Music, sounds are difficult to describe, and for this, we use metaphors evoking other senses, some metaphors are related to taste like ‘a sweet melody’, although I have never heard of a salty one, or ‘saccharine pop’, some are related to texture like ‘hard rock’, ‘soft music’, or some are related to space like ‘a musical landscape’. Music can be light or heavy without having a mass, fluid or metal without being a liquid, or a type of matter.
How do we do that? A sound does not have a texture, a taste or a physical form! But we manage to make us understand this way because music is a total abstraction at the beginning. I have always been fascinated by the fact that, once one sense is stimulated, the sensation produced in our brain can be perceived by other senses.
You may even see colors with music, it happens sometimes, but for some of us with synesthesia, a brain condition making a person able to perceive multi-sensations with only one stimulation, it is completely real. It is like an addition, one sensation is added to the initial one, and music produces color visions, how cool is that? It works for other senses too, like taste or smell or touch.
This is how some musicians with synesthesia describe it:
‘I have always associated written music notes with particular colors, which also correspond to the respective piano keys. I was stunned to read the reasons why D is green (it has always been green for me!) and I too see C as yellow, E as pink and G as brown!’
‘I see a range of varying colors in soft and sharp shapes, but the color and shape is determined by volume and depth of the music. For example, electric guitar is generally sharp and bright in color, such as yellow and a bass guitar deep purple and rounded.’
‘I always see different notes as colors, not keys. For example, a C major chord consists of a C – red/yellow, E – pink, and a G – brown. When I hear this chord, I see all of these colors in a picture that I can’t describe. […] I also see the texture of sounds; a C major chord played quite long on a stringed instrument reminds me of something in a very sticky substance, amber or resin, for example.’
Michael Thorke, a famous composer, said to his piano teacher at age 5: ‘I love that blue piece’ and was disappointed by his teacher’s clueless reaction.
And no these people are not on LSD or any drugs, they are not making up stories, scientists have checked their brains, the color areas of the brain are actually active when sounds are heard, and their ‘visions’ are consistent, if they see a note as red, they will always see it red, but it gets complicated since different people with synesthesia may see a different color for the same sound.
So who is a synesthete in music? If wikipedia is correct, Tori Amos, Leonard Bernstein, Duke Ellington, Hélène Grimaud, Robyn Hitchcock, Billy Joel, Brooks Kerr, György Ligeti, Frantz Liszt, Olivier Messiaen, Jean Sibelius, Patrick Stump (Fall Out Boy), Michael Torke, Sam Endicott (The Bravery), Stevie Wonder, and probably others are all synesthetes.
Now I would really like to experience this, describing a song would be a total different adventure, like describing a painting!
But f you want to find out if you have synesthesia in the large meaning of the word, you can test yourself here (the questions do not have a relation with music)