the art of music - a genmix
[Synesthesia is, put simply, when the senses are confused or joined. Time can be perceived as a circle, numbers can become smells, or, in my case, music is represented as colours. Not every synesthete is the same, and not every joining of senses is the same.
As I said, music becomes colours. Certain words, sounds, names, people and places have colours, too, but it's less frequently. Not every piece of music has a colour- Parade by Garbage doesn't have a colour- and not every piece of music is one single colour. I'm Like A Bird by Nelly Furtado has a whole range of colours, for instance. Certain songs, like She & Him's This Is Not a Test is just one colour (green, in that example). Some artists have one colour that encompasses all their music. Emilie Autumn is very orange. The colours appear in my mind. When I shut my eyes, I can see them dancing on the back of my eyelids. The colours move, which is hard to show in still images, but I did my best. A lot of music moves from the lower left hand corner to the upper right hand corner. A lot of it twirls and waltzes.
In this mix, I tried to show this. My favourite type of music is blue. I listen to a lot of folk music, a lot of which is blue. It's calming and soothes me. I tried to show a larger range, though. I tried to avoid choosing songs where colours are in the lyrics. This doesn't particularly influence the colours I see, but I wanted to opt that out. I also broke it into two discs. The first side is more quiet music, and the second is more upbeat.
There are links for individual songs, separate links for each disc and a link for the entire mix.
And yes, that is my handwriting on the front cover ;D]
pianissimo
[The piano dominates this song, as does the blue. It's dark, quiet, but the colours are bright. The guitars and drums make it brighter, and makes it sound more like an underground rainbow. Aimee Mann's haunting voice are white and it shimmers and sparkles, like fragmented light.]
The Scientist - Aimee Mann
[Space for me is always black with bright colours arcing through it. When I think of space, I think of nebulae. Such a magical mixture of dust, gas, plasma, rainbows made of science. I love looking at these peculiar forms, although it scares me just a little. Natalie Merchant's voice reminds me of Aimee's in that it's haunting, and a little whimsical. Natalie reminds me of nebulae and this song is a rainbow set amongst a black background.]
Space Oddity - Natalie Merchant
[This is prominently purple. It sounds like a ballet to me. A pas de deux by two women, dancing around each other, in a curtain of purple. Dar Williams is pink, and Ani DiFranco is blue. They mix together to a beautiful purple.]
Comfortably Numb - Dar Williams and Ani DiFranco
[Des'ree's voice is very rich and golden. The song is warm, with yellows and orange, like a fire, a hug, a warm bed on a cold night while wrapped in the arms of someone you love. There's a hint of loneliness, there, too, a wish for something more, and it tints the golden touch somewhat. The outer edges are green, particularly with the way the song drifts off. It holds back its true warmth. It wants to be something more.]
I'm Kissing You - Des'ree
[The flutes are insects, the strings are fairies and lights that dance around. They combine to be a rainbow on a warm, spring night, becoming mixed with the stars. It's a waltz under moonlight, dancing on the ocean while the romance lifts you.]
Fairy Dance - James Newton Howard
[This is a cabaret of sorts. A dimmed theatre with a spotlight, a navy backdrop. The song is a quiver, a whimper. When I first heard this song, I initially only heard the first few lines and I thought it was about an affair. I thought it to be a mourning song instead of a declaration of love. The song still remains dark to me, but with a shimmer of hope.]
How Long Has This Been Going On? - Kristin Chenoweth
[Johnny Cash- the man in black. He dominates the song. It's black all the way through until Fiona Apple joins in, when bright yellow shines through. Just a spotlight in the corner, a glimmer of hope like that in How Long Has This Been Going On? It breaks through the darkness and lets the line shine on through, letting you know that there is a way out. There is a light.]
Bridge Over Troubled Water - Johnny Cash and Fiona Apple
[The Virgin Suicides is what makes this song so colourful. The film itself is blue and lavender with shades of grey. It's lonely, sad, haunting, gripping in your throat and chest, making it hard to breathe until tears prickle your eyes and your mouth goes dry and you're frozen in place, crying and choking on your own breath as your head gets dizzy and your cheeks burn red and your nose runs and you rock back and forth unable to move until the the corners of your vision start to grow dark and everyone is running but they're stuck in slow motion this is it and this is it and this is it until you finally suck down that precious burning air.]
Bathroom Girl - Air
[The instruments in this song are yellow, particularly in the chorus. Thurston Moore's throaty, raw vocals are a murky, dark blue, and this is what overpowers the song. The yellow crosses through the lyrics, though, particularly in the crescendo in the chorus. It's a nauseating ride, half adagio, half allegro, and it's always, always spinning.]
Superstar - Sonic Youth
[I typically don't like brown songs. I don't like the colour brown typically, anyway. It holds you down, it spoils everything. Damien Rice is very brown, though, and he's one of my favourite artists. He lets me know brown can be nice. Brown can be warm, and loving, and although it's ugly and makes everything sour and rotten, it can hold your hand as you cross the street. This song is my boyfriend and me, and it's obscure and wonderful and it has a trippy start and sometimes not everything goes right or according to plan, but it works and it holds you and kisses your tears and, most importantly, brown lets you know that everything will still be there to catch you because brown is earth and the earth is always there beneath your feet.]
