I’ve been doing a bit of work on some ideas of synchronicity across various mediums of art & expression, and I’m rather interested in your thoughts.
Synchronicity may not entirely be the right word, but bear with me for a bit.
For a time I’ve been fascinated with the interplay between the senses. It’s not entirely uncommon for me to describe a wine as “tasting like a Gil Evans arrangement with a punch of Miles Davis’ muted trumpet stabbing through”, or thinking of a sunrise as bearing a particular scent or sound to it.
We have the idea of synesthesia -
syn·es·the·sia, n.
1. A condition in which one type of stimulation evokes the sensation of another, as when the hearing of a sound produces the visualization of a color.2. A sensation felt in one part of the body as a result of stimulus applied to another, as in referred pain.3. The description of one kind of sense impression by using words that normally describe another.
It’s the third definition that got me thinking about all this, but I came to appreciate the truth and validity of the first, as well. For instance, I’ve always thought of the key of D as being distinctly yellow, a good bit more than C, while F was more of a lime green. But oddly, adding extensions of D or E to make an F major triad into an Fmaj7 or F6 chord made it more of a yellow-green. And the F-minor sound always sounded like Eb or Ab do — very red. And Db is rather purply.
Alright. Put that idea on the corkboard; we’ll come back to it.
It’s no new concept to use
names as a basis for generating melodies. It’s easy enough… start at middle C, perhaps, and go through the alphabet until you get to the first letter of someone’s name. Then start over, and go until you reach the second letter, and so on. By this, you come up with a melody all over the keyboard. Take that, and smush it into a single octave. As the image to the right will suggest, as you continue counting up through the letters and through the pitches, you keep coming back to the same notes, but at varying pitches. For our purposes, we may simplify them to make them more manageable: a C6 can be interchanged with a C4 at whim. They’re both a C, and it’s really the letter-name I’m interested in, anyway. Once you’ve got the notes, placement of them is what makes the art.
Put that on the corkboard, too.
We’ve got a twelve-tone equal temperament system in Western music — and that simply means that an octave is divided into twelve distinct tones, as visually evidenced on our average keyboard. C to C will yield twelve individual and unique notes.
Curiously, the color wheel available to the average artist utilizes a twelve-tone system as well, comprised of your Primary colors (red, yellow, & blue), their Complementaries (green, violet, & orange), and then the intermediary shades between those six.
For lazy purposes, I generally start at C with red. I know this goes rather against what I particularly imagine C to sound like, but it works itself out so that starting this way leaves F a nice kelly green.
Let’s pull down those corkboard items at last.
So take someone’s name, like “Lauren”. With this you have B-C-Ab-F-E-Db, yes? Here’s where the art of the process comes in and far surpasses the math. Here I’ve toiled to use this melody as a small boundary in a piece intended to capture the subject’s personality or character. It’s rather like an auditory portrait.
And what I’d like to do is utilize an artist to paint an abstract rendering of the subject’s likeness using only those colors pertaining to the subjects tone-order — for Lauren, B-C-Ab-F-E-Db would give the artist Red-Violet, Red, Blue, Yellow-Green, Yellow, and Red-Orange. But this is something to go up on the Projects Page, for sure.
Next post will be an exploration of what I came up with for “Lauren”. It’s called “Lo’ Bop”… and it’s quite a perky little bit of chromatic bebop, if I may say so myself.
Ciao! And listen to some Coeur de Pirate today.
[for more reading & listening on color-influenced music, check out the works of Alexander Scriabin. He crafted a sort of artificial synesthetic approach to composition.]
It took me a good solid couple of reads to understand what you were trying to pull off here.
When I finally wrapped my head around all that you were saying, it got me thinking in terms of “story” (my natural bend). I couldn’t help thinking, what if these concepts were applied to a feature film story just as you’ve applied them here.
Each character has a name and a song produced from the letters in their name. The song captures their personality (maybe it’s a tune mixed in the background when they’re present? Or those chords are used etc?) The color and feel of each scene with the character is also defined by the colors of the song etc.
It’s not uncommon for writers/directors to match their characters mood with color/sound…but I don’t know if it ever has been/could be intentionally pulled off and planned so precisely by using the concept you’re talking about here.
It’s actually quite mind boggling to think about. I like it. heh.
As always, thanks for the inspiration and thoughts, Josh.
Please, don’t you ever stop writing. Maybe someday I can pick back up my pen too.
I definitely could’ve worded much of this better. -_- Tight deadline. ^_^
There are myriad movie-makers that have implemented this… Freshest in my mind would be John Williams with George Lucas in any of the Star Wars movies, but most potently in the older trilogy. Each character has their own theme that builds as they come onstage, and the interplay between characters is mirrored in the dance between established musical themes (motifs) that adjust and adapt to create a beautiful blend.
Early opera also utilized that — Puccini’s “la Boheme” really exemplifies this. Every time Mimi comes onstage, you can hear her “Me Chiamano Mimi” resounding across the stage, instrumentation dependent upon desired mood.
There are a couple artists I’ve been finding like Kandinsky that were pretty big on this… Some artists even wanted to create a large music / lights / dance / random painting productions called “Gesamtkunstwerke” — or Total Works of Art.
I would love to implement as widely as I can… I just feel I gotta start the ball rolling somewhere, even if on a small level. Trying to match composition based on letter-to-number base-12 integration, 12-tone color system, and 12-tone music… That’s three big boundaries in composition. Doable, but definitely a big starting ground. =)
Also, I think I came up with some serious good characters for the musical, on a side note. I don’t know how well the musical would work with a synesthetic experience… that might be too interdisciplinary and avant garde. I’ve a great deal of research to do, but… I think I have a good main character, and I’m trying to shape some story around him.
Enjoyed even though I did not understand much of this! God bless you my friend! Miss you! When are you going to be in FI? Love your blog and your logo!
Jeff, thank you! I appreciate you reading!
This post wasn’t so clear… I’m publishing another tonight or tomorrow, and I’m aiming for MUUUCH more clarity. o_O
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