The Feedbacker

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Annabelle Ink

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Profiles

February 26, 2025

I first met Jacqueline in the basement of Pomona’s Thatcher music building. I had just finished playing a wobbly cover of Radiohead’s “Exit Music (for a Film)” when I heard an incessant knocking at the door.

Pulling it open, I found myself face-to-face with a girl from the practice room next door. She was wearing a silver Radiohead pendant around her neck and was smiling from ear to ear.

“I just need to say, I love Radiohead,” she said. “This is going to sound weird, but do you happen to experience colors when you listen to their music?”

Jacqueline, a music major in her senior year at Pomona, is herself no stranger to this phenomenon. She’s had synesthesia — a neurological condition that allows people to experience multiple senses simultaneously — for her entire musical career.

“I first realized I had synesthesia in general when I was eight,” Jacqueline later told me. “I was so excited to turn eight years old, because the number eight is a very pretty teal.”

A synesthesia battery test confirmed that she was a synesthete, although it wasn’t until her sophomore year of high school that Jacqueline discovered her musical chromesthesia. She was in the midst of playing Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in G Minor when the realization hit her.

“I just had this thought, like, this piece is so insane,” she said. “It changes straight from deep red to blue and green. And then I was wondering, is this another kind of synesthesia that I have?”

Jacqueline’s chromesthesia allows her to see different colors when she hears music. The Game of Thrones  theme song is a medium red color. One of her favorite pieces in “Edward Scissorhands” is vividly light blue. “Hey There Delilah” is yellow. Jacqueline, who made the accompanying graphic, said that Radiohead’s music creates especially unique colors; she draws a lot of inspiration from them.

But according to Jacqueline, her chromesthesia does more than just influence how she hears other artists’ music; it also helps her shape her own compositions.

She’s been composing music since she was ten years old, but she started releasing her pieces online in her junior year of high school. Now, as a college student studying music, she spends nearly all of her time composing.

“I’m pretty much composing constantly,” she said. “If I’m not by an instrument, I’ll just sing into an audio memo so that I won’t forget, and I’ll write things down in my notes on my phone.”

Jacqueline mainly writes instrumental pieces, describing her compositional style as a blend of neo-classical new wave, ambient, cinematic, and gothic classical music. She draws inspiration from artists and groups like Danny Elfman and Radiohead, using her work to create new musical worlds.

She released her debut commercial album, Singularity, in 2024, although she started working on some of the pieces as early as the year before. Each piece underwent a vastly different creative process, with Jacqueline thinking up one of the songs in a lucid dream. She had been trying to write an “orange piece” for awhile, but hadn’t had any luck.

“In a lucid dream, I basically created this color radio with all these colored buttons on the top, with the idea that each of those represented a station where a piece of that color was being played,” she said. “And then I pressed the orange button, and the main theme of ‘Amber Sky’ came out.”

Singularity has ten tracks in total, all of which are meant to help listeners envision a different kind of world.

“I definitely hope that people experience the album as a collection of musical worlds,” she said. “I want them to feel like they’re basically being teleported to another time or place.”

Jacqueline’s next album is set to come out sometime in the next few months. In the meantime, she’s beginning to think about life after graduation.

“I would love to write soundtracks for films that are just, you know, slightly bizarre, slightly creepy,” she said. “I just think writing for films that have a very unique feel to them, a very unique environment — I would totally thrive.”

As for other aspiring musicians, Jacqueline has one major piece of advice.

“Write music for yourself,” she said. “Don’t write it trying to be popular, trying to match the style that someone else did. Definitely just write music that has value to you.” 

Public Pressure 

 “As a child, I was told not to talk about my mutant superpower, so I kept it secret and hid among humans. Now, I'm putting it to use, creating colourful music in a variety of styles and environments and proving that even non-synesthetes can appreciate the variety of colours, even if they can't see them.”

Imagine perceiving sounds as bursts of colour, where melodies glow and harmonies shimmer in vivid hues. For Jacqueline Cordes, this isn’t a metaphor but her everyday reality. As a chromesthetic composer, she experiences music through a kaleidoscope of colours, using this rare neurological condition as a powerful creative tool. Whether crafting the vibrant worlds of her debut album “Singularity” or colour-coding film scores to evoke precise emotions, Jacqueline’s unique perspective transforms how she approaches music. In this interview, she shares how chromesthesia has shaped her artistry, from her discovery of the condition to her mission to explore uncharted musical environments and inspire listeners to see the world through her eyes.

Do you remember the moment you discovered your chromesthesia? What was it like to realise that not everyone “sees” sound the way you do?
I was in my junior year of high school, I was practising Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in G minor, and I suddenly thought, “What an insane piece—it changes from red suddenly to green and blue.” Then it hit me: “What if this is another kind of synaesthesia I have?” By then, I already knew I had grapheme-colour synaesthesia. I’d figured it out at eight years old, after telling my parents how happy I was to turn eight because the number eight is a lovely shade of teal. My parents had heard of synaesthesia but were sceptical until they researched it and found that most synaesthetes agree the letter A is red. My dad called out from the other room, “What colour is A?” and I yelled back, “Red!” After that, I took a synaesthesia battery test, which confirmed I was a synaesthete.

