So a couple months ago I found this poll that basically asked musicians if they associated colors with certain music keys and if so, what they were. (This is called synaesthesia, if you were wondering.) Anyway, I found it very interesting because not only do I associate colors with keys, I'm known to plan my recital outfits around the keys that my pieces are in. This is often tricky because I don't want to have to change what I'm wearing, but then I don't want to "clash" with the music. The strongest key/color association I have is E-flat Major/green and F minor/red(dish). (And if we want to be really dorky, those are the keys of the Brahms viola/clarinet sonatas.....) Anyway, the results of the poll have been published. Now, there are no right or wrong answers, but I found it interesting that the colors I picked generally went with the majority, but not always. Here were mine:
E Major - yellow
E-flat Major - green
D Major - blue
D-flat Major - purple
C Major - white
C minor - black
This was REALLY interesting - "the colours shift from red to violet in the rainbow as the keys move from sharp to flat." I had never realized that, yet I always picture scales in my head as rainbows.
Ok, I apologize for the obscene amount of nerd content in this post.
Whoa.
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4 comments:
i also try to plan my clothes to go with the pieces, but that's not related to keys.
i don't feel a strong connection between keys and colors, because sometimes i feel one and sometimes i don't. and it's not very consistent. well, actually for me, it's not the key that makes me think of a color, but the piece of music. i used to think the brahms f minor was brown, but i think that has changed. i am not synaesthetic. the end of this incoherent babble.
That's so coincidental! I plan my wardrobe around which coils I am making. If I'm making a quadrature birdcage coil I wear a black polo and blue jeans. If I'm making a linear 1H loop coil I wear a gray polo and blue jeans. If I'm making a proton-decoupled multinuclear imaging/spectroscopy coil I wear a red polo and blue jeans. What a eerie similarity ... sends shivers down my spine!
does this give you a certain amount of pitch recognition?
Eddy - haha, are you getting me back?
Jill - sometimes I don't really associate a piece with one color because it's got too many keys (like 11/4). I think I developed good relative pitch in high school, but don't think I noticed the color thing until sometime in college.
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