Synaesthesia

Synaesthesia is the process of picturing sounds in the minds eye. This could also be known as 'thought beats' or 'seeing sounds in your head'. In our last lesson we got a big bit of paper and put it in the middle of the table and we all sat around the table with a felt tip. We played two different songs and on separate pieces of paper we drew to the beat of the music. The result of this was 2 big pieces of paper with lots of scribbles on it. However we could tell what the different genres of music were because of the way people drew. One of them was slower and has more emotion in it and one was more upbeat and had more jagged edges.

A. Goodwin's (1993) quote says that Synaesthesia is 'A clip that responds to the pleasures of music, and in which that music is made visual, either in new ways or in ways that accentuate existing visual associations'.

Steve Archer stated in the February 2004 edition of 'MediaMagazine' that with the process of Synaesthesia you need to start with the music. To begin, the lyrics don't need to be analysed word for word but the main lyrics that pop up in the chorus for example, create a sense of subject matter. So these key words and phrases will have a part to play in the kind of visuals associated with the song. The other thing he says is that if songs are stories, then the singer is the storyteller and this obviously makes music videos stand out , as they feature a first person mode of address rather than the invisible 'fourth wall' of television narration. He says that the music or arrangements of the song, including instrumentation, the mix and effects, including samples generally works with the lyrics and grain of voice. He gives an example of how instruments can create visual associations, the slow twang of the steel guitar could create geographically based visual associations from the deep south of the US - a desert plain, a small town,one road out or men chewing tobacco. He says that everyone shares some of the same visualisations of what the music fits too.

The visualisations can be created in the format of a music video by using camera, colour, editing and mise en scene. For example, when you have an up beat pop song you would expect to see bright colours, fast choppy editing, modern clothing and a range of camera shots.