Visualising your music... in your MIND!

[Zulu Romeo]

I've been meaning to post this for some time, but does anyone else develop visions in their head when listening to different types of music, and reinterpreting the music in their own unique way? I find it a fun thing to do, keeping my head ticking over as the music plays.

For instance, listening to the famous "Vltava" segment of Smetana's "Ma Vlast" (itself depicting the passage of the titular river through eastern Europe), I always envision that the various different parts of the music correspond almost perfectly to the scenery of the east coast railway journey starting from Aberdeen and finishing at Edinburgh (in a condensed way, obviously: the real journey takes a few hours while the piece itself lasts about 15 minutes).

The seven movements of Holst's "The Planets"? Rather than seven planetary bodies, or seven deities, I see it (in its original order) as the seven ages of Man.

I even have some mash-up megamixes on my computer, each featuring samples of over a hundred songs mixed together, lasting well in excess of an hour, and I often imagine, "Enigma Variations" style, that each individual song sample in the mix corresponds to a different particular member of the TrekBBS (myself included somewhere) in terms of their perceived prominence and character being compared to the character and use of the sample in that part of the mix.

Anyone else have fun visualising music and reinterpreting them?

 

[C.E. Evans]

Years ago, I used to listen to albums when I went to bed, and so sometimes I couldn't help but visualize stuff once my eyes closed.

-I came up with some really weird stuff listening to Faith No More's Angel Dust album, I can honestly say that...

-I fell asleep while listening to Sarah McLachlan's Fumbling Towards Ecstasy once and had really creepy nightmares about demonic clowns for some reason...

But more often than not I generally just visualize myself playing bass with the band or artist in a performance setting...

 

[Zulu Romeo]

The strangest ones involved listening to the pop boom of the late 90s/early 2000s on commercial radio, and visualising some of the girls I was at university with singing the music, while I was drumming along to the song. Bizarre.

 

[Roshi]

Whenever I listen to AC/DC I keep seeing Angus Young headbanging. I dunno but I can't help it!

 

[Geckothan]

I often visualise what I was doing the first time I heard that particular piece of music.

 

[Zulu Romeo]

I often visualise what I was doing the first time I heard that particular piece of music.

It's funny you mention that - I often listen to whole albums on my mp3 player when I'm out, or on my CD player in my car, and I've now associated certain music with certain journeys:

The music of Fatboy Slim with a train journey to Glasgow on the west coast line.
The music of Daft Punk with car journeys from work to home.
The music of the Traveling Wilburys while driving out in the Lincolnshire countryside.
The music of Dire Straits with walking along the beach at Cleethorpes during low tide.

Not quite the same as visualising my own things with the music, but the visual and interactive stimulation does help me enjoy the music more.

 

[Zulu Romeo]

The other thing I would also visualise is while listening to the relatively recent Beatles "mash-up" album "LOVE" - I'd imagine that each of the 26-odd tracks corresponded to a different character, event or thematic element from hit TV show "LOST". Crazy, but somehow it all made sense to me.

 

[barnaclelapse]

Absolutely.

The music I listen to, anything from Bob Dylan to Alice Cooper to Tom Waits to Nine Inch Nails or Tori Amos (and dozens more) has an incredibly profound influence on my writing. Many of the images I get that lead to actual story ideas very often come from the music I happen to be listening to.