When Music Has Color: Meet Cheryl Kaldahl

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Let's see, how do I turn this damn thing off?

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Keep that on the pocket.

SPEAKER_00 0:13

Sweet. Talking about There's been lots of places and see many faces. Now we sit surrounding something. He's not asking for your money. It's another way to waste your time. You might save your life with a piece of device. But gramps just make shit up.

SPEAKER_03 0:42

My guest for this episode is Cheryl Caldall. That's spelled K-A-L-D-A-H-L. Cheryl is a remarkably talented composer, singer, songwriter, facial artist, and painter, and she's from Lafayette, Indiana. Now, I've met some interesting people over the years, but Cheryl is something special. She's warm, enthusiastic, wonderfully creative, and has a laugh that is downright contagious. Cheryl also introduced me to something called synesthesia. Oh for God's sake. However it's pronounced. It is a fascinating neurological phenomenon which the senses can overlap. Some people, for instance, actually experience colors when they hear music, like Cheryl. Others associate letters, numbers, or sounds with particular colors. And approximately 4% of the world's population, it turns out, experience this phenomenon. And Cheryl is one of them. I have something similar. Every time I try to pronounce I see red. Anyway, Cheryl has it, and in her case it's a wonderful part of her creative work. We also have a surprise visitor, Joe Peters, a previous guest and distinguished alumnus of Gramps Just Make Shit Up, he drops in for the conversation. Now, Cheryl and Joe go way back in the Lafayette arts and music scene and they spend a little time reminiscing about the good old days. Although listening to these two, I suspect the good old days have not actually ended. They're just getting a bit older and probably charging more for whatever they do. Lafayette, Indiana is lucky to have these two creative souls in its midst. So settle in and enjoy my conversation with a delightful Cheryl Caldal. And for the record, Sinesthesia. Oh, for God's sake. I often ask the singer-songwriters what is their very first memory or their first influence of music? And here's what Cheryl had to say.

SPEAKER_01 2:47

Really, it was my dad. He was in World War II. He was a frogman in World War II in the Navy.

SPEAKER_02 2:52

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 2:53

And he was part of the band there. So he did, he played saxophone and clarinet. And back then it was that big band music. So you've got all the drumming and you've got all these great horns and all of that. Growing up, my my first real memory of music was when dad had this beautiful record player that was in this nice cabinet with the big tubes in the back. And he would he had 78s. So you can tell what kind of records those were back in the day, right? The 78s. And he would, if we were in trouble or got in trouble, we would get a little bit of a sit-down break. But uh he would put us in front of the record player and he'd be playing music and he would have his arms like this and his head down, just absorbing all this beautiful music, a lot of orchestra pieces and big band music. And he wasn't putting his head down so much on the big band music, but on the classical, he would do that. And I think as a timeout form of punishment, he would set us in front of this record player. I never thought of it as punishment because I thought, this is fantastic. How many times can I get to sit here? Because to me, it was not punishment at all. So I've cherished those memories that I made with him and that he made for us doing exactly that and just sharing music with us like that all the time. And so he was that stimulus for me with the music. And just at a very young age for me, I started to learn to play piano. And so he would bring home these little chord organs. I don't know if you remember those. They probably only had maybe 12 keys, actual keys on it. And then they had these letter chord push buttons that you would push down. And if it said you were following the music and it told you exactly what note to play, which was written down, C D E F on the actual key, which was funny. But then you could coordinate and it would tell you when to play whatever chord note with whatever it was that you were playing. It was a lot of fun. And it just sparked me into wanting to really play pianos. They were able to finally get me lessons and get me in there. And I was trained classically, just the classic music because of all of those times in front of that record player. Had me focused. So dad really did that. And he was really the music person for us in the family. And then I've got uh relatives beyond him, older than him, in fact, that were musicians and concert violinists and things like that. So it just flows through. But the art does too. That kind of flows through too.

SPEAKER_04 5:17

Yeah. So has your home always been there in Lafayette or in Indiana? Is that where you grew up?

