It's not synesthesia, but...

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I do not have color-grapheme synesthesia. I do not see colors when I hear music. I'm not a savant, etc.

However:

1) Numbers 0 through 9 have definite personalities to me that are absolutely unchanging.
2) When I hear music, each note makes a certain vibration in a different place inside my head -- it feels like a groove being stroked -- and the location of each vibration doesn't change.

What in the world is going on?

According to the Oxford Handbook of Synesthesia that's called sequence-personality synesthesia.

I thought everybody had synaesthesia. I didn't even know there was a word for it until I came to WP.

I thought it was so normal, that I never even spoke of it.

the first time I was handed a guitar in college I asked someone to look up the frequencies of some notes and preceded to correctly play those notes and a small sequence where I went trance-like for a bit. I apparently commented the the guitar is just an "abacus" and I was playing an algorithm... I don't really remember it and it didn't happen other times I tried to play.

Edited for reasons of a sensitive nature.

I'm not keen on people assuming that I am competitive about an issue that I have never spoke about before.

Last edited by babybird on 23 Dec 2013, 1:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Geez, guys, what is this -- a synesthetic contest?

No, not a contest, a conversation. You brought up synesthesia, something that many people here have experience with, and they were sharing that experience. If all you want is an answer to your question, without the side anecdotes, you should specify such; you are on a site for people who don't pick up nuance and implication very well after all.

With regard to your question, the numbers with personalities is a definite form of synesthesia, something this person discusses in detail:
http://feminspire.com/synesthesia-why-m ... onalities/

As far as the notes causing mental vibrations, I've never heard of such a thing as being synesthetic, but then, I've never heard of such a thing period, it's possible it's some obscure form of synesthesia, but I have never come across it in my studies.

Now for my own side anecdote. I have grapheme-colour synesthesia; letters, numbers words and shapes all have colour for me, making it easier to recall facts and dates, but the colours can also give me a headache if I think about them for too long. When people say names, I see them in my head like coloured text on a screen, sometimes capitalized, sometimes not, it's a very odd experience.

That's true. And I have to apologize for the following: I thought up the title of my thread to hear from those of us who don't seem to have classic synesthesia, but "something else." But what could I have meant by "something else" except for "some potential subset of synesthesia"? So in my thread I was asking for a paradox: to hear from someone who doesn't have X, but instead has X.

Anyway, let's keep going, because I do find your stories fascinating. And I wonder how some of you can function with all the sensory conflation.

There is probably spectrum of synesthesia ranging from strong consistent form measurable by objective tests to milder, less consistent forms blending into associations made by most people's brains.

I don't see colors when I listen to music, but when I think about musical notes, each note in a scale is definitely associated with a color. It's more associated with the concept of the note than the actual sound of it. I think modern tunings and temperaments make the color go off for me, because the frequencies aren't right.

Regarding ...

This actually happens to me all the time, but not every time, depending on the song. It did happened this morning on my way to work. I can’t quite describe the feeling as accurately I would like to, but it’s almost like a brain massage for me. When I play a song, it’s like the waves,vibrations and keys of the melody connect perfectly to something in my brain resulting in the “massage” or “vibration” like feeling.

If you don’t mind me asking ... what kind of music do you listen to ?

*I do have color-grapheme synesthesia.

Well, as my name seems to indicate, I am in love with the music of Bach. I am familiar with the entire repertoire of Western music, but I continue to return to Bach. No other music makes my brain so happy. It "feels" like the notes are running through places in my brain, and the bass notes step firmly in my gray matter. And counterpoint and harmony make my brain vibrate happiness. I feel it all mostly on the left side of my brain. (Of course there are no nerves in the brain, so this is a ghost phenomenon.) But I really do feel it.

I feel the "touch" of the music mostly in the middle of my left hemisphere in a vertically sliced circular space the center of which is two inches from my left hear. Higher notes are nearer the top of my brain, lower notes near my brain stem. Different timbres will activate different places horizontally. A string section will occupy an entire region. A piano note a point. Etc. No colors are associated with the sounds.

The artist that really do it for me are The Sundays, Akiko Yano, Cocteau Twins, Reveire Sound Revue and Kitchens of Distinction. I get a response mostly on the right side, about two inches above the ear and at the top sneaking over to left side. The bass and the highs are the same as you. Different notes will respond more in clusters. This only happens when I hear what I would consider perfect sound and melodic arrangements.

Interestingly ... this cannot happen at just anytime. It's either early in the morning or late at night when i'm coming home from work.

What I do not have is Chromesthesia. My Synesthesia is only associated with letters, numbers and whole words.

You can take an online grapheme color synesthesia test here: http://synesthete.org/

This is the type of test that is used to detect synesthesia in research.

I don't associate names or numbers with smells or tastes.
However, I have perfect pitch, and hearing a certain instrument playing in a certain key makes me think of being in a different place.

For example:
*I think of being in a garden centre on a sunny day when I hear a guitar playing a tune in G major, but a field in beginning twilight when the guitar plays something in D# minor.
*I think of a cloudy, rainy day in the town when I hear a song in C minor.
*Hearing a soft synth pad play a song in F# major makes me think of the night sky.
*When I hear any song in G minor, I immediately imagine being at the swimming baths.

Is this synaesthesia?