) is brown with a hint of yellow - it's almost as if the tune is leaning towards the key of G, although it's actually in D.
I'm a graphic artist by trade, and when I'm designing I can use this music/colour thing to my advantage. Some types of music really set some patterns going off and I can use this as a basis for a design. Strangely, modern electronica works wonders - the ones I like best often have vast textured washes of sound and lots of glitchy little electric tics.
I saw an interview once with Elvin Jones, the jazz drummer, and he talked about his drums that way. He'd get a roll going on the big bottom drum and that he said was violet, and then add another roll on the medium drum that was green, a cymbal was orange, and the high hat was yellow...you could kind of see the colors after he explained them that way, and then as he played around the set the colors would shift as he played---it was really a trip!
I can perfectly understand you, Sugarfoot, since I connect colours to music too, but for me chords don´t play a role: I rather associate colours with keys and instrumentation, no matter if it is ITM, rock, jazz or classical. Every composer with a classical training makes use of this to a certain extent when doing the instrumentation. To me this just another way of distinguishing the sounds of e.g. Altan and Cran (take any other band). And I also believe that "it´s just how it works". It is not crap (which some funny contributors suggest) nor is it logical, it is personal, but it´s there.
I've resorted to color-coding when learning the keyboard layout on my bandoneon, but that's as far as it goes.
Does anybody know the name of this British mathematical genius with a mild case of autism , who was in the news recently. He perceives numbers as colors associated with a landscape, and they can be hot or cold, etc. He taught himself Icelandic in no time.
Fascinating. If I could only glean some mnemonic devices from his insights to remember my tunes, I'd be happy.
"Sugarfoot, do you also see colors to music when you're dreaming?"
Hmmm, not that I've noticed. I have often wondered if this was some sort of response I taught myself at some point, perhaps associated a tune with a colour from some reason and took it from there, but I've come to the conclusion it's not. One of the other guys in a band I was in said he saw chords as colours the same way, but it was a totally different set of hues.
It works with any kind of music, jazz can be good (my wife plays sax so I am exposed to varying different types of jazz) and many avante-garde pieces seem to work well - the work of Steve Reich is one composer that springs to mind.
Funny, was talking about this at family dinner table yesterday... my daughter has different food tastes when hearing a combination of notes, like ham on hearing a C followed by an E, etc.
I have compared notes on this subject with a fiddler friend, but concerning keys rather than chords. Although there were a few glaring discrepancies, it was surprising how many of our key-colour relationships were consistent.
My bathroom isn't really in Am, by the way. That would be wholly inappropriate for a bathroom.
S. T. Willow - You must ask your daughter for more details. Then you could use her taste-music synaesthesia as a basis for deciding what to put in her packed lunch. You could start with simple major and minor triads, gradually adding in tones as the months progress. If she develops a taste for Ab13 with a flattened 7th, then you,ve got a jazz musician in the making. On the other hand, if you bombard her with complex chords, then she'll eventually rebel and cast them off, makig her perfectly suited to traditional backing.
As a loving parent, however, you'd probably avoid combinations like blancmange and soy sauce.
"Funny, was talking about this at family dinner table yesterday... my daughter has different food tastes when hearing a combination of notes, like ham on hearing a C followed by an E, etc."
That's better than colours - I've always thought that the 'Fields of Athenry' reminded me of a Chicken Rogan Josh.
I think this is the same thing - synesthesia. According to Wikipedia it's called Lexical → gustatory synesthesia (good article on wilkipedia about the whole subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia#Music_.E2.86.92_color_synesthesia). I also see weeks and years as shapes - this is called Number form synesthesia.
