An exploration of tone-color synesthesia shared by twins Ben & Miles Kredich.
Twinesthesia
Miles Kredich’s Master of Arts Final Project
Spring 2022
Best viewed on desktop or in landscape mode.
An explanation.
My twin, Ben (who has autism), and I have been involved in anything and everything musical since a young age. Even before Ben became fully verbal at around 11 years old, we always knew we shared an intense love of music and sound. However, it wasn't until recently that we discovered we both experienced synesthesia.
According to neurologist Richard Cytowic, synesthesia is a phenomenon where stimulation of one sensory pathway leads to involuntary experiences in a second sensory pathway. Ben and I "see" color when we hear pitch, and vice versa.
There are many different kinds of synesthesia, so to be specific, the kind we experience is chromesthesia or the phenomenon in which sound can trigger the experience of color in the brain.
Since learning we both experienced colorful sound, I’ve wanted to compare and contrast our two perceptions of the same musical world in a fun, beautiful, and informative way. This project is my attempt to do so.
Enjoy :)
“Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers,
the soul is the piano with its many chords.
The artist is the hand that, by touching this or that key,
sets the soul vibrating automatically.”
- Wassily Kandinsky
C Major
A kinetic visualization of how Ben and I see pitch differently, with the pulsing borders representing the bass and the squares representing the melody. I’d been wanting to create a piece like this for so long and specifically wanted to compose it with Ben. Our composition styles are very different, so what we ended up with was a unique blend of chord progressions, instrumentation, and melody.
“Form itself, even if completely abstract… has its own inner sound.”
- Wassily Kandinsky
Identical
A visualization of the pitches Ben and I see similarly. I found it interesting how the colors we most share, blue, green, and amber, are all clustered together in the same region of the keyboard. Although we’re fraternal, you’d be surprised how similar our interests tend to be.
Fraternal
A visualization of the pitches Ben and I see similarly. Synesthesia tends to be very unique to whoever has it, so it’s no surprise the majority of the colors vary. We sometimes argue over what color specific pitches are, but then quickly remember how pointless it is to argue.
Tension, Resolution
The colors you see on the left side resemble a musical interval known as a tritone. A tritone tends to sound very tense, dissonant, and unresolved on its own. But with the colors on the right which represent a pleasant E Major third, the tension resolves. It’s beautiful how specific combinations of pitch can evoke strong feelings of tension and resolution.
G Major
This piece is a visual representation of the G (natural) minor scale. You can hear the wavy notes played simultaneously while the square notes are short and staccato. To me, G Minor feels haunting and tranquil. The piece can most easily be understood in tandem with the audio, while “reading” the artwork left to right.
Sustain
I wanted to make a piece that emulated the look of MIDI data (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) in music production software. The note being played lengthens horizontally according to how long the note is held. Like the other pieces, this is best understood by listening while viewing. I chose these specific notes because I specifically love the colors of B major.
Chromatic
This work displays all 12 notes within an octave on a piano keyboard. In western music, we divide an octave into 12 equal intervals — but not all music is limited in this way. Microtonal instruments divide the octave into more than 12 equal intervals and create new worlds of scales, pitch, and theory, but for the sake of time and convenience I’ll be sticking to a standard piano keyboard.
F Major 7
An F major 7 chord feels, green, nostalgic, and heavenly to me. Meant to be “read” left to right, I wanted to visualize how the notes rise in pitch and how each successive tone builds on the one previously played. The “7” or the amber color in the chord is what creates that heavenly sense of suspension.
“Color is a power which directly influences the soul.”
- Wassily Kandinsky
C# Major
The final piece in this project is a variation of the previously viewed C Major. To let all 12 tones and colors in the octave have their time to shine, we transposed the work up a semitone to C sharp. The transposed version further displays the idea that a change in key signature can alter the entire color palate of a piece of music.
Thank you Ben, Anna Kate, Coleman, Mom, Dad, Zoltan, Matthew Akers, David Steinweg, and Wassily Kandinsky.
In the eternal memory of our twin superpower – the discovery and exploration of which brought us closer together than ever. I love you so much, Ben!