Do you see colors? Synesthesia

[Tom]

So, yesterday my wife shows my this video. "Look at this 5 year old boy who sees (he says "hears") notes as colors." C is red, G is blue, etc. I say, "Oh, that's Rick Beato's son," which makes me seem like real smart, worldly, or, more probably, a super nerd.

Anyway, gets me thinking. Do you experience synesthesia, which is "seeing" notes or music as shapes, or colors, in your "mind's eye"?

For me, I do not see these colors. I experience the notes as "relative positions" along a line (scale). It's sort of a combination of "seeing," and "experiencing relative direction." Ie, I will either "see" a sort of line or ruler, or, for example C is straight ahead (actually a little to the left, maybe because I am left handed?), and G is "looking 5 degrees" in the rightward (easterly, if C is north) direction. I suspect that I see the notes in a line because I play the PA. I do not see in "perfect pitch," the notes are always relative to each other.

There's a lot more I could say about this, for example visualizing chord shapes, but I want to know your experience. ??????

 

[losthobos]

Funnily enough if you see all the 7 colours of the rainbow and see them at the same time they make white...
Likewise if you play all 7 notes of the scale simultaneously they will harmonise together and play one all encompassing tone....
I'll try find YouTube video to illustrate this phenomenon...or then again I may just opt for real lazy and await it's appearance as someone else has already contemplated this..

 

[Alan Sharkis]

No matter how you visualize notes, don’t discount it as inferior to notes on a staff. It’s intuitive, and that, in the proper context, can help. You can learn to read notes on a staff, for example, and use your color system as a double-check. On the other hand, because it’s your personal system, it might not be the next guy’s personal system. That’s where universal systems like staves and dots, or tabs, or solfege come into play.

 

[JerryPH]

I do not see colours, but literally up to a few years ago, my brain would not hear words in a song, just the melody/music. It was more a choice as the words had no value or meaning to me, but I “saw” the musical notation in my head. I used to test it out by sometimes writing down a part of a song, by just copying what I saw in my head and comparing it… about 80% of the time what I wrote down matched the music I saw In my head.

 

[Pipemajor]

The mind's eye is a wonderful thing. I don't see colours but, often, when I'm playing a piece from memory and I forget where the next note is on the keyboard (CBA) , I visualise the sheet music and find it helps greatly.

 

[vivdunstan]

I hear chord progression in a way that I seem to visualise them in space, moving forward and back. So eg going from C to G feels like leaning forward, C to D even more so, C to F leaning back and so on. I get the same feeling if I haven’t worked out the accompanying chords yet but just listen to a melody. I’ve had this feeling since I was a young piano accordion player, over 40 years ago. I have had very limited musical theory training, just what I picked up from playing my box. This strong feeling of physical movement, like playing by ear, just feels instinctive.

I have never tried to explain this before. So thanks for this thread!

 

[Tom]

Thanks everyone! Shows how everyone is different and music plaing is a "full mind experience."

 

[vivdunstan]

It's maybe worth remembering here that synesthesia can take many forms. Often it's colour, but not always. Sometimes shapes. Sometimes as seemingly in my case - if that's what I have - it's a feeling of movement, which is kinesthetic synesthesia. It's absolutely fascinating, but not something I know very much about. But I have loved this thread