Relationship between relative frequencies of electromagnetic spectrum and sound

[mollymoo]

I am a piano teacher with some very cool, science-minded students. Usually we stick to basic acoustics, and mechanics in terms of piano technique, but yesterday one of them took things in an interesting new direction. . . he described to me how, when he closes his eyes and listens to the music we are working on, in his head (I guess maybe a form of pre-phonatory tuning. . .most musicians do this as a form of rehearsal/creative doodling), he sees interactive colors. . .which as it happened correlated to the colors of the EM spectrum relative to pitch (lower pitches red up to higher in violet). Is there an established relationship? He also went on to describe emotive color theory exactly a la Van Gogh. I would really appreciate any thoughts anyone has on this. Thank you!

 

[DavidSnider]

Sounds like your student has auditory Synethesia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synethesia.

Cool =)

 

[Andy Resnick]

I am a piano teacher with some very cool, science-minded students. Usually we stick to basic acoustics, and mechanics in terms of piano technique, but yesterday one of them took things in an interesting new direction. . . he described to me how, when he closes his eyes and listens to the music we are working on, in his head (I guess maybe a form of pre-phonatory tuning. . .most musicians do this as a form of rehearsal/creative doodling), he sees interactive colors. . .which as it happened correlated to the colors of the EM spectrum relative to pitch (lower pitches red up to higher in violet). Is there an established relationship? He also went on to describe emotive color theory exactly a la Van Gogh. I would really appreciate any thoughts anyone has on this. Thank you!

Stephen McGreevy has been recording ELF (extremely low frequency) electromagnetic phenomena for years- the frequencies correspond to the audio range (20- 20k Hz):

http://www.auroralchorus.com/

Your students may get a kick out of listening to it. Note- McGreevy converts the electromagnetic signal into an audio signal: you can't hear ELF signals directly.