Talk:List of people with synesthesia

message: After doing a bit of digging on the internet, I don't think that John Mayer actually has synesthesia. The original website is down (so I had to use a cached link), but according to this fan website which has chat-logs posted of John Mayer on the Columbia Records livechat, John Mayer says it was all a misunderstanding that began after his interview with Rolling Stone magazine. He says, "I'm not, and it wasn't a joke, but it was a misunderstanding. I was doing an interview with Rolling Stone and was feeling a bit New-Agey and tried to explain to the writer that words have colors for me. I think somewhere along the line it became misconstrued as being a physical event. Thing is, what I've learned now is that when someone prints an untruth about you, but it’s kind of cool, most people around you just want to let it stay, and people are suddenly very quiet about correcting anybody." 
The thing is, there doesn't seem to be any article confirming that he explicitly has synesthesia, and everyone just references the (2004?) interview in Rolling Stone, where he talks about color in Jimi Hendrix's playing (which makes the chatlogs seem like a good source, since they're supposedly John Mayer talking — if someone could confirm that the person responding is actually John Mayer, we could solve the mystery once and for all — but I've also found this log posted on various fan-forums, which undermines its credibility a little). Also, musicians often describe music as having certain "colors", so I wouldn't say it's a good idea to come to the conclusion that he has synesthesia. It seems like many websites are passing this off as "fact", so I'm not sure if directly removing the point about John Mayer is the best thing, as I'm sure it'll quickly get added back by someone citing one of those fact/fansites. But leaving it there also perpetuates the cycle of possibly wrong information. Thoughts?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Karlding (talk • contribs) 03:44, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: John Mayer DOESN'T have synesthesia?

message: In Wednesday Is Indigo Blue, it stated that Eddie Van Halen had synesthesia. Shouldn't he be on this page?
Also, this radio program  mentioned Billy Joel being a synesthete. Is this verifiable from any other sources?
In an interview with Syd Barrett's sister  she mentions him having synesthesia. She says:
:"I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he had a condition like synaesthesia because he would say that a sound was a colour to him. If something was really loud he would say it was black and I knew what he meant because I’d grown up with him and was so close to him."
This quote implies that he had it when he was younger, meaning it probably isn't LSD-related pseudo-synesthesia. However, this is the only source I can find by someone who knew him. --Asnav (talk) 05:42, 15 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi Asnav. Be bold.  Wednesday is Indigo Blue just came out, so no one has added this yet... but, you might want to add it in yourself, since this is verifable and comes from a reliable source.  If there are no other sources for EVH, them you may simply say that "Cytowic and Eagleman claim/argue/suggest...".  Be sure to include page numbers.  As a general rule, we've been trying to get two independent sources, but this is somewhat arbitrary, so one good source, like the Cytowic and Eagleman book may suffice.  The Syd Barrett quote is a little weaker, but may also be sufficient.  See if you can find another, and in the meantime, feel free to add stuff... What's the worst that can happen?  Someone else will just delete it.  Edhubbard (talk) 14:58, 15 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Eddie Van Halen, Billy Joel, and Syd Barrett 

message: The evidence points towards Alex, and NOT Eddie being the synaesthete who first came up with the term "brown sound". See Wikipedia article for Alex and the reference it gives. did you know there is a fact-checked and well-referenced list of famous synaesthetes out there beyond the Wikipedia?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.169.81.106 (talk) 03:37, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi IP, if you have a reference for Alex Van Halen, please share.  Wednesdays are Indigo Blue is a book by two well known synesthesia researchers, Richard Cytowic and David Eagleman, published by a reputable publishing house, MIT Press.  As for the fact-checked and well-referenced list, do you mean this one by Sean Day?  Or did you have another page in mind?  If you meant Sean's page, he has been a major contributor to this wikipedia page, along with other pages, like the main synesthesia article, under the user name Daysa (see his contributions here Special:Contributions/Daysa).  Cheers, Edhubbard (talk) 13:25, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

text: Strictly speaking, you gave me one reference. The AVH page does not count as an independent reference, since the only support for the statement comes from the reference on that page. But, yes, you did give me a reference; I'm sorry, I just didn't follow up to the AVH page and then to the reference. The "Not Even Wrong" reference also sounds good... so, we're now in a situation where we have verifiable references for both EVH and AVH.  Given that Cytowic and Eagleman are both synesthesia researchers, and not necessarily rock music people, perhaps they just mis-stated who had synesthesia.  Alternatively, they know something we don't. I've looked at their book, and they don't really provide any quotes, but simply state as a fact that Eddie Van Halen has synesthesia.  I will e-mail Richard off-wiki and ask him to come and comment on this issue here on-wiki. As for sibs, although there is some accumulating evidence that sibs will more likely have similar colors compared to non-sibs, since the environmental stimuli that might play a role in forming the associations may be similar, you're right that, for the most part, synesthetes do not share precisely the same associations.  In the case of tone-color synesthesia, there is evidence (e.g., Marks, 1975; T.L. Hubbard, 1996; Ward et al., 2006) that lower pitches are darker both for syns and non-syns, so the associations are not entirely random. Edhubbard (talk) 18:28, 11 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Alex van Halen

