Anyone else with a visual experience of music?

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Hi all!

I watched this excellent talk the other day by Temple Grandin, called My Experience With Autism (it's on Youtube, and definitely worth a watch). She describes exactly the way my mind works. Apparently many people with autism think very visually - I suppose that before I watched this talk, I thought it was far more common that it actually is.

I've read a lot about synaesthesia, and always found it quite fascinating. I always found that I related to the experience in some way, but figured that I could not have synaesthesia, because I do not literally see sounds with my eyes. I do, however, think in pictures, and when I hear a piece of music, I often experience it visually, in my "mind's eye".

Since I began to pay attention to it, I've realized that some of my favourite music is music that conjures vivid images in my mind. I've realized that my favourite music is generally red, black, and orange, with clearly defined shapes (usually squares with rounded edges, or circles), and contains a certain sense of visual balance. A lot of light jazz/relaxing hip-hop is lacking in individual shapes, but usually has colour; some music has many colours, whereas some will focus on one colour, with black lines and spots... there are so many different variations that I cannot describe it accurately. Kate Bush is often purple/white, with lots of shimmering vertical grey/white lines. The song Doorstep by the Tune-Yards is small weaving dots on a decidedly spring green background. Different timbres also look different; the banjo is a vibrating dandelion yellow, and the fiddle is a deep red, multi-layered line.

Sometimes there are more complex pictures, or just a certain visual impression (texture, colour, shape, etc). I can draw these images with ease, though I do not see them literally with my eyes.

I very much dislike music that conjures no images in my mind, barely any images, or brash, boring images. A lot of country is just brash, buzzing yellows and reds, with no variation in shade or texture. Gross.

I thought that this was a common experience of music, but then I started asking people if music gave them mental images, and people kept telling me, no.

So my questions to you, the denizens of WrongPlanet, are these: do you also experience music visually? If not, how do you experience it, and what does music mean to you?

Thanks for reading.

My synesthesia is very similar. Not simply color/note but almost 3D in that it includes shapes and lines that move through the chord changes and volume dynamics. I also often feel textures emanating from different parts of my body depending on the timbre and frequency.

Very cool stuff.

I was making decent money for a while building effects units for guitar. If only I could get my organizational skills together I might be able to revive my business.

Very cool!! !

Mine is not colour-note (I do not have perfect pitch), but the 3D stuff sounds familiar. The shapes/colours/lines/fields arrange themselves 3-dimensionally, in a way - some sounds are, for instance, up and to the right, sometimes far away, sometimes nearer... others are lower in position, or closer, or more far away. Some vibrate, some seem hollow and bottomless. The colours and shapes are more timbre-related than pitch-related. I also see mouths incorporated in the pattern when people sing...?

That is super cool about your business. What a perfect gig for someone of your ilk!

A lot of my favourite songs inspire visuals as well, but not in the way you describe. Instead of abstract images, I picture short bits of movement; running, spinning, fabrics and water flowing, etc. There can be some abstract stuff too, such as random shapes stretching or colours drifting by, but it all relies heavily on motion.

Like you mentioned, I don't actually see this. But it plays clearly in my mind, and I favour songs that provoke this imagery. I can't really tell what genres work best, but as I'm listening I can sense if it's a "moving song" or not. This has become more and more prominent since childhood, but it happened a little bit then.

For everyone who's posted so far, have you always gotten these images? Do you make other sensory associations? Can you make these mental pictures or movies without the help of music?

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Cool! I get some movement as well - sometimes it is movement instead of a shape or colour, and sometimes the colours vibrate. Sometimes I get snippets of images in my head, too, like movies playing, usually in response to a lyric, and that is how I think anyway, in day to day conversation, etc... sort of associative home movies in my head. The images conjured by music are not always abstract... sometimes they're a mish-mash of memories... but my favourite music conjures the abstract images.

I can conjure these images without the help of the music - the memory of the music is enough. I have good pitch memory and a very good memory for music and can remember favourite songs in detail - I can play them later in my head.

