Does anyone else see chords as colors?

[MickZ]

What are you guys smoking?

[davidbeinct]

It would be interesting to see if people with synaesthesia see the same colors for the twelve tones and associated chords. I’ve seen sound as colors one time, it was at a Grateful Dead show in the seventies.

[rllink]

I went to a "Playing by Ear" workshop and the lecturer assigned colors to chords and then assigned the same colors to emotions. It was okay and I understood the concept. It just was to general for me.

[Mr. Jelly]

Originally Posted by MickZ

What are you guys smoking?

Gummy bears

Seriously the chord colors change depending on their context. But hey, that's me .....

[CTIMOTH]

remember hearing Jerry Garcia associated notes with colors

[Earl49]

This could be handy. I don't experience this, but I know some people that can visualize music using colors. Some have perfect pitch too, but not all. The brain is a mysterious thing.... With practice I can hear chord changes and identify many of them by interval, and do that consciously while listening to the radio. I can usually pick out I, II, IV, V and the relative minor (vi) in most music. Beyond that, I often lose it in the complexity. I have good relative pitch, but not perfect absolute pitch by any means.

For work a 1000 Hz calibration tone is commonly used, and I can usually whistle that pitch to within about 2-3 Hz.

[Nymuso]

One of my former band mates is all about the hearing colors thing and he is friendly with a concert pianist who also experiences synesthesia. He is always talking to me about this or that note being this or that color.

I know it is a real thing but not everyone experiences it. Consequently, while it is an interesting phenomenon, I don’t see it as a useful means of musical communication, which is how he constantly attempts to use it. I tell him I am tone blind.

[FingahPickah]

Originally Posted by Steve DeRosa

Sounds like something James Brown would have sung at Woodstock (cue guitar rhythm and rimshot here):

I feel good !

[Cobby]

OK, I don't have synesthesia or anything, but I do associate chords with colors. It mostly at the conceptual level I guess - I associate A major with yellow, for instance, but I don't actually see yellow when I hear A major (although I know some people do have that kind of synesthesia).

I also sometimes associate chords or more often, keys, with people. These two associations are related - like if I know someone with a bright sunny personality, I might think of that person as an A major (either chord or key) and that goes along with the bright yellow color I associate with it.

I tend to think of the minor chords as darker, but related colors to their relative major chords. For instance, I think of D major as a nice medium blue, and B minor as a dark midnight blue. (I'm a B minor, by the way) (the key - as for a chord, I don't know, but I think I'm an augmented chord).

Also sometimes when I'm writing a song, the chords take on personalities and form teams that fight other teams. Kinda strange. One piece in particular comes to mind - and I was actually sort of feeling this while I was writing it - D major and E major formed a team and were enemies with G major and F# major who had formed an opposing team. Another chord - F minor showed up and was sort of a neutral party, attempting either to mediate the conflict or provide neutral ground for them to battle it out.

Not sure what all of the fuss was about - but I did think of the D major, E major team as the good guys. I think they won since the piece ended up being in Bm (even though no Bm's were ever used).

[MCP850]

That is Dr. Oliver Sach https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqKry0gh_NA

[KevWind]

Chords and melodies

Not so much for the last 50 + years but definitely in the late 60's a few times .

[rllink]

Blue notes.

[hermithollow]

Wassily Kandinsky painted what he heard in musical compositions as does this artist:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbh7tAnwLCY

[SongwriterFan]

Originally Posted by aeisen93

When I think of certain chords, I associate them with colors. D Major chord is Green, A Major chord is blue, etc... not sure where these colors are coming from. Do any of you associate chords with colors?

Originally Posted by DianeA

Yes, A is red, E is blue, D is white, F is brown, G is gold, B is blue-green. I feel silly writing this...

Do either of you actually SEE the colors when playing/hearing the chords, or do you just "associate" them with a color (though I'm not sure what the latter would really mean)?

What I've always wondered is this: If you hear a D major and it's green (we'll assume A=440 here), what happens if you set your A reference such that it's exactly halfway between A and Ab, for example? What color is it then? The color of A, or the color of Ab (I'm assuming there's a color for Ab, I guess) . . . or some sort of blend between them?