I'll not go into too much detail but basically it is about how some people can interpret or visualise notes as colours or shapes. Possibly this could also apply to keys, chords etc , I don't know?
Have any of you experienced this? Whether you have or not, would you consider it to be a help or a hindrance?
Here's my own opinion on the matter which I posted on the other site.
"Surely, music is an aural thing?
Yes, I can read music and see notes on the paper. I can transfer what is written on the paper to an instrument and even into a tune "in my head". However, if I listen to a tune or play one either from memory or learned by ear I don't think of notes or chords. They just come naturally. Of course, I might play a "bum note" especially if I'm unfamiliar with the tune but the best way to get to know a tune is by listening!
So, things like visualising notes/keys/chords etc whether as colours, shapes, numbers or whatever would seem more of a hindrance to me than anything else. "
Synaesthesia. Always one of my faviourtie topics whenever it comes up, which is fairly often. But, for me, it's not something that is either a help or a hindrance, or anything that I can use. It just happens. For instance, A major is yellow.
I sometimes imagine a major scale in a given key as having a particular colour, but that has to do with the mood of tunes I know in that key, sometimes in comparison with those of other tunes that often precede or follow, and probably the real colours of tin whistles I've played or seen - blue, red or green plastic fipples, nickel or brass tubes.
So no, I ain't got synaesthesia, if this is an involuntary and consistent association of a particular colour with a particular absolute note whenever one hears it.
Years ago I did a diploma course at an art college and wrote an essay on the German painter Emil Nolde (1867-1956). He claimed to have been synaesthetic as a boy, though I don't know if he used this word, experiencing animal and bird sounds as colours. I dare say the pitch of these is often enough fairly constant, if pitch is a key factor in which colours one perceives, or claims to.
An old friend of mine can sit with his eyes closed an indentify any note played for him anywhere on the piano. Not only that ,he can tell you the approximate fraction of a semitone it may be out of true pitch. This goes for any note. He states that he's always had this ability. When I first heard of the "colour"
idea I speculated that people like this may have a colour association with notes that doesn't "kick in" until the instrument
is properly tuned. I think it would be a marvelous skill to have.
I dont know anything about them , but the young ones say
that they find Tabs, the easyist to read. More so than Dots,
and even Abc , My son has learnt many Guitar things Quickly
by Them - All be in Mettalica and not Tommy Peoples,,lol..
jim,,,,,
Last time this happened to me was in college. It was a lovely summer day, upstate Vermont, early 1990's. Phish was playing on stage. Someone said "Don't take the brown acid" and the rest is sort of a haze, but there were lots of musical colors that day.
quote chuneboi : "his eyes closed an(d) indentify any note played for him anywhere on the piano. Not only that ,he can tell you the approximate fraction of a semitone it may be out of true pitch. This goes for any note. He states that he's always had this ability."
I've heard this argued before but he couldn't have always had this ability as at the naming of notes is surely an arbitrary manmade thing and has to be learnt. As a child he must have learnt that such and such a pitch is called a certain name and the intervals between them are tones etc.
Read some interesting excerpts from a book called Musicophilia by Sachs or something like on this topic: he argued that many children have latent abilities in this area but that the acquisition of spoken language tends to suppress the ability. Something to do with being able to interpret language regardless of pitch/ intonation of voice etc. So I suppose if you take a young child and give them formal music training including conventional music notation, you would tend to maintain and retain the ability.
Not sure how it would relate to children learning in an aural traditional music idiom though - think relative rather than absolute pitch is more important here??
The University of Vermont is aka "Groovy UV", it was unavoidable back then, even for a punker. Plus, those Phish-head lassies are kinda cute in their Birkenstocks and all.
I brought this subject up at one of our band meetings once when I wondered if any of my friends experienced it. They didn't (although the accountant in the group said she thought numbers had personalities and could see patterns in them that helped her maths), and then after a google I discovered synaethesia.
So, for the record here's how I see the main keys I play in:
D = Brown (milk chocolate)
G = Sunshine yellow - think pale daffodil
Gm = Yellow with an sort of orangey tint
C = Red
Am = beige - the same as the background colour this text is on
Em = purple
Dm = This is brown with a blue wash
Bm = Blue - a sort of matte velvet blue
Funnily enough, when I capo up on the 5th fret of my bouzouki to play D with the Am chord shapes, everything gets a surrounding tinge of red.
