Musical chords produce complex, blended taste experiences.
Inducer
chord
Concurrent
taste
Category
Auditory Gustatory
In chord-taste synesthesia, hearing musical chords — combinations of simultaneous notes — triggers complex blended taste experiences in the mouth or mind. For example, a C major chord might taste sweet and creamy, while a diminished chord could taste sour or metallic. The taste experience shifts as the harmonic content changes, making music a multisensory gustatory journey. This is among the rarest forms of synesthesia, and because chords are more complex than single tones, the resulting taste blends can be richer and more layered than those triggered by individual notes.
Ward, J. et al. (2006). Sound-colour synaesthesia: To what extent does it use cross-modal mechanisms common to us all? Cortex.
View publication →Crisinel, A.-S. & Spence, C. (2010). A sweet sound? Food names implicitly name taste qualities. Appetite.
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