Do you see tone?

[metropolis_4]

I’ve realized when I hear guitar tones (especially the overdrive/distortion characteristics of them) I see images of them in my head. It’s hard to describe what I see, it’s almost like abstract shapes, but each is familiar to me and I have schemas formed around these images. So when I hear a new tone I categorize it by the image I see when I hear it.

Our brains are fascinating! Does anyone else experience tone that way? How do you experience tone?

 

[Chocol8]

Nope, but I am far from normal. I have aphantasia which means I can't mentally visualize things at all. You might have a form of synesthesia which is where stimulating one sense can trigger another. It's relatively rare in the general population but I have known and also heard of a number of musicians who have it and who see notes as colors.

 

[DrewJD82]

Nope, but I am far from normal. I have aphantasia which means I can't mentally visualize things at all. You might have a form of synesthesia which is where stimulating one sense can trigger another. It's relatively rare in the general population but I have know and also heard of a number of musicians who have it and who see notes as colors.

Hahahah a good buddy of mine has aphantasia and we probably wasted a good year or two of friendship debating the merits of that being a thing. The dude is a great artist, I can’t make any sense of it!

 

[sleewell]

 

[DrewJD82]

I can’t really put into words what it does internally, it’s both visual and emotional but nothing I can describe with words. Waves is the only word that comes to mind.

 

[Chocol8]

Hahahah a good buddy of mine has aphantasia and we probably wasted a good year or two of friendship debating the merits of that being a thing. The dude is a great artist, I can’t make any sense of it!

I was an adult before I even knew it was a thing. I always thought people were talking more conceptually about visualizing shit. Funny thing is I can absolutely imagine sounds, songs, melodies etc. and hear them in my head, yet it never seemed odd to me that I couldn't see images. Heck, I can close my eyes and hear my kids voices clear as day, but I can't see their faces. My daughter has the same thing, my wife and son are more normal. Definitely hard to make any sense of it, especially since it's impossible to directly experience the way other people's minds work.

 

[FuzzyAce]

I was an adult before I even knew it was a thing. I always thought people were talking more conceptually about visualizing shit. Funny thing is I can absolutely imagine sounds, songs, melodies etc. and hear them in my head, yet it never seemed odd to me that I couldn't see images. Heck, I can close my eyes and hear my kids voices clear as day, but I can't see their faces. My daughter has the same thing, my wife and son are more normal. Definitely hard to make any sense of it, especially since it's impossible to directly experience the way other people's minds work.

What about dreams?

 

[FuzzyAce]

I’ve realized when I hear guitar tones (especially the overdrive/distortion characteristics of them) I see images of them in my head. It’s hard to describe what I see, it’s almost like abstract shapes, but each is familiar to me and I have schemas formed around these images. So when I hear a new tone I categorize it by the image I see when I hear it.

Our brains are fascinating! Does anyone else experience tone that way? How do you experience tone?

So you're saying tone is not in the hands, but in the eyes?! Geez, I can't keep up anymore.

 

[la szum]

I must be tonally blind. Good trade, if I am not also tonally deaf and dumb, too.

 

[la szum]

Wasn't there deemed to be corollaries between Sacred Geometry and Music back in the good ol' days of Pythagoras?

 

[FuzzyAce]

Wasn't there deemed to be corollaries between Sacred Geometry and Music back in the good ol' days of Pythagoras?

Sounds plausible to me.
You mean like music used in rituals?

 

[Alex Kenivel]

Yes. Shapes, motion and colors. When I'm listening to a full mixed track I can close my eyes and see a kind of moving tapestry. Sometimes they're legitimate shapes of things I've seen before, sometimes they're just weird waves and blobs that make up interesting patterns and shapes.

I remember having dreams when I was young about feelings accompanied by sounds that got real intense that seemed to come by in waves. The only thing I can really describe what I saw was something like an oscilloscope but it was connected to me emotionally and physically somehow like I was riding the waveforms and experiencing fear.

 

[Chocol8]

What about dreams?

Thats another really weird thing! Most of us with aphantasia CAN see images in dreams.

 

[Stone]

Yes Met when I look down at my FM9 I see tones

 

[FuzzyAce]

Thats another really weird thing! Most of us with aphantasia CAN see images in dreams.

That's pretty crazy.
I can't even imagine not being able to form images in my conscious mind though, it seems foreign to me! I feel like visualization has been very important when it comes to playing and progressing on guitar. I've mentioned it before, I think it was on this forum, but I've used it to practice concepts and chord/scale shapes when I'm not actually playing guitar. Visualizing the fretboard in my mind with my hand moving across the strings and hearing notes. It's not perfect clarity by any means but it gets me close enough to where I can sort it out quickly when I do get on a guitar. I have to be able to do this type of thing in my day to day work as well, with building and designing things.

 

[MirrorProfiles]

I was an adult before I even knew it was a thing. I always thought people were talking more conceptually about visualizing shit. Funny thing is I can absolutely imagine sounds, songs, melodies etc. and hear them in my head, yet it never seemed odd to me that I couldn't see images. Heck, I can close my eyes and hear my kids voices clear as day, but I can't see their faces. My daughter has the same thing, my wife and son are more normal. Definitely hard to make any sense of it, especially since it's impossible to directly experience the way other people's minds work.

Holy shit, I had no idea this was a thing and this is exactly what it’s like for me. I figured when people spoke about picturing an imagine they were just going off their memory and thinking about what they remember it looking like.

I can also have perfectly vivid dreams but if I try and picture something it’s just black. I can also “hear” songs, notes, music, people’s voices from memory and imagine those.

Apparently some people don’t have internal monologues and that’s wild to me too.

 

[Chocol8]

Holy shit, I had no idea this was a thing and this is exactly what it’s like for me.

This is an bit technical yet enlightening article about how we may think differently.

The Power of Abstract Thinking in Aphantasia

The concept of 'types' and 'tokens' helped me understand how we think differently: visualizers use specific imagery, while aphantasics excel in abstract thinking.

aphantasia.com

 

[DISTORT6]

Apparently some people don’t have internal monologues and that’s wild to me too.

That must be so peaceful.

 

[spawnofthesith]

I see 1s and 0s any time I play a modeler

 

[fetishfrog]

My clean tones are the soft polar breeze over a field of icebergs in the Arctic Ocean. Whales breaching as they sing in the background, birds held aloft in the wind.

My dirty tones are the hell-fire of the Almighty Lord Satan. Smell the sulfur burn, hear the wailing masses.

Apparently some people don’t have internal monologues and that’s wild to me too.

My oldest step-son is like this. It's....interesting.