SPEAKER_01 5:23

It's always been in Indiana. Yes. My dad was the first generation of Norwegians born here in the U.S. So he was the first generation born in the U.S. in Minnesota. And then his parents migrated over here to Indiana. And so for us, uh yeah, I was born in northern Indiana and then moved here to Lafayette now, but not until I was an adult.

SPEAKER_04 5:44

When you started to take piano lessons, did he did he work with you on that as well? Did he play keyboards?

SPEAKER_01 5:51

He didn't play keyboards. He played saxophone and clarinet and he sang. Oh, so and so there were a lot of times at church that we would sing and play. I would play and he it would sing with me and we do duets and things like that growing up.

SPEAKER_03 6:04

But based on what you're saying, I'm guessing your father is no longer with you.

SPEAKER_01 6:07

He is not. No, he passed away in 2008. Sorry to hear that. Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 6:12

What a kickstart for an artist's career is to have a family that's not just supportive, but talented in that way.

SPEAKER_01 6:22

Yes. And because dad did that with the art too. He was a painter. He didn't do paintings like what I do, but he did something called bow painting, which, if you're familiar with that, it's painting something to look like something it's not. For instance, he could take a brick and paint it to look like a piece of marble. Yeah. So growing up, he would quiz me on things. If we were looking at the sky, he'd he'd look out the window and he'd say, Cheryl, what color is that? What color would that be? Well it's blue dad. No. What color blue is that? Cerulean? So that was really great though, because then he would test me on music theory or color theory along the way too when it came to the art side. How do you make that not be green anymore? Or how do you turn that to make that not stay that bright of that color? And what would you add to the mix to make that happen? He was really influential on both my music and my art.

SPEAKER_04 7:12

Would your mother sure enthusiasm for the art? It doesn't sound like she was a part of that.

SPEAKER_01 7:18

She was also a singer, so she would sing. But when it came to playing instruments, she didn't do that. She was the one that always took me to all of my piano lessons. And both of my parents were at any kind of performance or show that I did, they were always there for those. And just really great support system there with them.

SPEAKER_03 7:33

The one that I've been listening to the most when I write in the morning is a long piece. So tell her about that. How do you create something like that?

SPEAKER_01 7:43

That piece is very special to me. That piece is about my dad. And I wrote that after he passed away. I was in that moment of just wanting to see him, just wanting to talk to him, what about the conversations and just remembering how good of a friend he was for me, not just as a dad, but just as a friend, as an adult, the things we could talk about, the things he still helped me with and guided me. And both of my parents have been like that, but dad more so even than my mom. And I think it was just also because of that bond with the music and the art that we had. And with this particular piece, the Whispering Pines, every shift in that piece is like another memory and me just honoring those moments that we had together. This is what the relationship was for me. And it was so just to have somebody like that in my life was just so beautiful and just such a gift that it to me it's an honor to have had him be my dad. So that piece is what that's all about, and then also missing him a lot too at the same time. And so the whispering pine's title actually came from the fact that when we were growing up, he named the farm. He loved pine trees, he loved Norway spruce. He had rows of these spruce trees, and there were many times that we would wonder, where's dad? We're looking all over for him. He'd be laying in the grass in between the trees, just listening to them. And he taught me even so many beautiful things with that. He said, Cheryl, just listen. But it what do you hear? Just listen. And so it's just taking that time and that moment, even in just in nature, to to hear the music and listen and watch all the abundance that it has for you. If you just look. And it was very inspirational. So he named our farm Whispering Pines.

SPEAKER_03 10:20

Do you have siblings?

SPEAKER_01 10:22

I do. I have eight. Five brothers. Yes, I have five brothers and three sisters. Wow. Yep, and we were very much a farm-to-table family because there were so many of us.

SPEAKER_03 10:33

Where are you in the pecking order of the children?

SPEAKER_01 10:36

I am number eight of the nine.

SPEAKER_03 10:37

Oh, you're the baby.

SPEAKER_01 10:39

Yep, I have a younger brother. Who will to this day say, Well, of course I'm the ninth. They waited for perfection. Typical sibling, right? I know.

