Discovering Synesthesia

My Story in My Own Words

I was five years old when I discovered that it wasn't normal for people to see color in music. My mom and dad were sitting in the living room playing songs – Mom singing, Dad playing his guitar. I sat with them, singing along, when I noticed something off.

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“Daddy, that's not how the song goes! It's supposed to be dark yellow, and you're playing red!”

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Both of my parents looked at me like I had spontaneously grown an extra arm. I insisted that my dad needed to change back to dark yellow, and after a few minutes of going back and forth, they started to understand what I was saying. Dad shifted the capo on the guitar and started to play again.

“No, that's still not it!” I said. “Now it's light purple!”

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He continued to adjust his capo until I heard the right color. I told him to stop there, finally appeased, and then continued to sing as if nothing weird had happened. How could they not know what the right color was? They heard the same song in the same color that I did when we listened to it on our CD or sang it at church; they were the weird ones for changing the color.

After that initial incident, my mom – who happens to have a degree in vocal performance – began to ask me more about the colors I heard, which still puzzled me. She made a chart with my crayons and some random letters and symbols that meant nothing to me. I didn't really understand at the time, but my mom had found the pattern in the invisible colors. I had sound-color synesthesia, and every note and key signature in music had a special color that allowed me to distinguish between each tone. When I had been upset at my dad playing the “wrong color”, it was because he had transposed the song's original key to one that was easier for him to play. I caught the difference immediately as my synesthesia gave me inherently perfect pitch.

Over time, as I grew older and learned the names of each key, I no longer relied on my colors to distinguish tones. Since that distinction was the only obvious use for my synesthesia, it went from a fascinating talking point to some random quirk that sat in the back of my mind. However, it never faded completely, and the colors became an abstract background to every song I heard, whether I realized it or not. Music was still a large part of my life – I learned to play piano, my younger siblings turned out to be musically inclined, and my parents were active in the music team at the churches we were in fellowship with. Yet despite the near-constant flow of color, I started to take my synesthesia for granted.

Then, after a particularly difficult year fraught with depression and anxiety, I felt a need to better understand myself and how to grow into my adult life. My family and I always knew I was quirky, synesthesia aside, and when I met and did extensive testing with a local Neuropsychologist, she concluded that I was on the autism spectrum. Along with an official diagnosis, the test results also showed that I had above average visual reasoning and visual spatial skills. When she talked with me more about those traits, I brought up that I had sound-color synesthesia. She became very interested, and it turned out that she was a member of a local wind symphony. She suggested that I use my experience in music and art to draw or paint the colors I see.

Inspired, I bought art supplies and painted my first official synesthesia painting for my Neuropsychologist. Although I was more comfortable with paper and digital formats, I preferred the bright colors of acrylic paint over the other mediums. She thought the painting was amazing and proceeded to put the canvas on top of a bookshelf in her office, where I assume it remains to this day. She encouraged me to pursue my art as a secondary form of income, and after a few more paintings, it turned out to be a good decision. Now I earn a decent wage from both of my studios – piano and art – and I couldn't be happier with any other line of work.

Thank you to all you people out there who share my passion for music and art. ~ Katie Harris