The Score Magazine May 2018 issue! | Page 27

SOUVIK CHAKRABORT Y WHAT DO YOU SEE WHEN YOU PLUG IN? So do you see strong colours of pink, or red when you listen to an Arijit Singh number? Or do you feel like a canvas coming up to life when you listen to a playlist of your favourite songs? Well, if you can; it could be that you are in possession of a special talent called synesthesia? also mean that a coloured number will or will not trigger a musical memory. There are more than 60 permutations of synesthesia, but the fun fact is that studies have suggested around 4% of us have it in some form.Synesthesia can also be heterogeneous as many people with these qualities tend to see different colours for similar music. For the famous musician Duke Ellington, the note of D seemed dark blue while G was satin blue. When Pharrell Williams was a little boy Earth, he saw burgundy and blue, when he listened to Wind. Kanye West associated blue to pianos, and dark brown and purple to bass lines. Other famous artists that have synesthesia include the greats like Stevie Wonder, Billy Joel, Mary J. Blige, and Dev Hynes. So what happens in synesthesia? Unfortunately the legendary stalwarts like the great Van Gogh could not earn make much of his gifted talent as he was mostly down with the deviations of his piano teacher who thought that the act of associating colours and numbers to music is purely an act of insanity, in fact he categorically suspended him from his classes. Thanks to the outright admission of this secret talent by Pharrel Williams,"medical condition". There is a popular conjecture that, listening to music through headphones will trigger blood flow in the part of our brains that deals with sound. When this part of the brain interacts with the part responsible for sight as well, it create the sensation called synesthesia. Also, it has been formulated that synesthesia is a dominant trait and genetically carried down on the X chromosome. In synesthesia it is believed that the neurons and the synapses are responsible for the cross over from one sensory system to the other. Synesthesia is a Greek word which means "joined perception". The cross-modal association of sensations and their relationship to musical perception leads to a kind of ability that makes you see colours in everything that you hear.Synesthesi