SPEAKER_03 10:48

Yeah, exactly. Typical sibling. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 10:50

On the farm. It's the earliest memories of the farm. I remember watching a baby calf, a calf being born. And I remember my dad saying we were a transplant from northern Indiana before I came down further towards the Indianapolis areas, Purdue University Territory. That farm, that earlier farm that I initially grew up in for the first six years of my life was where this baby calf was born. So I know I was younger than six watching this calf be born. And I remember my dad telling me, you need to go inside. No, I want to see exactly what's happening. And he let me stay. So I remember that. And then I remember distinctly the smell of the supplemental calf milk that you made. It was a powder form that you could mix up and put in the bottle and to help feed the baby calf to help. I don't know if it was to help mom keep up to. I don't know. And aside from just the animals like that, because we had cattle horses at that point, we only had cattle. We had some cows, horses, and chickens. I remember the chickens. But I also remember on that farm, our garden at that age seemed like a field that went on for acres. And it's as a youngster, I remember thinking the only thing I ever wanted to do as an adult was to have a place that I would never have to weed. Because every time you had a spare moment, it was go weed to such and such, go weed to such, and go weed this area, that area, and that area. And I just remember thinking, I don't want to weed anymore. When can we stop weeding? Yeah, those were my earliest memories.

SPEAKER_03 12:19

That sounded like a great Americana kind of childhood.

SPEAKER_01 12:22

It really was. We went to a second farm, and then I was in charge of all the chickens and the turkeys, and that was my responsibility and all the barn cats. Then we had hogs and we changed what we had when we moved to that farm. You're raised with so many chores and so many responsibilities, even as a youngster.

SPEAKER_02 12:40

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:41

That it's different. I just feel like there's a different kind of programming we get when you live on a working farm and it is what you're gonna eat too. But just makes us have a different type of work ethic. I remember my dad, the one thing that he told us was on, especially with the hogs, we had two sows and a boar, and they were the always cap, the always the ones that we had. Those are the ones we kept. And those we could name, but nothing else on the farm we were allowed to name. Yes, don't name them. They're not a pet. Don't name them, even though we treated them like that because we treated them so well.

SPEAKER_03 13:14

I want to talk about your painting, but I want to talk about your music a lot as well, since we were talking about the genesis of whispering pines.

SPEAKER_01 13:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 13:22

But what other kind of music do you create? The tribal dance is very different than whispering pines, of course.

SPEAKER_01 13:27

Oh, for sure.

SPEAKER_03 13:36

Looking at videos that are on your website, what I didn't know until I I looked at that was that you work with movie directors to create the scores.

SPEAKER_02 13:46

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 13:46

Uh so uh how long have you been doing that? Was that something you fell into, or did somebody say, hey, you play a piano? Would you play piano for this?

SPEAKER_01 13:54

Hey, could you whip something up? Exactly. Actually, that's funny. When that's a great question. When I was learning all the piano, when I was doing all the training for that and all the classical things, along with that came awareness of how powerful music is in film and anything that you watch. My parents being older parents, older than I am, so I had older generational parents than most of the kids growing up. And so musicals were very popular for us growing up. A lot of the scores are orchestrated and it's just full of music, obviously. The passion that I had for music, knowing that it could be so powerful over someone, not just to listen to it like I was on the out with the albums and listening to all of dad's uh albums that way, but also how then when it attached to a visual, how much it helped that visual have even more meaning behind it to me was incredibly powerful. So it's one thing to have a one whammy just by listening to it and it moving you wherever you want it to without it having a visual when you can go on whatever journey you want to take. Beautiful, love that. But then to also, when it's associated with film, to have it help push that emotion even further was just, I want to do that. And so that really was besides the writing and wanting to play the classical pieces on piano, the drive for wanting to do film scoring was pretty much born from all of that. And so around here though, there aren't very many schools that offer anything like that. And I'm a roots girl and don't like to go and travel a whole lot like that. And so I thought, no schools, what can I get around here? And the closest I could get was theater sound design, and that's as close as I could get. But either way, when I had the opportunity to be able to work with a videographer and do some of the background scores for some of their things, it was my little taste of that world and being able to fulfill that really big desire that I had about wanting to help influence a mood and emotion through music, aside from the visual acting out of things. So I just loved that. So I sought that out.

