I feel blue … but only in B flat major

In freshman ear training class, I amazed my professor with my ability to name any scale or chord upon hearing it. Yet I couldn’t do it with a single note, as someone with perfect pitch can. That’s because I didn’t identify it with my ears–I did it with my eyes.

For a few of us, notes have colors. Note sequences, particularly as scales and key signatures, even more strongly so. For years I thought I was the only one, until I ran across an article in a magazine describing it. No psychedelic drugs involved; it’s just a quirk of how my brain works. (I wonder if the LSD phenomenon may have something to do with allowing people to access that normally undiscovered part of the brain?)

In compositions, the colors I see have subtle hue and density variations based on the key, the structure of the music, the texture and the orchestration. For example, most Egyptian classical music is a rich burgandy purple, because of both the traditional modes and the common lown.

So I was thrilled when a friend alerted me to a program–Colour Player–that will allow me to assign colors to songs and sort them based on it. Most of the music I listen to while working is red (E major) and is driving simple rock. So instead of building long playlists, I could tell the player to pull up everything red in my collection, and let it run.

It’s so exciting to think there are enough of us out there that someone would create this. It’s going to take me awhile to import all my music into it, but I’m looking forward to it. If you’re curious, download it and give it a try.

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