Singer-songwriter Pharrell Williams, is starring in a documentary about his rise to fame — and it bizarrely sees everyone played using animated Lego.
But for the ‘Get lucky’ hitmaker, using Lego figurines is an ideal way to translate what’s going on inside his head on screen.
In the documentary called ‘Piece by Piece’, released on November 8, he reveals he has a neurological condition known as synaesthesia.
That means he doesn’t just hear music, to him melodies, choruses and hooks all have a textual rainbow of colours.
The medical phenomenon causes people to experience one sense through another, from seeing music to tasting words and smelling shapes.
In the documentary called ‘piece by piece’, which is set to be released on November 8 in the UK, he reveals details of his experience of a neurological condition known as synaesthesia which allows him to experience music in colours
Pharrell explains he doesn’t just hear music, to him melodies, choruses and hooks all have a textual rainbow of colours
Speaking in the documentary he confesses to feeling ‘mesmerised’ by music when he was young and recalls ‘staring into the speaker and seeing these colours’.
‘It’s not something that you see with your physical eyes, it’s something that you see in your mind’s eye,’ he explains.
‘I would just start the record over, and start it over, and over doing whatever it took to continue to make it happen,’ he added.
For him it not only enhances sound but also how he writes music.
Previously in a 2013 interview with NPR radio, Pharrell explained seeing colours also helps him recognise if something is in the right key.
He said: ‘It’s the only way that I can identify what something sounds like.
‘I know when something is in key because it either matches the same colour or it doesn’t. Or it feels different, and it doesn’t feel right.’
Previously in a 2013 interview with NPR radio, Pharrell explained seeing colours also helps him recognise if something is in the right key
Synaesthesia isn’t a disease or a disorder but a rare neurological condition that affects around four per cent of people, according to Professor Jamie Ward, a cognitive neuroscientist who specialises in Synaesthesia at the University of Sussex.
‘One sense can trigger another. Music might have colours, shapes and textures and they change dynamically over time. It’s not like just thinking of scenes like the countryside or houses, it’s more like seeing a dynamic abstract art image,’ he told MailOnline.
While Pharrell can see music, more commonly people report words having taste or numbers being visualised with colours, Professor Ward explains.
For many like Pharrell it is a positive creative stimulant, but some people who experience Synaesthesia can find it overwhelming, he added.
But it’s not seen as something that is needed to be treated and many enjoy perceiving the world differently.
Professor Ward said that the prevalence of the condition is higher among people in 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 pull several senses together, Professor Ward explains.
‘It changes the way the brain is wired,’ he said.
‘There’s quite a lot of difference in the brain of someone with synaesthesia, but it’s not like having a stroke, where you can see a hole in the brain or anything like that.
‘It’s just differences in the pattern of wiring in the brain. It that enables the information to flow around and join things together in unusual way.’
For example, each of your five senses stimulate a different area of the brain. So, looking at a bright colour will stimulate the primary visual cortex, at the rear of your brain.
But if you have synaesthesia, you may also feel like you can ‘taste’ a colour.
So not only will your primary visual cortex be triggered by the color, your parietal lobe, which tells you what something tastes like, is stimulated, too.
There are several types of synaesthesia, but you may have it if you notice strange involuntary cross overs between senses.
You may ‘taste’ certain words or be able to ‘see’ colours for days of the week.
There may also be consistency in your sensory triggers and they might become predictable, for example always matching a certain word with the same colour.
It’s also common for people with synaesthesia to be able to describe their unusual perceptions to others.
A similar phenomenon, known as autonomous sensory meridian response, or ASMR, involves physical feelings triggered by hearing or seeing certain things.