Crikey - what an interesting afternoon this is turning into.
actually this linking things to colours is a really common thing.. when most traditional musicians see piano accordions and or bodhrans, they see red.. it's also said that the little guy in the hollywood blockbuster "the sixth sense" actually saw green: not dead people and it took rather alot of training for him to overcome this problem for the purposes of shooting a film...
anybody have any synesthetic comments to make on the impact of hearing uillean pipes? with their serious out-of-tuneness, thats going to be some collage alright!
perhaps a practical derivative of this synesthisia is the choice of lighting for a concert... when i toured germany, most of the venues had a lighting engineer so i submitted a form with what colours to use on different parts of the sets etc.. just blue low colours for slow tunes and then bright n flashing with the faster stuff... it seemed to really enhance the show when they got it right... so then the question is why?! do we all have a universal standard of colours,, i.e. darker colours for slower pieces and bright perhaps flashing for the faster ones... i wonder where that association came out of...
I don't know how much of this was smoke being blown up the arse, but was told the Irish upper house plans to eliminate the shamrock and substitute the fuschia.
The band was selling tee shirts "The People's Republic of Fuschia".........
There was a great documentary on synaesthesia: I think it was Panorama, or some such programme. The author considered synaesthetic ability to be one of the foundations of abstract intelligence: his main argument was that abstract relations, such as metaphor, depend upon the innate ability of the human brain to recognise relations between the different senses. Synaesthetic distinctions are pretty essential to language: think of the difference between a sharp blade, a sharp pain, a sharp word, or a sharp smell.
Slightly off-topic, perhaps. On a more personal note, I see diddly tunes as squiggly worm-like patterns of colour, which follow the tonal pattern of the tune. Would I get in trouble if I said that I see the sheet-music when I close my eyes? Joking, joking.
EEJIT-----where are you on this thread ???
C'mon babe, give me a good laugh !! Your
terse invectives always make some of these threads
worth while. I really mean it --I'm complimenting you !!
I search for your name on some of these non particular,
cerebral topics. Best to ya'--keep it up.
Seeing chords as colours
Seeing chords as colours
I mentioned in another thread I see chords as colours in my minds eye, and this can actually help me identify which key a tune is played in (which is useful for a bouzouki player).
Here are the colours for the main keys:
D = Dark Brown
G = Yellow
Em = Dark Purple
AM = Beige
Bm = Blue - a sort of greyish blue rather than a sky or bright blue
C = Red
The chords are pretty much the same, but the notes are less well defined - as I learn the whistle it will be interesting to see how the notes express themselves in colour.
# Posted on September 17th 2007 by Sugarfoot Jack
Re: Seeing chords as colours
What's Am7 and C6 then
# Posted on September 17th 2007 by llig leahcim
Re: Seeing chords as colours
and green?
# Posted on September 17th 2007 by Key Maniac Lad
Re: Seeing chords as colours
psychedelic man !!! The crack (sic) must be good at your sessions…….
# Posted on September 17th 2007 by SeanMc
Re: Seeing chords as colours
wouldn't green be Gmaj7 with a flattened 5th?
# Posted on September 17th 2007 by llig leahcim
Re: Seeing chords as colours
That's synesthesia, right?
# Posted on September 17th 2007 by Pere
Re: Seeing chords as colours
A bit of a stretch . . .
# Posted on September 17th 2007 by Sugarfoot Jack
Re: Seeing chords as colours
Yeah thats the one Pere.
Its a genetic thing. Usually effects people in relation to mathematics but is common in relation to music.
# Posted on September 17th 2007 by session savage
Re: Seeing chords as colours
The Kesh is always a turd-like brown to me.
# Posted on September 17th 2007 by Key Maniac Lad
Re: Seeing chords as colours
I hear chords as sound - am I weird ?
# Posted on September 17th 2007 by BegF
Re: Seeing chords as colours
Don't drink the brown beer!
# Posted on September 17th 2007 by Steve L
Re: Seeing chords as colours
So, on the principle of colour mixing, if several people played all the chords at the same time, would you hear the resultant sound as white?
And by the way did you know that Isaac Newton invented toblerone?
# Posted on September 17th 2007 by maxF
Re: Seeing chords as colours
If you hear Bm and C played together does it remind you of Deep Purple?
