Singer-songwriter Pharrell Williams is starring in a documentary about his rise – and it’s bizarre that everyone is playing with animated Lego.
But for the ‘Get lucky’ hitmaker, using Lego figures is an ideal way to translate what’s going on in his head onto the screen.
In the documentary ‘Piece by Piece’, released on November 8, he reveals that he has a neurological condition known as synesthesia.
That means he doesn’t just hear music; for him, melodies, choruses and hooks all have a lyrical rainbow of colors.
The medical phenomenon causes people to experience one sense through another, from seeing music to tasting words and smelling shapes.
In the documentary ‘Piece by Piece’, released in Britain on November 8, he reveals details of his experience with a neurological condition known as synaesthesia, which allows him to experience music in colours.
Pharrell explains that he doesn’t just hear music; for him, melodies, choruses and hooks all have a lyrical rainbow of colors
In the documentary, he admits that he felt “mesmerized” by music when he was young, and remembers “staring into the speaker and seeing these colors.”
“It’s not something you see with your physical eyes, it’s something you see with your mind’s eye,” he explains.
“I would just start the record over, and start over, and redo whatever it took to make it happen,” he added.
For him, it not only improves the sound, but also the way he writes music.
Previously in a 2013 interview On NPR radio, Pharrell explained that seeing colors also helps him recognize if something is in the right key.
He said, “It’s the only way I can identify what something sounds like.
‘I know when something is in the key because it is either the same color or not. Or it feels different, and it doesn’t feel right.’
Previously in an interview with NPR radio in 2013, Pharrell explained that seeing colors also helps him recognize if something is in the right key.
Synesthesia is not a disease or condition, but a rare neurological condition that affects around four percent of people, according to Professor Jamie Ward, a cognitive neuroscientist who specializes in Synesthesia at the University of Sussex.
‘One sense can activate another. Music can have colors, shapes and textures and these change dynamically over time. It’s not that you just think of scenes like the countryside or houses, it’s more like seeing a dynamic abstract art image,” he told MailOnline.
Although Pharrell can see music, people more often report that words have taste or that numbers are visualized with colors, Professor Ward explains.
For many like Pharrell, it’s a positive creative boost, but some people who experience synesthesia can find it overwhelming, he added.
But it is not seen as something that needs to be treated and many enjoy experiencing the world differently.
Professor Ward said the condition is more common among people in the creative industries, for example musicians and artists; it has also been shown to run in families.
In most cases, people are born with it or develop it in early childhood.
The condition causes the brain to bring together different senses, explains Professor Ward.
“It changes the way the brain is wired,” he said.
‘There is quite a difference in the brain of someone with synaesthesia, but it is not like a stroke, where you see a hole in the brain or something like that.
‘It’s just differences in the wiring pattern in the brain. It allows the information to flow around and connect things in unusual ways.”
For example, each of your five senses stimulates a different part of the brain. So when you look at a bright color, the primary visual cortex, at the back of your brain, is stimulated.
But if you have synesthesia, you may also feel like you can ‘taste’ a color.
So not only is your primary visual cortex triggered by the color, but your parietal lobe, which tells you what something tastes like, is also stimulated.
There are several types of synesthesia, but you may be affected if you notice strange, involuntary crossovers between senses.
You may “taste” certain words or “see” colors for days of the week.
There may also be consistency in your sensory stimuli and these may become predictable, for example by always matching a certain word with the same color.
It is also common for people with synesthesia to be able to describe their unusual perceptions to others.
A similar phenomenon, known as autonomic sensory meridian response, or ASMR, involves physical feelings caused by hearing or seeing certain things.