If colours were sounds?

Question

Hi,

A friend of mine who is blind gets confused when I mention colours. If you could replace the colours with sounds, what sounds do you think would best explain different colours?

Answer 1

I think of blue as being a smooth sort of sound from a wind instrument. The darker the blue, the deeper the note.

Purple's a smooth sound too, it kind of echoes when it's dark and the paler and pinker it gets, the shallower the sound is.

Pink's a light, tinkly kind of sound, whereas orange is whiny like a violin.

Yellow is a bright, cheeful sort of sound. It comes from a piano - nothing really wrong with the sound, just not as beautiful as it could be.

Green is a calm, peaceful sort of sound. Maybe a quiet "ooooooo" kind of noise.

Black is like a drum beat going on for a long time, while white is a soft, high pitched humming sound.

For some reason I can't think of a sound for red - just a touch. Red is hot and sharp.

I think it's a difficult question to answer because a lot of it depends on how people feel about the sounds and colours in question. Hope it helps though.

Answer 2

Hi, interpreting sound is a very individual and personal thing and finding a mutually evocative sound for a colour could be difficult. Another solution would be interpreting the colours into touch. There is a lovely scene in the film "Mask" (the film with Cher who has a son with a facial disfigurement) where the main character explains colour to a blind girl. Hope this helps.

Answer 3

This is a very interesting question and one, which I'm sure, will provoke much thought.

As an artist and sculptor, I relate very much to the 'colour' of sounds and vice versa. I also trained for the theatre and I can always remember the 'sound association' we always had to practice by relating to certain objects and colours. In my paintings, I associate certain pieces of music to colours.

Metallic colours such as silver and gold, I always relate to the sounds of the brass section in an orchestra. Although gold is 'warmer' than silver, it remains with the same basic 'feel'. I would like your friend to listen to Janacek's, 'Sinfonietta' - the colour of all gold, brass, and metals. Touch the hard, smooth, cold metallic surface and you have the colour with the music and your inner vision.

Red, always associated with heat and passion, is a full and 'spreading' sound; it is not unlike yellow. Perhaps the sound of thunder is a deeper tone of red ... but you need to feel the 'dry and stifling' heat with it as well. Without wanting to become a classical music bore, Prokofiev's 5th Symphony bears an abundance of red ... drifting into deeper red, and then black. Black, in itself, can be silence; it can also be the sound of emptiness or a firm thud. White may also be viewed as silent but, again, it can 'spread'. A slight breeze is fairly white ... Then ... white, like snow, can be a dense and solid state. The sound of china or porcelain against each other can be white. Very clean and precise sounds. Brown is hard and blunt. Wood against wood. The smell of wood. Green is close to brown but, again, 'spreads' further. Green can be wet or damp; listen to it by kicking through fallen leaves or scraping your shoe through the grass. Blue, with perhaps the greatest variety of shades, can go from ice cold to a firm medium. Blue is the sound of the wind, the sea slashing against the rocks, or the tranquil sound of the flow of a stream. 'Blue' music is the slow moving bars of the music of Muddy Waters and Thelonious Monk. The 'flat' keys on a piano keyboard may be 'blue'.

I could go on forever but ... I need to get the dinner going! Hope your dear friend will find this helpful. Remember, even a blind person has the vision of the soul.

All the best.

Answer 4

Look into the concept of Synestasia. It is the idea of all the arts being blended together, including connecting music and colour. I think I get where you are going, sort of reverse "Mr. Hollands Opus". Also, think of associations with other senses, like green with the smell of fresh cut grass, a crackling fire with orange or red, crashing waves with light blue. While I'm not sure I can explain this properly my mother has always described the the smell of old cooking oil as yellow.
It's great that you are thinking creatively to find a way of opening this difficult concept for your friend.

Answer 5

So the question dopes colors make sound ? my first answer is no. because sound is a air - pressure wave, and color is an electromagnetic wave. then I read you story , and i think that I understand what you want to say, if it is true that your brain makes the colors, then can yoyur brain also transform a gray-shaded color into a sound ? I think that is possibles you can have the sensation of hearing sounds when looking at colors. This can be accomplished by eating certain mushrooms. Maybe there are also people who can do it sadly enough wothout any chemical substance as an aid. So the answer is yes. but i dont know how.

Answer 6

Blue, running water, Green, tree leaves rustling. Although i asked a similar question and a guy gave a good answer that no matter how you try and relate to colour, the blind person will still never get near to imagining what a colour was.

Answer 7

If your friend has a scientific temperment, then the literal comparison might be reasonable to try.

Light consists of electromagnetic vibrations striking the eye, just as sound consists of mechanical vibrations (of air) striking the ear. A sighted person can process those vibrations of light in a way analagous to, but different from, the way we process the vibrations of sound.

Just as sound occurs at different frequencies, so does light. A tuba is a low frequency sound, and a piccolo is a high frequency sound. And certain sounds, like those of a dog whistle, are so high frequency that human ears can't detect them.

Likewise, violet is a high frequency color and red is a low frequency color (a rainbow displays the colors in order of their frequencies.) And some colors , like ultraviolet, are so high frequency that human eyes cannot detect them.(Bees, however, can see in ultraviolet, analogously to how dogs can hear high frequency sound)

Answer 8

I see colours when I listen to music. If it's Mozart I see bright yellows and reds and oranges. If it's easy-listening like Haygood Hardy I see greens and blues. If it's Lou Reed or Leonard Cohen I see greys and browns. If it's jazz I see rainbows with sparklies all through it. Does that help?

Answer 9

Well since there are a hell of a lot of colours in the world - how long have you got to spend on the subject?

Answer 10

Anything hot or warm is in the red, orange and yellow spectrum such as fire is red, autumn is orange and yellow is sunshine.
Anything cool or cold is in the blue green spectrum such as the sea and the shade of the trees.It`s quite a difficult one but not impossible...Good luck.