Music is not just an aural thing for some folks, nor is the association between music and colors always a learned metaphorical adjective kind of thing
Oliver Sacks book Musicophilia describes how the perception of music’s characteristics varies from person to person. I found the book engrossing and well worth the read.
Many folks relate pitch and color as a learned metaphor, but for others it is a literal, innate ability; hear a note and literally automatically see its associated color. Others perceive music’s keys as colors. For them, the sounds are also processed by their visual cortex.
Sacks described an individual who perceived tastes when hearing intervals; minor seconds were sour, Major thirds sweet, minor seventh bitter.
The brain’s cross connection to color is not only made to pitch, some folks literally experience days of the week as color, other folks experience the letters of the alphabet as colors, others link smell and color.
Yes, fascinating! Sugarfoot Jack, do you ever see tunes which are in the same key as different colours or shades of the tune's main colour? For example does the Dmaj of Dennis Murphy's or St Anne's Reel come out different from the Dmaj of, say, Mountain Road? Do you see a difference in colour between something in Amyx (like Rakes of Kildare) vs something in Adorian (like Scarce O'Tatties)?
Certain tunes have tinges according to the chords played (it's worth noting here I mainly accompany on bouzouki).
A straight Gmaj tune like The Kesh is pretty uniform in colour. It's often accompanied by The Kid on The Mountain which is altogether more complicated. The colours of the Em parts dominate the tune, even with the addition of the occasional Bm chord (it simply shifts the hue of the browns of the Em and Dmaj chords played around it - a bit of colour bleed if you like). In the G parts of the tune, there is a distinct reddish tinge where the parts join, even though most accompanists play G/D all through the G parts. This reddening indicates to me the influence of a Cmaj chord (no suprise, obviously), and I think if you add a Cmaj it colours the accompaniment just right.
michael o haluin had us for a whistle class and he sat us down and made us close our eyes and see if we saw colours when he played notes....only me and this little guy from belfast could do it!!!!it was so fun!!
There's a fellow who plays in our session who was blinded in his youth. Apparently when playing in a band some years ago he would say something like: "The first tune is in the key of yellow - the one after is in the key of green" very interesting take on the feel of individual tunes.
Yes Liam, that's the book I had out of the library a while back - Sacks describes many of these things and also interesting stuff on playing music 'therapy' for people afflicted with Parkinson's.
But if I recall correctly, when discussing concept of absolute pitch - he quoted tests amongst the general public that showed that a high proportion of those who had absolute pitch and related pitches to colour etc. were musicians and many were professional classical musicians I think by inference. The question then is - did they become musicians because of ability to perceive pitch accurately OR did the early training that many undertook as children (in classical music) simply nuture & preserve the ability?
Sacks does say that folks with absolute pitch are more likely to also link pitch to color. It’s interesting that most folks I know can automatically name a color though few can name a heard note even if they are musical. He notes that absolute pitch can have its downsides, for example some are distressed when they hear tunes being played out of their intended key; I imagine the effect is similar to finding blue carrots on your plate.
Sacks notes that absolute pitch is found in one individual in ten thousand, is more common among musicians, and that life-long training does not confer it. So AP may pre-dispose you to become a musician, or the lack of it may discourage you; there is a correlation, but who knows which is the cause and which is the effect! It is more common among the blind and is more common among native speakers of tonal spoken languages such as Mandarin and Vietnamese. He noted a comparison of two music conservatories - In the US 14% of the students had absolute pitch, whereas in the Chinese school 60% had it.
He also writes that infants show more evidence of absolute pitch ability, and a tendency to link pitch to color.
So it seems that usually those with absolute pitch have an innate ability that also has to be nurtured from a very early age.
Hello, All ! Aren't there 2 camps : those who believe very good pitch memory approaching perfect pitch can be learned (some by a purchasable study course involving color association) and the camp of those who argue against it? In my experience those against seem closed-minded, similar to people who say they are tone deaf but only have been bullied into lack of musical function. I also think that good pitch orientation can be damaged by listening to lots of out-of-tune music.
Seeing notes as colours
Seeing notes as colours
A discussion has started elsewhere....
http://www.footstompin.com/public/forum?threadid=163286
re the above.
