One voice I am super curious about is Junji's, because you sometimes mention that you're very attached to it.

Also curious about Dreamcatcher's Handong, ATEEZ' Jongho and Epik High's Tablo. 🤔

And yes that are some of my fave voices. 😁

I've got to admit, our conversation earlier is what made me think of posting this!

OnlyOneOf's Junji

I've actually described Junji's voice before:

a nice lightly oxidized wulong tea, light notes of ginger and cardamom, a little bit of lychee and orange blossom

This was in the context of a post on the self composed songs in response to this game: https://shadowetienne.tumblr.com/post/656842214652215296/you-know-ive-gotta-ask-how-coy-and-night-flight

I'm going to add on to this a bit since that was a quick description. He's got some backing notes of sweet rice cakes, and when he does beltier notes, he gets some honey in his tone. The ginger and cardamom get stronger lower in his range. The orange blossom is especially prominent in his upper register.

Dreamcatcher's Handong

Handong is one of my Dreamcatcher biases and I love her voice! She's got a vocal flavor based in a lightly oxidized wulong tea, sweet sticky rice, and some spices, specifically cardamom and anise. There's also a light note of candied kumquats and some gentle coconut cream sweetness.

Ateez's Jongho

OK, so I really like Jongho's voice, but there is something about the flavor of it that is hilarious to me because of the thing he does with breaking apples while singing.

Jongho's voice tastes like malty black tea, sweet dark rye bread with honey, and apples. Sometimes there's a little bit of sweet ginger and cinnamon in there too.

Epik High's Tablo

I don't listen to Epik High much, they just aren't really my thing for the most part (more rap heavy than my general preference, and I don't like one of the other voices much). Had to go look up some songs to answer this and took a few tries to hit on one that I could listen to enough of for a good impression. This is mostly based on "On My Way."

His vocal flavor is based in a bitter dark chocolate over a light moist spice cake, rich in nutmeg and cloves. There are some times when there is an orange note as well when his tone is brighter.

pentagon's jinho, super junior's kyuhyun and wjsn's dawon

Pentagon's Jinho

His voice is based in black tea and cinnamon and a sweet pastry for me. In his higher registers, the black tea can get a little astringent, but in his lower registers it is beautifully malty. Sometimes there are notes of candied lemon peel in there as well, mostly in his mix voice.

Super Junior's Kyuhyun

I've actually done his before for this game years ago. The description still holds pretty true:

His voice kind of reminds me of gingerbread with black tea. One of the really rich soft gingerbreads with molasses and cinnamon and nutmeg and allspice and cloves and a little bit of anise as well as the ginger and brown sugar. When he’s singing higher, more upbeat songs, his vocal flavor gets a little bit lighter, losing some of the molasses notes and focusing more on the black tea and ginger with fewer spices.

As he's gotten older, his voice has developed more malty notes that make it even more well rounded!

WJSN's Dawon

And questiOn mark taste bad and that added to your first impression?

The flavors of songs in my synesthesia experience are very heavily influenced by vocal flavor, so that's one of the first things that comes into play here. So as a basic run down of vocal flavors:

Junji - a nice lightly oxidized wulong tea, light notes of ginger and cardamom, a little bit of lychee and orange blossom

Rie - a somewhat delicate jasmine green tea, similar light notes of ginger and cardamom, heavier on the cardamom than Junji's voice, somewhat sweet, again with some lychee notes (Rie and Junji's voices have a similar palette for me, but the distribution is different)

Nine - malty black tea (such as Assam), hint of chocolate, hint of mint, some orange, when he goes into the airier part of his voice, loses some of the harshness/astringency that it can develop a little bit when he does the raspier tones

Love - strong (non-malty) black tea, some chocolate notes again, cinnamon, cloves, some ginger, some orange, like with Nine, in the airier parts of his voice, it does tone down the astringency some

KB - a more delicate black tea (Qimen - a Chinese black tea), a hint of sweetened condensed milk, cinnamon, cardamom, a hint of coconut

Yoojung - again a more delicate black tea, prepared milk tea style, a little bit of ginger, cardamom, and honey, honestly, his voice tastes a lot like one of my favorite boba tea orders and this is slightly confusing

Mill - a somewhat lightly flavored, spiced black tea w/ cardamom, cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, a lot of orange, including the orange zest element of orange, honey

I actually really like the flavor palette of all their voices a lot, though Junji's and Rie's are my favorite both in balance and overall palette.

So how that interacts with the instrumentation and the individual songs.

"cOy"

They spend a lot of time in that lighter, airier configuration, stylistically in Junji and Rie's preferred zone (unsurprising, it's their song). This song's instrumentation brings a very light creamy element to the flavor, it reminds me of a very light ginger sponge cake with ice cream, with a lot of those ginger/orange/lychee/orange blossom elements present in several of their voices. There's a lovely balance of tea flavors, the overall flavor is very heavily balanced towards Rie and Junji's voices, with almost nothing in the way of the chocolate notes that Love and Nine can sometimes bring into songs.

