I am a synaesthete. In my head for as long as I can remember, numbers, days of the week, school subjects, and significantly, musical notes on the page have been associated with colours. The numbers thing is especially useful. Even though I was never particularly gifted at maths, I have always been pretty good at memorising strings of numbers, which comes in handy when trying to remember phone numbers, or door codes – they just look like a sequence of colours. If I ever wanted to try reciting Pi to several thousand decimal places (which is unlikely – I do have a life, after all), then it would look like some kind of incredible rainbow to me.

It was only relatively recently, when I studied for my PGCE at Bristol University in 2008-9, that I realised that not everyone experienced this. I remember having animated discussions with a good cellist friend of mine who has perfect pitch, and sees specific colours when she hears certain notes. I do too, but my ability to distinguish them is nowhere near as developed as hers. Interestingly, her colour scheme did not match mine! Synaesthesia manifests in different ways, and some people never experience it at all.

The UK Synaesthesia Association, set up by Professor Simon Baron-Cohen at the University of Cambridge, describes synaesthesia as:

“…a truly fascinating condition. In its simplest form it is best described as a “union of the senses” whereby two or more of the five senses that are normally experienced separately are involuntarily and automatically joined together. Some synaesthetes experience colour when they hear sounds or read words. Others experience tastes, smells, shapes or touches in almost any combination. These sensations are automatic and cannot be turned on or off. Synaesthesia isn’t a disease or illness and is not at all harmful. In fact, the vast majority of synaesthetes couldn’t imagine life without it.”

For more information on their work, visit their website:

http://www.uksynaesthesia.com/index.html

Synaesthesia does seem to be particularly prevalent amongst musicians and composers, with people as diverse as Duke Ellington, Franz Liszt and Eddie Van Halen reporting the condition.

Last Friday, I was teaching a student, who, to my knowledge, is not a synaesthete. She has a very good aural memory and can pick up music by ear with ease. Her struggle is with sight-reading. Initially she refused to read music at all, relying on me to teach her by rote. Recently however, with a little encouragement, she has started to see the possibilities that being able to sight-read can offer her. The ability to look at any piece of music and understand it is beginning to appeal as she realises that she can play whatever she wants without having to rely on someone who can read music to decipher it for her.

This particular student loves playing flowing, melodic pieces based around broken chords, and was inevitably drawn to Einaudi, although we also looked at alternatives, such as Michael Nyman. (Alternatives to Einaudi are eminently blog-worthy, and SE22 Piano School has a great article on this: http://se22pianoschool.wordpress.com/tag/piano-alternatives-to-einaudi/)

Einaudi’s minimalist style, with subtle, shifting harmonies, and melodies buried in pages of repetitive semiquavers can be tricky for a reluctant sight reader to get their head around. My poor student stared at the page in despair, saying, “but there are just so many notes!” It was then that the thought came to me. I find sight-reading easy as my brain automatically sorts notes into different colours, and I wondered if bringing the page to life with the help of a giant box of felt tip pens might help. I explained my synaesthesia to her, and began colouring in the notes according to my colour scheme and it did seem to help. Now she could see much more easily where the harmony changed.

My next student that afternoon was battling with the middle section of a Grade 2 piece, and the problem was the Alberti bass line. I tried the same approach with her and again, it seemed to help after a while. She is a sensitive, artistic student, and shared that she thinks she does have a form of synaesthesia, with colours and days of the week, but not with musical notes.

I am interested to see whether the techniques that synaesthetes use on a daily basis, whether they are aware of it or not, can be harnessed to help people who don’t experience it, and I would love to hear from anyone who has tried, or who has a different form of synaesthesia.

If you are not sure if you experience synaesthesia yourself, try this test:

http://synesthete.org