I'll not go into too much detail but basically it is about how some people can interpret or visualise notes as colours or shapes. Possibly this could also apply to keys, chords etc , I don't know?
Have any of you experienced this? Whether you have or not, would you consider it to be a help or a hindrance?
Here's my own opinion on the matter which I posted on the other site.
"Surely, music is an aural thing?
Yes, I can read music and see notes on the paper. I can transfer what is written on the paper to an instrument and even into a tune "in my head". However, if I listen to a tune or play one either from memory or learned by ear I don't think of notes or chords. They just come naturally. Of course, I might play a "bum note" especially if I'm unfamiliar with the tune but the best way to get to know a tune is by listening!
So, things like visualising notes/keys/chords etc whether as colours, shapes, numbers or whatever would seem more of a hindrance to me than anything else. "
# Posted on April 17th 2008 by Johannes J
Re: Seeing notes as colours
£5 = Blue.
£10 = Brownish sort of colour.
£20 = Pinky-blue colour.
£100 = Red (I think - long time since I've seen one).
# Posted on April 17th 2008 by Ron P
Re: Seeing notes as colours
Oh, sorry John, I thought you meant the colour of notes....
# Posted on April 17th 2008 by Ron P
Re: Seeing notes as colours
Synaesthesia. Always one of my faviourtie topics whenever it comes up, which is fairly often. But, for me, it's not something that is either a help or a hindrance, or anything that I can use. It just happens. For instance, A major is yellow.
# Posted on April 17th 2008 by benhall.1
Re: Seeing notes as colours
Hi Ben,
Sorry. I should have checked first for other discussions on this topic. I see there are a few and I'll read them with interest.
# Posted on April 17th 2008 by Johannes J
Re: Seeing notes as colours
Yeah, this has been discussed before.
Its called Grapheme-color synesthesia according to wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grapheme-color_synesthesia
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Story?id=98039&page=2
I would love to have it. cool.
# Posted on April 17th 2008 by session savage
Re: Seeing notes as colours
I sometimes imagine a major scale in a given key as having a particular colour, but that has to do with the mood of tunes I know in that key, sometimes in comparison with those of other tunes that often precede or follow, and probably the real colours of tin whistles I've played or seen - blue, red or green plastic fipples, nickel or brass tubes.
So no, I ain't got synaesthesia, if this is an involuntary and consistent association of a particular colour with a particular absolute note whenever one hears it.
Years ago I did a diploma course at an art college and wrote an essay on the German painter Emil Nolde (1867-1956). He claimed to have been synaesthetic as a boy, though I don't know if he used this word, experiencing animal and bird sounds as colours. I dare say the pitch of these is often enough fairly constant, if pitch is a key factor in which colours one perceives, or claims to.
# Posted on April 17th 2008 by nicholas
Re: Seeing notes as colours
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_(game)
# Posted on April 17th 2008 by Bodhi
Re: Seeing notes as colours
Luckily I do not experience synaethesia as (presumably) my Daltonism would render me tone deaf.
# Posted on April 17th 2008 by yhaalhouse
Re: Seeing notes as colours
An old friend of mine can sit with his eyes closed an indentify any note played for him anywhere on the piano. Not only that ,he can tell you the approximate fraction of a semitone it may be out of true pitch. This goes for any note. He states that he's always had this ability. When I first heard of the "colour"
idea I speculated that people like this may have a colour association with notes that doesn't "kick in" until the instrument
is properly tuned. I think it would be a marvelous skill to have.
# Posted on April 17th 2008 by chuneboi slim
Re: Seeing notes as colours
Beethoven called B minor his "black key."
# Posted on April 17th 2008 by Steve Shaw
Re: Seeing notes as colours
I dont know anything about them , but the young ones say
that they find Tabs, the easyist to read. More so than Dots,
and even Abc , My son has learnt many Guitar things Quickly
by Them - All be in Mettalica and not Tommy Peoples,,lol..
jim,,,,,
# Posted on April 17th 2008 by FIDDLE4
Re: Seeing notes as colours
Last time this happened to me was in college. It was a lovely summer day, upstate Vermont, early 1990's. Phish was playing on stage. Someone said "Don't take the brown acid" and the rest is sort of a haze, but there were lots of musical colors that day.
