Her whole aura & personality just fit the story so perfectly. She definitely comes across as someone down to Earth that you could hang with, all while finding so much common ground. Thank you so much for sharing your story Geri! Sending you all the positive vibes & prosperity!
See at the exact same time I feel like I can relate to her based on my few strange experiences, I have always had this thing with music, anytime I listen to anything my hair is stood up straight and I feel like I'm about to take flight like in a dream state it's quite strange. I never assumed it was anything but normal but now it really sounds like I might have one of those confused pathways. I wouldn't say that I see sound necessarily but I automatically associate the shapes of objects in my mind with different colors every time a new sound is tossed into the mix the whole outlook of objects floating through my head while the song plays make me feel just great. I cannot explain it well at all. It feels like when your skin crawls hair stands on end but I feel this overwhelming good feeling which always makes me just leak the tears can't stop it
@@AdeJohnson Literally because acid can cause full on synesthesia and connect different parts of the brain very similar to what the actual condition is like. Experiencing full on psychedelic synesthesia is by far one of the most interesting things thats ever happened to me.
It can be overwhelming at times, especially when you need to focus on a task at hand. I have to make an effort to "block it out" while I'm doing important things. Places like Malls, shopping can be extremely draining because of it. Imagine hearing everyone all at once.
I adore her. Such a light in her. I have synesthesia as well, along with some other interesting wiring. And I am with her, I would never do away with it. The first "post pandemic" concert I went to was Chopin (solo piano) by candlelight in a masonic grand hall. I wept it was so intense. The experience there in the dark was so brilliant and saturated. Fast whisps of color weaving into one another, gradually warming and cooling tones and pour overs of color,, slow shifts of sensation in my body, additionally I had visuals of scenes and objects that would surface and fade from out of and back into the color. It seems like it just gets more involved as I age and become more aligned to myself.
@@boohere2 I have it as well since I can remember. I have it when I have my eyes closed. Like when writing this I've closed my eyes for a couple of seconds and a car past by my house (quiet road but with brick stones, about 35 meters from me) and I saw a yellow bar from the corner of my eyes cross like a / symbol (also the direction of the road orientated from my bedroom) the yellow color went from brighter yellow to a dimmed yellowish and had some kind of ripple till half way of my eyes like /////// but the brightness dimmed also from left to right. Different sound makes different colors and different patters for me.
2:06 yeah Electronic Music! Thats the reason why young people, who once experienced electronic music in a rave or something like that, under the influence of psychedelics love that musicgenre so much - because its sooooooo damn enriched with details which you realize the most under the influence of psychedelics you dont just hear them, no, you feel, see, taste and smell them... its so lovely 🥰
Electronic music gives me the strongest, vivid visions among all music. I listen to 90s UK rave like Orbital and Leftfield and every drum beat of each song has their own colour and shape. This gift of seeing music is so enjoyable.
She’s amazing! I used to have synesthesia as a kid, but it went away. Never could explain it. Just enjoyed the colors and visuals and thought it was normal.
Apparently most kids has it. During childhood the brain is calibrating synapses, deciding which ones are useful. Almost everyone "grows out of it". Although it's more like your brain establishing the most useful ones.
She probably listens to Aphex Twin (Richard D. James) since he is well known to make his music around his synesthesia. It must be interesting to experience art from another who has the same condition. Also ASCII-art should look nice in pseudo color.
Oh I would love to meet this women. Her perspective on sound .. i want to hear more of it. Listen to some music with her and just talk about how it makes you feel.
I'm also a synesthete who sees sound, and it's not always great. Some sounds, or songs, look horrible. Sometimes it even sounds good but looks bad. So it's not always such a great thing.
The first time I tripped on acid the same happened to me and I was mesmerized to tears due to it. Happened again a few more times but never as powerful as that first time because I was always waiting and hoping it would happen.
I have grapheme-color, sound-color (as she calls chromesthesia even though chromesthesia is usually a horribly bad experience with it, like a grating feeling from the people I’ve met who’ve been diagnosed with that type), timbre-color, timbre-texture, & multiple others including graphemes having personalities & other things. My sound-color synesthesia is more active than she describes. I essentially hear with my eyes, so I tend to look away from people when I’m in a loud space so I can see their voice better. I have figured out with the help of professionals that my combination of synesthesia causes a certain cognitive dissonance, that my grapheme-color synesthesia tells me something is one color, when the sound of it is a different color, & the timbre is a wholly different color & texture/shape. I use it to write music since it’s a part of my hearing but I especially like to challenge myself & reverse engineer works of art I like into the musical representation of what I saw. I wrote a whole album based on it, which was fun. People say “it must be like you’re on acid all the time!” I wouldn’t know. Probably not. I’ve never taken psychedelics due to a fear of it being taken away somehow by it causing synesthesia for normal people when they’re high, I thought I might lose it. I never thought it was interesting or unique until I was told when I was 14 that I had it. I thought everyone experienced what I did. Except I had a couple times where, for example, I’d remark that someone’s name had a lovely shade of indigo with yellow at the end & they just looked at me weirdly. So that made me question it a little. But a music teacher figured it out & I was tested after that. I’m glad it’s a part of my life. Edit: I also get in friendly arguments all the time with other synesthetes about what colors certain notes, chords, and letters are.
@@Reth_Hard Weirdly enough that isn’t the first time a person has asked me that. I suppose numbers wouldn’t necessarily have a race since they’re not human nor do they have a melanin count. I do find the way colors look naturally, the way it’s spelled out which instantly pops into my head (which then also shows color), & the way they look when someone says the color out loud to be different, & it doesn’t actively bother me usually. It’s more of a passive “patting your head & rubbing your stomach” feeling but more subtle, nuanced, yet at the same time like rubbing your stomach with a brillo pad & patting your head with a bunch of tiny pins at times. That makes no sense so I’m sorry but short answer I’m not racist against colors hahah. More like, for example, when people read the color purple but its in red & that screws their brain up when someone asks what color it is. I guess that’s my best way of describing it.
