Writing with Synesthesia, Seeing Colors in Music | Hacker News Reader

Writing with Synesthesia, Seeing Colors in Music

americansongwriter.com

39 pointstintinnabula27 comments

If you look at the bouba/kiki effect[0] almost everybody shares this synesthesia-like shape to sound mapping.

I'm pretty sure that as the concept of synesthesia is more well-know you'll see many more people report it.

Don't have any source for this but I feel like these synesthesia like mappings are pretty fundamental when learning/memorizing. Seems to me like everybody makes these unusual associations that don't seem to follow any obvious logic to memorize things. But not everybody can readily verbalize and describe what they're seeing/feeling.

Say when speaking or listening to Chinese I have a visual sensation representing the tonality. Which to me is pretty obviously an adaptive technique that helped me learn.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouba/kiki_effect

I don't know if it's synesthesia but music's always had a colour to me. Major and minor scales in the same key tend to have similar colours just with different tones. A tends to be a bright blue while a minor is more of a darker purply blue. G minor's a dark reddy brown. Dminor is a darker forest green while dmajor is a brighter 'happier' green. C major tends to be a bright yellowy colour, c minor more of a darker yellowy green. B minor takes on a darker yellowy green while b major tends to be an orangy yellow. F and f major start moving into shades of light purple.

It's not just notes though but the octave and tone make a difference too. Distorted instruments like electric guitars or that sound they use in edm music tends to be kind of fuzzy, bass notes are full round and heavy, pianos and bells remind me od looking through the colours through a stained glass window or something.

Definitely sounds like synesthesia.

Definitely looks like synesthesia. FTFY

I'd say the line between sights and sounds is pretty blurred here.

But in seriousness I have heard written language described as similar to synesthesia. We associate a sound to graphemes and text. Some people describe reading quietly as hearing sound.

For those interested in these things, here's a music/synesthesia study that I stumbled across last week that sounds pretty cool.

https://researchprofiles.herts.ac.uk/portal/en/publications/...

> Typically, research has focussed on synaesthetic musicians such as the composer, Messiaen, who experienced colours when hearing music. This new inquiry investigates and develops a novel approach:

> Can music be composed to evoke cross-modal sensory experiences such as taste, touch or smell in a general audience?

> From principles derived from current research, can a methodology be devised to evoke novel cross-modal sensory experiences through musical composition?

What is the downside of synesthesia? It is often presented like a superpower with no downside.

As if people with synesthesia have some kind of built-in color coding that allow them to see patterns more easily than anyone else.

But considering that matching patterns is what brains are for, there should be some big evolutionary pressure toward such an ability. If synesthesia for instance is able to help make a difference between an edible and a poisonous plant, make up camouflaged animals or anything like that, it is a direct advantage when it comes to survival.

For that trait not be selected for and be considered a condition, there must be some kind of drawback, but what is that drawback?

I think synesthesia wouldn’t help much with these examples. Some common types of synesthesia, like graphemes->color or chromesthesia (music in colors) would’ve been completely useless throughout 99% of human history.

Most people won't relate to it. Plus you might assume everyone sees things like you do, and operate under those conditions.

Synesthesia with poetry / metaphors. strikes me as a more interesting subject. At what point does a specific sense cross the point of abstraction that is relatable to other senses?

Anyone have Synesthesia? Is it a blessing or a curse?

My daughter has synesthesia. She is an adult now but we discovered it when, at about the age of three, when asking her if she knew the meanings of words, she would preface her definitions with, "That's a yellow (or whatever color) word." It led us to realize that, to her, sounds had distinct colors and that she found it hard to believe that was not the case for everyone.

Is it a blessing or a curse? It is hard to say but perhaps a mixture of both.

In the possible blessings column, she is, without a shred of hyperbole, an innately skilled artist and has been since she was old enough to hold a pen. Her works, illustration, paintings and sculpture, flow fully formed without any apparent planning or sketchy second-guessing. It is quite a thing to see but I have no idea whether, or how much, her synesthesia plays in it. Her palettes are incredible.

She is not a musician but finds live music to be so pleasurable that she goes to extremes — such as driving 350 miles round trip on a weeknight after work — to see concerts or live acts, and often four or five nights a week. This is a curse in the regard that it has in the past threatened her financially and I worry about her hearing. The pandemic has curtailed this and she terribly misses the music.

I am really interested to see some of her art. Please share if she is obliged...

I am often stunned at the hyper-realism of modern artists - as opposed to a lot of the art of the past eons, and I wonder why is it that we now see hyper-realism / photo-realistic drawings / art now as opposed to the past?

Has the artistic side of human creativity evolved in literally the last 75 years?

The right/left brain idea is usually considered debunked, but it's still observably true as a metaphor, even if it's not literally true in terms of physical brain function.

People with what are labelled strong right-brain skills can often do some or all of those artistic things. It's complementary to having a talent for linear symbolic logic, but operates in a different space.

