Colors

Would you classify certain instruments, instrument pitches, or chords into color diagrams? As in, this sound variation has a "green" feel to it, or a "dark red" feel to it. Maybe a mix of colors.

If you could classify each symphonic instrument into color schemes, what would they be?

Also for chords, I would imagine major chords might be brighter colors and minor darker colors. Diminished possibly bleached or greyed. Who knows? Isn't this a somewhat interesting discussion?

Apparently I'm green.

Interesting? You have too much time on your hands ;). I suggest less talking about trivial/nonsensical aspects of music, more writing music ;)

BTW, it's spelled "Colours" :thumbsup:

PS: 'spelled' or 'spelt'?

Looks like someone has synesthesia (sp?)

It's where your brain crosses signals in ways that mix your senses together. So maybe for you, soap smells round. Or a trombone sounds dark red. It's pretty rare, but I think that some people have sort of some degrees of it.

By the way, this ISN'T synesthesia, but it seems to me that about 10-20% of people have this. Who here thinks the letters have genders? The weird thing about this is, everyone who thinks the letters have genders seem to think that the SAME letters have the SAME genders.

it is possible describe music in colour...i have some sounds that i call yellow, green, blue and morning red, black as well.

Would you classify certain instruments, instrument pitches, or chords into color diagrams? As in, this sound variation has a "green" feel to it, or a "dark red" feel to it. Maybe a mix of colors.

If you could classify each symphonic instrument into color schemes, what would they be?

Also for chords, I would imagine major chords might be brighter colors and minor darker colors. Diminished possibly bleached or greyed. Who knows? Isn't this a somewhat interesting discussion?

Oh no- We're headed back to the sixties!!!!! AHHHHH!!!!

*AHEM* Being a realist, you can't categorize sounds as colors. It doesn't work. I can't even imagine calling a certain sound "red" unless it sounds like "blood" which is "impossible." :P

Looks like someone has synesthesia (sp?)

The difference here is that he associates colours with music.

Synesthesia is when you physically see colours when you hear music.

Synesthesia is a lot of things. I don't think that you necessarily have to physically see the colors.

Synesthesiacs sometimes feel pain in certain parts of their body when they here or smell certain things, etc. They generally associate letters with colors, so why not music?

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

m f f m f m m f f f f m m f f f m m f m f m m f m f

Those are my thoughts on the letter genders... how close am I to the "accepted" genders? I might switch E and F .... not sure on those two.

Anyways... on the hearing colours... (and Mark, it is spelt "color" in the USA, we bastards have dropped the "o", but I still include it, it looks mighty fancy. Oh, and spelled or spelt is the acceptable past participle, but the more modern spelling is "spelled". I, on the other hand, prefer "spelt")

Colours and sounds.... I don't associate them too much, but I do tend to picture shapes in instruments when I hear them. And these shapes can vary from instrument to instrument... I.E. one tuba individually might sound more round or square than another. Clarinet make me think of the letter O ... something very hollow. Flute to me sounds very flat in sense of shape, and trumpet very triangle. Maybe this all relates to sine waves and square waves and triangle waves and such. As for colours.... I can stipulate on the relations, but they never really occur to me.

Synesthesia is when you physically see colours when you hear music.

it depends on what you count as ''physically seeing colours". actually there's no other way around it, but to speak of imagination here. so, it is completely possible that one can (and does) imagine certain colours or even full paintings when hearing sounds.

this is what i spoke about in some other thread:

i'm not a scholar in neurophysiology, but loved to study philosophy of mind. and somehow i came to the idea, that neurons- let's say in the visual cortex - trigger (or may do that) neurons in other areas responsible for audio or even taste experiences. while it is more or less obvious with audio/visual case (because of so much visual information, audio being second one),i don't rule out the possibility that smell could be described (and experienced) in terms of visual or sound experiences. i think of a brain being very intermingled - like a little butterfly wing move in africa causing hurricane in america. so i think it more natural than an oddity to experience sound in colors and vice versa.

that's my humble opinion on such a great topic.

and - i presume - one could have direct/one to one note/colour relation or/and sound pattern-chord-any sound sequence/colour/s relation.

maybe even more.

it is possible due to the fact that both - sound (as we hear it) and colour are phenomenological properties. there's no logical contradiction in thinking they can have causual relations.

I classify most brass as golden, strings and bassoons as brown, oboes and clarinets as black, flutes as silver, and conductors as black-and-white!

Quite accurate... but what about percussion? :P

I classify most brass as golden, strings and bassoons as brown, oboes and clarinets as black, flutes as silver, and conductors as black-and-white!

where's the red? ;)

I had ideas about classifying the instruments of the orchestra with what spiritualists call Chakras.