# Posted on September 17th 2007 by sergeant fox
Re: Seeing chords as colours
found this on grove:
"in Central African societies musical instruments have various functions linked to different musical repertories. First and foremost, instruments are used in ritual and initiation ceremonies, notably in connection with a heightened state of consciousness. The beating of musical instruments in particular, along with song, arouses that heightened state, which manifests itself in trance, auditory drive and/or music-colour synesthesia, allowing communication with the supernatural (often under the psychotropic influence of hallucinogens). Then there are such separate functions as sending messages from village to village by a slit-drum and providing entertainment for a group or an individual. The diversity of the functions of musical instruments is not, however, limited to these main contexts."
so you're not the first to come up with this idea! many western composers also had synesthetic ability... but i cant remember exactly who! i was playing with the colour idea for a while myself and spent time working out a method but in the end, the ear proved more usefull. it would be useful if you were good with colours.. so that if d major was green and if A major was red, then would F sharp minor which lies half ways be yellow? and then if you had d major seventh add 6 it'd be a mixture of other whatever is associated with b minor, dmajor and a major! i couldn't mix all those colours in my head fast enough though! but, if it's something you can do; then cool!
also if you're using that system, do you use the 3 chemical primary colours or the 3 primarys associated with light?! when you get it worked out, i'll pay you to write a tune based on the colours found on anything that steve cooney wears! or indeed myself for that matter!!! now that'd be mad!
cool topic..looking forward to hearing how this progresses!
martin tourish.
# Posted on September 17th 2007 by martin t
Re: Seeing chords as colours
oh... and is this particular form of synesthesia for use within the relatively narrow tonality of irish music or would it be something you'd use in more complex situations e.g. while listening to jazz?! then also are colours fixed to definate pitches or to sol-fah ways of thinking? because then if a tune is transposed up to e flat from d, does that entail an entirely different series of colours? or are you only hoping to show chordal relationships...
sorry for hoggin the board here!
# Posted on September 17th 2007 by martin t
Re: Seeing chords as colours
I used to see colours when playing music, but my psychiatrist put me on a strict diet, where I had to cut out LSD, magic mushrooms, skunk and mescaline. I'm ok now but the cocaine and amphetamines mean I still play a bit briskly at sessions.
# Posted on September 17th 2007 by Key Maniac Lad
Re: Seeing chords as colours
"often under the psychotropic influence of hallucinogen"
That'll be the bitter in our session pub - it's why so many people drink the mild.
In all honesty I don't have a system, it's just how it works. I see the colour in my mind's eye as I hear the music - I didn't choose the colours, it's what they are. For instance, in one of the pub's I play in there is a fair proportion of English folk music played. If the ITM contingent is thin on the ground on a particular evening the session invariably ends up with loads of English tunes, most of which seem to be played in G. This means I have a yellow night - the whole evening is coloured by the endless yellow of G major morris tunes.
However, some tunes work particulary well. The Connaughtman's Rambles, with it's Bm in the second part adds a nice splash of blue during the tune. The A part (in which the Bm is less dominant - you can leave it out altogether) is brown with a hint of yellow - it's almost as if the tune is leaning towards the key of G, although it's actually in D.
I'm a graphic artist by trade, and when I'm designing I can use this music/colour thing to my advantage. Some types of music really set some patterns going off and I can use this as a basis for a design. Strangely, modern electronica works wonders - the ones I like best often have vast textured washes of sound and lots of glitchy little electric tics.
# Posted on September 17th 2007 by Sugarfoot Jack
Re: Seeing chords as colours
scriabin wrote a 'colour' symphony i think.i don't recall what colours he linked with what chords though.
i don't see colours at all but i know a big fat G reel when i hear one...
i think this kind of thing is well documented.
# Posted on September 17th 2007 by biggus dave
Re: Seeing chords as colours
I saw an interview once with Elvin Jones, the jazz drummer, and he talked about his drums that way. He'd get a roll going on the big bottom drum and that he said was violet, and then add another roll on the medium drum that was green, a cymbal was orange, and the high hat was yellow...you could kind of see the colors after he explained them that way, and then as he played around the set the colors would shift as he played---it was really a trip!
