question for fellow musicians/ singers - remembering and singing notes

[epath13]

My issue might or might not be Asperger's related but still...
It's always been difficult for me to associate note sounds with their names when singing. When playing musical instrument it's different - I associate the location of the note with it's name not the sound. And then the sound comes out as a consequence. I'm trying to figure out how I can remember notes' sounds. So for instance when someone says - sing D, or A or G - I would be able to do it without thinking. Or when a melody plays I would be able to recognize what notes are in there etc
If there're any musicians or singers on the forum, have you ever had this issue and if yes, how do you solve it? Now I'm trying to see if I can associate sound with color and go from there. For my brain it seems to make more sense. But I'm not sure how it's going to work exactly...

 

[Occasional_Demon]

I've always associated sounds with colours, so I actually have always found it hard to associate the notes/colours with the actual name of the note. Hence, I was never that great when, as part of my practical exams when I was studying classical piano, I had to turn my back to the piano and identify the notes the examiner was playing. I'm pretty sure I got some right, but I was never 100%. I couldn't really say to the examiner, "Well, that note sounds like navy blue" or "that's tangerine"

Generally, I think it just takes a lot of practice and concentration to work out the tone of the actual notes. Not even people with perfect pitch can always identify the actual note that they are playing - they might be able to match notes and harmonise quickly, but they might not always be able to tell you what note they are playing. There are some workbooks for learning notes by ear which you might find helpful.

 

[IContainMultitudes]

I've always associated sounds with colours, so I actually have always found it hard to associate the notes/colours with the actual name of the note. Hence, I was never that great when, as part of my practical exams when I was studying classical piano, I had to turn my back to the piano and identify the notes the examiner was playing. I'm pretty sure I got some right, but I was never 100%. I couldn't really say to the examiner, "Well, that note sounds like navy blue" or "that's tangerine"

I think stuff like that is really interesting.

Synesthesia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Geordie]

I just remember rhythms and the meaning behind songs.

Even Kurt Cobain didn't remember all the lines what he wrote, I think. It's the message he portrays. not the words alone

 

[epath13]

I've always associated sounds with colours, so I actually have always found it hard to associate the notes/colours with the actual name of the note. Hence, I was never that great when, as part of my practical exams when I was studying classical piano, I had to turn my back to the piano and identify the notes the examiner was playing. I'm pretty sure I got some right, but I was never 100%. I couldn't really say to the examiner, "Well, that note sounds like navy blue" or "that's tangerine"

Generally, I think it just takes a lot of practice and concentration to work out the tone of the actual notes. Not even people with perfect pitch can always identify the actual note that they are playing - they might be able to match notes and harmonise quickly, but they might not always be able to tell you what note they are playing. There are some workbooks for learning notes by ear which you might find helpful.

Yeah, I guess it is about practice. Maybe if I learn to recognize notes 1st and then sing them I will progress faster... But I'm still thinking about exploring color association possibilities a little more...

 

[Geordie]

Yeah, I guess it is about practice. Maybe if I learn to recognize notes 1st and then sing them I will progress faster... But I'm still thinking about exploring color association possibilities a little more...

It'll help me remember lyrics better, too. I'm thinking of singing in a pub even.

 

[Occasional_Demon]

I was just thinking about this thread again while I was driving to university [first day of classes, yay] and I recalled one of my teacher's suggestions - to associate an image with a note. If a note [say, B] sounds "jagged" to you, for instance, then try and associate it with an arrow. This method also apparently works when you are trying to identify intervals by ear. A 6th sounds "sharp" so maybe a knife, a "7th" sounds unresolved so maybe a puzzle with a missing piece, etc.

Until very recently, I haven't thought of my experiences of viewing sound as colour to be anything remarkable. I guess I've always taken for granted that everyone viewed the world the same way. It was only after I came across the concept of synaesthesia that I started to wonder whether it is something that I experience as well and that other people didn't experience the world in the same way.

For instance, if I'm doing an improvisational jam with people, I'm not so much listening to the actual notes themselves, but to the colour that the note bring, and I try to match my colours with other people's colours. Sometimes it might mean I try and play within the same colour range as they are. For instance, if I'm perceiving everyone to be playing in "yellow" - which is the equivalent of Em, or "dark red -to- maroon", which is the equivalent of Am, I try and play within those "colours" too.