SPEAKER_03 15:59

That makes a lot of sense in the sense that you grew up with music in your life, and you're it sounds like your father was not just allowing it, but guiding you to pay attention. We talk about just listen. I would imagine watching the sound of music with your parents might be different in a family like yours. But kind of the guided uh discovery for you.

SPEAKER_01 16:18

Yes. And with dad being the musician that he was, it was fun when you listen to things like that because then he'll stop and he'd say, What instrument is that? For instance, when the Rhapsody and Blue by George Gershwin came out, it was the Cheryl. What inst what is that starting off with? Dad, that's clarinet. There you go. Yep, you got it. With all this awareness, too, with even when it was were pieces like that, what instrument is making that sound? That helps with orchestration, especially when working with the videographer on some of those projects that you saw. Because he said, No, we just need a light string. Just do light piano, but then a light string in the background is what I'm envisioning. Okay, what would that be? So knowing that ooh, I could get some nice, beautiful tones if I used a cello instead of a violin and just things like that was helpful even just from growing up and having somebody like my dad quizzing me on those. It's helpful now.

SPEAKER_03 17:05

So tell me a little bit about now. Uh, are you a guildan?

SPEAKER_01 17:08

Uh I'm getting ready to start doing some of that because I had done some things in the past and it was all classical. So being classically trained, I performed that. Now that I'm growing older, the classical is still my roots. And you'll hear a little bit of that in some of the soundtrack pieces. It's still very mellow and easy listening, new age type of sound to it. Really just naturally comes out from me. I think because of having all the classical training, it just really is the easy flow of what happens. But I also love doing pieces like the tribal dance that are more of a dance music type. And I think that comes from that big band music. It's got a lot of rhythm, and I think it's still pulling up things that I've listened to as a child, pulling them into today. And I just love anything like that with the rhythm. Past gigs were all classical. The newer ones, I'm trying to change them up a little bit to be actually also including some of my artwork with the painting and the music combination. With the art and music, art, I was able to do some research and find that color is equivalent to specific notes on the musical scale. Not only are they equivalent to musical notes on the scale, but color is also equivalent to, if you're familiar with any of the Eastern medicines, different chakras, different energies, that as well. So through some of my studies with that and learning about how powerful emotion is, that different emotions are equivalent to different color as well, which then those are in turn related to notes on the musical scale. If I do a painting, and before I actually take any of the color and put it on the canvas, I put a dot of it on a side scratch piece of paper, doing it all in a row, that when my painting is done, I know what mood and emotion and what I was feeling, the whole topic while I was doing the painting. And I have this completed painting and this cheat sheet of all these little dots that are actually musical notes. Take that cheat sheet, plop it in front of my piano, plug into my logic through my computer system, Logic Pro, and compose the piece. All the notes are already written for me. So I know what the rhythm is because I painted the piece. So I know how what I was thinking and feeling. And each piece comes to life with an audio. Again, going back to that experience that I had as a kid, the music is powerful by itself. A painting is powerful by itself. But if you put the two together, does it help or does it make it any better? Or does it still leave it up to free interpretation to someone? So I think it just gave it another of exactly what I was at least thinking. I could take a piece that I've written and do a painting from it based on the notes that I've used. The benefit of this is that I'm the one that is the same person that's up in here knowing exactly what I'm feeling and thinking while I'm doing either one of those creative processes. Whereas if you're just painting to someone while they're playing, or if you're just playing to someone playing music while someone's painting it, you don't know what they're thinking.

SPEAKER_05 20:01

Hi folks. How are you guys?

SPEAKER_01 20:04

Oh, I've missed you.

SPEAKER_05 20:06

Likewise.

SPEAKER_01 20:08

This is like a big cyber hug. This is great.

SPEAKER_04 20:13

Joe, your timing was perfect.

SPEAKER_05 20:14

I cannot wait to uh learn about Cheryl's art.