So words/text have color, does this include this text? What would happen if you saw rainbow colored text instead of black/white? Is the word "rainbow" always rainbow colored? You synesthesiacs are so fascinating, to your average person this is all extremely counterintuitive, and yet you all spend decades not realizing how different your lives are.
I don't see numbers with colors but I have to admit I'm a bit racist against some of them, especially the number 3. Probably because it's one of the lowest odd numbers but I'm not quite sure... I just don't like him! lol (And it's hard to pronounce it correctly it english!)
I usually see colours when i hear songs. Some of my favourite colour are my favourite just because they remind of my favourite songs and my favourite songs is something delightful since i see my favourite colours in it :)
❤ Her husband's voice 🥰 I could listen to Geri talk all day. Her aura and perspective is upbeat and yet comforting. Now I have to go check out her art!
So glad she has owned her gift. I had a partner who grew up with mild synesthesia and he eventually blocked his out. He could see colours, and picked me out of a dark crowded nightclub because of the colour he could see around me. He told me I was a rare yellow that he had only seen on one other person which was his brother. He said from the colour that he knew I was special ☺️
when flow state kicks in and the vibe is right, you connect the the universe. Movement is perfect, art is perfect, you are completely in the zone. If you don't know, I pray one day you will.
What an awesome lady, I'm a shaman and was born with a few things myself I feel you my friend. Keep spreading the awareness around the topic and that beautiful smile. May love, light and wisdom be with all 🙏💚🧙♂️
There are some people, like me, who are both aphantasic and synesthetic. They aren't contradictory because the sensations we experiences are just as real -- not in our heads -- as the other sensory experiences. Think of it more this way: aphantasics can't visually imagine in their heads, but what synesthetes experience aren't imaginations at all.
I feel like I see colour in my head but only when I am thinking about music. I started making music myself just over a year ago and usually if I am doing something boring or somewhere where I cant listen to music or be watching something thats when I come up with music and lyrics and thats when I see colours and images in my head but not when I hear actual music or sound, only when I am imagining it. Not sure thats the same thing though. It would be really cool to hear what people with synesthesia do hear when they listen to my music though which is all electronic lol but yeah anybody who has it thats reading this, would be really interested in hearing what you see when you listen to my music, even if you hate it lol
That is crazy because I also have OCD, and I also have Spatial Sequence Synesthesia, as well as associating images and colors with sounds. I see time like a holographic calendar in my head. My whole life I thought that was how everyone visualized time, until I asked other people and they said they don't do that. The closest thing in my family is my dad, who also sees images associated with words and songs, so I guess I got it from him. He is also a great artist, and people say I'm talented at drawing too, but I don't do it anymore. I will see animations in my head when I say certain words. For example, when I say 'thermonuclear,' I used to imagine an animation like a gif of missiles flying and hitting targets, with a mushroom cloud exploding. When I say the word 'ZZ Top' (like the band), I would see a top hat spinning on an old school record in front of a purple background. Their music I associate with the color purple. Jimi Hendrix, the 60s blues artist, I associate his music with vibrant blues, greens, and reds. The song Mary Jane's Lady Dance I associate with a dark green, and because that song plays around an Am chord on guitar, and that was one of the first songs I learned on guitar, I now associate the Am chord and A# with dark green. I was actually going to ask that same question, if you have time, I would be interested what you associate with my songs. I will listen to yours.
It would be so dope to hang out with this lady and just share music all day. On top of the fact that she has an amazing gift, she just exudes such positive energy. Truly a remarkable human being.
A very famous concert pianist from France (she's also lived some years in America) named Helene Grimaud also has synesthesia. She's not as vocal about her experience of the condition, but she has talked about it on different occasions.
What a wonderful lady!! When she said her favourite sound is her husbands voice it made my heart melt a little bit and I Being someone who loves music and poetry/song writing, this sounds like a gift!! I almost wish I had this but definitely wish I could see music 😍
This was such a nice insight, thank you! I have a much lighter version of synesthesia and actually tend to forget about it in my daily life. It used to be more intense and my mom noticed when I was younger but didn't know about synesthesia back then. However I still see certain letters, names/people, numbers (I agree that two is yellow and young) and some other stuff in color and such (I notice when I have to choose new notebooks for example, it still distracts me when the color doesn't match the subject).
This is such a great video! I generally have a much more milder form of synesthesia (sometimes I question even if I have it at all) but it’s wonderful to hear more about it, especially with the more vivid experiences of others! God is so clever like that! 👍🏻
I realized that I had synesthesia in my second year of Art School, in Art History class , approaching the work of Kandinsky. I had never payed much of attention to it until i realized that not everyone has it as an experience. In Elementary School my approach to learning music was very rudimentary and stop at that , because I couldn't correlate anotated music notes with the colors and shapes that I saw in the notes, and I quit.
I had an amazing experience on Acid once’s where I could see the music I was hearing was one of the most beautiful experience I have had. Another experience I had on acid was tasting fruit that I was looking at, the shits pretty cool haha. This lady seems like she has a gift.
I wasn't aware of All the different forms of synesthesia - I was aware of sound- colour , &. Taste- smell ( I have this form , + feeling incoming weather , that I'm aware of ) . You are one of the most complex synestets who has been encountered . There's also a big load of Empathic stuff with myself as well .
I don't see sound when I have my eyes open, but when closed I do see sound as well in colors. For example when I'm in bed and not sleep yet but have my eyes closed and I hear a loud bang on one side of the house I do see a ripple effect sourcing from that direction. the color is different depending on how deep or loud it is. Many people never believed me for a long time with it and called me crazy, I was glad to learn about synesthesia a couple of years ago (I'm 38 at the time of writing). Because people called me crazy I've stopped speaking about.