# Posted on September 17th 2007 by kennedy
Re: Seeing chords as colours
Sugarfoot, do you also see colors to music when you're dreaming?
# Posted on September 17th 2007 by kennedy
Re: Seeing chords as colours
I can perfectly understand you, Sugarfoot, since I connect colours to music too, but for me chords don´t play a role: I rather associate colours with keys and instrumentation, no matter if it is ITM, rock, jazz or classical. Every composer with a classical training makes use of this to a certain extent when doing the instrumentation. To me this just another way of distinguishing the sounds of e.g. Altan and Cran (take any other band). And I also believe that "it´s just how it works". It is not crap (which some funny contributors suggest) nor is it logical, it is personal, but it´s there.
# Posted on September 17th 2007 by Reelin´ man
Re: Seeing chords as colours
I've resorted to color-coding when learning the keyboard layout on my bandoneon, but that's as far as it goes.
Does anybody know the name of this British mathematical genius with a mild case of autism , who was in the news recently. He perceives numbers as colors associated with a landscape, and they can be hot or cold, etc. He taught himself Icelandic in no time.
Fascinating. If I could only glean some mnemonic devices from his insights to remember my tunes, I'd be happy.
# Posted on September 17th 2007 by pennhorse
Hearing colours as chords
My bathroom is painted in A minor.
# Posted on September 17th 2007 by granama
Re: Seeing chords as colours
"Sugarfoot, do you also see colors to music when you're dreaming?"
Hmmm, not that I've noticed. I have often wondered if this was some sort of response I taught myself at some point, perhaps associated a tune with a colour from some reason and took it from there, but I've come to the conclusion it's not. One of the other guys in a band I was in said he saw chords as colours the same way, but it was a totally different set of hues.
It works with any kind of music, jazz can be good (my wife plays sax so I am exposed to varying different types of jazz) and many avante-garde pieces seem to work well - the work of Steve Reich is one composer that springs to mind.
# Posted on September 17th 2007 by Sugarfoot Jack
Re: Seeing chords as colours
Funny, was talking about this at family dinner table yesterday... my daughter has different food tastes when hearing a combination of notes, like ham on hearing a C followed by an E, etc.
Very weird.
# Posted on September 17th 2007 by stripthewillow
Re: Seeing chords as colours
I have compared notes on this subject with a fiddler friend, but concerning keys rather than chords. Although there were a few glaring discrepancies, it was surprising how many of our key-colour relationships were consistent.
My bathroom isn't really in Am, by the way. That would be wholly inappropriate for a bathroom.
# Posted on September 17th 2007 by granama
Re: Seeing chords as colours- ask any harpist
C=red
F=blue
all other = neutral/white
Just ask any harpist
# Posted on September 17th 2007 by domnull
Re: Seeing chords as colours
S. T. Willow - You must ask your daughter for more details. Then you could use her taste-music synaesthesia as a basis for deciding what to put in her packed lunch. You could start with simple major and minor triads, gradually adding in tones as the months progress. If she develops a taste for Ab13 with a flattened 7th, then you,ve got a jazz musician in the making. On the other hand, if you bombard her with complex chords, then she'll eventually rebel and cast them off, makig her perfectly suited to traditional backing.
As a loving parent, however, you'd probably avoid combinations like blancmange and soy sauce.
# Posted on September 17th 2007 by granama
Re: Seeing chords as colours
"Funny, was talking about this at family dinner table yesterday... my daughter has different food tastes when hearing a combination of notes, like ham on hearing a C followed by an E, etc."
That's better than colours - I've always thought that the 'Fields of Athenry' reminded me of a Chicken Rogan Josh.
I think this is the same thing - synesthesia. According to Wikipedia it's called Lexical → gustatory synesthesia (good article on wilkipedia about the whole subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia#Music_.E2.86.92_color_synesthesia). I also see weeks and years as shapes - this is called Number form synesthesia.
