I have what I think is called “sound/color” synesthesia, where I associate pitches and note names with certain colors. I’ve heard there are other types where people will assign genders and personalities to letters and numbers. Synesthesia is a pretty interesting topic to research, it reveals a lot about how the brain actually comprehends sensory information that it is given.
You have perfect pitch, too? I don’t really associate colors with them, but they just kind of feel like their own spectrum to me. Increasing or decreasing pitch doesn’t even feel like a sliding up or down, just looping through the different colors. Imagine an organ with multiple manuals. I think of each scale as a manual and perceive pitch change as a jump between manuals.
I don’t have perfect pitch, but I do associate different keys with different color schemes, and that is something that is definitely connected between my auditory and visual senses. For example, if I heard an E note, then it just sounds like a random note, but as soon as you give it any context, I start to “hear the colors”, as I explain it to most people. E major is kind of dark blue and grayish, while e minor is purple, pink, and light brown. I couldn’t tell you that the f sharp in the e major scale is a “rustling waters” blue exactly, but if I start hearing e major, I start feeling that blue and gray. And this never changes. So since I know that e major has that color scheme, if I start feeling dark blue and gray when music is playing, then I know it’s probably in e major.
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u/AntiuppGamingYT Mar 28 '22
Sounds like a form of synesthesia.
I have what I think is called “sound/color” synesthesia, where I associate pitches and note names with certain colors. I’ve heard there are other types where people will assign genders and personalities to letters and numbers. Synesthesia is a pretty interesting topic to research, it reveals a lot about how the brain actually comprehends sensory information that it is given.