I have synesthesia of sight/sound. My experience isn’t like hers though. When I hear sounds (specifically as an example, really well-composed music), it’s like putting on “invisible” VR goggles, and I’m existing in two settings at the same time. I’m more attached to my physical body, but music is like watching movies. I’ll sit down and start heavy-breathing like I’m literally on a roller coaster, a starship, a boat, flying through the air, tumbling underground, getting goozed on in a toxic otherworldly cave… It’s not an “active imagination,” I’m seeing the things I hear. I’m not creating it, I’m seeing it. I’m feeling it. I have a sense of an alternate reality AND the one I’m attached to, and I can feel things from that alternate reality affecting my corporeal form. Hearing people’s voices varies though. Some people are hollow and distant. Some people sound like I’m looking up at a canopy of leaves, with a waterfall in my periphery. And again, this is what my mind is being shown through my ears, not my fantasizing about someone. It doesn’t convert so well from sight to sound, or I’d be a musician by now. But I have heard a yellow crayon’s color before. Tbh it was excruciating. I was also on shrooms then. It’s really a pretty friggin’ awesome type of the condition to have. And it makes writing music videos easy. But it also ruins some videos. “Na Na Na” by My Chemical Romance… Goddamn they blew it so badly at the guitar’s bridge. That should’ve been a visually intense scene, even with a grenade detonating and popping the back of the chasing car to flip it over. But no, they did a mf stare-off. Good god they weren’t even listening to their own song when they wrote that video! >
I didn't know this wasn't how everyone heard sound till I was about 21. I asked a friend while driving "what does this song look like to you"? And she just looked at me weird. I thought I was asking a mundane question. Kinda a mind-blowing moment in my life. "What do you mean you don't see sound?" I "see" every sound... From the birds chirping and leaves blowing to the footsteps/patterns of people in a store. For some reason Classical music is so "powerful" and I'm not necessarily a fan of that type of music. It's not a "power", it's just the way my/our brains are wired 🤷♂️
I have synesthesia too, numbers, letters and FEELINGS have color for me. Sometimes it's hard for me o describe what i feel and it's like there isn't a word for it, but i feel in color. Psychological and physical feelings both have colors. I remember talking about feelings as colors when i was child and my dad understood that. Kids didn't get it but went along with it. My synestheia is really strong on magic mushrooms, it's like it swallows my brain and everything is connected like this. All sences, all parts of the brain work together to understand meanings of things from all angles.
I feel like this documentary left empty spots for people who never heard of this condition before. Does the condition affect your visual acuity? i.e: can you accurately know whether traffic light is green or red? Or does it shift as you hear sounds? Thanks for your feedback in advance.
One part of me is kind of jealous; seeing sounds seems amazing! On the other hand, I wonder how it would affect daily activities like driving a car in traffic, what would that be like?
I have Aphantasia. That condition might make an interesting Vice bit. Since most people that have Aphantasia don’t realize it until they learn about it. It’s pretty interesting check it out
Sometimes i got this while listening to music while smoking pure weed. It is so much intense that you are IN the music, exploring ecery single sound individually with maximum focus and creativity. It's actually insane once you experience it.
I have an auditory synesthesia. I can hear subtle movements like movement of a fly or fish. I can hear the woosh but it's probably my brain adding sounds to the movements. Even when scrolling the scrollbar on the phone or on a computer or the progress bar. I can hear the scrollbar sliding and bumping on the ends. The downside of this is you sometimes you can't sleep. These sounds that I hear is not going into my ears but directly in my mind. I would really want to see colors instead of having these auditory perceptions.
So cool! Describes and explains a lot about my mind visions (a musical score Mandelbrot style) and involuntary drumming or instrumental fingering the notes when I tune in and check-out. It's sooo relaxing to spend 2-3 hours "in the zone".
I have synesthesia and for the people who's wondering. No it's not really like tripping balls everytime we hear music. When it's been there since you were a child, you just get used to it. I thought everybody had that for a long time ! It's also not overwhelming at all ! Its very passive and doesnt require energy.
I think everybody has this on a certain level. I can mix up sound, vision, sense and smell like a mind-game. Also, days and hours have colors, a square and a triangle have different sounds. I also have a visual number system. It can shift it's scale at every 3 digits, like 0, 1000 and 1000000 are the same point. Strangely enough, everything is spiraling around myself but the negative numbers disappear in a straight line into the distance. I don't think any of it is special, mostly cultural influence.
... A powerful interview... 🦋😎....am a little proud, as a semi-professional musician, to be in the top rank in terms of Geri's listening habits on lastfm........but I'm not a synesthetic
I would like to have seen a test like with piano notes, someone plays a note and the person would guess the color, I'm searching yt but I don't find this test, this is how you test for perfect pitch, it's really reliable.
I think it depends on the person. Some people perceive pitch as color, others (including me) perceive it as position (higher note -> higher position usually). That said, I think the really strong visuals only occur when you have an entire arrangement. So if you broke a song into its individual parts, it wouldn't create the same effects.
What most people don’t realize is that this isn’t an obscure thing either. Billie Ellish, lady Gaga, billy Joel, Lorde, Marilyn Monroe and many other people have syenthesia
Most people who say that they have synesthesia are bullshitting and just want to be portrayed as special. Specially these days. I have spoken with dozens of girls who claim to have it. They drop it in conversation for attention and to impress. You begin asking questions and it becomes apparent that it is just a lie.
Hmmm I didn’t think this was a thing. I think I have this, I tried to explain to my friend that was playing a song on his guitar was almost like seeing a painting being painted while the song was playing(in my head) but its just seeing the brush tip smack or caress the canvas depending on sounds. I can see the colors or movement only while they are playing… or maybe I’m just crazy
If you weren’t high & see it all the time you may have it. That’s pretty much how it can work for some people. I have it & that’s kind of how mine works in a way but I also have a bunch of different color types so it messes with it.
@@Trymr that’s pretty cool. I didn’t know it had a name, I thought it was just my eyes messing with me or I was just weird like that lol I’d try and explain but no one understood what I ment
i know maggie Rogers and Lorde have this, so its really coool to see what they potentially do. It feels like these people are tuned to a dimension beyond this one. Such an awesome superpower.
mine is mainly sound-shape with music, and sometimes sound-color. i think it might also be sight-feeling if that makes sense, just based on things i have done as a kid.