message: I am sure that I once read in a publication of Classic FM that Rachmaninov had synaesthesia. Does any one know anything about this? This is a very interesting list, and I am sure that it could have some names added to it. A lot of classical composers seemed to have synaesthesia. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 20:47, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Rachmaninov

message: Perhaps he has synethesia? To quote from his My Inventions articles in the Electrical Experimenter, February-June and October 1919 he says, In my boyhood I suffered from a peculiar affliction due to the appearance of images, often accompanied by strong flashes of light, which marred the sight of real objects and interfered with my thought and action.  They were pictures of things and scenes which I had really seen, never of those I imagined.  When a word was spoken to me the image of the object it designated would present itself vividly to my vision and sometimes I was quite unable to distinguish whether what I saw was tangible or not.  This caused me great discomfort and anxiety.  None of the students of psychology or physiology whom I have consulted could ever explain satisfactorily these phenomena.  They seem to have been unique altho I was probably predisposed as I know that my brother experienced a similar trouble.  The theory I have formulated is that the images were the result of a reflex action from the brain on the retina under great excitation.  They certainly were not hallucinations such as are produced in diseased and anguished minds, for in other respects I was normal and composed.  To give an idea of my distress, suppose that I had witnest a funeral or some such nerve-racking spectacle.  Then, inevitably, in the stillness of night, a vivid picture of the scene would thrust itself before my eyes and persist despite all my efforts to banish it.  Sometimes it would even remain fixt in space tho I pushed my hand thru it.   — Preceding unsigned comment added by Yogiadept (talk • contribs) 00:18, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Nicola Tesla

message: The evidence for synaesthesia in a lot of people on this list seem to be rather tenuous. It seems that these days anyone involved in the arts is a synaesthete (if that's a word). 90.205.92.82 (talk) 21:11, 2 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tenuous? 

message: as shown in this clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaMWUsJfIYc both talk about weekday to colour synesthesia  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.164.206.58 (talk) 21:57, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Don't  Alan Davies and stephen fry have this 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified  on List of people with synesthesia. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Corrected formatting/usage for http://robert.cailliau.free.fr/ByLetter/M/Me/Alphabet.html
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at ).
Cheers.—cyberbot IITalk to my owner:Online 09:10, 2 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Some of those listed as having synesthesia seem a little dicey to me. I was wondering what the criteria for "diagnosing" them are. A few examples follow.
* Rollo Armstrong - Hearsay evidence only from Sister Bliss claiming that Armstrong has synesthesia based on his describing some moods that music can generate. On it's face, isn't that what much of western music is used for, to generate varying moods in listeners? Television and films utilize this effect all the time in their scores. Is there a firmer source that points to more discretely synesthete behaviors? (His article doesn't even mention synesthesia.)
* Amy Beach - First off, according to Oliver Sacks, perfect pitch is quite rare even among musicians. And, ironically, not all people who have perfect pitch are musicians. Now, about the color claims - "Amy’s mother encouraged her to relate melodies to the colors blue, pink, or purple, but before long Amy had a wider range of colors..." This sounds an awful lot like she learned to use her inner eye (imagination) to think this way, a kind of mnemonic device perhaps. Wikipedia's Synesthesia article includes some diagnostic criteria developed by neurologist Richard Cytowic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia#Diagnostic_criteria . The first mentioned is "1. Synesthesia is involuntary and automatic." Therefore, it seems that Beach's mother could not teach her daughter to be a synesthete. 
* Vladimir Nabokov - Is there any known documentation that this ability is inherited? In the Synesthesia article, it says: "Little is known about how synesthesia develops. It has been suggested that synesthesia develops during childhood when children are intensively engaged with abstract concepts for the first time.[10] This hypothesis – referred to as semantic vacuum hypothesis – explains why the most common forms of synesthesia are grapheme-color, spatial sequence and number form. These are usually the first abstract concepts that educational systems require children to learn." Is there any more data known?
Tori Amos: "...try to imagine the best kaleidoscope ever..." I'm trying, I'm trying - jealousy abounds! 
[I made Sister Bliss a link. More of the names mentioned in this article may also qualify for links, too, but I'm tired.] 
Thank you for your attention, Wordreader (talk) 06:47, 29 August 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Criteria? 