# Posted on April 17th 2008 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: Seeing notes as colours
quote chuneboi : "his eyes closed an(d) indentify any note played for him anywhere on the piano. Not only that ,he can tell you the approximate fraction of a semitone it may be out of true pitch. This goes for any note. He states that he's always had this ability."
I've heard this argued before but he couldn't have always had this ability as at the naming of notes is surely an arbitrary manmade thing and has to be learnt. As a child he must have learnt that such and such a pitch is called a certain name and the intervals between them are tones etc.
Read some interesting excerpts from a book called Musicophilia by Sachs or something like on this topic: he argued that many children have latent abilities in this area but that the acquisition of spoken language tends to suppress the ability. Something to do with being able to interpret language regardless of pitch/ intonation of voice etc. So I suppose if you take a young child and give them formal music training including conventional music notation, you would tend to maintain and retain the ability.
Not sure how it would relate to children learning in an aural traditional music idiom though - think relative rather than absolute pitch is more important here??
# Posted on April 17th 2008 by the wounded hussar
Re: Seeing notes as colours
http://www.thesession.org/discussions/display/7837
http://www.thesession.org/discussions/display/15170
Oh, SWFL, you didn't go hang out a Phish concerts, did you? That's it, you're out of the circle of friends...
# Posted on April 17th 2008 by Reverend
Re: Seeing notes as colours
The University of Vermont is aka "Groovy UV", it was unavoidable back then, even for a punker. Plus, those Phish-head lassies are kinda cute in their Birkenstocks and all.
# Posted on April 17th 2008 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: Seeing notes as colours
A similar observation -- from a backer ...
Chords are the "adjectives" of music.
Of course, colors are just one type of adjective.
# Posted on April 17th 2008 by Eliot
Re: Seeing notes as colours
I brought this subject up at one of our band meetings once when I wondered if any of my friends experienced it. They didn't (although the accountant in the group said she thought numbers had personalities and could see patterns in them that helped her maths), and then after a google I discovered synaethesia.
So, for the record here's how I see the main keys I play in:
D = Brown (milk chocolate)
G = Sunshine yellow - think pale daffodil
Gm = Yellow with an sort of orangey tint
C = Red
Am = beige - the same as the background colour this text is on
Em = purple
Dm = This is brown with a blue wash
Bm = Blue - a sort of matte velvet blue
Funnily enough, when I capo up on the 5th fret of my bouzouki to play D with the Am chord shapes, everything gets a surrounding tinge of red.
# Posted on April 17th 2008 by Sugarfoot Jack
Re: Seeing notes as colours
Music is not just an aural thing for some folks, nor is the association between music and colors always a learned metaphorical adjective kind of thing
Oliver Sacks book Musicophilia describes how the perception of music’s characteristics varies from person to person. I found the book engrossing and well worth the read.
Many folks relate pitch and color as a learned metaphor, but for others it is a literal, innate ability; hear a note and literally automatically see its associated color. Others perceive music’s keys as colors. For them, the sounds are also processed by their visual cortex.
Sacks described an individual who perceived tastes when hearing intervals; minor seconds were sour, Major thirds sweet, minor seventh bitter.
The brain’s cross connection to color is not only made to pitch, some folks literally experience days of the week as color, other folks experience the letters of the alphabet as colors, others link smell and color.
Fascinating!
Liam.
# Posted on April 17th 2008 by billiamconkey
Re: Seeing notes as colours
''They call me Mellow Yellow'',,,,, lol,
jim,,,
# Posted on April 17th 2008 by FIDDLE4
Re: Seeing notes as colours
Yes, fascinating! Sugarfoot Jack, do you ever see tunes which are in the same key as different colours or shades of the tune's main colour? For example does the Dmaj of Dennis Murphy's or St Anne's Reel come out different from the Dmaj of, say, Mountain Road? Do you see a difference in colour between something in Amyx (like Rakes of Kildare) vs something in Adorian (like Scarce O'Tatties)?
# Posted on April 17th 2008 by fliedermaus
Re: Seeing notes as colours
For nihilists, all the notes are black. Not many of them play ITM. Good thing. Sceptics... another box of frogs altogether.