This also seems to bleed into speech, voice, descriptions - in fact, anything that has a sound involved, even if it's just a name that you say aloud, a colour would immediately spring in front of me. "Metallica" is almost black, with some white specks. "Jethro Tull" is a canary yellow.

Hope that makes sense!

 

[epath13]

The word association is a pretty good idea for visual folks regardless of them being on the spectrum or not.

And the color thing makes absolute sense to me! I wouldn't say I did what you did during an improvisation... but I just remembered an interesting moment. I associated music not only with colors for also with shapes and structures so I had an idea to create an image and see what music that image could "play"... I didn't think it through very well and never finished the project though

I have a question. Do you think you see colors as reflection of your emotional response or you see the same colors consistently depending on the pitch?

I do like Metallica, so I thought let me see if I see the same colors as you do for me I think it depends on the song though but I see lots of clear, deep colors and blinding white. Maybe it's because of the way music is written, it's very straight forward and uncompromising. It just hits you in a face and you can't really get away from it. As if it says: "here I am. deal with it!" it doesn't lure you in like the other guys you've mentioned (I've never heard of the band before but found them now on youtube, the guys from 70s right? ) and again I think it would depend on a song here as well ...there're some dusty rose and khaki which eventually did turn into yellow... or maybe more of a golden color

now my goal is to see if I can consistently see a pitch in one color or not.

As about synaesthesia it seems to be a little different... I saw a documentary about it once. Some of them do see music in color but I couldn't quite understand if they "saw" it in their mind or if they actually saw color waves all around. But some of them do see letters and numbers in color (always the same colors). I think I might have found reading extremely difficult if I had that

 

[Occasional_Demon]

I think with synaesthesia, it means seeing colours/shapes/etc. in front of you. For me, I can see colours in front of me when I hear sounds. Say, if I'm listening to a song, I can point to certain points in space where colours change. I might say something like, "Bottom left hand corner, around about here, is blue. Upper left right corner, is crimson. The centre is bright yellow..." and etc. Those colour changes would correspond to the various instruments that are featured in songs. Drums are found towards the bottom left, treble instruments like some horn and wind instruments are found in the upper left spectrum. Guitars and vocals are towards the centre. The sound of keyboards have a narrow, tube-like colour effect that splashes up and down depending on their tone.

The colours that I see when I'm listening to sounds is consistent. For instance, I always see "Metallica" in the same way as described above, same with "Jethro Tull". My emotions have no effect on how I see the colours. Same with when I'm jamming with people - I see the pitches the same colour regardless of how I feel. It's involuntary too - I hear something, and up springs a colour association.

It's interesting that you had difference experiences with how I perceive Metallica's music, because I tend to view them as on the darker end of the spectrum, without a lot of whites. Jethro Tull, on the other hand - yes, I get a lot of the orange/yellow hues when I listen to their music. Jethro Tull actually started in the 60s, but they are most well-known for their material in the 70s. I think Aqualung is their most famous album, from 1972. Anyways, I digress...

I do get a bit of colour association when it comes to numbers and reading, although to a lesser extent than sounds. I think I associate a lot of things to colours, which can be difficult sometimes because I have to translate <x> colour to a corresponding word. Even my emotions tend to take on the forms of colours rather than on feelings themselves, if that makes sense. I often have to stop and think deeply about what my "colour" means sometimes - I feel like I'm a walking, talking mood ring.

 

[epath13]

@Occasional_Demon
I think it's amazing if you're able to see the world this way. I truly believe it's a gift.

 

[Occasional_Demon]

Thanks! I don't know if it's a gift or not. I guess it's just something that I have and usually I don't pay much mind to it, although I might see if it would help me more, music-wise.

 

[Geeses]

I have always had difficulty identifying notes. Needless to say, this was quite an issue in ear-training. I got the impression that many of my instructors thought that I shouldn't be in a vocal performance program when I couldn't even name notes when I heard them. Interestingly, I had to change my major after I transferred to another university.

