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Seeing sounds, hearing colors, part IV
We are in a holiday season during which many of us will eat too much, so I have been quite delighted to discover that for one synesthete, a major sixth tastes like low-fat cream – as opposed to a minor sixth that tastes like regular cream, or a major third that tastes sweet. Don’t you…
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Seeing sounds, hearing colors, part III
Tom tells me that my voice is yellow when he speaks to me in person, but is a bright green on the phone. I’m not sure what I think about having a yellow voice, or even a bright green one. While I hear voices as lighter or darker, throaty, wispy, husky, gravelly, etc., and I…
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Seeing sounds, hearing colors, part II
Imagine if you saw a color whenever you looked at someone’s face, and different faces were different colors. Or tasted eggs when you heard the word “fax.” Or saw a mental map placing any number you saw or heard in a certain location in space (as in the image at the left, called a number…
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Seeing sounds, hearing colors, part I
I have often asked a student “what color does this movement (or excerpt, or chord progression) suggest to you?” Color becomes a metaphor for sound – an additional tool for accessing the emotional content of the work, because most of us (even if unaware of it) associate colors with emotions – lighter colors for happiness,…
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Vision and movement
In 2009, the Gold Medal in the 13th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition was won (actually shared) by a 20-yr. old Japanese pianist who is blind, Nobuyuki Tsujii. Although there have been many blind pianists in jazz and popular music (Art Tatum, Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles), this was the first time that a blind pianist…
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Should everyone be able to make music if we’re hardwired for it?
I thought I had finished writing this post when a fascinating new study appeared in my Inbox, and I simply had to incorporate it. Researchers at the University of Helsinki have discovered that, for several months after birth, infants can recognize a melody that they have heard in utero. In a study of 24 women…