Consistent images seen in creative trance when playing a musical instrument
I have recently come across several cases of an interesting phenomenon which I think is a firm candidate for being considered a type of synesthesia. It consists of the visualisation of pictorial images, random but usually very consistent, by people in a state of heightened concentration when playing a musical instrument – particularly if they are creating, memorising or learning a piece of music – or when concentrating on a creative task of another kind with musical accompaniment. It would seem to be a fairly rare phenomenon, as yet unknown, although it may perhaps achieve more recognition with more cases being brought to light in the future.
The images perceived are figurative (places, people and objects) and they are usually random in nature, although in some cases they may correspond to autobiographical childhood memories. In many cases – or in all cases perhaps – they are consistent, i.e. the same images are associated with the same musical sequences. It appears to happen when the person enters the "flow state", i.e. the special state of profound concentration and/or relaxation induced by a creative process, and it particularly occurs on learning to play the instrument itself or on studying and memorising new pieces of music.
Could this be considered a type of synesthesia with musical sequences as an inducer? Time will tell. In general, synesthetic visualisations are abstract rather than figurative; however, some pictorial manifestations are usually accepted as being synesthesia (see the next paragraph below and the page on
figurative images as a synesthetic concurrent), which would open up the possibility of its future acceptance. As it is not a known phenomenon at the present time there are no studies on it or, as far as I am aware, any mentions in the literature. I've personally gathered notes on about twenty cases. Most of the people who have reported it say they also have other types of synesthesia so there may be a correlation, but sampling in the general population would of course be required to determine to what extent it affects both synesthetes and non-synesthetes.
It actually bears a fairly close resemblance to
sexual/romantic synesthesia (due to the type of images visualised, the similarity it appears to have with hypnagogic imagery and the special state of trance/concentration/relaxation required to experience it), although it seems to be more consistent than the latter, as the same pictures repeat on different occasions in response to the same stimulus and this is not usually the case with sexual synesthesia. It is interesting to note that there is a dual inducer of the experience: the musical sequences and also the mental flow state given rise to by playing an instrument, creating and/or memorising.
Here
are some descriptions written by people who experience this phenomenon:
The first case I came across
“I'm curious to know if others and indeed if all pianists see random
images or think of certain things/people when they play a piece. I get it with
every piece I play, but it's nothing that's connected to the style of the
piece..it's much more abstract than that. (...) The last few pieces I've
learned (and it's always at the same part of the piece) I have had flashes into
my head of random images such as - a crocodile, my sister, a girl at my work
who I have never spoken to, my friend's ex boyfriend (again..don't even know
him that well), a boat on the water, a woman waiting for her husband to come
back from war..and the word banana. (...) The only way I can describe it is as
if you were recalling your dream from the night before and images flash into your
head.”
(Source: this forum on the classical piano
website Piano Street. 2017.)
Images on learning musical sections
“I have
musical chromesthesia and usually see colors for music, but Bach's music tends
to be colorless for me. Instead of colors, I'll get images associated with some
of the sections (I never see a color and an image at the same time), and I need
to be actually playing the piece in order to see them. Also, once I gain muscle
memory for the piece, I won't see the images anymore (but the exact images come
back if I forget and relearn the piece).”
Jacqueline, the girl who experiences this phenomenon, has shared her perceptions with us in this fascinating video (2021), “How my synesthesia interprets WTC Prelude No. 6”. (There is also a direct link to see
the video at the end of this page)
Chords and flowers"I’m self taught in piano and I learned just by listening to
music, not by learning to read sheet music. The sheet music just couldn’t click
with me. However, some specific notes or chords that I would strike on my piano
would give me an image of a flower depending on what pitch it was. Deeper
sounds are dark purple irises, other higher pitched sounds would be orange
marigolds or yellow roses. If I played fast enough I could almost describe it
as growing a garden at my finger tips. I really loved it, but unfortunately I
fell out of practice and can’t really play anymore. But when I hit even one key
on a piano, I can still see the flowers. (…) This only happens to me when I play piano,
never when I’m just listening to music alone.
I still remember chords from pieces of music I’d learned
because I remember the flowers, there’s a chord that is 100% a yellow rose for
me every time, it never changes.
(…) It’s making me want to relearn piano again, which I
think I definitely will do. It might be interesting to see if everything comes
back to me exactly as it did once before."
(Source: this post and comments on Reddit/Synesthesia. 2024.)