SPEAKER_04 20:18

Cheryl was kind enough to tell a little bit about how y'all met, but do you have a memory of that, Joe?

SPEAKER_05 20:24

So my probably my earliest recollection is at the uh Renaissance uh Academy when you and Rena, Dave, these artistic folks in Lafayette, I think one of them bought his old historic home and turned it into an arts gallery, performance space, and coffee shop. And that's my first recollection of you, Cheryl. Is that that space?

SPEAKER_01 20:47

That makes sense too. Because I Lew it asked, and I thought, oh, it had to be him performing, I'm pretty sure. Uh I couldn't remember for sure when, but you're right. I bet it probably was the Renaissance Academy.

SPEAKER_05 20:59

Probably was, yes. Yep. And then I have the closest I've come to seeing you perform was at the Opera House, the Gallery for Contemporary Art. You did a thing there one time many years ago.

SPEAKER_01 21:11

That's right.

SPEAKER_05 21:12

And you probably done, I don't know if you've done several there or not, but I caught you with one Rena and you had, I think, had come up with.

SPEAKER_01 21:19

Yeah, the good old days. That was so fun.

SPEAKER_05 21:22

Cheryl and I certainly have a lot of mutual friends. We do. I get to learn about her, and she's gonna talk about herself. She's one of these people, Lou, at least as far as I know her, who's usually quietly in the background making sure everything is perfectly. Cheryl played a major role in the uh concert that we did in terms of organizing the whole flow of this rather extensively large gathering at a lovely venue, and Cheryl was absolutely instrumental. She's not only top personality organizer, artist. I d I just don't have enough words for her.

SPEAKER_04 21:56

That's a bit of a paradox right there, being an artist and an organizer. I do now.

SPEAKER_03 22:14

So there's some value in in doing deep dives into people's experiences there and how they've informed your music and your art. And do you have a favorite chord?

SPEAKER_01 22:23

I have a favorite chord. Yes. I do.

SPEAKER_04 22:26

When we said random keyboard, what's that favorite chord that pleases the Lord?

SPEAKER_01 22:30

Yeah, that pleases the Lord. You know what? It's it is funny. If you listen to my pieces that I have, those aren't in any of those. It's not in the D. I really like D minor, D major if I'm happy, D minor if I'm not. And a lot of times I start there. I move away from that depending on my mood. Because it's just all mood influence art, but depends on what my mood is as to what medium I'm going to use. I want involved in it. Because, like you were saying, with watercolor, it's different than it is in the other mediums.

SPEAKER_05 22:58

Of course, you can't go wrong with D. I also like E a whole lot because of the way I capo my guitar and I just capo the second fret and leave it off of the low E. So I got it like a dropped D sound, which I use quite a bit. Yeah, Cheryl's probably not gonna like the key that in this cathedral of trees is in.

SPEAKER_01 23:14

Hey, which key is it in? How many? What are we talking? That means it's probably got five flats.

SPEAKER_05 23:20

I will figure this out while you I don't honestly know.

SPEAKER_01 23:25

Yep, sometimes that just happens, Joe. Yeah, it probably has five flats. That's okay.

SPEAKER_05 23:29

Do you just play an acoustic instrument or do you play an electronic keyboard that has a transposition key?

SPEAKER_01 23:35

Yeah, but I'd figure it out because I I'm just okay, because you're that kind of person. Yeah, I'd like to play it for real. Yep, I can do that, Joe.

SPEAKER_05 23:42

See, Lou, there's the difference between a real artist and someone like me. I'm looking for the easiest way to this thing. So it's got a capo. That's good enough. I don't need to I don't need to know what all this other stuff is. And Cheryl's going, Yeah, I want to dissect this and understand what it is, how we got there.

SPEAKER_01 23:59

And I want to put my fingers on the keys because then I know where to move. Do you know what I mean? A geographical location, truly. A geographical location.

SPEAKER_05 24:11

I was just gonna say, I know with Sue and the hammer dulcimer, it's just all about pattern recognition. She's just seeing the geography of the instrument. I can relate to that now, thanks to my sister. That didn't make sense to me earlier, but now I get it.

