The Color of Music

When a young person in my family told the adults that different sounds produced different colors, I took that as a metaphor. Susan and I had raised two creative girls, and I’d heard many odd remarks along the way. But this time the remark was literal.

Synesthesia takes different forms. The brain somehow associates color with numbers or sounds or whatever.  Richard Feynman, noted physicist, had it, as did Marilyn Monroe and Vincent Van Gogh. 

People with music synesthesia may also have perfect pitch; the ability to see/hear colors helps them identify keys and notes. That turned out to be the case with my family member. If you ask her for her a C, she can sing it right at you. She’s a human tuning fork—and much more. This isn't a parlor trick. It's an added dimension for a musician.

Musicians with synesthesia include Franz Liszt, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Leonard Bernstein, Duke Ellington, Billy Joel, Itszhak Perlman, Jean Sibelius, Kanye West and Marian McPartland.