Root - Red - Percussion

Sacral - Orange - Woodwind

Solar-plexus - Yellow - Brass

Heart - Green - Strings

Throat - Blue - Human Voice

Third-eye - Indigo - Glockenspiels, Xylophones etc.

Crown - Violet - Harp

I don't know if any of you know Chakras but I found this really interesting.

Quite accurate... but what about percussion? :P

Somewhere between white, brown, black, silver and gold, I guess!

where's the red? ;)

The face of the oboist.

And blue would be brass players in the evening.

White noise is white~

PS: 'spelled' or 'spelt'?

"spelled" ;)

By the way, this is really a pointless topic

I personally associate all notes with colors as well as pieces of music. I don't physically see colors but I do associate them in my mind. I'm not sure why or how my brain does this but none the less.

Spelt is right too.

Btw, there was a topic on this before.

Well, I don't know what phenomenological means, but as for seeing sounds as colors, here are my thoughts:

People have emotional reactions to colors, no matter how subtle these reactions may be. People also respond to music in a very similar way. So in my view, there is no direct relationship between color and music; instead, a color and a sound are related to eachother through this emotion. For instance, if a song makes you feel excited, then maybe you would classify it as a "yellow" song. Maybe someone else would classify it differently. It's all very subjective.

The face of the oboist.

And blue would be brass players in the evening.

straight to the middle :D

Well, I don't know what phenomenological means, but as for seeing sounds as colors, here are my thoughts:

People have emotional reactions to colors, no matter how subtle these reactions may be. People also respond to music in a very similar way. So in my view, there is no direct relationship between color and music; instead, a color and a sound are related to each other through this emotion. For instance, if a song makes you feel excited, then maybe you would classify it as a "yellow" song. Maybe someone else would classify it differently. It's all very subjective.

i agree, and emotion is as well - phenomenological property. while brain is physical to its root, the way we experience it (brain movements) are phenomenological. while its unlikely that one brain part (responsible for visual sensations) causes the other (responsible for audio) to work (at least to the theory which has a brain as a map), it is nonetheless quite understandable that the same phenomenological properties may arise in - so to say - illegal lands. since there is no direct way to prove how brain causes all this rich world of phenomens, there's possibility that sound and colour (or for that matter smell or taste) could have very strange network relations going on.

of course,what you said about emotion, is the answer for many associations between sound and colour. but it doesn't answer the question how the hell such different phenomens as sound and colour might have parallel relations to the other so much different property as emotion.

to make an example - someone sees dark red (while it doesn't provoke any sound in him, except maybe for AAAA) - it may scare him, because its the colour of blood. then he goes to the concert and hears the music that scares him, but it doesn't make him see (imagine red, or blood for that case). now, for instance, he hears another piece, that somehow gives his brain way to imagine blood-red and simultaneously he gets scared, while the music isn't scary at all. ergo, it might be not through direct link to emotions, that the sound and colour are in a relation.

interesting...hmmm...as far as instruments, you got me there. but i have had vivid reactions to Ab as maroon and C# as lime green........weird...

Colours

That is the british spelling, the lazy american spelling is without the 'u'.

Colours and sounds.... I don't associate them too much, but I do tend to picture shapes in instruments when I hear them. And these shapes can vary from instrument to instrument... I.E. one tuba individually might sound more round or square than another. Clarinet make me think of the letter O ... something very hollow. Flute to me sounds very flat in sense of shape, and trumpet very triangle. Maybe this all relates to sine waves and square waves and triangle waves and such.

I suspect this might be fairly common. I'm reminded of the bouba/kiki effect (briefly, the apparently innate tendency of people across cultures to assign names with particular properties to particular shapes). Perhaps these mechanisms, having developed because they were beneficial to language, shine through in music.

As for myself, while I'd just be making stuff up if I tried to assign colors to anything, I can certainly make these connections between timbres and shapes. They tend to differ somewhat from yours, but I suspect this is a result of conditioning from playing with synthesizers throughout my childhood. So perhaps in my case this is more a result of my acquired experience of seeing and hearing various waveforms, rather than some kind of natural, innate quasi-synaesthetic bouba/kiki thing--perhaps disappointingly. My acquired knowledge of what a triangle wave sounds like makes me want to assign something sharper to a trumpet, and the word "clarinet" makes me instantly think "square".

- Mark

That is the british spelling, the lazy american spelling is without the 'u'.

I know, but we may as well try and get them spelling properly. ;)