A Practical Guide to the Musical Notes and the Colors They Perceive

Last night (or rather, 3-4 in the morning) I couldn’t find any sleep. I spent a good time staring at the ceiling and thought about my somewhat recent discovery that I perceive some things around myself as colors and that not everyone is like this. I surely was living under a rock for most of my life until a few months ago as I missed out on the fact that this has a medical term which is “Synesthesia” and so, for a good portion of my life I have thought that everyone else was like this and just brushed it off  as a nothing-burger. After some digging, I’ve come to learn that there is no specific clinical diagnosis for synesthesia but you just have to know if you have it and I have tested it around with other people to see if they also perceive numbers as colors, but two of those I asked couldn’t see it like I did but one friend of mine did and we even agreed on some of the colors of the numbers. So, I feel that it is safe to self-diagnose as a synesthete (please correct me if I am wrong).

I, being a musician, thought it would be natural to make a list of the notes and potentially the scales and what colors they represent to me. A thing to keep in mind is that since I do not have perfect pitch, these analogies are not based on the notes that I hear but rather what do I think when I see them on sheet music or when someone mentions their name. However, if I were to make a list based on intervals then that can be purely based on what color I think of when I hear each interval.

Here, I present to you; A Practical Guide to the Musical Notes and the Colors They Perceive According to Hoshmand Samir Murshid. With the notes in English, Italian and German for the sake of variety.

C/do: the note “C” is definitely the color red to me, especially in C minor but C major feels red only sometimes.

C#/do diesis/Cis: for the moment, it is orange to me.

D-flat/re bemolle/Des: I perceive it as a bubblegum-esque pink.

D/re: the note “D” is green to me and has always been. I especially feel the green in the D major scale.

D#/re diesis/Dis: just like “C#” I perceive this as orange but also, not completely sure about it.

E-flat/mi bemolle/Es: the note itself is magenta, but the E-flat major scale (favorite scale by the way) is purple. This one’s a weird choice but hopefully makes sense to you, the reader.

E/mi: yellow. A very, bright, yellow…

E#/mi diesis/Eis: I do not perceive this note as a color.

F-flat/fa bemolle/Fes: I do not perceive this note as a color either.

F/fa: the note “F” is black to me and especially in the F minor scale.

F#/fa diesis/Fis: a darker yellow, almost like the color of yellow mustard.

G-flat/sol bemolle/Ges: this note swiftly changes from around the spectrum of white and grey, along with other things I cannot point my fingers at.

G/sol: last night, I felt that “G” is red but I don’t feel like that now. I don’t really know what it is today but I still get a hint of red.

G#/sol diesis/Gis: alright, this one is definitely red just like “C”.

A-flat/la bemolle/As: pretty confident that this is grey.

A/la: pretty confident that this is white (there’s a theme with the note A?)

A#/la dieses/Ais: aaand this one’s black.

B-flat/si bemolle/B: this feels both purple and baby blue to me.

B/si/H: I think, orange? Maybe because of it being the perfect fifth to E natural (previously cited as yellow) ascending, then my brain relates them to each other but really, if we go by that analogy then none of these would make any sense.

B#/si diesis/His: I do not perceive this note as a color.

C-flat/do bemolle/Ces: this note feels like it swiftly changes from pink to grey.

And that to you, my dear friends and colleagues, was the Practical Guide the Musical Notes and the Colors They Perceive. Hopefully you have enjoyed reading or have learned something new.

Until the next blog, farewell!

-Hoshmand