Like many synaesthetes, I was stunned to learn that most people don’t experience the world this way. I was also surprised to find that non-synaesthetes can imagine black numbers and letters! Realising how rare synaesthesia is made me feel fortunate—it’s profoundly influenced my passions and life path.

Can you share what certain musical elements—like a minor chord or a specific instrument—look and feel like to you? How does your chromesthesia inspire your music?

Unlike many synaesthetes who associate specific chords or instruments with colours, my chromesthesia is tied to the musical character or feel. For example, most Irish jig music and sea shanties appear red to me—energetic, driving, and often in minor keys. Green music, which is rarer, emerges in orchestral film scores with strong chord progressions and soaring melodies, often in dorian mode, like the main themes of “Black Beauty”, “Night at the Museum”, and “The Power of the Heart”.

This perception shapes my compositions. I aim for clear melodies and chord progressions, which are more likely to evoke colours. Understanding the musical elements that create certain colours is invaluable when composing. For instance, when scoring a film, I might think, “This scene needs a heroic and soaring theme—something green.” A filmmaker recently laughed when she noticed I’d colour-coded the script, saying, “You’re, like, supernatural!”

Was there a moment during your childhood or early musical education when your synaesthesia became a creative tool rather than just a fascinating quirk?
Once I began understanding what the colours represented, they started influencing my compositions by helping me replicate the environments of pieces that inspired me. When I began sharing my synaesthetic experiences with teachers and peers, I found that most people were fascinated and full of questions. Over time, it became a defining part of my identity.

When you sit down to compose, do you start with a musical idea and see where the colours lead you, or do you begin with a visual palette and translate it into music?
Most of the time, I aim to create a specific musical environment, focusing on evoking particular colours and using instruments to build the atmosphere I envision. Over time, I’ve learned to consistently create colours by understanding the necessary musical elements. For example, green pieces often revolve around repeating chord progressions, while purple pieces start with melodies that guide the chords. Unfortunately, some great music feels “colourless” to me, so I use unique scales or other techniques to build a vivid atmosphere.

At the Fibonacci Conference, you spoke about cataloguing scales. Could you tell me more about that?
My goal in cataloguing scales was to encourage other composers to explore the vast array of scales available in music. I wanted to make unusual scales accessible, even for those without formal music theory training, and inspire experimentation beyond major and minor scales. Popular music today feels increasingly homogenous, but scales are powerful tools that can evoke distinct musical worlds. I hope to inspire composers to explore this untapped potential.

Do you see your work as a bridge to help people understand chromesthesia, or is it more about sharing your unique perspective with the world?
I aim to create music that captures specific musical worlds. My hope is that even non-synaesthetes can connect with my work and feel transported to another time or place. I’m constantly discovering new musical environments and hope to explore and document as many as I can.

 Rising Artists 

Q: How does your synesthesia interact with your creative process?

CORDES: It definitely plays a large role. I think it helps me avoid getting so experimental with my music that it stops connecting emotionally with people. Colors seem to occur in that sweet spot between conventional and unpredictable. I think synesthesia also causes an awareness for when I’m changing the musical character in the middle of a piece; I can see when the color changes. If I change colors within a piece, it’s often an intentional decision for a contrasting section, rather than letting the color falter within a musical phrase, which I try to avoid.

Q: “Singularity” is an ethereal instrumental album. What was your creative process in making these tracks?

CORDES: I generally have different processes for each piece, but I’ll tell you my craziest one. I had been trying to write an orange piece for a very long time and couldn’t figure out how to do it. Since synesthesia is a subconscious process – it’s completely beyond my control and I don’t know what aspects cause each color – I decided to try to use my lucid dreams to help. During a lucid dream, I conjured a “color radio” in which each station (a set of colored buttons on the top) is playing a piece of the corresponding color. I pressed the orange button, and the main theme of the piece that eventually turned into Amber Sky (a synesthetically orange piece) began to play. I know it sounds crazy, but this is what happened!

Q: Did any real-life events occur in your life that inspired “Singularity?”

CORDES: Actually, no. I don’t tend to write about my own life in my music since my goal is to create new musical worlds rather than reflect on past experiences.

Q: Do you have a personal favorite on the album? Which one, and why?

CORDES: The tracks are really difficult for me to compare since they are all so different, but maybe my choice would be “Encounter From Beyond.” It was one of the pieces that was really effortless to write and also takes one of the most dissonant intervals–the tritone–and makes it palatable. That said, I think “A Child’s Song” really represents my typical musical style. It’s purple, which I write in often, and also has a spooky feel.

Q: Was there a pivotal moment in your life when you decided to follow your path as a musician?

CORDES: Yes. I originally planned on studying linguistics in college, but when I started taking music classes and especially music composition classes, I realized that composing music was what I truly loved both studying and doing in my free time.

Q: What is coming up next for you?

CORDES: Another album called Frozen Star! It will be out in a few months, and it will transport listeners to another collection of musical worlds.

Interviewed by Taylor Berry