Synaesthesia

Synaesthesia is generally defined as a neurological condition. The triggering of one sensory (e.g. nose-smell) usually leads to the triggering of another (e.g. texture- feel) through cognitive pathways in the brain.There can be many types of synaesthesia ranging from associating numbers, places and letters with colours to visualising "something like fireworks" to specific sounds.

All of us, in a small quantity can be said to have synaesthesia in the sense that when we hear certain music we think of certain things, and our brains formulate a visual response to the sound waves. Andrew Goodwin's theory summarizes this in relation to visualising music videos-

"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."

- Andrew Goodwin (Dancing in the Distraction Factory 1993)

The article by Steve Archer, from which this quote was taken discusses how synaesthesia is arguably the essential starting point of creating any music video. He justifies this by saying that the closer the visualisations of a music video are to what you visualize upon hearing the sounds, the closer the relationship between the music (video) and the audience.

In his article, Steve Archer states that it's best to start with the raw music in the process of creating a music video. Only after the impact of the sounds on the visuals have been considered is it then wise to move onto analysing the meaning and content of the lyrics. Archer encourages us to take the approach of theorist Roland Barthes who "sees the singing voice as an expressive instrument" and not as a separate entity from the accompanying instrumentation. Indeed a voice can affect the visualisation of a song greatly; for example softly hummed melodies could evoke a serene ocean, whilst the growling vocals of Tom Waits may evoke the complete opposite.

The example below is the song our group had a go at responding to visually. The following video by Tom Waits is an example of a contrasting song.

Red- Phoria

Tom Waits - Satisfied

The visual response our brains formulate to a piece of music will, undoubtedly have some cultural inter-textual references embedded somewhere. For example the sound of a musette may evoke a Parisian scenery, as our culture stereotypically associates this instrument with France. It is a combination of these intertextual references, associations and combinations of personal experiences and events that together, formulate the images in our minds.

Our Response
Our class put this process to the test through listening to two different songs, and simply responding on a piece of paper with a pen. Interestingly most people opted to draw single lines following the feel of the music, rather than drawing specific objects/scenes. Whilst I think that this was effective in capturing the general movement of the song (e.g. distinguishing key moments of progression- texture becoming thicker/thinner) it didn't really capture the exact visualisations that came to mind during the song, simply because I couldn't draw them quick enough. However, after discussing as a group how we would interpret our visual response, we came up with similar imagery, and developed our visualisations into a music video concept. We did this through observing the patterns in our drawings and questioning how we could apply this. Once we decided upon certain aspects we then discussed what other imagery came to mind when listening to the song for the second time.

Other Responses

        Nina Simone - Feeling Good            

The maker of the video above was given the assignment of creating a visual response to music using only type and typographic elements. In a way, I thought the goal of this final product and assignment was similar to ours. All the elements employed in this video I would argue convey the appropriate feel of the song; the black & white jazz theme fits in very well with the jazzy tone of the music, different imagagery reflecting lyrical content as well as the layering structure of the song etc...

Arctic Monkeys - Do I Wanna Know? 

When I watched this music video, I was immediately reminded of the drawings we made in class in response to the music we listened to. The video similarly displays a direct link between what's occurring in the music and on the screen through the use of something like a frequency bar. The strong tempo is depicted in a variety of ways throughout this music video. Primarily this is achieved through the drastic drop and rise of the sound wave on the frequency bar. As the other vocals come in the frequency bar picks up on this layer of music, the same goes for the bass, backup guitar and vocals.