It can also be learned or at least enhanced. But just like other talents some people are born with exceptional ability while others have to struggle to be mediocre. And skill levels as an adult depend on a supportive and stimulating environment in childhood which brings out the talent, as opposed to leaving it undeveloped.

>. It's complementary to having a talent for linear symbolic logic

Interesting. Can you expand on that?

I have it as well, and like the other poster mine faded at around my early 20's. Music had vibrant color and texture, and for me quite a few words did. Numbers, 1-9 all had their own colors and I still "see" those, or at least I strongly associate them with the colors I saw, like "three" felt green, five was orange and seven was red. Up until I was 18 I didn't know it was rare, I was describing a song to my girlfriend and she'd heard of Synesthesia. I miss it very much.

I have this. Every letter and the numbers up to 20 have individual colors, then the 20s are yellow, the thirties are gray, the 40s are red, 50s blue, and so on, then in the hundreds it turns to white and all numbers are white. Days of the week and months have colors. Decades of history have colors. Like the 1700s are all green but the 1960s are red and the 1970s are a different shade of green. Some individual words have colors, usually with what they represent. So egg is white and elephant is gray. But museum is dark red which doesn’t really align with anything.

I don’t have any color associations with sound or music.

I don’t think this has changed my life whatsoever. I thought everyone did this until I was a teenager and mentioned how the letter A was a red letter and no one knew what I meant. I can’t speak on artists or musicians saying it is like a superpower. I think it may help me remember things better, although I don’t have an extremely good memory.

I have a form of synesthesia. every letter and digit has a unique color, The colors have always remained the same since as far back as I can remember.

I saw a comment in this thread about syntax highlighting and that's kinda correct, it's like having syntax highlighting in your inner eye.

I don't focus on it that much when I read, it's subtle but I think it helps me remember things and associate things in my mind. I also sometime visualize words in my mind (like one word at a time subtitles) when people talk to me and i see the colors then too. The first letter of the word usually has more influence on the overall "color" of the word than the other letters in the word.

I have it, I "see" sounds and especially musical notes as flowing shapes with color and texture. Very strongly as a child, sadly faded quite a bit by now (in my 50s). It's definitely a blessing. It adds several additional dimensions to music and makes the experience so much richer.

Edited to add: Listening to music smoking pot back in my college days was just an incredible experience. I don't miss pot, but I miss listening to music like that.

Cool that someone else has it! It’s much less common than just sound to color. We should compare notes.

A couple questions to see if our experiences match:

How would you describe the texture of drums?

What brightness is bass?

Are instruments usually separate or merged?

I've always wondered what the chances were that two people with synesthesia would have similar subjective experiences.

In general pitch corresponds with brightness of the colors. Bass would be a metallic, more roughly textured brown; medium pitched guitars shading from brown into reddish/lighter brown, then pink, then pink-white with a plasticy sheen at the highest pitches. Although certain types of guitar sound are shades of deep electric blue. Drums... I'm not sure if that color has a name. Something like bass, but lighter colored, and less dense.

Different instruments / notes played are separated in space, though always moving and sometimes swarming around each other.

Let me tell you, smoking up and sitting between two stereo speakers back in the day was just out of this world. You got the visuals from the synesthesia and the heightened sense of realness and meaning from the pot. I still remember one specific time I listened to Led Zeppelin's Kashmir like that. Or the first time I ever heard Pink Floyd's Shine On You Crazy Diamond, with alcohol this time. Fully-body music listening.

This pretty much agrees with what I experience. For me bass is always darker, drums have kind of a sandy texture, instruments are separate and also moving. Another one is that louder means bigger.

It adds new dimensions to music and it can make even the types of music you didn’t like previously look beautiful. When I have some free time I’d like to do video (or better, VR) representations of some songs.

I get music to shape, texture, color, location synesthesia when I smoke pot (just a very small amount is enough) so I have a good idea of what it’s like to have it and not have it. It’s amazing but also I’m happy I don’t have it all the time because I’m sure I’d end up doing something music-related and probably not paid as well for my career. It feels like a completely unfair advantage to have it.

I can describe more of how it is if you’re interested.

It’s kind of like the difference between syntax highlighting on or off in a code editor.

A blessing! In my case anyway. It only happens when I intently listen to music: headphones, dark room, clear head. It's like a reward for focusing in. Thankfully it's not intrusive; doesn't happen when I'm driving or working, etc.

I experience it when doing multitrack recording of electronic music, rather than in keys. Each track has a given synthesizer and changing the sounds affects a color impression. Likewise, and perhaps related, when I use many different types of synths together (eg subtractive, FM, ROMplers) there is sort of a shadow feeling that they are in a family and I need to make the family happy together.

Yes, static colors for letters and numbers. They haven't changed in 15+ years. It's neither an advantage or disadvantage since I can 'turn it off/on" mid sentence. I don't see colors as literally as the orange bar at the top, I'm just... sort of aware of them, like they're being superimposed after initial visual processing happens.

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