Imagine listening to your favourite song and seeing a burst of vibrant colours swirling around you. Or maybe you taste chocolate when a particular chord plays. It sounds pretty cool, and some of us get to experience it. This fascinating experience is called synaesthesia, a condition where one sense sparks unexpected sensations in another.

What is synaesthesia?

Synaesthesia is a unique phenomenon that affects about 4% of people. It happens when one sense—like hearing—automatically triggers another, like seeing colours or tasting flavours. For people with synaesthesia (called synaesthetes), the world is a more intertwined sensory experience. Some of the common types linked to music include:

• Chromaesthesia: Seeing colours when you hear music.
• Lexical-gustatory synaesthesia: Tasting specific flavours when certain sounds or words are heard.
• Spatial-sequence synaesthesia: Seeing musical scales or numbers in specific places around you.

Synaesthesia in the music world

Many well-known musicians have synaesthesia and use it in their creative processes:

• Billie Eilish: She’s spoken about how synaesthesia influences her decisions on everything from album artwork to stage design. It even helped when she created her perfume by connecting smells to her synaesthetic experiences.
• Pharrell Williams: He sees colours when listening to music, using these colour associations to help find the right pitch and key for his songs.
• Hans Zimmer: The legendary film composer has chromaesthesia, which likely helps him craft the emotionally charged soundtracks he’s known for.
• Lorde: She adjusts her lyrics and sounds to match colours she feels are more appealing, making sure everything in her songs looks "right" in her mind.

The science behind synaesthesia

Though researchers aren’t entirely sure what causes synaesthesia, they think it has to do with extra connections between different parts of the brain. It could come from a few different factors, like:

• Genetics
• How the brain develops in childhood
• Unique neural wiring

Synaesthesia and creativity

For many synaesthetes, their condition is less of a challenge and more of a creative superpower. It can boost memory, fuel artistic ideas, and offer a totally unique perspective on life. In music, synaesthesia can inspire artists to create more complex and immersive experiences.

Synaesthesia is just one example of how different our brains can be. Whether you have synaesthesia or not, exploring how our senses are connected can open up new ways to enjoy and create music. So next time you hear a song you love, take a moment and ask yourself: what colours might it paint in your mind?