@@Trippin710 I mean it was a hallucination but at the time I "actually" did. Blue, red, green and every shade inbetween all had different frequencies. I planted my ear on the side of a house to hear/feel the red paint and it had a low calming buzz while a blue water bottle was a little more erratic but intriguing.
I literally thought all people has it. I just discovered I have it just last night when my bf told me it's not normal to see letters in colors and see music in shapes and colors when you hear it. And I have had it since I can remember, but never talked bout it since I thought everyone has it.🤯
I've heard it said that PCP makes you see sounds and hear colors... It also makes the view from a sidewalk, looking directly down the curb and onto to the street, as if you're looking into the grand canyon. It toys with your depth perception.
I have experienced tinker taping all of my life, like seeing subtitles/closedcaptios whenever somebody is speaking. I thought it was normal until one day I asked my classmates if they saw words whenever someone was speaking. I can literally smell pictures of food. Sometimes I can smell voices, and music, e.g., rock music smells of beer lol.
Imagine, 50 years in the future, everyone could see the things she sees if they wanted to, because they could either have some vr set/glasses, or they would actually be able to change the connections in your brain.
I think i have like mild version of it. Like for example jazz horns often sound like orange to me and some other "old movie chore" type horns sound like blue and white. Most high high pitched sounds sound like clear white and then grey when going lower. Drums sound like shaded of black and grey usually like stones and dark metal type colors. Also its usually connected to some type of visual scenary that i "see in my mind. Some specific old movie scores with horns makes me see/imagine snowy mountain tops and blue sky and white clouds in it.
I only discovered about 6 years ago I have 2 types of synesthesia; Ordinal Linguistic personification and chromesthesia. I have full personalities tied to numbers and letters. I just thought that's how everyone as kids learned how to read and do math haha. Then I have chromesthesia like she does except it's more like a projector displaying colors and shapes against a white canvas in the back of my head throughout the day. When I try to sleep then it's "in front of my eyes". The best I describe to people is when you rub your eyes too hard and you see flashes and splotches of color. That's how it is at night for me.
i think i have this and when i was younger it was much more annoying than it is. i haven’t been tested but days have colours so do months . i feel textures and see colours and sounds to numbers. i feel textures when listening to sounds as well as seeing colours and patterns depending on like the pitches of the music too for example like asap rocky excuse me gives intense browns and hints of silver and purple btw i don’t take drugs and i’ve had this all my life it’s really annoying tbh
This is me too....ever since orchestra in 5th grade 🥴 I knew....its really helped me with all my musical experiences and production 🥸 i REALLY want to design a DAW add on that uses shapes and colors
I have a feeling this goes deeper then the study’s say , seeing sound? Sound is vibrations so she’s able to see what keeps the universe in flow??? Sign me tf up
Yep, nobody actually knows if what people with synesthesia are actually seeing/experiencing. We can only go by their claims and science cannot prove those claims even a little bit as of yet.
I swear I thought connecting color with sound is something everybody did. Because to me it makes sense for sound or music to have color. For the longest I never knew it had a name. I just thought that’s how everyone saw music or sound.
LSD + decent headphones + a dark room = closed eye visuals like this lady is describing. This is such a gift she has, natural hppd? Who knows? All I know is that I wouldn’t get much done 😂
Her whole aura & personality just fit the story so perfectly. She definitely comes across as someone down to Earth that you could hang with, all while finding so much common ground. Thank you so much for sharing your story Geri! Sending you all the positive vibes & prosperity!
I want to be her BFF
See at the exact same time I feel like I can relate to her based on my few strange experiences, I have always had this thing with music, anytime I listen to anything my hair is stood up straight and I feel like I'm about to take flight like in a dream state it's quite strange. I never assumed it was anything but normal but now it really sounds like I might have one of those confused pathways. I wouldn't say that I see sound necessarily but I automatically associate the shapes of objects in my mind with different colors every time a new sound is tossed into the mix the whole outlook of objects floating through my head while the song plays make me feel just great. I cannot explain it well at all. It feels like when your skin crawls hair stands on end but I feel this overwhelming good feeling which always makes me just leak the tears can't stop it
I mean, it's not like we're X-men or something lol. You might know a synesthete and not even be aware of it.
Man this is like tripping balls everytime you listen to music, how fantastic.
Most have to pay for such beauty.
And it's legal (yet!) :)
@CatRat A lot like acid then.
@@AdeJohnson Literally because acid can cause full on synesthesia and connect different parts of the brain very similar to what the actual condition is like. Experiencing full on psychedelic synesthesia is by far one of the most interesting things thats ever happened to me.
It can be overwhelming at times, especially when you need to focus on a task at hand.
I have to make an effort to "block it out" while I'm doing important things. Places like Malls, shopping can be extremely draining because of it. Imagine hearing everyone all at once.
I adore her. Such a light in her. I have synesthesia as well, along with some other interesting wiring. And I am with her, I would never do away with it. The first "post pandemic" concert I went to was Chopin (solo piano) by candlelight in a masonic grand hall. I wept it was so intense. The experience there in the dark was so brilliant and saturated. Fast whisps of color weaving into one another, gradually warming and cooling tones and pour overs of color,, slow shifts of sensation in my body, additionally I had visuals of scenes and objects that would surface and fade from out of and back into the color. It seems like it just gets more involved as I age and become more aligned to myself.
Neurotypicals can experience this by going to a concert on LSD
Do you?
Wow. I wish I had that. I can envision and do that, but to have it come naturally without thinking is really interesting.
@@boohere2 curious about that too!
@@boohere2 I have it as well since I can remember. I have it when I have my eyes closed. Like when writing this I've closed my eyes for a couple of seconds and a car past by my house (quiet road but with brick stones, about 35 meters from me) and I saw a yellow bar from the corner of my eyes cross like a / symbol (also the direction of the road orientated from my bedroom) the yellow color went from brighter yellow to a dimmed yellowish and had some kind of ripple till half way of my eyes like /////// but the brightness dimmed also from left to right. Different sound makes different colors and different patters for me.