My new major involved a lot of research, and it helped me to realize that I see written information in different colours. For example, some information is bright green and other information might be dark purple (I usually highlight my texts based on what colour I see--otherwise I get confused).

I don't know why, but most notes are usually a mass of grey. It is kind of a swirly, confused type of grey. To resolve this I have been trying to code certain notes with certain colours, shading them appropriately for different octave (i.e. on C Major the middle B [Ti] is bright canary yellow, and an octave down is a darker shade of yellow). The only problem with this is that it's difficult to "guess" notes when you're playing them.

 

[epath13]

I have always had difficulty identifying notes. Needless to say, this was quite an issue in ear-training. I got the impression that many of my instructors thought that I shouldn't be in a vocal performance program when I couldn't even name notes when I heard them. Interestingly, I had to change my major after I transferred to another university.

My new major involved a lot of research, and it helped me to realize that I see written information in different colours. For example, some information is bright green and other information might be dark purple (I usually highlight my texts based on what colour I see--otherwise I get confused).

I don't know why, but most notes are usually a mass of grey. It is kind of a swirly, confused type of grey. To resolve this I have been trying to code certain notes with certain colours, shading them appropriately for different octave (i.e. on C Major the middle B [Ti] is bright canary yellow, and an octave down is a darker shade of yellow). The only problem with this is that it's difficult to "guess" notes when you're playing them.

Yeah, I can relate to that. At some point in my life I was planning to get a music degree (not sure what kind though The story was kinda ridiculous, I didn't really understand what was going on. Basically my aunt convinced some people in the college that I was some sort of a musical genius (composition wise, as a guitar player I was pretty much like any other decent musician out there). So one day I came to a class and the teacher said, we want nothing from you but one thing - I'm going to play piano and you tell me what notes I am playing... OK 2 things the 2nd was - she told me a note and I had to sing it. Not only I couldn't do it, I couldn't even understand how it was possible... that was really embarrassing only now 13 years later, I sort of begin to understand, imagine that

Anyway, are you a musician? What instrument do you play? Do you think you could sing a note on request? So would you say that if you determined that a certain note has gotten a certain color (for you) you could sort of hear..or retrieve the correct sound out of your memory when you see that color?

I think it's also very interesting way to perceive things. I definitively think it can be used for benefits of people with similar perception types or styles, however you want to name it.

 

[Geeses]

My primary instrument is my voice, but I can also play the piano (badly). I trained privately to sing Opera for three years during high school, and then I started a vocal performance program at university. I was doing okay in the voice classes (I was being trained as a sophomore during my freshman year), but the theory and ear-training courses killed me (fortunately, my general education credits kept my GPA from going too low). The courses were early in the mornings, involved information that I either had trouble with or had never encountered before, and the professor (same one for both sections) was not very helpful. It didn't help matters that I was being foolish at the time; I was acting out against all authority in my life and "doing what I wanted to do".

THEN, my family moved to another state (occupation-related move), so I went with them. When the only real option for college was to go online (unless I wanted to go to a vocational-technical college) it became difficult to pursue a music degree. In addition to that difficulty, I had enough trouble trying to re-orient my life in accordance with were it needed to go (lots of faith-based dialogue here that I'm not sure is allowed on the forum, so I'll just conclude by saying the God helped me work through a crazy, several-year-long tantrum phase). Anyway, I stopped singing almost completely for nearly three years, and I have just now begun to get back into vocalizing. I'm hoping to start working on getting back up to speed with the pieces I was working on before, but this could take a few months of preparing my voice the wide ranges.

My ear-training is still pretty bad, though. I can usually sing notes fairly accurately as long as I am not anxious. If I am asked to sing one note after another for any length of time I can get confused.

Personally, I think that, given the neurological differences (many of which are still not understood or agreed upon) in those with AS, it is entirely possible that we process auditory stimuli differently from our neurotypical counterparts. This may cause difficulties both in perception and long-term memory of auditory stimuli. Therefore, we may not only have difficulty hearing the notes correctly, but also have trouble remembering what the notes sounded like when we heard them. However, it hasn't stopped me from trying! And, yes, I do believe that using the typical AS strength in visual memory will assist me in remembering notes through color. This hypothesis is in the process of being tested, however, and the results are not yet conclusive. We'll see how it goes.

