# Colored pieces



## Niebolaz (Jul 9, 2009)

Every time I listen to Prok's 'War' sonatas, different colors pop up in my head and linger there for the duration of the piece (now, here's the twist - i don't do drugs). And so no.7 is purple, no.8 orange, no.9 vivid dark blue. Actually, I can't think about these pieces without picturing the associated color. So, do any of you listen to 'colored' music?


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## emiellucifuge (May 26, 2009)

I think Scriabin developed some theories concerning tones and colours.


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## Earthling (May 21, 2010)

Synesthesia, perhaps?


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

There was a thread about this synesthesia effect. Evidently a large number of classical music listeners and composers have it. (I do not - at least not in the way others have described it.) It is a fascinating concept. 

For my part, if I am listening to common practice music rather than atonal, I think of minor keys as cool colors, blues, greens, and purples, and major keys as warm colors, yellow, red, and orange. I think of large intervals as brighter colors and shorter intervals as subdued colors, loud passages as high contrast and soft passages as low contrast. I think of it this way because colors in a painting have similar effects on the viewer as these types of intervals and passages have on the listener. 

This is not the same effect as the synesthesia people have described however. I would love to experience that.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Yes, there have been a few threads on this already. Generally, I don't strictly associate music with certain colours, it's more complex than that. The "red C major" climax of Scriabin's _Poem of Ecstasy _doesn't particularly strike me as being "red" or anything else. It's just sound. Even Bliss' _A Colour Symphony _doesn't strike me as really strictly associated with the colours he was trying to portray, though the composer was probably thinking along the lines that Weston has described above. The movement portraying red is probably the most effective, full of high contrast, a bit of dissonance and movement.

But I do associate colours with some works, in my memory. Some that I can think of are:

Bruckner:
- _Symphony No. 4 'Romantic' _- deep greens of a forest
- _Symphony No. 6_ - a golden sunset
Shostakovich - _Symphony No. 10_ - all colours of a darker hue, including blacks
Walton - _Symphony No. 1_ (Final movement) - bright colours against a dark background, like fireworks at night
Dutilleux - _Cello Concerto 'A whole remote world'_ - like the Shostakovich, many dark colours
Sculthorpe:
_Sun Music(s) I-IV _- The colours of the Australian outback, red earth, bright blue sky, yellow scrub (& the isolation of being in this world, the searing heat, etc.)
_Piano Concerto_ - Again, very dark hues, but some brightness (like the lights in a city at night)
_Kakadu Suite_ - Australian rainforest, browns, greens
Gorecki - _Symphony No. 3 'Symphony of Sorrowful Songs' _- greys of all descriptions & subtle gradations...
Messiaen - _Vingt regards _- very dark colours (almost black). Someone told me never to listen to this work if I feel depressed!

That's what immediately comes to my mind. Obviously, some of the colour associations here are just what the composer intended, especially in the case of Sculthorpe...


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## djj (May 14, 2010)

Color is the vibration of light particles (photons) sound is the vibration of air particles. Lower musical notes have a visual analogy in low light frequencies, ie those tending towards the red end of the spectrum. Conversely high notes are analogous to colors tending toward the blue end of the spectrum. The effect of synesthesia that I experience very roughly corresponds to this maping, though much musical information is harmonic, more to do with the overtones of a sound than the pitch of its fundamental. This is why a middle c on a piano sounds (and looks) different than a flute. Dense music with lots of inharmonic (atonal) overtones looks to me more darker, tending towards brown. A flute sounds more pure and to me generates purer bluish colors, the piano more red or brown. Also temporal (rhythmic) aspects of music have strong effect. Sharp defined rhythm appear as straight lines, blocks of color, Less rhythmically defined music appears as curves.


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

Speaking of flute (and instruments in general), there are ways to change the "color" of one's tone. Although it's probably harder with piano, wind instruments have the ability to add harmonics to one's tone. The less harmonics, the more hollow (dark) a tone sounds, and the more harmonics, the more sweet and brilliant (light), although the naming of such "colors" can be subjective.

With flute for instance, the smaller the aperture, the focused and sweeter the sound is, and if the aperture is bigger, it sound's more dull. However, all these ranges can be used, especially along with dynamics. It can be good sometimes to have a hollow tone when playing quiet, low notes because it can give a softer, "darker" color.


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## prustage (May 22, 2010)

As a teenager I found I was developing quite strong visual associations with certain pieces of music and began to suspect I may be being influenced by the cover art of the LP/CD. I was also pretty sure I was being influenced by other aspects of the packaging such as the type of vinyl used (whether is was the soft bendy type used by DG and Philips or the hard brittle type used by other labels), whether the inner sleeve was paper or polythene, whether the cover was full or half laminated, internally or externally glued. 

As a case in point, of the two sets of Brandenburgs I had, I am sure I played one more often than the other simply because I liked the packaging better. In a "blind" test carried out with a friend it was clear that from a musical point of view it was the neglected set that was far superior!

To overcome this, one day I went out and bought a load of totally blank white LP covers, transferred all my LPs to these with nothing more than discrete labels in the corners. This worked until CDs came along by which time I found the effect wearing off.

Today, all my music is in flac format on a music server and there are no associated visuals. The colours and shapes are still there though. Now I know that these images are genuinely conjured up by the music and am fascinated to know if there is a universal language at work or whether we are all different. I certainly share many of the associations described by Weston. 

Oh - one other thing. A lot of my non-classical friends say that certain pieces of classical music conjure up very specific visual images e.g. a "lonely" boat at sea, knights jousting, a bustling town centre, a tiger running through the jungle etc. I dont share this and wouldnt want to. I suspect this really is the result of some Pavlovian conditioning by the media and to me suggests a lack of imagination on their part.


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## djj (May 14, 2010)

Looking at a unembellished flute tone on a spectrograph, (or to be more technical its fourier transformation, which maps the energy of each over tone) it can be seen that some 90% of the energy is concentrated in the first overtone (heard as the fundemental). A pure bell tone comes closest to a simple sine wave with no overtones. For a pianio playing a single note in the middle register most of the energy is spread between the first three or four over tones, representing the root, 3rd, 5th and octave. Its a trick of psychoacoustics that we hear mainly the fundamental , thus middle c sounds more like c than e, g or its octave.


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## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

Niebolaz said:


> Every time I listen to Prok's 'War' sonatas, different colors pop up in my head and linger there for the duration of the piece (now, here's the twist - i don't do drugs). And so no.7 is purple, no.8 orange, no.9 vivid dark blue. Actually, I can't think about these pieces without picturing the associated color. So, do any of you listen to 'colored' music?


Just maybe, you're too influenced by album covers.


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