2:06 yeah Electronic Music! Thats the reason why young people, who once experienced electronic music in a rave or something like that, under the influence of psychedelics love that musicgenre so much - because its sooooooo damn enriched with details which you realize the most under the influence of psychedelics you dont just hear them, no, you feel, see, taste and smell them... its so lovely 🥰
Electronic music gives me the strongest, vivid visions among all music. I listen to 90s UK rave like Orbital and Leftfield and every drum beat of each song has their own colour and shape. This gift of seeing music is so enjoyable.
I wish they would have talked more about her cool artwork she makes.
Me too! I was hoping they would!!
She’s amazing! I used to have synesthesia as a kid, but it went away. Never could explain it. Just enjoyed the colors and visuals and thought it was normal.
Apparently most kids has it. During childhood the brain is calibrating synapses, deciding which ones are useful. Almost everyone "grows out of it". Although it's more like your brain establishing the most useful ones.
same
Her paintings are unbelievably cool. It's all the proof you'd need, they're all so curious and intruiging
Her art reminds me of Kandinsky's
She probably listens to Aphex Twin (Richard D. James) since he is well known to make his music around his synesthesia. It must be interesting to experience art from another who has the same condition. Also ASCII-art should look nice in pseudo color.
I absolutely listen to Apex Twin!!!
@@gerihahn7891
Yesss love aphex twin!!
Maybe Tipper too
Wow, I didn’t know he had that.
I feel like this video should have been waaaaay longer. I have so many questions!
Oh I would love to meet this women. Her perspective on sound .. i want to hear more of it. Listen to some music with her and just talk about how it makes you feel.
This is so cool and such an amazing way to go through life 🙏🏽💜
Lol you’re everywhere
I'm also a synesthete who sees sound, and it's not always great. Some sounds, or songs, look horrible. Sometimes it even sounds good but looks bad. So it's not always such a great thing.
Once I had a very deep LSD experience, and I felt synesthesia! It is simply amazing, but I cannot imagine having it while sober!
The first time I tripped on acid the same happened to me and I was mesmerized to tears due to it. Happened again a few more times but never as powerful as that first time because I was always waiting and hoping it would happen.
@@cactaceous Hahahah I feel you bro. It could also be because that first time is so unexpected, and new ! :)
I never did LSD (plan was to try it last new year but something came up). But I can say that MDMA made my synesthesia stronger multiple instances.
Never had it on lsd but did xtc and cubesins amazing
She has incredible music taste. And vision.
I have grapheme-color, sound-color (as she calls chromesthesia even though chromesthesia is usually a horribly bad experience with it, like a grating feeling from the people I’ve met who’ve been diagnosed with that type), timbre-color, timbre-texture, & multiple others including graphemes having personalities & other things. My sound-color synesthesia is more active than she describes. I essentially hear with my eyes, so I tend to look away from people when I’m in a loud space so I can see their voice better.
I have figured out with the help of professionals that my combination of synesthesia causes a certain cognitive dissonance, that my grapheme-color synesthesia tells me something is one color, when the sound of it is a different color, & the timbre is a wholly different color & texture/shape. I use it to write music since it’s a part of my hearing but I especially like to challenge myself & reverse engineer works of art I like into the musical representation of what I saw. I wrote a whole album based on it, which was fun.
People say “it must be like you’re on acid all the time!” I wouldn’t know. Probably not. I’ve never taken psychedelics due to a fear of it being taken away somehow by it causing synesthesia for normal people when they’re high, I thought I might lose it. I never thought it was interesting or unique until I was told when I was 14 that I had it. I thought everyone experienced what I did. Except I had a couple times where, for example, I’d remark that someone’s name had a lovely shade of indigo with yellow at the end & they just looked at me weirdly. So that made me question it a little. But a music teacher figured it out & I was tested after that. I’m glad it’s a part of my life.
Edit: I also get in friendly arguments all the time with other synesthetes about what colors certain notes, chords, and letters are.
If you see numbers having different colors, are you racist against some of them?
@@Reth_Hard Weirdly enough that isn’t the first time a person has asked me that. I suppose numbers wouldn’t necessarily have a race since they’re not human nor do they have a melanin count. I do find the way colors look naturally, the way it’s spelled out which instantly pops into my head (which then also shows color), & the way they look when someone says the color out loud to be different, & it doesn’t actively bother me usually. It’s more of a passive “patting your head & rubbing your stomach” feeling but more subtle, nuanced, yet at the same time like rubbing your stomach with a brillo pad & patting your head with a bunch of tiny pins at times. That makes no sense so I’m sorry but short answer I’m not racist against colors hahah. More like, for example, when people read the color purple but its in red & that screws their brain up when someone asks what color it is. I guess that’s my best way of describing it.
Is your album available publicly? I'd be interested to hear it
So words/text have color, does this include this text? What would happen if you saw rainbow colored text instead of black/white? Is the word "rainbow" always rainbow colored? You synesthesiacs are so fascinating, to your average person this is all extremely counterintuitive, and yet you all spend decades not realizing how different your lives are.
I don't see numbers with colors but I have to admit I'm a bit racist against some of them, especially the number 3. Probably because it's one of the lowest odd numbers but I'm not quite sure... I just don't like him! lol (And it's hard to pronounce it correctly it english!)
I usually see colours when i hear songs.
Some of my favourite colour are my favourite just because they remind of my favourite songs and my favourite songs is something delightful since i see my favourite colours in it :)
I love the video's you post :)
❤ Her husband's voice 🥰 I could listen to Geri talk all day. Her aura and perspective is upbeat and yet comforting. Now I have to go check out her art!
So glad she has owned her gift. I had a partner who grew up with mild synesthesia and he eventually blocked his out.
He could see colours, and picked me out of a dark crowded nightclub because of the colour he could see around me.
He told me I was a rare yellow that he had only seen on one other person which was his brother.