Do you play anything besides the guitar? Have you any experience with Classical guitar? What genre are your compositions? What got you interested in music?

 

[King_Oni]

I couldn't name notes if my life would depend on it. That being said, I understand a lot of theory. I can hear when something is "off", I have a pretty good rhytmic feeling and comprehension for the oddest time signatures. If someone would ask me "can you play me a D minor chord", I rather play it by "D minor is this, this and this key together on my keyboard". If one of those wouldn't be in tune, I'd probably play a out of tune chord and would try to figure out which of the 3 notes is the one that is "off". So it kinda feels to me like "finger position" or the position on the interface of the instrument, rather then ear.

I was a vocalist for some heavy metalbands quite some years. But I never cared for notes or tones. I did my vocal thing (which had little to do with 'harmonies" as it was more of the growling death metal kinda thing), I nailed it kinda spot on though, I thought it was more of an excersise in "my vocal chords worked like this, last time, let's repeat that trick". I can't replicate voices of people for some reason... but I can repeat my own "creations" without problems.

If I write music, I'm usually writing it on paper (or digital) first, use my knowledge to figure out correct harmonies and all and after that I'll see how I finger movement is on keys or strings and learn from there. I tried to just "jam" and play stuff and replay it. It doesn't work for me. I just play random stuff (which to people who were around when I was playing, weren't that illogical in terms of tempo, progression or time signature). I tried setting up a camera in front my guitar to see what I was playing. It worked to some extent, but it felt more like someone was watching my hands to what I was doing. So that was no succes.

 

[epath13]

Do you play anything besides the guitar? Have you any experience with Classical guitar? What genre are your compositions? What got you interested in music?

I don't know if you stll using this forum but I've just read this post for the 1st time.
When I was a kid I wanted to play piano not the guitar but my parents didn't think it was a good idea. They thought it would take too much of my time and that playing guitar is easier later I started listening to Nirvana, was absolutely obsessed with their music. So they inspired me to start playing and organize a band. I was taught by a musician. And made very quick progress but I couldn't keep up. Demands of people around me (about recordings and performances) became to overwhelming. I was still trying to figure out who I was behind the mask I was wearing. So in the end I let the guys go, decided to be on my own for a while, but everything was still overwhelming. Let's put it this way, if I lived some place else some other time, was diagnosed early and maybe had a coach of some sort I might have gotten into music school after all, because they wouldn't expect me to process things like normal folks and possibly would give me a break and needed support...but it's all in the past now, so doesn't matter. I was writing mostly metal, rock, all kinds of it but maybe more on alternative side. I wrote a few classical compositions, unfortunately they got lost. Nowadays I'm a little lazy and just write ballads. But to be fair my lyrics writing improved significantly, my voice matured a little as well. As for classical guitar, I didn't really study it. I had a friend, who was classical guitar teacher. She told me, "just take some classical sheet music and practice" . Yeah... I do want to start writing again, I mean properly... But for me it's not just about writing, it's about organizing the process, it seems easy for some, but me sometimes if a task has more than 3-4 steps it can become very overwhelming, but I don't give up one thing that bothers me...or something that I'm not certain about... How many people would actually be interested in my music...even though if you love music and that is you way of self-expression it shouldn't matter... I have pretty unique voice, it's not that uncommon but still... It's pretty low...and has more male timbre to it more that female. About 80-90% of people thought it was a guy singing, after hearing my songs. And I've noticed that people tend to prefer females singing with "female" voices and males ... With any kind of voices but anyway, I love my voice the way it is and people can't accept it - I can't help it.

 

[CaramelCookie]

Free music games and tests - specially created for www.8notes.com Try some of these games?

You see people doing things like pointing in the air when they are singing... I guess that part of their visual memory. The higher their hand, the higher the note.

Have a look at this, she does it overkill! Hands all over the place, she basically points out every note on her imaginary scale...

Mariah Carey Live! - YouTube