I also associate sound with images sometimes, usually short animations. It's usually breathing/whooshing sounds... in my mind's... ear? haha. Also some sounds create physical sensations, along with colour/shape. For example, a very high-pitched whistle is a yellow needle in the base of my skull.

This stuff has been present since childhood - I can still remember some songs that conjured vivid colours/images from my early childhood. I guess I just didn't realize it was unusual until very recently. What a cool discovery!

When and how did you first realize that this experience was unusual?

cmoonbeam1,
Thats so interesting! Are high pitched whistles a sensory issue for you, is that why you imagine a needle? Have you ever attempted to make a music video before?

I realized it was unusual at some point in grade 10, I think, and it was mainly because no one else mentioned experiencing that, so I figured it wasn't a common perception. Other than seeing motion, sometimes I can sense or feel the motion in my balance, but not like dancing. On very, very rare occasions, I get a vague feeling that I'm teleporting, levitating, etc

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Questions are my favourite form of communication

A high-pitched whistle is annoying, but not a major issue - higher frequency sounds are the issue for me. Whereas a sound of a certain level of high pitch, like the whistle of a tea kettle, is like a thick, canary-yellow needle inserting itself in the base of my skull and resonating in there, a higher sound is more of a fast, thin, white and blue beam shooting sideways through my head (with some variation). These problem sounds are sounds like squeaky brakes (thin lines, along with an image of an oddly-shaped dark grey minivan), a knife squeaking on a plate (felt more in the nose - resonates in sinuses just above the roof of the mouth - a yellow/black line sound, of course along with an image of the knife squeaking on the plate), and the high-pitched sound a TV makes when it's muted (a bit fuzzier - more grey-blue - along with an image of a large TV with bunny ears, on a long-legged TV stand).

So I guess I see the thing I'm hearing, in two different literal ways - in one way, I see the object causing the sound, and simultaneously, I see the sound.

As for making a music video, I never have, due to a lack of software. I would love to, though. I have made paintings - I go to art school, and last year there was a project where we had to choose a song and represent it visually. I thought, "Wow, this will be easy! Music paints pictures already!" and went ahead and made two pictures to complement this track: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NyfHbyI4o8 It's funny that I didn't catch on at this point that it was unusual to come up with images so easily. Everyone else seemed to be working through it so logically!

Here is another track that is really cool and captivating - steel blue-grey with bouncing black lines, dots.... lots of motion, you'll like this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MA6ZXYIfLpA

I hope it causes you to levitate!

This thread resonates with me deeply. I come from a highly gifted musician (dad) and a highly gifted visual artist (mom). Since a young age I've been taking in classic art and classic albums. I think that textbook definitions are never to be trusted...

I remember being maybe 10 years old. I was heavy into Metallica and Pantera at the time. I flipped the channel to either a Wu-Tang or Biggie Smalls video and found the wonder that is hip-hop. The way that some rappers can paint pictures so visual with sounds and words so auditory is amazing. I've been enamored since that time with rap music. This song is a great example of an artist who has mastered the craft and can easily make metaphors out of simple things: Roc Marciano - Emeralds


[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fiLzNK4aOE[/youtube]

"I got Lamborghini dreams
Nissan nightmares
Moving white my ice cool as the night air
Two fives flare
Glare through your Cartier eyewear
And knock ya newborn out of the high chair
Devour n tear
Slice ya by the hair like pear
The prey I share fruit that I bear
I get nectarine in the beam
I steam a whole seventeen
Brolic chain chunk cheddar cheese
Spray up chumps
Text jam like Heavy D
Hoes lay bread on me like deli meat (woah)
That's pimpish
Pass the Mack 10 to my apprentice
While I get a pen and pad to print this
Then slide nine inches in your Empress with the quickness
You get ran through swifter than Wind Sprints
You a byproduct
Of guys that grind and buy Prada
Black cards lie inside Prada wallets
Black cars glide like flying carpets
The 40 lay you out like a starfish
I'm doing God's work in the booth
This was Allah's wish
I put a skirt on the Coupe
Squirt 32s that'll burn in your soup
Muthafucka"

That whole verse is straight fire... and when he makes those references I see that item in my minds eye. "I put a skirt on a coupe" and I just think about a black coupe deville decked out in street s**t.
While the subject matter is not even something I can relate to, his ability is clear and I love it. Those rhyme schemes are insane.
I realize this has not much to do with the original post, but this is what I took from it and I have Asperger's. My ability to pick up on lyrical talent has only grown as the years go by.
I believe this is due to my unconventional upbringing and diagnosis as ADHD and Asperger's.