He said from the colour that he knew I was special ☺️
Pick up artists be wilin’
when flow state kicks in and the vibe is right, you connect the the universe. Movement is perfect, art is perfect, you are completely in the zone. If you don't know, I pray one day you will.
I want to hear more from this woman!
DU HAST
this lady is a vibe
What an awesome lady, I'm a shaman and was born with a few things myself I feel you my friend.
Keep spreading the awareness around the topic and that beautiful smile.
May love, light and wisdom be with all 🙏💚🧙♂️
She’s adorable. Love her energy too.
Watching this as someone with aphantasia this is interesting. She experiences a whole other type of world which I think I’ll never experience
Same here. Where as I have a mental blindness, she sees more than most. Brain wiring is so strange.
There are some people, like me, who are both aphantasic and synesthetic. They aren't contradictory because the sensations we experiences are just as real -- not in our heads -- as the other sensory experiences. Think of it more this way: aphantasics can't visually imagine in their heads, but what synesthetes experience aren't imaginations at all.
@@ourgoalielife oh wow thank you for that explanation. I understand better now
Try dmt
I feel like I see colour in my head but only when I am thinking about music. I started making music myself just over a year ago and usually if I am doing something boring or somewhere where I cant listen to music or be watching something thats when I come up with music and lyrics and thats when I see colours and images in my head but not when I hear actual music or sound, only when I am imagining it. Not sure thats the same thing though.
It would be really cool to hear what people with synesthesia do hear when they listen to my music though which is all electronic lol but yeah anybody who has it thats reading this, would be really interested in hearing what you see when you listen to my music, even if you hate it lol
That is crazy because I also have OCD, and I also have Spatial Sequence Synesthesia, as well as associating images and colors with sounds. I see time like a holographic calendar in my head. My whole life I thought that was how everyone visualized time, until I asked other people and they said they don't do that. The closest thing in my family is my dad, who also sees images associated with words and songs, so I guess I got it from him. He is also a great artist, and people say I'm talented at drawing too, but I don't do it anymore.
I will see animations in my head when I say certain words. For example, when I say 'thermonuclear,' I used to imagine an animation like a gif of missiles flying and hitting targets, with a mushroom cloud exploding. When I say the word 'ZZ Top' (like the band), I would see a top hat spinning on an old school record in front of a purple background. Their music I associate with the color purple. Jimi Hendrix, the 60s blues artist, I associate his music with vibrant blues, greens, and reds. The song Mary Jane's Lady Dance I associate with a dark green, and because that song plays around an Am chord on guitar, and that was one of the first songs I learned on guitar, I now associate the Am chord and A# with dark green.
I was actually going to ask that same question, if you have time, I would be interested what you associate with my songs. I will listen to yours.
It would be so dope to hang out with this lady and just share music all day. On top of the fact that she has an amazing gift, she just exudes such positive energy. Truly a remarkable human being.
A very famous concert pianist from France (she's also lived some years in America) named Helene Grimaud also has synesthesia. She's not as vocal about her experience of the condition, but she has talked about it on different occasions.
What a wonderful lady!! When she said her favourite sound is her husbands voice it made my heart melt a little bit and I Being someone who loves music and poetry/song writing, this sounds like a gift!! I almost wish I had this but definitely wish I could see music 😍
This was such a nice insight, thank you!
I have a much lighter version of synesthesia and actually tend to forget about it in my daily life. It used to be more intense and my mom noticed when I was younger but didn't know about synesthesia back then.
However I still see certain letters, names/people, numbers (I agree that two is yellow and young) and some other stuff in color and such (I notice when I have to choose new notebooks for example, it still distracts me when the color doesn't match the subject).
Very cool that Geri actually explains the colors she can see. Geri Hahn thank you - hope you can / will do more and longer videos.
This is such a great video! I generally have a much more milder form of synesthesia (sometimes I question even if I have it at all) but it’s wonderful to hear more about it, especially with the more vivid experiences of others! God is so clever like that! 👍🏻
I realized that I had synesthesia in my second year of Art School, in Art History class , approaching the work of Kandinsky. I had never payed much of attention to it until i realized that not everyone has it as an experience. In Elementary School my approach to learning music was very rudimentary and stop at that , because I couldn't correlate anotated music notes with the colors and shapes that I saw in the notes, and I quit.
Bruh she fucks with LCD AND FLYING LOTUS? This woman is goated.
I had an amazing experience on Acid once’s where I could see the music I was hearing was one of the most beautiful experience I have had. Another experience I had on acid was tasting fruit that I was looking at, the shits pretty cool haha. This lady seems like she has a gift.
I wasn't aware of All the different forms of synesthesia - I was aware of sound- colour , &. Taste- smell ( I have this form , + feeling incoming weather , that I'm aware of ) .
You are one of the most complex synestets who has been encountered .
There's also a big load of Empathic stuff with myself as well .
I don't see sound when I have my eyes open, but when closed I do see sound as well in colors. For example when I'm in bed and not sleep yet but have my eyes closed and I hear a loud bang on one side of the house I do see a ripple effect sourcing from that direction. the color is different depending on how deep or loud it is.
Many people never believed me for a long time with it and called me crazy, I was glad to learn about synesthesia a couple of years ago (I'm 38 at the time of writing). Because people called me crazy I've stopped speaking about.
Anything percussive kind of looks like that to me, it's always white though. I see it as a disc with a wave rapidly going outward.
I have synesthesia of sight/sound. My experience isn’t like hers though. When I hear sounds (specifically as an example, really well-composed music), it’s like putting on “invisible” VR goggles, and I’m existing in two settings at the same time. I’m more attached to my physical body, but music is like watching movies. I’ll sit down and start heavy-breathing like I’m literally on a roller coaster, a starship, a boat, flying through the air, tumbling underground, getting goozed on in a toxic otherworldly cave…
It’s not an “active imagination,” I’m seeing the things I hear. I’m not creating it, I’m seeing it. I’m feeling it. I have a sense of an alternate reality AND the one I’m attached to, and I can feel things from that alternate reality affecting my corporeal form.
