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I have it, I "see" sounds and especially musical notes as flowing shapes with color and texture. Very strongly as a child, sadly faded quite a bit by now (in my

I have it, I "see" sounds and especially musical notes as flowing shapes with color and texture. Very strongly as a child, sadly faded quite a bit by now (in my 50s). It's definitely a blessing. It adds several additional dimensions to music and makes the experience so much richer. Edited to add: Listening to music smoking pot back in my college days was just an incredible experience. I don't miss pot, but I miss listening to music like that.

in3d 6y ago
Cool that someone else has it! It’s much less common than just sound to color. We should compare notes. A couple questions to see if our experiences match: How would you describe the texture of drums? What brightness is bass? Are instruments usually separate or merged?
- jsrcout 6y ago
  I've always wondered what the chances were that two people with synesthesia would have similar subjective experiences. In general pitch corresponds with brightness of the colors. Bass would be a metallic, more roughly textured brown; medium pitched guitars shading from brown into reddish/lighter brown, then pink, then pink-white with a plasticy sheen at the highest pitches. Although certain types of guitar sound are shades of deep electric blue. Drums... I'm not sure if that color has a name. Something like bass, but lighter colored, and less dense. Different instruments / notes played are separated in space, though always moving and sometimes swarming around each other. Let me tell you, smoking up and sitting between two stereo speakers back in the day was just out of this world. You got the visuals from the synesthesia and the heightened sense of realness and meaning from the pot. I still remember one specific time I listened to Led Zeppelin's Kashmir like that. Or the first time I ever heard Pink Floyd's Shine On You Crazy Diamond, with alcohol this time. Fully-body music listening.
  - in3d 6y ago
    This pretty much agrees with what I experience. For me bass is always darker, drums have kind of a sandy texture, instruments are separate and also moving. Another one is that louder means bigger. It adds new dimensions to music and it can make even the types of music you didn’t like previously look beautiful. When I have some free time I’d like to do video (or better, VR) representations of some songs.

in3d 6y ago

Cool that someone else has it! It’s much less common than just sound to color. We should compare notes. A couple questions to see if our experiences match: How would you describe the texture of drums? What brightness is bass? Are instruments usually separate or merged?

jsrcout 6y ago
I've always wondered what the chances were that two people with synesthesia would have similar subjective experiences. In general pitch corresponds with brightness of the colors. Bass would be a metallic, more roughly textured brown; medium pitched guitars shading from brown into reddish/lighter brown, then pink, then pink-white with a plasticy sheen at the highest pitches. Although certain types of guitar sound are shades of deep electric blue. Drums... I'm not sure if that color has a name. Something like bass, but lighter colored, and less dense. Different instruments / notes played are separated in space, though always moving and sometimes swarming around each other. Let me tell you, smoking up and sitting between two stereo speakers back in the day was just out of this world. You got the visuals from the synesthesia and the heightened sense of realness and meaning from the pot. I still remember one specific time I listened to Led Zeppelin's Kashmir like that. Or the first time I ever heard Pink Floyd's Shine On You Crazy Diamond, with alcohol this time. Fully-body music listening.
- in3d 6y ago
  This pretty much agrees with what I experience. For me bass is always darker, drums have kind of a sandy texture, instruments are separate and also moving. Another one is that louder means bigger. It adds new dimensions to music and it can make even the types of music you didn’t like previously look beautiful. When I have some free time I’d like to do video (or better, VR) representations of some songs.