message: Jones talks about his synthesia in the Nerdist/Leonard Maltin podcast "Maltin on Movies", 3 March 2017, at maybe the nine minute mark.  --  Zanimum (talk) 13:16, 4 March 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Quincy Jones 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified one external link on List of people with synesthesia. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20120717013939/http://www.neuronet.pitt.edu/~bogdan/tesla/tesla.pdf to http://www.neuronet.pitt.edu/~bogdan/tesla/tesla.pdf
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 20:30, 22 May 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 2 external links on List of people with synesthesia. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added  tag to http://www.soundgenerator.com/sound/artists/artists_biography.cfm?artistid=12653
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20061011212916/http://www.deutschegrammophon.com/special/insighttext.htms?ID=grimaud-credo&DETAIL=1 to http://www2.deutschegrammophon.com/special/insighttext.htms?ID=grimaud-credo&DETAIL=1
*Added  tag to http://startouch.thestar.com/screens/56cd3c2f-74ae-47f7-b407-15e45bf67d97%7ChIW-RYsmBHly.html
*Added  tag to http://www.cbc.ca/player/News/TV+Shows/The+National/Health/ID/2398859805/
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20090723054116/http://www.clarehansson.com/marianmcpartland/content/styleDiscussion.htm to http://www.clarehansson.com/marianmcpartland/content/styleDiscussion.htm
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 10:08, 1 January 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: This may be a stretch, but in the song "Lola" by The Kinks, Lola is described as talking "in a dark brown voice." I don't know if this is enough evidence for Davies being a synesthete, but he might go in the possible section. Sea Captain Cormac 20:54, 12 February 2019 (UTC)
thread_title: Ray Davies?

message: Hi! Back in November, I cleaned up the list a bit, which included the removal of sources that met one of the following criteria (and therefore entire entries that were solely backed by such sources):
*The source is inaccessible. During my cleanup, all the sources I found that met this criteria were either books with no Google Books previews or dead links with no archived versions.
*The source never mentions synesthesia by name, suggesting original research on the part of whoever added the person to the list.
*The source is non-primary and simply describes the person as a synesthete without citing its own sources.
Afterwards, I began syncing up the list with its corresponding category, :Category:People with synesthesia, as much as possible, but there are a few sources I have been unable to verify because they're either unavailable in my region, dead (all the Internet archive sites are blocked on my computer):) or YouTube videos I just don't feel like sitting through just to see the relevant part/if there even is a relevant part at all. Pretty much everyone who's in the list but not the category needs their sources verified, but if you want a specific list;
*Mary J. Bligehttp://la-confidential-magazine.com/personalities/articles/mary-j-blige-kevin-sessums-interview
*Robert Cailliauhttps://web.archive.org/web/20060822234559/http://robert.cailliau.free.fr/ByLetter/M/Me/Alphabet.html
*Elvin Joneshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0T5p1ZmQ1M
*Kilfordhttps://web.archive.org/web/20080801004611/http://www.gulfnews.com/4men/Profiles/10225222.html
*Geoffrey Rushhttps://web.archive.org/web/20120327210920/http://www.grippers.com.au/grippers-articles/2007/5/20/geoffrey-rush-a-man-for-all-seasons/
*Patrick Stumphttp://archive.is/fVnb
*Kanye Westhttps://web.archive.org/web/20140302135515/http://styleblazer.com/212503/kanye-interview/
*Hans Zimmerhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHvamU98GhA
--ⓋᎯ☧ǿᖇǥ@ℤε💬 18:55, 9 February 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Help verifying sources 

message: If you check other lists such as List of people with bipolar disorder, you will notice it doesn't have this tag. It has plenty of modern people on it as well and will presumably just keep getting longer and longer as new people reveal themselves as having it. I would think that either both of these pages should have the tag, or neither of them. Perhaps I misunderstand "dynamic list".  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Driftybiscuit (talk • contribs) 15:33, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: Is this page really a "dynamic list"?

message: I would like some help in tracking down some primary sources. I have found and referenced several secondary sources for Franz Liszt saying "Oh, please, gentlemen, a little bluer, if you please!", and some of them have referenced a primary source which I can't get a hold of. If anybody can get a hold of this to verify, I would really appreciate it as I don't know where else to look (I've searched JSTOR and EBSCO)
* Secondary source containing the quote: Cytowic, Richard E. (2009). Wednesday is indigo blue : discovering the brain of synesthesia. Eagleman, David. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. p. 93. ISBN 978-0-262-25483-0. OCLC 317116544.
* Secondary source containing the quote: Liu, Annie (Yen-Ling) (2013). "Listening as Gazing: Synaesthesia and the Double Apotheosis in Franz Liszt's "Hunnenschlacht"". Studia Musicologica. 54 (4): 379–388. ISSN 1788-6244.
** This source cites in a footnote the following primary source which I can't get a hold of: "O, bitte meine Herren, ein bisschen blauer, wenn es gefällt! Diese Tonart erfordert es!" and "Das ist ein tiefes Violett, ich bitte, sich danach zu richten!"; cited in Neue Berliner Musikzeitung, August 29, 1895. Driftybiscuit (talk) 16:34, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: Help wanted - Tracking down primary sources

message: In The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison often described different tones of voice as having colors. Blue and Green words, for example, seem to be more soothing tones, while black words are hateful and red words are angry or hurt. Yellow seems to be a more neutral tone. In the same book, she describes certain characters feeling colors. Cynthia-Coriníon (talk) 21:18, 22 December 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: Toni Morrison, perhaps?

message: Amy Beach should be added, but I've never edited a list before. So if someone else would do it, I'd appreciate it. Fan of composer Rebecca Clarke (talk) 03:39, 27 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Add  [[Amy Beach]]??