Topic: Synesthesia and how to harness it
Well, where to start...
After years of telling myself that it's not gonna work and I better bury my unrealistic dreams, I decided that the one who does not take risks, does not drink champagne, and decided to pick up an instrument.
The problem is-technically I am tone deaf. Badly. Neither I am gifted with a sense of rythm even close to average. Regarding this, I probably shouldn't be even interested in music, and I would probably end up listening to it only for lyrics if listening ever, if not a lucky coincidence.
When I was in primary school, they were testing a new music curriculum that involved not only singing our traditional folk songs (most of them similar in their level to nursery rhymes, I managed do be terrible at that) as the previous one, but also a huge amount of simply listening to classical and symphonic music and than verbalizing your experience.
That's when I discovered I was able to see/feel physical motion of ribbons, liquids, solid particles, while I was listening to music. At that time I didn't understand it was something unusual, it was just fun to get immersed in it while listening to Grieg's Peer Gynt ot Straus's Wiener Waltzer, and as it did not really help me to sing in tune, as soon as our music teacher changed, I was not very politely asked to shut up and please be silent while others were singing, so my enthusiasm about music kinda faded.
Only years after that I found out that the thing happening to me is probably a mild form of sound->motion synesthesia (I usually pay no attention to it, even though it's present all the time, sometimes, when I'm bored, I just walk down the street and watch the funny shapes made by street noises, but on most days I pay no more attention to it than to my breathing)
Anyway, I have just picked up the guitar, playing around with it (too embarrased to get any lessons at the moment) for a few weeks by now and it kinda seems to work. (Not like it sounds any good yet, but it feels good, I sleep better, and I'm generally happier person, I guess it's just that my fears of an instrument shattering just by me touching it didn't prove right, and as some little bits actually work I have hope that I'm not hopeless)
Are there any synestates out there who could share their experience and tell if their ''special skills'' have helped them in any way, and how to explore them? So far I have found out that there is very little correlation between the tones played and the ''picture'' at least the same tone on different instruments looks rather different, and the experience is hard to record in any way as I rather feel it spatially than ''see'' it. It probably has something more to do wit rhytm but it's not a straight forward correlation either.
I know every synestate is different and experiences are unique, I was just wondering, should I explore it further, or just try to train basic skills from sctratch?
