Colour association with musical keys

[Jaakko Keskinen]

Do you associate different keys with colours? It is said that composers such as Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Scriabin did. I mostly agree with their opinion of D major being yellow or gold in color (in one of their conversations they even noticed how in Rachmaninov's opera The miserly knight Rachmaninov uses D major when the title character sings about gold. Only other key that I definitely associate with one color is F major, with green (I guess you can blame Pastoral symphony for that).

Opinions?

[G. String]

Maybe you should check out what Chromesthesia is, first

[jochanaan]

No.  But I know some who do.

[EigenUser]

Do you associate different keys with colours? It is said that composers such as Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Scriabin did. I mostly agree with their opinion of D major being yellow or gold in color (in one of their conversations they even noticed how in Rachmaninov's opera The miserly knight Rachmaninov uses D major when the title character sings about gold. Only other key that I definitely associate with one color is F major, with green (I guess you can blame Pastoral symphony for that).

Opinions?

Messiaen did, and so did Ligeti to a lesser extent. I remember seeing an interview (or maybe reading a quote, I forget which) where Messiaen said that Debussy was a colorful composer, but the colors were pastels. Messiaen said that his own colors were those of bright stained-glass windows. My personal take relates this to the dissonances used within standard triads that are common in his music (especially in "Turangalila" and the "Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant Jesus").

I don't do this naturally like Messiaen, but if asked to match musical keys to colors I would relate brighter colors to brighter keys (perhaps bright lime-green to E-major, yellow to B-major, etc) and darker, lusher colors to the 'flat' keys (deep royal blue for A-flat-major, for instance).

[snyprrr]

No.  But I know some who do.

The correct answer is OF COURSE! sound and vision are one. Keys?.. schmeys! Forget about that, but, Tones?!! Of course, on some level "that colour of yellow is a certain sound/tone".

They just haven't invented the "Correct" DiscoBall yet, that has the "System" down.

Surely, just as E vibrates at, what? 110hrz,... that there is a "colour" that "matches" that frequency. It must be, I say, it must be so! Why isn't that just pure mathematical common sense? The only question is, what is the Correct, Scientific Way of determining these correlations? It don't really care for the whole "D Major is Bright Green" or whatever... what about non-Western scales then?... so, IT HAS TO BE SCIENTIFIC, but, how can this not be reality? It just hasn't been done yet, that's all. (Though, hasn't Pink Floyd been working on it for decades?)

Haha- Classical Music just isn't as hip yet as to have a Composer well versed enough in the Sciences to have written an awesome laser/light show into his works (I know Xenakis worked with lasers, but I don't think he went this far,... right? no colour theory). Imagine hearing Bach with each tone perfectly visualized...


But... can you colour INTENT?... THAT is the question...

[jochanaan]

The correct answer is OF COURSE! sound and vision are one. Keys?.. schmeys! Forget about that, but, Tones?!! Of course, on some level "that colour of yellow is a certain sound/tone".

They just haven't invented the "Correct" DiscoBall yet, that has the "System" down.

Surely, just as E vibrates at, what? 110hrz,... that there is a "colour" that "matches" that frequency. It must be, I say, it must be so! Why isn't that just pure mathematical common sense? The only question is, what is the Correct, Scientific Way of determining these correlations? It don't really care for the whole "D Major is Bright Green" or whatever... what about non-Western scales then?... so, IT HAS TO BE SCIENTIFIC, but, how can this not be reality? It just hasn't been done yet, that's all. (Though, hasn't Pink Floyd been working on it for decades?)

Haha- Classical Music just isn't as hip yet as to have a Composer well versed enough in the Sciences to have written an awesome laser/light show into his works (I know Xenakis worked with lasers, but I don't think he went this far,... right? no colour theory). Imagine hearing Bach with each tone perfectly visualized...


But... can you colour INTENT?... THAT is the question...

This reminds me of the old "psychedelic" light shows from the '60s and '70s.  Interesting, but I never felt it added that much to the musical experience.

The trouble I have with the whole "synesthesia" thing is that sound is one medium, air vibration, and one set of frequencies; while color is another medium and frequency set completely.  Any associations between color and sound would thus appear to be only in a person's mind.  And I've gathered that not everyone sees the same colors for the same music...

[amw]

I get a bit of key-colour synaesthesia—I actually don't have absolute pitch, so I have to spend a bit of time in a key before what it is becomes apparent.

I made this a while back

██████ - C major
██████ - c minor
██████ - C# major
██████ - c# minor
██████ - Db major
██████ - D major
██████ - d minor
██████ - d# minor
██████ - Eb major
██████ - eb minor
██████ - E major
██████ - e minor
██████ - F major
██████ - f minor
██████ - F# major
██████ - f# minor
██████ - Gb major
██████ - G major
██████ - g minor
██████ - g# minor
██████ - Ab major
██████ - A major
██████ - a minor
██████ - Bb major
██████ - bb minor
██████ - B major
██████ - b minor

Hex codes only give part of it, they can't bring out the goldenness of B-flat or the leafiness of E or the silky lavenderyscentedness of g# minor etc. I also don't know why (e.g.) E major and E minor are practically the same key in my mind, whereas G major and G minor are completely different in every respect. Or why Db and C# are different keys with different "feels" while bb and a# aren't. But that's a starting point.

I like the more rational assigning-keys-to-colours thing that people like Scriabin did, apart from the fact that the results were all wrong. F# is not supposed to be that colour! So, yes, actually there's nothing rational about it.

I don't exactly "see" these colours when listening to/playing/reading music—the world doesn't turn purple when I hear something in c-sharp minor. It's more that looking at purple seems to hit the same brain circuits as listening to c-sharp minor, so c-sharp minor "sounds" purple. I've tried to explain this pretty often but it never seems to make any sense.

