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Originally Posted by roachboy
martian: interesting---when i am doing sound work, i organize it through shapes and color. how it works is tied to the layout and sound characteristics of the piano, so i think it's a function of how i think spread into that sound-space. i expect that folk who play other instruments would not think in this way--i used to imagine this as synesthetic, but now i am more inclined to think of it as a way of working that changes as your engagement with the instrument changes--depending on the kind of music you're doing for example..
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That's interesting and sounds sort of similar. When I'm doing my music (whch granted, is much more straightforward from a compositional standpoint than yours) I tend to think of it in 'layers;' the correct layers in the correct order is what gives me the sound I want. Part of this is evoked by the recording process itself, with different tracks containing different instruments and sounds. The overall effect I suppose would be something that could be described as a soundscape. There are colours and shapes involved, but the colours are secondary to the sound itself. I guess. I've never actually tried to put any of this into words before and I'm not sure I'm being too clear.
As I advance my ability and understanding of piano, I find that it lends itself to a completely different form of thinking than a guitar does. At first I thought this was odd, but as I went along I eventually realized that it was a natural extension of the instruments themselves. A piano organizes sound differently than a guitar, and with a piano I tend to think in a more 'structured' fashion, viewing it in terms of notes and chords and modes. I think some of that may be simply a lack of familiarity with the instrument; I haven't yet reached the point where playing a piano is intuitive for me. On the other hand, because a piano does organize differently from a guitar, there's also a natural dichotomy. Guitars are about intervals and chords and spacing, because of the way the frets and strings are placed relative to each other (each fret in sequence increments one semi-tone higher, and all of the strings save one increment in perfect fourths; the one exception is a major third instead). A piano, on the other hand, naturally lends itself to scalar thinking because it organizes the notes sequentially. On the second fret of my guitar I can play (at the same time using one finger, if I so choose) an F# in two different octaves, a B, an E, an A and a C#. There's no equivalent to this on a piano.
It occurs to me that this is quite the threadjack.
Thinking - it does a body good!