“Synesthesia [...] is a neurologically based condition in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway.
According to Richard Cytowic, Sound to Color synesthesia is “something like fireworks”: voice, music, and assorted environmental sounds such as clattering dishes or dog barks trigger color and firework shapes that arise, move around, and then fade when the sound ends. For some, the stimulus type is limited (e.g., music only, or even just a specific musical key); for others, a wide variety of sounds triggers synesthesia.
Sound often changes the perceived hue, brightness, scintillation, and directional movement. Some individuals see music on a “screen” in front of their face. [...] Individuals rarely agree on what color a given sound is (composers Liszt and Rimsky-Korsakov famously disagreed on the colors of music keys); however, synesthetes show the same trends as non-synesthetes do. For example, both groups say that loud tones are brighter than soft tones, and that lower tones are darker than higher tones.”
I discovered recently this year that I have Sound to Color synesthesia, but it’s very minor I found out when I was at a concert/night club and “felt” that the colors of the light show weren’t matching to the music. When listening to music in the car or with headphones on, I can “see” colors flashing/moving in the back of my head like a built-in visualizer and sometimes “taste” sounds, but it doesn’t impair me from whatever I’m doing at the moment. It’s really difficult to explain, so here’s a drawing.
Illustrator Name: Emily
Illustrator URL: http://www.eychan.org/index.html
