I don't like the look of this song
Time to do something worthwhile with this website. I'm about to show you a whole different way to experience life. Keep your mind open, and welcome to my world. Come now, don't be shy!
Have you ever wondered what colour music is? I myself don't simply wonder, I know. Now call me crazy if you will - and I'm the first to admit that I'm a couple of rashers short of the Full English - but I see colour when I listen to music. Not literally see, like flies in my eyes or anything like that. Rather, in my minds eye I see a mass of colour and movement. Ever heard the Red Hot Chili Pepper album 'By The Way'? Well, to me it is red. When I think of the album, I think of red. When I listen to the album, I am left with an impression of redness.
I was amazed to discover that this is not normal. Until a few months ago, I thought everyone saw colour when they heard music. Everyone's seen fantasia, right? It was not until I began discussing the colour of a certain song with a friend that I realised just how strange my mind truely was. Now I've been saying this for years, but haven't had much of a scientific grounding for it. Well, now I have every teenager's dream: proof that I'm really not normal (this proof was compunded by the look on my friend's face at the time).
I can offer some explanation for this. It seems I have a mild case of a 'disease' (its not really a disease...) called Synesthesia. This is a rare condition whereby people cross-associate various senses. Ever heard the expression 'Don't look at me in that tone of voice, it smells a funny colour!', or some variant? Well, this is basically what Synesthesia is. Senses become tightly associated in some way so that perceptory inputs (thinks you see/sense) become linked.
Let me explain more clearly what I mean by 'seeing colours'. Imagine a black space inside your head - like a blank screen. Actually, colourless is a more accurate description than black; but I dont want to give you a headache. A black screen is quite adequate. Now, music starts playing. Movement occurs on this screen. Different music has different effects, but a good example comes from an electric guitar. I don't know much about guitar music - but imagine some rock'n'roll style power-chords being played through a dirty amp. 'Dan daan daaan da da daaaaa' kinda thing (does that help? guess not). For me, this is like a series of black brushstrokes. Imagine a paintbrush wiping black paint down over the screen. Contrast this with an acoustic guitar, where chords have a more brownish, organic colour, and tend to constitute a wavy line, rather than a brushstroke. Now, the song picks up and a guitar solo kicks in - something lively and high pitched, that would cause The Darkness to have some kind of musical orgasm. This comes across as a series of bright yellow streaks across the screen. Interestingly, vocal sounds tend to be colourless. A bass guitar tends to conjour short fat blobs of dark colour.
The best analogy I can make is to visualisation software for computers. Anyone who uses media players like Windows Media Player or WinAmp on their computer may be familiar with these visualisations (I think winamp calls the AVS's). In these, colours appear on the screen and swirl around in time with the music. Typically, louder, more intense music brings out brighter, stronger colours - from pale blue to red and green. Although my own visualisation studio doesn't work in the same way, it looks approximatley the same. Very approximatley - but its a fair analogy.
A full song can conjour quite a piece of art inside my head - like a firework display. There are no constants in this associtation though. Guitar solos aren't always yellow. There is no gurantee that any colour will stand out. A lot of music is just black or grey movement against this screen. A colourless movement against a colourless background - now we're having fun! The sound of a song as a whole seems to affect the colours. It is not simply a case of placing a yellow guitar solo on top a black bassline. I suppose its like paints mixing - things tend to blend rather be added together.
Danger comes from analysing the colours too closely. If I think about this too much I tend to force colours into the image, and its ruined. It only occurs naturally, when I'm not thinking about it. As soon as I start to take a direct look at the colours, they fade away. As such, its quite hard to write about. But I spend alot of time thinking about this. Here's a few particularly vivid songs. I apologise if the artists are unkown - this isn't something I can try to be user friendly about. Like I say, if I think too hard on it, the colours fade.
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Under The Bridge: The intro is quite green, but towards the end of the song it becomes more yellowy blue, and the colours become brighter and more solid.
Jimmy Eat World - A Praise Chorus: Green and black.
- Work: Also very green.
- Night Drive: A pale, ghostly blue - especially towards the end.
Feeder - Seven Days In The Sun: Red dominates, very strongly.
- Buck Rogers: Mostly pretty brown, with some yellow and grey.
- High: Orangey-Brown, become more red towards the end.
Lynyrd Skynyrd - Free Bird: Starting off quite earthly brown and yellow, becomes yellow and red
Stereophonics: Most of their stuff comes across quite green (Just Looking springs to mind).
When discussing music with a friend, or comparing music, it is very tempting for me to talk about the colours. If you were to mention a band to me and say they were brown, I would imagine them to be an acoustic group, or a country/ folk band.
Perhaps the most striking thing about all this is that the colour actually affects my opinion of the song. I tend not to like alot of heavy metal because there is little or no colour - just black on a black screen. Pop music is generally too bright and dazzly. R&B is too dark in colour - also it has a distrubingly smooth texture to it, which often makes me feel ill. The colours are sort of blurred and slurry. The Red Hot Chili Pepper album 'By the Way' is all round an excellent album. It's got good lyrics, some good tunes - lots going for it. But I dont like the colours of a lot of the songs. The Zephyr Song, Universally Speaking and This Is The Place spring to mind here. I cant decide exactly - they're alternately too neon and too pastelly. Not colours I'm comfortable with, and as such I don't like listening to the songs.
This phenomenon only seems to occur with music, not standard sounds. I suppose thinking about it (this is dangerous: take the following with a pinch of salt) is quite yellowish. But generally, it is only music which conjours these colours.
I think it is in part because of the colours that I love music so much. It seems to satisfy a part of my mind, calming me down and making me feel better about things. It actually makes me a little sad to think that not everyone can see the colour of music. I think it is one of lifes great wonders. Sadly, it is also one of lifes great secrets, and to many, one of the great mysteries.
Find some fascinating further reading here:
http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/v2/psyche-2-10-cytowic.html