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Music makes you smarter – or maybe not
Twenty years ago, the press had a field day with a small study published by a California researcher, much to the surprise of the author. The public’s imagination was caught by headlines that proclaimed “Listening to Mozart Makes You Smarter,” or “Music Makes You Smart.” An entire industry grew from the idea that listening to…
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Want perfect pitch? Maybe you can take a pill
If you’re like I am, you may have thought half-heartedly about making a New Year’s resolution or two. But one New Year’s resolution that wouldn’t occur to most musicians is to resolve to acquire perfect (absolute) pitch – if we don’t already have it. There are no documented cases of an adult ever being able to…
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Seeing sounds, hearing colors, part IV
We are in a holiday season during which many of us will eat too much, so I have been quite delighted to discover that for one synesthete, a major sixth tastes like low-fat cream – as opposed to a minor sixth that tastes like regular cream, or a major third that tastes sweet. Don’t you…
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Seeing sounds, hearing colors, part III
Tom tells me that my voice is yellow when he speaks to me in person, but is a bright green on the phone. I’m not sure what I think about having a yellow voice, or even a bright green one. While I hear voices as lighter or darker, throaty, wispy, husky, gravelly, etc., and I…
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Seeing sounds, hearing colors, part II
Imagine if you saw a color whenever you looked at someone’s face, and different faces were different colors. Or tasted eggs when you heard the word “fax.” Or saw a mental map placing any number you saw or heard in a certain location in space (as in the image at the left, called a number…
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Seeing sounds, hearing colors, part I
I have often asked a student “what color does this movement (or excerpt, or chord progression) suggest to you?” Color becomes a metaphor for sound – an additional tool for accessing the emotional content of the work, because most of us (even if unaware of it) associate colors with emotions – lighter colors for happiness,…