Weird Question for Musicians

[Wait and See]

I know there are a lot of drummers here, and I don't know if there are a lot of "note playing" musicians...but for some reason something popped into my mind and I was wondering if anyone else had a similar experience.

From the very beginning when I started learning guitar, back when I was about 13, I've always subconsciously, without ever thinking about it, associated colors with different notes, chords and keys. In my mind, whenever I visualized a chord, it would have a color with it, and it was not an intentional association. For example:

E/Eb - black
F - blue
F# - dark blue
G/G# - dark green, like a forest
A/Ab - yellow
B - red
Bb - pink
C - white
C# - charcoal gray
D/Db - green

Weird, I know...just throwing a random thought out there.

[Dietmar]

you should definitely see a doctor: C is khaki!

[DirtyMartini]

Synaesthesia?

Either way, pretty cool. Probably helps your brain keep the info organized.
(I might have to try that consciously.)

[zilboy]

Don't laugh - I used to see ads in music magazines with some guy who could teach you perfect pitch by hearing notes as colors.

[copelandos_damour]

That's pretty cool. I have no idea how I memorize chords. I just do...

[smax]

colours, huh?

not sure about that, i sing and play bass and love the patterns and shapes that come from playing, but no colours ~ apart from the odd spangled-drug-fuelled session over the years!

[GinaSuperCat]

Synesthetes are neat...this is only strange insofar as we have become so heavily invested in taxonomies...dividing things into categories like the senses, etc. I think we are so accustomed to something being either/or that we just forget that there are many things going on at once...

Memory used to be an essential component of one of the three core arts... but memory as an art, as something consciously thought of and cultivated has lost its importance...at most we get the odd mneumonic device (like how I learned the US presidents in order to the tune of Yankee Doodle Dandy...I can still fire them all off in less than 30 secs <giggle>, or ROYGBIV for the spectrum according to wavelength...making the relation between color and sound not all that strange, actually ;p) but they seem more curiosities than systems, an odd saying from school, etc...the ancient Greeks had elaborate systems for memory, for example, one could memorize entire lengthy speeches by associating sections of the speech to a part of the house as you would walk through it...these things seem strange nowadaws, too bad because they are cool, I think! did I mention I'm a total geek? <grin?

Or if it doesn't come to you, there's always the Robbie Krieger/JimiHendrix/Jefferson Airplane route for seeing colors <giggle>

[Paolo]

[quote="zilboy"]Don't laugh - I used to see ads in music magazines with some guy who could teach you perfect pitch by hearing notes as colors.[/quote]

Exactly what I though about when I read Wait and See's post. I've been reading Bass Player's issues since many years and clearly remember those ads

[blueboy]

Unless you have "perfect pitch", I can't see that anyone could associate a colour with a pitch or chord or key. If I played a note out of thin air and you didn't have an instrument, could you tell me what the note (and colour) is that I played? Not that many people have perfect pitch, and it is also not a guarantee for musical ability.

Personally, the only thing I associate with music is emotion...and that usually is the result of carefully chosen notes played over interesting harmonies and rhythms... sometimes combined with thought provoking lyrics.

Prosody and contrast in each of those elements are the keys to making good music into great music.

I guess it might be interesting to hear someone try and "play" the colours in a painting, but I wouldn't have high hopes for the result to sound anything like music!

...Unless of course your into atonal stuff

[Wait and See]

Like I said...this isn't something that was conscious. It's just a case of every time I had to think about or visualize a particular chord on the guitar, or had to think of the key for a song, the note would have a color association in my mind-- and it was always the same. I didn't even notice it consciously until I had been at it a while. It's funny how the mind works, I guess.

[Divemistress of the Dark]

Interesting, Bongo. I'd kind of like to hear someone do something like that (play a painting), but then I'm interested in weird things like that...(did you know about 2% of the static on your television is remnant background noise from the Big Bang? Cool stuff).

I've got pretty good pitch, oddly...which makes me a great music fan, but I can't claim to have inherited the ability that makes buddies of mine be able to gin up a song just like crossing the street. (And I know what having an 'easy' talent is like, because I could draw before I could do about anything else...)

[Grant]

When I learned music I learned it on guitar so I have a fretboard based understanding of (12 tone) music. Instead of colors (synthenasia dude!)
I see the notes as row/column entries on a matrix (with 6 rows and lots of columns). I think of intervals as additions and subtractions to base notes
(like a third can be up one row and back one column or whatever.)

However, you should listen to the color of your dreams.

[Wait and See]

>>>(synthenasia dude!)<<<

I should point out that there were no drugs involved when this developed...

[aceface]

[quote="copelandos_damour"]That's pretty cool. I have no idea how I memorize chords. I just do...[/quote]
Same here.

However, I have noticed that I associate songs and (more importantly) albums, with seasons. I think part of that comes from release dates, but that correlation doesn't always hold true.