i have synaesthesia

wow i have only just found this out, thanks to dandy.
i was describing how to me, each note is a colour, i don't understand why or how, but it is!! ie: G is quite clearly red, while A is yellow, D is green, E is orange, C is white, etc....

it's synaesthesia!
dictionary says this:
a brain disorder characterized by a cross-referencing of senses: for example, sounds might be "seen" and colors might be "heard."

how cool!
can anyone else do this or relate to what im saying?
love jaz

 

yeh i know what you mean, ive always thought of numbers and letters as having specific colours. a is yellow b is blue, c is green etc

 

syd barrett used to think that each note was a colour, and in his songs, he was painting on a canvas, and the notes were the paint,

 

Pah its not brain disorder, its just the way our minds find easiest to understand things!

Kandinksy was the same as i was saying, he heard music as he painted different colours in his work. I think perhapes Mondrian did in his Boogie Woogie board walk pieces too. But deffinatly Kandinksy is said to be synaesthetic,

"Kandinsky, may have been aided somewhat in linking music to art in that he had a condition called Synaesthesia, this means that he could 'see' music. He could see colours associated with certain sounds and notes. People who have this neurological condition have an overlap of sensory input, in which one form of input creates a reaction in another sensory department of the brain. Later when Kandinsky produced paintings of pure abstraction, he would call them, 'Compositions' or 'Improvisations', reflecting his theories about music."

I think its more a gift than a disorder

 

wow!
thats really strange how you think of it like that, but cool, and fascinating!
it's weird cos if i try to do that one it doesn't work, i only work with notes...
Jaz

 

wow yeah, i mean, it was the dictionary who said it was a disorder, obviously it doesn't understand....

 

I'm never sure about this. I'm not sure if I have it or not. I mean, I associate colours and sounds and words and smells and textures, but I don't know, doesn't everyone do that?

Is there a test you can do?

 

no, not everyone has it, some people have it more than others, and i'm sure it develops.
some people associate colours and smells, like, that smells blue or, thats a pooey colour, etc.... some people can do all of it i guess, i can only do the colour/sound thing, and i'm going to start writing more music using that

SelfControl, which ones can you do it with? it'd be interesting to know, my guess is, if you had the feeling that you can do it, most likely you probably can!
Jaz

 

yeah!! thats just how it works!!!

 

No, no you're not going insane, or maybe the people with it, like you an me, have always been insane:O I haven't qutie figured it out yet... but yes, I have it too

 

wow thats incredible!!! this is so cool!
hehe, don't you agree, G is sooo red...

 

Yeah cool dude. I read about synaesthesia recently and I believe I have it to a large extent. I don't associate sound with colours all that much but I do associate pieces of music with food or with a certain scenery or a complete visual environment (rather than just one colour). For example I was at a friends house one time and we were playing a football game on the SNES (Super Nintendo) and this music came on and I said that it reminded me of Weetabix! My friend though it was (the idea of me thiniing that) nuts but, how far out it was to be making such an association!

Also, when I was younger, I would have a certain imagery for a certain day of the week, or month of the year. As soon as I though of that day, or month, an image would pop up in my head. An image which would appear to many to have very little if any connection to that month/day. Here are some examples:

For Monday: I would visualise a child putting a coin in his/her mouth

For Tuesday: I would visualise a teacher talking and then placing a folder down onto a desk

For Wednesday: I would visualise another teacher, but standing still with a large grin

For Thursday: I would visualise a middle aged woman blowing out all the candles on a birthday cake

For Friday: I would visualise a young guy, in a town centre, with arms outstretched, in complete hapiness, rushing towards a crowd of pigeons

For Saturday: I would visualise a man ina kind of space/sci-fi type suit, standing on a sunny beach

For Sunday: I would visualise a man standing with a big grin. Not very different from my Wednesday imagery actually

Anyone want to know my images for the months of the year? Heh. But, you see it's preddy far out and strange isn't it? I've no doubt in my mind that I have synaesthesia and it's something I'm happy to have. It could be described as a psychological disorder but I'm of the opinion that a 'disorder' which a) can or does have it's benifits and b) is considered to be a gift to the person who has it, rather than a burden may not necessarily be a 'disorder' or 'illness', it just has it's ups and downs, but some people may really appreciate the ups. The same could be said about conditions such as aspergers and schizophrenia, which I've been looking into recently, and it seems that I have at least some of the symptons of those conditions as well.

 

Oh yeah, by the way. The word 'psychedelia' which I'm using as my signature right now isn't necessarily an aspect of my synaesthesia, at least, not conciously. I'm not relating certain colours to certain letters in that word, it just looks good.

 

haha ok. wow thats awesome! merlin thats really interesting n cool, thanks for sharing, i love your thing about days of the week, i've never heard that before.

Sar thats also really cool (as i'm stuck for a better word to use apart from cool) i was just thinking, it's weird that no matter who does the colour/note thing and who has said it, G is always red...

 

yah it is...people associate colour with smell etc....

 

I associate colour with smell... but this is all a natural instinct. Like how i describe things with imagry better than words. Its a natural thing.

 

No no no!

D E F G A B C

 

I think of piano sounds as yellow, acoustic guitars as an orangey brown or yellowy brown, like a sunset I guess. Electric guitar sounds seem quite red to me, harps are more green, and drums are really grey. Saxaphones seem kind of blue. Not sure about other musical instruments though.

 

Oh yeah, bass is brown, really chocolatey brown. In fact, it is very chocolately to me.

 

It's just an interlinked thing: if I listen to a piece of music, other sensations come in. I've used a single colour as a start point to extrapolate music before, and it's usually quite successful. There's other sensations. You can feel and taste certain sounds as metallic or whatever. It seems so strange to say it, I always feel a bit stupid if I tihnk about it for too long. I never even thought about it until I heard of synaesthesia though, it didn't occur to me that anyone else wasn't able to do it.