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Originally Posted by roachboy
i am not convinced that synesthesia is a particularly unusual phenomenon.
i have been doing experimental music for many years--through this, i have come to know lots of folk who have been doing variants of improvised music for very long periods--and it turns out that most of them order what they play in real time visually and generally have color correlates to the figures that they "see".
so my experience is that the kind of cross platform linkages called "synesthesia" is generally available, but that it unfolds in a space of real-time making of sound that has no particular cultural privilege and so is the object of default terms---the language of mysticism, the language of some vague pathology (synesthesia as some "neurological condition").
because it is an aspect of the process of interacting with a medium/instrument, it follows that synesthetic connections can develop/change over time--they can be used to make stuff once you get by the novelty of being able to make linkages. and it is better to get over it, because this is a perfectly ordinary aspect of how people interact with sound.
if you find that you are able to generate visual correlates of audio percepts without playing an instrument, then cool for you--but you probably would find playing to be most interesting and i would cheerlead for you taking up an instrument or sound practice and using this capacity...
the collective i have been working with developed criterion for determining the extent to which our performances work--talking to audience members afterward, trying to get them to describe what they experienced in the way of hallucinations and the colors that were involved---we were (and still are) interested in the extent to which this kind of information (which we use to organize what we are doing) transmits directly... we have been finding that these colors and some visual correlates do transmit---but they are always tangled up with a riot of other associations on the part of the audience/listeners.
this is why trying to figure this out interesting.
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I am actually a musician. I could loosely be termed a multi-instrumentalist, as I play guitar and harmonica quite regularly and could probably re-learn the trumpet fairly quickly. It's been about six years since I last played a horn, but most of what I'd have to get back is my embouchure training - I'm entirely certain the rest would come back quite quickly.
In terms of the prevalence of synaesthesia, my reading on the subject so far has been somewhat vague. So far as I've been able to determine, estimates place prevalence amongst the general population as being anywhere from 1 in 20 to 1 in 20 000. This also includes the other forms (ie, grapheme->colour, or number form) and optionally includes pseudo-synaesthetes, which are people like you describe who influence themselves to see colours.
I didn't have to make any linkages. They've always been there. I've always perceived colours to go along with music; it's not something that developed or changed. As I've previously stated, the novelty here for me is not the condition itself, but rather the idea that it's a form of perception that isn't commonly shared.
Also, the colours do not change. I've never really bothered to try to figure out what makes different sounds different colours (I have the vague idea that it may be modal, but haven't tested this). I find it easiest to liken the perception to vision, since that's really what it is. Grass is green. That does not change and barring physical trauma your perception of green never changes either. For me, a green song is always a green song. It's a similarly base property of the music.