Pretty Synesthesia

Prof. Reynolds:

A reader asks for a description of what I see. That’s hard, because the more you think about it, the less distinct the effect seems to be, at least for me. But I see sound as light, with texture and color relating to tone, and going up and down with pitch. So a smooth guitar solo (think Carlos Santana) looks kind of like an oscilloscope tracing, while, say, Jimmy Page in Heartbreaker is like a bunch of jagged lines. A drum hit is a flash, whose length depends on resonance. This is useful for judging delays because you can “see” them. Like I say, I think the synesthesia recruits more neural processing power. I don’t know if most people who experience this get the same visualizations.

Most interesting.