String colours + synaesthesia

[mae-mcallister]

So, I have that condition where I see musical keys/chords/notes in colours. It’s becoming a serious problem for me on the harp though because of the convention to colour in Cs in red and Fs in black, which is wrong! (Where does this convention come from? Does anyone know?) For me, A is red, but this is less of a problem because I know that it’s only the Cs and Fs that are coloured. The real problem is that I get particularly confused because for me, C is black so every time I want to play a C, I make for an F string. To make things worse, the colour of the two brass C strings on my harp is so faded that the balck brass F strings stands out more than the Cs do.

F is blue in my head and I’ve considered changing the F strings to blue (which you can get) and trying to fiddle the gauges to get black C strings but the levers would still be the wrong colours, and strings are expensive so I’d be changing them one by one and for a year or more there would be a horrible mixture. I’m currently wondering what would be the effect of spray painting strings or levers but they might sound different/be tack to touch.

Anyway, I wondered if there was anyone out there who had/has similar problems? And any ingenious suggestions/solutions?

Mae

[tracey-kjonegaard]

Hi Mae,

I’m not sure I could really be much help but I just wanted to comment on your post. I think thats such an interesting condition. I never knew about it until 10 minutes ago when I read this and then researched the condition more.

You should definitely consider switching your Fs to the blue strings. I’m not sure what companies make those as I normally just buy the same Bow brand strings which are the red/black ones.

As for finding black Cs…I know you probably wouldn’t be able to contact any well known harp string company and get them to make the black Cs but perhaps there are some smaller, lesser known companies that could maybe work with you? Other people on here would better know than me but I would try contacting some places directly and you’d probably have a better chance with a smaller business.

One other thing I was curious about, what do the white/clear strings do for you? Do they not bother you? Or is it something you can overlook because they’re the non colored strings, rather than the Cs and Fs intentionally being colored?

Tracey

[jimmy-h]

A lot depends on the harp you use, if there is no difference in string diameters you could try swapping the strings within the octave. If there is a difference, may you should talk with Bow Brand which is in England about custom coloring for you. You could also try all white/clear strings but that would probably still make things harder.

I would try to train yourself to recognize the strings as they are, because any time you play someone else’s harp you are going to be thrown off again.

I’m curious, did you develop synesthesia as a child or as you grew older? The other day I was thinking about how convenient it would be to have it and see the C’s and F’s as red/blacks.

[tracey-kjonegaard]

I thought of something else I’d like to know as well. Do the colors you see correspond w/ sheet music that you read? Or I guess as you learn the notes in sheet music, does that translate in color once you know what notes you’re playing? Or is it specifically just letters as you see them (their shape and lines etc…) and not so much mentally knowing what letters they are or what is represented?

[leon-ducommun-dit-verron]

Is it not possible to get your strings sprayed? Um sure if you take the strings to a local car body shop they could spray the strings up for you to the colours you like?

[Tacye]

You do not want car paint on your strings. Too thick and will make them sound awful. Probably what you want to try are dykem pens and be prepared to redo it often. Are they nylon or gut strings? Nylon can be dyed with Rit dyes, apparently. Never done it myself.

I would not use pens or anything on wound bass strings – clog up the windings and change the tone. If the colours are gone they are probably due for a change anyway – Salopian strings in the UK do custom bass wires or Vermont strings in the US and can probably do you black Cs and copper Fs.

[Tacye]

Ps – get little coloured rubber bands to go on the lever handles such as these things http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Bag-of-approx-500X-mini-elastic-Hair-Bands-braids-new-mixed-colours-no1a-/221297772285?pt=UK_Hair_Accessories&hash=item33866006fd
removable when/if you sell the harp and come in brighter colours than the levers.

[eliza-morrison]

Absolutely fascinating, I had never heard of this before!
When I started playing the harp, some instruments had very blue (not black) F’s, and some had purple F’s. There was also a color scheme (which was falling out of favor but which I encountered a few times) which had green C’s, blue F’s and all the rest of the strings red.
I agree with the suggestion that you should talk to a string manufacturer about custom sets. I wouldn’t coat the strings with anything, because it’s likely to affect the sound. And I’m not sure you should try to re-train yourself; it may not be fully possible, and it may make playing too confusing and frustrating.
Find a string maker with outstanding customer service, and see if they will work with you! Good luck!

[Philippa mcauliffe]

I am synaesthetic – it is not uncommon in musicians I know. Individual notes have specific colours as do keys. Obviously that also means absolute perfect pitch. Not chords though – I see those as the key colours. And have been ever since I can remember. But that has never been a problem for me in playing the strings on the harp! I dont see the colours so clearly when I play as when I listen. And it doesnt worry me at all that the C and F string colours are not my note colours. What age did you start the harp? I was 8. And I seem to be able to change according to different tunings. Different tunings dont worry me although I know if someone/orchestra is not tuned to 440 as I seem to be able to reset and the colours stay the same for the “new” notes. But if I listen to a piece that has been transposed I see it in the new colour…odd. For me I think the note on the page goes straight to my fingers to the strings without passing the colour centre in my brain.