SPEAKER_01 24:24

Oh, there's a something for listening for this chakra. If you listen to this type, this frequency is supposed to help with different moods and emotions. Well, then how does that transcend into how does that go further than that? Because I always had the love for the art, but I really loved music first. That was my first love, and then the art came long later. But yet my thought was, how can I marry these two together that makes sense to me? So when I started doing the Eastern medicine studies, helped to bring in awareness of the fact that, hey, did you know that everything really has has tone and frequency associated with it? And so realizing that and becoming aware that was scientifically a thing made me start diving into studying more about where do I go from here then? Okay, so what is that? Who came up with that theory and how is this, how does it really translate? It started my journey, but not anything that was a formal training, it just me doing it.

SPEAKER_05 25:13

I've heard other people say they hear sound and color, and I know, and some people truly are wired that way. I I have I've understood that. Cheryl's the only one I've really known to have explored that interface that I personally know. I think you have the expert there in front of you.

SPEAKER_01 25:29

Thanks, Joe. One discovery too that I found out, Joe, with the art and music on the art and music combination is that if I'm doing a painting and something looks off color wise, I can go to the piano, play them, and realize what note is off because it has its own key. Each painting ends up having its own musical key. So I can find out what's off, going note by note, find out what key it's in. And that color, usually that was the one I can see which color was wrong. I can take it out and change it to what it should be. Like if I say it's uh in we'll do easy. We'll say it's in the key of C. I'm playing all the notes and it sounds sour and it's horrible. If I take out the sour note with the matching color that it is on my painting and add what it should be, then it looks great. It fixed the problem. So color theory works in the midst of the whole thing as well, as whatever key it's in. I just found that to be a very interesting test. It happens every time. So it wasn't just a one-time fluke, it happens every time, which is fun.

SPEAKER_05 26:24

See, Cheryl's tapped into something for sure.

SPEAKER_01 26:28

There's in there.

SPEAKER_05 26:29

Yeah, definitely. No, I mean that most sincerely. Yeah, you obviously are wired up with the universe in a way that helps you interpret sound and color as a single entity. And truly, when we think about the universe and it uh it being simply a collection of various vibrations, it would it makes total sense. I get it. It's just few of us can tap into such things. But I think I've always known Cheryl's a person who's tapped in.

SPEAKER_01 26:53

Oh, thanks, Joe. Thank you.

SPEAKER_05 26:55

Hey, you guys carry on. I am delighted to have been invited. I apologize to Cheryl for the photo bomb of the podcast, but I'm so grateful for Lou and you both to have me in here to get to interact and to see Lou. Cheryl will brighten any day.

SPEAKER_01 27:10

Thank you. This was a great surprise.

SPEAKER_05 27:12

Thanks for having me. You guys take care. See you down the road. Can't wait to hear this podcast. Bye, you guys.

SPEAKER_01 27:17

That was so great.

SPEAKER_03 27:18

Thank you for allowing me to share your story.

SPEAKER_01 27:21

Thanks, Lou.

SPEAKER_03 27:22

Well, folks, I sure would like to thank Cheryl Caldall for sharing her time and her remarkable creativity and that infectious enthusiasm for just about everything she does. Cheryl reminds us that creativity isn't limited to a canvas or a musical instrument, or even to our five senses. Sometimes the most interesting things happen when those senses decide to ignore all the rules and just start working together. And a special thanks to my friend Joe Peters, a distinguished alumnus of Gramps Just Make Shit Up, for dropping in and adding a little Lafayette history, friendship, and music to our conversation. Joe, you're always welcome back, and although at this rate I may have to put you on the payroll, you can explore Cheryl's artwork, music, and creative adventures at CherylCaldall.com. That's Cheryl Caldall, all one word.com. I'll include the link in the episode notes. And thanks to you for listening. Whether you're a regular visitor or just stumbled into this peculiar little corner of the podcast universe, I'm glad you're here. Until next time, keep learning, keep laughing, and never stop being curious. This is Gramps reminding you that I don't actually make everything up. For example, synesthesia is a real thing. See, I almost got it.