Hearing people’s voices varies though. Some people are hollow and distant. Some people sound like I’m looking up at a canopy of leaves, with a waterfall in my periphery. And again, this is what my mind is being shown through my ears, not my fantasizing about someone.
It doesn’t convert so well from sight to sound, or I’d be a musician by now. But I have heard a yellow crayon’s color before. Tbh it was excruciating. I was also on shrooms then.
It’s really a pretty friggin’ awesome type of the condition to have. And it makes writing music videos easy. But it also ruins some videos. “Na Na Na” by My Chemical Romance… Goddamn they blew it so badly at the guitar’s bridge. That should’ve been a visually intense scene, even with a grenade detonating and popping the back of the chasing car to flip it over. But no, they did a mf stare-off. Good god they weren’t even listening to their own song when they wrote that video! >
Yeah I have to avoid music videos, they're always vastly different than how I see it and the dissonance gets annoying.
I didn't know this wasn't how everyone heard sound till I was about 21. I asked a friend while driving "what does this song look like to you"? And she just looked at me weird.
I thought I was asking a mundane question. Kinda a mind-blowing moment in my life.
"What do you mean you don't see sound?"
I "see" every sound... From the birds chirping and leaves blowing to the footsteps/patterns of people in a store.
For some reason Classical music is so "powerful" and I'm not necessarily a fan of that type of music.
It's not a "power", it's just the way my/our brains are wired 🤷♂️
I have synesthesia too, numbers, letters and FEELINGS have color for me. Sometimes it's hard for me o describe what i feel and it's like there isn't a word for it, but i feel in color. Psychological and physical feelings both have colors. I remember talking about feelings as colors when i was child and my dad understood that. Kids didn't get it but went along with it. My synestheia is really strong on magic mushrooms, it's like it swallows my brain and everything is connected like this. All sences, all parts of the brain work together to understand meanings of things from all angles.
Sounds like a precursor to the most profound DMT experience ever...
Here's the key Sherlock. "My synesthesia is really strong on magic mushrooms". Hmm
@@sarahm6234 pretty sure they weren't doing mushroom trips as a small child!
same omg and like textures?
I feel like this documentary left empty spots for people who never heard of this condition before. Does the condition affect your visual acuity? i.e: can you accurately know whether traffic light is green or red? Or does it shift as you hear sounds? Thanks for your feedback in advance.
One part of me is kind of jealous; seeing sounds seems amazing! On the other hand, I wonder how it would affect daily activities like driving a car in traffic, what would that be like?
I have Aphantasia. That condition might make an interesting Vice bit. Since most people that have Aphantasia don’t realize it until they learn about it. It’s pretty interesting check it out
must be a blessing , she looks like she enjoys it alot
She's higher than a kite!!
@@sarahm6234 I bet it feels like that hahah
@@Greyalien587 Bahahaha.... true story!!!
She has a beautiful personality , good vibes and interesting watch
Sometimes i got this while listening to music while smoking pure weed. It is so much intense that you are IN the music, exploring ecery single sound individually with maximum focus and creativity. It's actually insane once you experience it.
My most favourite sound, "the sound of my husband's voice"
......My heart!!!❤
I have an auditory synesthesia. I can hear subtle movements like movement of a fly or fish. I can hear the woosh but it's probably my brain adding sounds to the movements. Even when scrolling the scrollbar on the phone or on a computer or the progress bar. I can hear the scrollbar sliding and bumping on the ends. The downside of this is you sometimes you can't sleep. These sounds that I hear is not going into my ears but directly in my mind. I would really want to see colors instead of having these auditory perceptions.
I've experienced synesthesia on psychedelics. I saw the sound of a drum as a blue/violet light. It was pretty amazing.
So cool! Describes and explains a lot about my mind visions (a musical score Mandelbrot style) and involuntary drumming or instrumental fingering the notes when I tune in and check-out. It's sooo relaxing to spend 2-3 hours "in the zone".
I have synesthesia and for the people who's wondering. No it's not really like tripping balls everytime we hear music. When it's been there since you were a child, you just get used to it. I thought everybody had that for a long time ! It's also not overwhelming at all ! Its very passive and doesnt require energy.
I think everybody has this on a certain level. I can mix up sound, vision, sense and smell like a mind-game. Also, days and hours have colors, a square and a triangle have different sounds. I also have a visual number system. It can shift it's scale at every 3 digits, like 0, 1000 and 1000000 are the same point. Strangely enough, everything is spiraling around myself but the negative numbers disappear in a straight line into the distance. I don't think any of it is special, mostly cultural influence.
I have this same synesthesia and I love it!
She said Flying Lotus & metal I love this lady
She seems like so much fun.
The interior design and outfit choice 🙌🏼🔥👏🏼
Watching this old lady talking about how much she loves Flying Lotus is just the best
It seems to keep her young at heart!
And this is why I sing "hello" as I pass by... in case you can see my words 💜
We need an influx of more people like this lady in the universe
Man she’s so cool! It was funny when she said The beatles is boring hehe. I loved how she sees her husband’s voice, very lovely.
I'd love to sit down and talk with her for an hour. What an amazing perspective.
... A powerful interview... 🦋😎....am a little proud, as a semi-professional musician, to be in the top rank in terms of Geri's listening habits on lastfm........but I'm not a synesthetic
makes me so happy watching her listen to music
I would like to have seen a test like with piano notes, someone plays a note and the person would guess the color, I'm searching yt but I don't find this test, this is how you test for perfect pitch, it's really reliable.
I think it depends on the person. Some people perceive pitch as color, others (including me) perceive it as position (higher note -> higher position usually). That said, I think the really strong visuals only occur when you have an entire arrangement. So if you broke a song into its individual parts, it wouldn't create the same effects.
What most people don’t realize is that this isn’t an obscure thing either. Billie Ellish, lady Gaga, billy Joel, Lorde, Marilyn Monroe and many other people have syenthesia
Kanye West too
Most people who say that they have synesthesia are bullshitting and just want to be portrayed as special. Specially these days. I have spoken with dozens of girls who claim to have it. They drop it in conversation for attention and to impress. You begin asking questions and it becomes apparent that it is just a lie.