On learning to play an instrument“My brother bought an electric keyboard thing (…) and he gave it to me and I had NO idea how to play it, so I would just watch those mini videos on YouTube and just copy them and then keep playing it until I remembered it. (…) Something that I didn't notice at first but was kind of weirded out by when I realised, was what I thought or saw when I played [certain songs]. (…) I would associate certain sections (I think melody might be a better word) within the song with a pretty specific image that I would see in my head.
So for an example of the song I most experienced this with, Dancers on a String, I would remember the song in sections, like 2-5 notes, with an image and when I was playing the song I would mentally be like 'okay now is the pear part' without even realising how strange that was. Some of the specific imagery I would see consisted of:
- a red barn with many black widow spiders and clocks
- tiny little cubes of pear, like the texture of a pear and were light green
- someone big with their face like squashed against the screen as if I was looking through a camera
(…)
As you can see, these were bizarre.
In Swan Lake I associated one short section of like one or two notes with an old dust lamp you would find in like a grandmas home and it was yellow, and I associated another later section with like death hounds trying to chase someone.
I have no idea why I see these things so vividly, and I don't think it's unique to a certain note, as I play the same note in different songs and I don't see the same imagery. My dad suggested that maybe its how I remember certain patterns. I don't think I have this with actual music, or anything else. Its just specific to when I'm playing the keyboard and trying to remember how to play.”
(Source: This post on Reddit/Synesthesia. 2021.)
Autobiographical images
“I
definitely experience this every time I play. I see random images from my childhood.
And I mean random. One is looking under the sideboard at a neighbour’s house
which must have been from when I was 6 or 7. Several relate to particular
places in my old secondary school. Another is at the top of the stairs at my
auntie’s house. It’s always the same set of places but there are probably about
100 different places. (…) It’s interesting that there are no images from after
the age of about 13 or 14 which is when I stopped having piano lessons.”
(Source: This comment on Reddit/Piano. 2021.)
Personification of chord sequences/parts of songs“I play in
a band and (…) my fellow guitarist asked me how (…) I can seemingly remember chord
sequences or parts of songs if I don’t play them for a couple of weeks. (…) I
told him that I can remember parts because they are all people to me, and if I
can remember the person I can remember the part. (…)
The whole
thing is involuntary and I can't influence how the personification presents
itself. Sometimes they are pretty vague personifications which I would struggle
to describe visually but will feel a certain way like a strong masculine
presence for instance. Others however can be very vivid and specific and I
could describe exactly as they appear physically and also what kind of person
they are.
Personifications
seem to be strongest for me with anything in the key of E.
I'm not
sure at what point the personification manifests itself, it's not something
I've been able to consciously pinpoint. It could be that is appears the very
first time I play a chord sequence and I only really become aware of it as I
repeat it or it could be that it takes a couple of plays through to manifest.
It's possibly a chicken or the egg situation.
As far as
I'm aware the personification doesn't grow stronger or fade in any way, they
manifest and remain the same regardless of how much I play the chords.
(…) The most
useful part is the strong association the personification and the music have
together, which means that I can remember chord sequences and guitar parts
easier than I may do otherwise. It can also be difficult giving up on parts
that don't fit or work in a song because I've this strange bond with them as
they are like friends to me in a way. I can let them go though as I know they
don't really exist."
(Source: This post and comments on Reddit/Synesthesia. 2023.)
This account is also related to Personification of musical sequences.
Creative writing + music
“I was on the midst of plotting a short story that I was wanting to write while listening to music when suddenly an image flashed for a second then disappeared. The image was a valley of white lilies. It felt as if I saw the song as a picture then vanished as quickly as it came. It distracted me from further imagining the rest of my story so I surrendered and went to listen to other songs and to my surprise, it happened again. Another song I felt / saw was a landscape of a candy land which is again, very befitting the song. The next song I played showed me a dim dark room with an endless staircase and a lone lightbulb swinging from the ceiling.”
(Source: This post on Reddit/Synesthesia. 2021.)
The
video "How my synesthesia interprets WTC Prelude No. 6”, by Jacqueline
Cordes.
Go to the page on figurative images as a synesthetic concurrent
Go to the page on sexual (and romantic) synesthesia
Go to the page on musical synesthesias
Go to the page on auditory-visual synesthesia
Go to the page on personification of musical sequences
This post first published: 24 August 2021
This page last updated: 10 February 2026
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