Cannonball - Damien Rice
fortissimo
[The LOVE version of While My Guitar Gently Weeps is more appropriately blue, but the Anthology version, despite lacking the white strings, is also very blue on its own. I don't like the rocked-up version. It's too heavy, to red and angry, while the song is so very, very sad. It's a wish. It wants to be more. It wants to be strings. It doesn't want to be bass. I love George Harrison singing this as a solo. Wishes are blue.]
While My Guitar Gently Weeps - The Beatles
[To me, certain chords and notes are certain colours. The first F♯ above middle C is an olive green. B♭ is a pale blue, a high A♭ is red. C and C♯ are, for the most part, pink. A pale pink, nothing to garish. But this song, despite being in C♯ is blue and it's most definitely due to the minor key. Minor is blue. Songs in a major key aren't particularly anything, but minor is most always, always blue.]
Nocture in C♯ Minor - Chopin
[Lucy is in the sky with lights and magic and fairies, as she sits on clouds and telephone lines and swims over fish and flowers and steals the hats of bus drivers. Lucy is an aerobatic act, swinging from trapezes and twisting through aerial silks and hanging from a corde lisse. She's a contortionist and flies above you, promising kisses and smiles.]
Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds - The Beatles
[Utopia reminds me of a dystopian society, of robots and creatures and monsters. Everything is crystal-clean and yet it doesn't all quite fit. Two by two, hands of blue and so on. Make everything forever. The strings will wrap around you.]
Utopia - Goldfrapp
[Once again, Space Oddity. Tangled up in gas clouds and inhaling their sweet scent. It trickles through you as you're blown away in the wind. Dizzy on uppers and you'll never, ever get down. It's not perfect, and maybe in fact everything is going so very, very wrong, but in this case you don't know any better. Or maybe you do- maybe you know everything is going downwards and out into the constant black, but really, would you want it any other way?]
Across The Universe - Fiona Apple
[This song is very much like Bridge Over Troubled Water for me in that it's very black and dark, but there's this light shining through. The sun is coming again. Like George sings, the sun is coming and it's going to break through that terrible black and dry away the blues. The bridge is going to help you across the icy lake.]
Here Comes The Sun - The Beatles
[This is one of Damien Rice's few brown songs. It's full of pale blues and bright whites. How very French, how very whimsical. It sends shivers down my spine, it's a song transposed to music. It's like holding a hand, temples together, just a breath of a kiss as you're sent into the sky to dance amongst the clouds. Amie is you and me and all of us. It's the sweet scent of spring, talc on a baby's skin, fish swimming in the cool ocean water and nibbling on your toes. It's waking up next to the person you love and kissing their lips and letting the morning sun touch your skin.]
Amie - Damien Rice
[In many ways, this song is blue. The chorus is blue, Utada Hikaru's lyrics are blue, it sounds like stars and trickles of water. But Utada herself is very pink. If it were someone else singing, it would be blue all over, but Utada's presence tints it pink and makes it purple by default. There's also streaks of sunlight through it. The joy just goes straight through it.]
Simple and Clean - Utada Hikaru
[The Weakerthans are also a very brown band. Nothing about their music is particularly brown, but as a whole, they're very earthy and grounded. Virtute, the eponymous cat, is blue. After all, with an owner who is in the midst of a depression, anyone would be blue. It brings with it greens and yellows, a promise of new life. It wants a new life. The song puts a smile on my face with its green. The weather will be better tomorrow, Virtute promises. Just look outside.]
Plea From a Cat Named Virtute - The Weakerthans
[Virtute is back and now the purple has overtaken her. The greens have gone and the yellows have disappeared. The night is dark and the clouds are grey. Rain has fallen and purple has washed Virtute's world. There's promise there of something else- pigeons and cats and construction sites that Virtute was effected by in Plea. But purple is everywhere and maybe this is what the human was once like.]
Virtute the Cat Explains Her Departure - The Weakerthans
[With a title like Cool it should be easy to understand the colours. The colour scheme is very similar to that of Amie. The songs are very different, in terms of theme and structure, but they're both blue and white. But there's something tinting the edges when I hear this one- a hint of want, a longing for what once was. Not everything is cool.]
Cool - Gwen Stefani
[Everyone wants to be recognised. Everyone wants to fit in. They don't always go hand in hand. But those who embrace not fitting in, for being recognised, shine out more than everyone else. The black continues to lurk, the white stands out and then there's bright violet, radiating out, pushing the black out, filtering through the white, with a leap and a smile, jeteing across and ignoring every other colour that tries to steal what it has. Do you think you're a star?]
Weird Friendless Kid - Emiliana Torrini
[This is what I dub as my John Sheppard Cock-Walk Song. Blue and white, but as it picks up, the green starts, letting you know it's there, it's smug, it leads with its cock and you're going to love it. It doesn't fit in, it won't even blend in. The blue doesn't want it, the white doesn't want to be tainted. But that's just fine, it's going to be a smug little bugger with a smirk and a wink and it's going to grab your attention.]
Foolish Love - Rufus Wainwright
[Grey and blue. Even when things are dull, there's flight. Utter simplicity.]
Free as a Bird - The Beatles
Download the full rar + covers here
Reuploaded 06/01/11. Download here.
SONG MISSING: I'm Kissing You - Des'ree
DIFFERENT SONG: While My Guitar Gently Weeps - The Beatles (LOVE version)