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Tones and colours in the brain
A while ago I received an email from a kind blog reader which read as follows: “I stumbled upon your blog and there is some interesting things on it. But as someone with synaesthesia I was wondering have you done any post on it? My music is full of colours” The email was from a man called Paul who experiences a rare condition called tone-colour synaesthesia, meaning he consistently experiences sensations of colour when hearing music. At the time I replied to tell him that his was a fascinating condition and that I would love to write about it. But sadly there was no new research out at the time…
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Pitch black: Music without vision
This week I had a musical experience that I must share with you, dear reader. To make things even more interesting the event in question led me to spend some of my spare time this week investigating an area of music psychology about which I knew almost nothing – what is it like to listen to music when you are blind? A few weeks ago I had a very kind invitation from the Southbank Centre in London to attend a night at the London Jazz Festival called ‘Phronesis: Pitch Black’.The event was to feature the talents of London-based jazz trio Phronesis, which comprises Copenhagan-born Jasper Høiby on bass, Ivo Neame…