[G. String]

Color-Note relations in terms of piano keys according to Scriabin's perception:

[Madiel]

Every synaesthetic's set of associations is unique to themselves, so it's inevitable that another person's colours will be 'wrong'.

Having a choir director who was synaesthetic was a tricky business, because she could tell very easily if we were going flat...

[Szykneij]

How does the tuning used affect this? Period ensembles often use tunings a complete half-step below or above A440. Handel's piano was tuned at 422.5 and Mozart's at 421.6. Would Mozart's Requiem visually sound (or aurally look?) closer to the violet of the key signature or the purple of c# minor?

[71 dB]

I'm not at all colorblind, but I am "key blind". I don't have a clue what key is playing... ...my brain just registers the degree of consonance and dissonance.

So, all the keys have the same color for me, gray I think...

[Madiel]

How does the tuning used affect this? Period ensembles often use tunings a complete half-step below or above A440. Handel's piano was tuned at 422.5 and Mozart's at 421.6. Would Mozart's Requiem visually sound (or aurally look?) closer to the violet of the key signature or the purple of c# minor?

The synaesthetic musicians I've known couldn't stand period tuning for precisely that reason.

[amw]

How does the tuning used affect this? Period ensembles often use tunings a complete half-step below or above A440. Handel's piano was tuned at 422.5 and Mozart's at 421.6. Would Mozart's Requiem visually sound (or aurally look?) closer to the violet of the key signature or the purple of c# minor?

Period tuning always sounds out of tune to me—the ear takes a while to acclimatise. I don't actually have an A=421 recording of the Requiem, but I do have one of the K516 string quintet which comes across as being in a rather flat f-sharp minor (with the finale occupying the extremely delicate F-sharp/G-flat region, lending it a fleeting character I find more convincing than G major actually), thus tying it for me to the slow movement of K488 which I've only ever heard in A=440.

I possibly know Mozart's d minor requiem too well to be able to adjust to his c-sharp minor requiem. Similarly with Haydn's London symphonies, introduced to me by Colin Davis and Eugen Jochum, Sigiswald Kuijken's renditions just never sounded "right" no matter how many times I listened to them.

[Szykneij]

Period tuning always sounds out of tune to me—the ear takes a while to acclimatise. I don't actually have an A=421 recording of the Requiem, but I do have one of the K516 string quintet which comes across as being in a rather flat f-sharp minor (with the finale occupying the extremely delicate F-sharp/G-flat region, lending it a fleeting character I find more convincing than G major actually), thus tying it for me to the slow movement of K488 which I've only ever heard in A=440.

I possibly know Mozart's d minor requiem too well to be able to adjust to his c-sharp minor requiem. Similarly with Haydn's London symphonies, introduced to me by Colin Davis and Eugen Jochum, Sigiswald Kuijken's renditions just never sounded "right" no matter how many times I listened to them.

I find this subject fascinating. Is there any relationship between synaesthesia and perfect-pitch ability?

[North Star]

Absolute Pitch and Synesthesia: Two Sides of the Same Coin? Shared and Distinct Neural Substrates of Music Listening

...We have established that Absolute Pitch has a strong genetic basis. We identified the location of Absolute Pitch genes on chromosomes 2 and 6 [PDF] and are focused on identifying the specific genes....

[petrarch]

Period tuning always sounds out of tune to me—the ear takes a while to acclimatise.

Yes, indeed. Anecdotally, note the Hogwood, Norrington, Gardiner and Savall in the following compilation of the first chords of the Eroica:

https://www.youtube.com/v/UnhlQUBsd6g

[Szykneij]

Absolute Pitch and Synesthesia: Two Sides of the Same Coin? Shared and Distinct Neural Substrates of Music Listening

...We have established that Absolute Pitch has a strong genetic basis. We identified the location of Absolute Pitch genes on chromosomes 2 and 6 [PDF] and are focused on identifying the specific genes....

Thanks for those links!

I'm not surprised by the cited correlation between absolute pitch and autism. I teach large classes of 4th grade beginner violin students and at the initial stages, due to the time constraints I work under, I'm not always as picky with tuning as I need to be later on. Invariably, students with autism will insist their instruments aren't tuned properly, even those who haven't had any previous musical training (and, of course, they're right!)

[Jay F]

I don't associate color with musical keys, but then, I don't know musical keys. What I do experience synesthetically are smell and color. Everything I smell has a corresponding color and, sometimes, texture.

[EigenUser]

Yes, indeed. Anecdotally, note the Hogwood, Norrington, Gardiner and Savall in the following compilation of the first chords of the Eroica:

https://www.youtube.com/v/UnhlQUBsd6g

Very cool and interesting! Thanks for posting this. Some new composer could make millions $$$ by passing this off as a minimalist composition.

[North Star]

I don't associate color with musical keys, but then, I don't know musical keys. What I do experience synesthetically are smell and color. Everything I smell has a corresponding color and, sometimes, texture.

That's something I haven't heard of before, I think. Someone I studied with briefly had a wife with grapheme-color synesthesia, but only for numbers, and not for letters, if I recall correctly. I think some numbers didn't have a corresponding colour, either, for her.

Thanks for those links!

I'm not surprised by the cited correlation between absolute pitch and autism. I teach large classes of 4th grade beginner violin students and at the initial stages, due to the time constraints I work under, I'm not always as picky with tuning as I need to be later on. Invariably, students with autism will insist their instruments aren't tuned properly, even those who haven't had any previous musical training (and, of course, they're right!)

When one think of it, it does seem natural that autistic people have better perception of tones - since their brains are less occupied by the actual words, they have more capacity for detecting the pitch.