I've always had "visualizations" in my mind when I hear music. It's almost like using the spectrogram feature of some media players. Different instruments form different components of the image, and sometimes even a component/instrument would be assigned a "personality" (especially when I was very young)

The entire "timbre" of a song is what leads it to have color for me. For example, something about Dancing Queen is dark blue. Girls Just Wanna Have Fun is neon green, with hints of yellow. One Room Disco is orange. a single note cannot be a color to me - I need to hear the notes in a musical context for it to become something other than just... a note.

But this usually only works with pop music, due to the varied instrumentation. A lot of art music is just white to me. Not that I don't like it, but I never listened to it much as a child and so to me the "timbre" of it all sounds the same. This experience of synesthesia was much, much stronger as a child, and has lessened throughout the years. However, I still have strong color associations for songs I used to hear as a child, and it is very common for me to think that a certain song is a certain color (for example, "Call Me Maybe" is so totally a shimmery gray).

I used to assume everyone had the same experience. I was very surprised when my parents said that they didn't experience this.

SpiderJeruz: Thanks for the link! I've just recently started getting into Hip-Hop, and I do love the picture it paints. I love the repetition and the picture of the beats. The lyrics paint a picture too, which combines with the visuals.

WillMcC: It was stronger for me when I was younger, too.

moonshine_princess: Your experience is so similar to mine. Certain songs have distinct colour impressions to me as well. Colour is also directly related to the texture of the music, but mostly to timbre.

I don't think I would be considered to have synesthesia when it comes to sound (though I do have it with letters). On the other hand, I do experience music in a very visual way (actually I experience *everything* visually) - but what I see is not just colors or shapes. It's much more complicated than that. It's why I became a VJ. Have a look at my blog if you like, where I've posted a few short examples of my VJ work matching images to sounds. http://airavj.tumblr.com (There's 3 at the top and a fourth further down the blog - I hope I'll have time to post more of these soon.)

when I hear music, or even read words, or even listen to my thoughts, I see all manner of images,
for example, the song, "let the bodies the the floor" makes me imagine an epic battle of all the worlds greatest superheros, villains and Transformers.. and other songs make me exprience similir images,
such as "Bad Girlfriend" well you get the idea.
and "hard rock heliauha" = demonic warriors fighting Angels. (the demons usually win)
or, "Times running out" = images of cars shooting eatch other. ( thanks Twisted Metal)
the theme of my favorite pscyopath, from Marvel vs Capcom 3. = Deadpool!
anyway... yeah musc does that too me.

Not really; I do love the visual effects media players have these days though. G Force is the best.

Most humans have some tendency to make one sensory experiance into a metaphor for another.

Thats "why they call it 'the blues'" as Elton John sang.

And its why major vocalists have nicknames like "Smokey" Robinson ( a visual metaphor for the sound of his voice), and "the Velvet Fog" apalation earned by Jazz singer Mel Torme ( an interesting mix of the visual AND the tactile as a metaphor for the aural experience of hearing his voice).

Most music lovers think of the black keys on the piano (the minor scale) as sounding "dark", and the notes of the major scale as sounding light colored.

For me bass notes and drums generally sound dark, and high pitched treble instruments have a light color.

I have always had a strange interaction with album covers, in that the overall colour of the album cover affects how I feel about the sound of the music. Black and white covers always make me find the music to be stark and thin, yellow and red makes the music seem lush. I probably haven't explained it very well.