"night flight"

The instrumentation of "night flight" brings forward some interesting smoky/campfire scents and flavors. Between KB and Yoojung's vocals being pretty forward in this and the instrumentation, along with a lot of them singing together, there's a lot of milk tea/creamy rich notes. Again, the instrumentation brings in some cake-like elements, but more like a coffee cake with plenty of cinnamon and spices. The chocolate elements in Love and Nine's voices are more brought forward in this song, but in a way that incorporates well with the overall flavor palette.

"? (questiOn mark)"

One of my biggest issues with this song comes down to the fact that one of the types of distortion that they're using hits one of my sound creates a touch/sensory response along with flavor, and I am getting a little bit of sand to the mouth from the distortions in the mixing/instrumentation. I've said a few times that the song sounds a little bit disjoint, and that also comes up here, there's not a lot of vocal blending, so in the different parts of the song, we're sort of jumping from member's vocal flavor to other member's vocal flavor, without the instrumentation providing a flavor element that unifies it. There is a distinct element of like sour hard candies added from the sort of "droplet" sounds in the instrumentation that is kind of neat though. So while it doesn't taste bad necessarily, it's certainly a somewhat disconcerting flavor ride.

I taste sounds. I want a writing exercise. So, here’s how it works: put the name of a singer (and if it isn’t someone I post about a song of theirs I should go listen to), and I will describe the flavor of that singer’s voice.

I taste sounds. I want a writing exercise. So, here’s how it works: put the name of a singer (and if it isn’t someone I post about a song of theirs I should go listen to), and I will describe the flavor of that singer’s voice.

Hello!  I will definitely do not kpop things.  A lot of my listening is in mand pop and k pop (and recently I started listening to some Kazakh pop too), and there’s a slew of reasons for that, but I like a lot of other music too.  I went to a big folk music festival recently (which I go to every year) and I love a lot of what gets played there.  I like a lot of classical music and traditional music (especially a lot of woodwinds heavy stuff and a lot of traditional/classical Chinese music).  I even listen to music in English sometimes.  One of the big issues that I sometimes have is understanding the lyrics too well though (it means that I avoid random listening to English and French language music a lot because I don’t have to think to understand the lyrics, and that doesn’t always make for a happy Etienne).

That being said… I am going to go ahead and do these.

1) Otis Redding (”Try a Little Tenderness”) 

(I usually think of Otis Redding in the context of “A Change is Gonna Come.”)  His voice tastes of cinnamon and molasses and candied orange peels with a little bit of good smokey whiskey (bourbon) and a subtle oatmeal base.  It’s a good voice.  The section in the end of the song is heavier on the orange and bourbon notes.

2) Bloc Party (”Ratchet”) 

This is… not my flavor of music.  It does the guitar shift thing that tastes (and feels because the less commonly set off synesthesia likes to get in on this) sand.  It’s also kind of sticky sour-sweet tasting music.  The vocalists don’t have terribly flavorful voices one way or another, sort of… dried rolled oats mostly.  However, the one who seems to be doing most of the singing has a slightly astringent undertone to his voice (a bit like Darjeeling, which many people love, and is not the tea for me).  So, nothing too interesting, but not for me.

3) George Cosby (”State of Undress”) 

OK, I like the flavor of his voice.  His base vocal flavor is of a dark rye bread with honey and tiny hints of licorice and cloves.  There are notes of a dark malty tea (like an Assam), and on the higher/clearer notes occasionally there are notes of fresh pears (taylor golds, slightly overripe when they’re sweet and dripping but still delicious).

4) Róisín Murphy (”Ruby Blue“)

This also has the off pitch/filtered instrumentation of SAND to the mouth.  I almost backed out of listening to the song in the first 5 seconds due to sand.  Vocally, this also isn’t one of my favorites.  The vocalist has a coffee voice.  I hate coffee (it makes me ill), and while there are some interesting spices in there (nutmeg, anise), pretty much not much is going to save a voice from coffee for me.  (Basically, I am a bad judge of this singer because not my flavor and instrumentation of SAND.)

5) Bing Crosby (”Young at Heart”) 

I must admit that I came into this already not having terribly fond feelings towards Crosby, but I’m trying to focus on the song that you picked itself.  I hat to go find a different link because youtube didn’t want me to actually be able to look at the video on that one.  Crosby’s voice tastes of chocolate and whipped cream with too much vanilla in it.  (These are flavors that I range from not particularly liking to really not liking, and I know that a lot of people do like them.)  There are some undertones of caramel and dried apples and a tiny bit of sweet salty combination, but it’s not enough to rescue the voice for me personally.  I can tell why a lot of other people like it though.

I taste sounds. I want a writing exercise. So, here’s how it works: put the name of a singer (and if it isn’t someone I post about a song of theirs I should go listen to), and I will describe the flavor of that singer’s voice.

This is a part of the Synesthesia Game (see explanation through the link).

You’re right that this isn’t entirely my style of music, mostly because the electric guitar distortion noise that they use heavily tastes like sand, and is one of the sounds that I get a sensation response from, so it feels like my mouth is full of sand if it’s especially strong (and also like there is sand between my shoulder blades, not my favorite sensation).