Perfect Pitch.....tone color

[Tom Myler]

(Lots of big snips throughout)



>>It sounds interesting to think that you could hear musical color in
>>different pitches.  My thoughts on the matter are that this has to be
>>bogus, because I have never heard different colors in different
>>musical pitches.  But just because I can't do it doesn't negate the
>>possibility that someone else can.
 >Isn't the major source of tone color in a chord based on the beat rate
>of the thirds?  The chords will then "shimmer" at different rates,
>enabling one to recognize different tone colors.

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About 12 years ago I attended a wonderful tuning demo/class that was
presented jointly by Jim Coleman Sr. and George Defebaugh.  In the audience
was a Piano Tech who was blind (NOT since birth), and he mentioned that he
could *literally* hear colors.  Different frequencies, alone and in
combinations,  excited the sight areas in his brain, and in his mind's eye
he would see various colors, with different pitches evoking different
colors. I don't recall if he claimed that this  was of any practical benefit
to tuning.

At the time, I thought it was nonsense, and didn't give it another thought.
My loss, as it turned out.

It was a few years later when I first read about "synesthesia"  or
"synaesthesia".


"It might be that Scriabin also suffered from a rare genetic peculiarity
known as synesthesia, in which sound is translated directly into color.
People with synesthesia cannot hear music without seeing colors."
(from Schonberg's "Lives of the Great Composers")

and...

"Synaesthesia........................The production of a mental sense
impression relating to one sense by the stimulation of another sense, as in
coloured hearing........"
(from Oxford English Dictionary)

Scriabin even made a chart to tie in with his 5th symphony, showing which
frequencies and colors matched up.   " C 256Hz = red........C# 277Hz =
Violet.........E 341Hz = Pearly white and shimmer of moonlight......" and so
on.

In Scriabin's case, it must have been a curse, as it apparently contributed
to his worsening insanity.


Food for thought.





Tom Myler

"The young person knows the rules;
   The old person knows the exceptions."