Listen to music guessing colors

People can predict exactly what kind of colors other people are thinking based on the music they are listening to.

New research discovered, people often associate fun music, fast rhythm with bright yellow, colorful; while sad music, slow rhythm makes people think of dark, gloomy gray.

Scientist Stephen Palmer, of the University of California and colleagues, came to the conclusion after studying 100 men and women, half of whom were in San Francisco, California and half in Guadalajara, Mexico.

Artwork: diendanbaclieu.net

Participants listened to 18 different classical pieces of immortal musicians such as Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Johannes Brahms. The scientists also gave a 37-color table for participants to choose the 5 colors that best match each song.

The results are the same in both California and Mexico. Most people choose warm tones for cheerful, optimistic music and dark, gray tones for sad, gloomy music.

"The research results show that the important role of emotions in listening to music relates to color," Palmer said. "More surprisingly, we can accurately predict 95% of colors based on the music they hear is happy or sad."

The researchers then experimented with another experiment using facial expressions instead of color. The result, happy faces are linked to happy, optimistic music; while sad faces "pair" with melancholy melody. This proves that emotions play a dominant role in the association of music and color.

Scientists hope this research will have practical applications such as adding emotion in the tracks, by combining colors and music.