[mae-mcallister]

Wow, what a lot of questions and comments:) Lets see:

Tracey: No, the other strings don’t bother me because they are not any colour at all, just clear/white. If they were coloured different colours they’d certainly bother me a lot. And no, sheet music doesn’t really come into it at all. It’s the sounds that have the colour, not the writing on the page. If I see a G written down I only get the colour if I imagine a G being played in my head. In fact, I used to colour in the chords in my piano music to make them easier to read.

Jimmy: There is something in learning to deal with it because you are right about switching to different harps. However I only play a floor lever harp so chances are it’s going to come with me everywhere and the question of playing another harp won’t arise. But it’s really annoying me…it’s not just a matter of retraining – it’s like someone’s labelled all the F strings incorrectly as Cs and I have to concentrate really hard not to play an F when I want a C or a G when I want a D etc. Imagine that someone switched round all the buttons on your computer keyboard. As for when I developed it, it’s very hard to say because I don’t know. I was made aware of it when I was 15, but I don’t know if that’s because it became acute then (it could have done) or because it didn’t think it was anything out of the ordinary. Everyone associates stuff with colours – it’s just that it happens to a bizarrely detailed degree for me. It was a long time before I realised the reason I could name chords so accurately, but I wasn’t really trying to do that as a child…? So, I don’t know. As for it being convenient – hah. You can’t choose the colours, they are involuntary, and it can be a right pain sometimes, as this thread should show. Suppose your brain programmed them to be the other way round…

Tayce: They are gut strings. Hmm..maybe not. I’d get multicoloured fingers! And oh, the sound might change…I’ve considered custom strings…but maybe they would have to wait until I had a more permanent harp. Some of them might be able to be fiddled with gauges. The rubber band thing is a stroke of genius though – I could do all my levers! That sounds awesome. Now to find the right colours…

Eliza: That’s fascinating. How long ago was this (if you don’t mind me asking)? Green Cs and blue F’s and red other strings? Ew. Definitely worse. I wonder why everything got so standardized…Yes, custom strings are the way to go. It’s not a matter of retraining because the condition is entirely involutary, it’s more a matter of getting used to the strings being mis-labelled…But you are right, it is a right pain.

Phillipa: Whoo, I thought I was going to be the only one on this forum and everyone else would be like “what the hell?!”. For me, it’s the chords that have colours. Keys and notes are the colours of their principal chords. I also noticed that thing about hearing vs. listening – the colours are there when I listen or recall and not so much when I hear, it’s like they don’t come along until I actually engage my brain to think about what it is I’ve heard. I haven’t been playing the harp all that long and I am in my twenties, which is probably the problem. Maybe I’ll get used to it/learn to ignore it. That’s quite encouraging. Ditto tunings. Can acclimatize to tunings, new key = new colour. I have a few theories as to why, but no scientific basis for them yet..how do you test something like this? I think the main problem for me is that because it’s new, I actually have to think about where the notes are on the harp. Certainly for other instruments when I play, the notes go straight to the fingers. But I like to play a lot of folk music on the harp which is all aural, so no sheet music to distract me and my brain has to process the notes instead. Once my fingers learn where the notes live they might be less needy…

[mae-mcallister]

P.s I really pissed the spellchecker off with all the British spellings of colour haha.

[eliza-morrison]

I am not sure exactly when that other color scheme was popular. Probably before I was born. I started playing when I was eight in the late sixties, and two of my older teachers had harps with the red color pattern, and I rented a concert harp from Lyon and Healy in 1971 which had the red strings with green C’s, too. Someone more up on harp history could tell you more about when and why that was done. It must have been phased out when I was very young, because I never saw it again after 1971.

[Tacye]

The familiar string colours were in use in the 18th century – see the paintings I linked to here http://musicstand.harpcolumn.com/forums/harps-and-accessories/posts/63492
I read somewhere, probably in Roslyn Rensch, that the lurid string colours were to show up better in stage lighting of the day. Many Paraguayan harps have different colour schemes too, I have seen blue Cs and red Fs.

A plausible black C should be fairly easy to come by: if your harp is strung with lever gauge gut then the F string for four notes above in pedal gauge gut won’t be far off the right thickness. (If your harp, as some lever harps are, is strung with ‘pedal’ gauge gut then you would want the lever gauge string from a 5th below.)

[ellen-beckerman]

Somewhere along the way I read about dying strings, using a permanent dye that you might use on clothes. Has anyone else heard of this? That way you could work with the white strings, and then color code as you wished. Might be worth an experiment on one string and see how it went.

[Allison Stevick]

Cecile Corbel plays lever harp with no colored strings. Maybe having all your strings clear/white could help?

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