# Posted on April 17th 2008 by drone
Re: Seeing notes as colours
When I play the piano all is see is black and white
# Posted on April 17th 2008 by zippydw
Re: Seeing notes as colours
Certain tunes have tinges according to the chords played (it's worth noting here I mainly accompany on bouzouki).
A straight Gmaj tune like The Kesh is pretty uniform in colour. It's often accompanied by The Kid on The Mountain which is altogether more complicated. The colours of the Em parts dominate the tune, even with the addition of the occasional Bm chord (it simply shifts the hue of the browns of the Em and Dmaj chords played around it - a bit of colour bleed if you like). In the G parts of the tune, there is a distinct reddish tinge where the parts join, even though most accompanists play G/D all through the G parts. This reddening indicates to me the influence of a Cmaj chord (no suprise, obviously), and I think if you add a Cmaj it colours the accompaniment just right.
So tunes can get quite colourful.
# Posted on April 17th 2008 by Sugarfoot Jack
Re: Seeing notes as colours
Good link folks
http://www.theasc.com/magazine/jan05/conundrum/page3.html
# Posted on April 17th 2008 by Hugo Chavez
Re: Seeing notes as colours
michael o haluin had us for a whistle class and he sat us down and made us close our eyes and see if we saw colours when he played notes....only me and this little guy from belfast could do it!!!!it was so fun!!
# Posted on April 17th 2008 by craicagusceol
Re: Seeing notes as colours
sometimes when I play fiddle my sense of smell becomes more acute - does that count?
# Posted on April 17th 2008 by airport
Re: Seeing notes as colours
There's a fellow who plays in our session who was blinded in his youth. Apparently when playing in a band some years ago he would say something like: "The first tune is in the key of yellow - the one after is in the key of green" very interesting take on the feel of individual tunes.
# Posted on April 18th 2008 by Brown Creeper
Re: Seeing notes as colours
Yes Liam, that's the book I had out of the library a while back - Sacks describes many of these things and also interesting stuff on playing music 'therapy' for people afflicted with Parkinson's.
But if I recall correctly, when discussing concept of absolute pitch - he quoted tests amongst the general public that showed that a high proportion of those who had absolute pitch and related pitches to colour etc. were musicians and many were professional classical musicians I think by inference. The question then is - did they become musicians because of ability to perceive pitch accurately OR did the early training that many undertook as children (in classical music) simply nuture & preserve the ability?
# Posted on April 18th 2008 by the wounded hussar
Re: Seeing notes as colours
i.e. is it Nature or Nuture?
# Posted on April 18th 2008 by the wounded hussar
Re: Seeing notes as colours
Hussar:
Sacks does say that folks with absolute pitch are more likely to also link pitch to color. It’s interesting that most folks I know can automatically name a color though few can name a heard note even if they are musical. He notes that absolute pitch can have its downsides, for example some are distressed when they hear tunes being played out of their intended key; I imagine the effect is similar to finding blue carrots on your plate.
Sacks notes that absolute pitch is found in one individual in ten thousand, is more common among musicians, and that life-long training does not confer it. So AP may pre-dispose you to become a musician, or the lack of it may discourage you; there is a correlation, but who knows which is the cause and which is the effect! It is more common among the blind and is more common among native speakers of tonal spoken languages such as Mandarin and Vietnamese. He noted a comparison of two music conservatories - In the US 14% of the students had absolute pitch, whereas in the Chinese school 60% had it.
He also writes that infants show more evidence of absolute pitch ability, and a tendency to link pitch to color.
So it seems that usually those with absolute pitch have an innate ability that also has to be nurtured from a very early age.
Liam.
# Posted on April 18th 2008 by billiamconkey
Re: Seeing notes as colours
"Sacks does say that folks with absolute pitch are more likely to also link pitch to color."
Hmm. I think I have it the other way round - colour to absolutely no pitch.
# Posted on April 18th 2008 by Sugarfoot Jack
Re: Seeing notes as colours
Hello, All ! Aren't there 2 camps : those who believe very good pitch memory approaching perfect pitch can be learned (some by a purchasable study course involving color association) and the camp of those who argue against it? In my experience those against seem closed-minded, similar to people who say they are tone deaf but only have been bullied into lack of musical function. I also think that good pitch orientation can be damaged by listening to lots of out-of-tune music.
# Posted on April 21st 2008 by Pete Goehring