Crikey - what an interesting afternoon this is turning into.
# Posted on September 17th 2007 by Sugarfoot Jack
Re: Seeing chords as colours
No matter which chords are played, and no matter the key, ITM gloops a potato-like flavor in my mouth.
Rockabilly: a hot dog taste (mitt sauerkraut, not mustard).
# Posted on September 17th 2007 by NEW Pure Drop® Ear Canal Oil
Re: Seeing chords as colours
actually this linking things to colours is a really common thing.. when most traditional musicians see piano accordions and or bodhrans, they see red.. it's also said that the little guy in the hollywood blockbuster "the sixth sense" actually saw green: not dead people and it took rather alot of training for him to overcome this problem for the purposes of shooting a film...
anybody have any synesthetic comments to make on the impact of hearing uillean pipes? with their serious out-of-tuneness, thats going to be some collage alright!
perhaps a practical derivative of this synesthisia is the choice of lighting for a concert... when i toured germany, most of the venues had a lighting engineer so i submitted a form with what colours to use on different parts of the sets etc.. just blue low colours for slow tunes and then bright n flashing with the faster stuff... it seemed to really enhance the show when they got it right... so then the question is why?! do we all have a universal standard of colours,, i.e. darker colours for slower pieces and bright perhaps flashing for the faster ones... i wonder where that association came out of...
and so: anyone been to any good raves recently?!!
mt.
# Posted on September 17th 2007 by martin t
Re: Seeing chords as colours
This is tooooo deep.
What's fuschia?
I don't know how much of this was smoke being blown up the arse, but was told the Irish upper house plans to eliminate the shamrock and substitute the fuschia.
The band was selling tee shirts "The People's Republic of Fuschia".........
# Posted on September 17th 2007 by zippydw
Re: Seeing chords as colours
Try this for size!
I know I started it but that's just a coincidence!
JD
# Posted on September 17th 2007 by tallulah
Re: Seeing chords as colours
http://www.thesession.org/discussions/display/7837/comments#comment168259
That was the bit I missed out - I'm out of practice!!
JD
# Posted on September 17th 2007 by tallulah
Re: Seeing chords as colours
http://www.gootar.com/theory.htm
# Posted on September 17th 2007 by Backer
Re: Seeing chords as colours
I'm a synaesthetic too, Sugarfoot, although in my case it doesn't affect music. (For me, scents have colors and sometimes textures.)
Shetland fiddler Tom Anderson said that for him, the key of F was a silvery color. That's why he composed his tune Da Silvery Voe in that key.
# Posted on September 17th 2007 by sara g
Re: Seeing chords as colours
I see wildflowers in paddocks, dont ask me why but different tunes make me see variations.
Now for the real cringer....
Not dissimilar to the sound of music alp dancing scenes.
# Posted on September 18th 2007 by Joze
Re: Seeing chords as colours
There was a great documentary on synaesthesia: I think it was Panorama, or some such programme. The author considered synaesthetic ability to be one of the foundations of abstract intelligence: his main argument was that abstract relations, such as metaphor, depend upon the innate ability of the human brain to recognise relations between the different senses. Synaesthetic distinctions are pretty essential to language: think of the difference between a sharp blade, a sharp pain, a sharp word, or a sharp smell.
Slightly off-topic, perhaps. On a more personal note, I see diddly tunes as squiggly worm-like patterns of colour, which follow the tonal pattern of the tune. Would I get in trouble if I said that I see the sheet-music when I close my eyes? Joking, joking.
# Posted on September 18th 2007 by Robert Ryan
Re: Seeing chords as colours
EEJIT-----where are you on this thread ???
C'mon babe, give me a good laugh !! Your
terse invectives always make some of these threads
worth while. I really mean it --I'm complimenting you !!
I search for your name on some of these non particular,
cerebral topics. Best to ya'--keep it up.
# Posted on September 23rd 2007 by hauke