Hmmm I didn’t think this was a thing. I think I have this, I tried to explain to my friend that was playing a song on his guitar was almost like seeing a painting being painted while the song was playing(in my head) but its just seeing the brush tip smack or caress the canvas depending on sounds. I can see the colors or movement only while they are playing… or maybe I’m just crazy
If you weren’t high & see it all the time you may have it. That’s pretty much how it can work for some people. I have it & that’s kind of how mine works in a way but I also have a bunch of different color types so it messes with it.
@@Trymr that’s pretty cool. I didn’t know it had a name, I thought it was just my eyes messing with me or I was just weird like that lol I’d try and explain but no one understood what I ment
Try listening to a song you haven't heard in years. If it looks almost the same, good chance it's synesthesia.
i know maggie Rogers and Lorde have this, so its really coool to see what they potentially do. It feels like these people are tuned to a dimension beyond this one. Such an awesome superpower.
coolest grandma you could have
Such a lovely insight into this unique life! Awesome they featured so much of the art!!
Props to that old lady for dropping flying lotus lmao
mine is mainly sound-shape with music, and sometimes sound-color. i think it might also be sight-feeling if that makes sense, just based on things i have done as a kid.
I heard colours while on acid once, pretty rad stuff
@@Trippin710 I mean it was a hallucination but at the time I "actually" did.
Blue, red, green and every shade inbetween all had different frequencies. I planted my ear on the side of a house to hear/feel the red paint and it had a low calming buzz while a blue water bottle was a little more erratic but intriguing.
I literally thought all people has it. I just discovered I have it just last night when my bf told me it's not normal to see letters in colors and see music in shapes and colors when you hear it. And I have had it since I can remember, but never talked bout it since I thought everyone has it.🤯
I've heard it said that PCP makes you see sounds and hear colors... It also makes the view from a sidewalk, looking directly down the curb and onto to the street, as if you're looking into the grand canyon. It toys with your depth perception.
Wow, this lady is woke! She share me smile with her attitude on the vibrations of life... so cool!!
Well, she’s just awesome !
I have experienced tinker taping all of my life, like seeing subtitles/closedcaptios whenever somebody is speaking. I thought it was normal until one day I asked my classmates if they saw words whenever someone was speaking.
I can literally smell pictures of food.
Sometimes I can smell voices, and music, e.g., rock music smells of beer lol.
Just looking at her artwork on the wall makes me believe everything she is saying! (I also find A432Hz changes coloring of the notes. In a good way).
Geri, you are simply Top of the Pops!
Ahhhhh Love you Tony!!!
God bless whoever video edited this
This is possible with psychedelics, one of my favourite things is listening to music while tripping 10/10 would recommend
Imagine, 50 years in the future, everyone could see the things she sees if they wanted to, because they could either have some vr set/glasses, or they would actually be able to change the connections in your brain.
it's here now, and called LSD. Or probably DMT would be a more apt comparison
@@TheAnimatedOsprey haha yep true
Interesting how this could help the blind to have a more visual feeling of the world..
I think i have like mild version of it. Like for example jazz horns often sound like orange to me and some other "old movie chore" type horns sound like blue and white. Most high high pitched sounds sound like clear white and then grey when going lower. Drums sound like shaded of black and grey usually like stones and dark metal type colors.
Also its usually connected to some type of visual scenary that i "see in my mind. Some specific old movie scores with horns makes me see/imagine snowy mountain tops and blue sky and white clouds in it.
I only discovered about 6 years ago I have 2 types of synesthesia; Ordinal Linguistic personification and chromesthesia. I have full personalities tied to numbers and letters. I just thought that's how everyone as kids learned how to read and do math haha.
Then I have chromesthesia like she does except it's more like a projector displaying colors and shapes against a white canvas in the back of my head throughout the day. When I try to sleep then it's "in front of my eyes". The best I describe to people is when you rub your eyes too hard and you see flashes and splotches of color. That's how it is at night for me.
i think i have this and when i was younger it was much more annoying than it is.
i haven’t been tested but days have colours so do months .
i feel textures and see colours and sounds to numbers.
i feel textures when listening to sounds as well as seeing colours and patterns depending on like the pitches of the music too
for example like asap rocky excuse me gives intense browns and hints of silver and purple
btw i don’t take drugs and i’ve had this all my life it’s really annoying tbh
Her music taste is off the charts ... an old lady bumpin Flylo ?!? wicked hip lol 😂
This is me too....ever since orchestra in 5th grade 🥴 I knew....its really helped me with all my musical experiences and production 🥸 i REALLY want to design a DAW add on that uses shapes and colors
Du hast! ⚠️❤🧠♻️
I have a feeling this goes deeper then the study’s say , seeing sound? Sound is vibrations so she’s able to see what keeps the universe in flow??? Sign me tf up
Yep, nobody actually knows if what people with synesthesia are actually seeing/experiencing. We can only go by their claims and science cannot prove those claims even a little bit as of yet.
This is so fascinating!
I swear I thought connecting color with sound is something everybody did. Because to me it makes sense for sound or music to have color. For the longest I never knew it had a name. I just thought that’s how everyone saw music or sound.
Good lady using DT770 Pro, nice.
Wow… those art pieces! 😳🙌
When the room is quiet and dark and if I hear a sudden noise, I see a white flash, I wonder if this is normal.
This ladies got great music taste
Beautiful piece
dope! I wonder how nature sounds like in a tropical rainforest or by the ocean, gotta be a vibe
2:48 that was adorable
give the editors a raise for this one
Interesting! Good work
Thank you for this
LSD + decent headphones + a dark room = closed eye visuals like this lady is describing. This is such a gift she has, natural hppd? Who knows? All I know is that I wouldn’t get much done 😂
Yep meditation too
@@narutofan4545 yup, you know it ! 😉