Late one night on the BBC, I heard an interview with Kelly Hoppen, an interior designer who is inspired by music. In her West London office, she sees high-profile clients like Victoria Beckham, and asks them what songs they like.
“I say to them, ‘If you wanted your room to look like a piece of music, what would it be?'” Hoppen says. “Some don’t understand the question, but others say, ‘Oh, 100 percent, “Say A Little Prayer for You” by Burt Bacharach.’ And I get that! I can’t explain why, but music is design to me.”
What an excellent profession, making music visible!
Design based on sound has certain obvious principles. Music in a major key calls for primary colors. Music in a minor key requires secondary colors (orange, purple, green). A dissonant composition demands furniture set at odd angles.
Recently I saw Roger Waters at Madison Square Garden. At a climactic point of the concert, a large plastic cow was dangled on wires over the audience, migrating throughout the auditorium. This referenced the cover of the Pink Floyd album Atom Heart Mother.
Which brings up one obvious home decoration tip. Get a large artificial cow for your bedroom if you enjoy Pink Floyd’s sonic voyages.
Beyond artificial cows
But I want to transcend simplistic ideas – such as a six-foot-high replica of a nickel for Nickelback. (Come to think of it, just the back of the nickel would be visible.)
Or white stripes everywhere, if you like The White Stripes. Or an American flag for Bruce Springsteen. Or giant dominoes, if you admire Fats Domino. Or a Welcome to Woodstock sign for Joni Mitchell. Or a throne, in honor of James Brown. Or an ATM machine as a tribute to Johnny Cash.
For the first time in my life, I decided to ask Artificial Intelligence for help. I joined Chat GPT, and requested: “How can I use music to decorate a house?”
Immediately my computer spit out a page of dumb advice, such as:
Create art pieces using vinyl records by melting or shaping them into different forms, like bowls or wall hangings. Hang records on the wall in a visually appealing pattern or shape.
Chat GPT didn’t quite tell me to turn a flugelhorn into a lamp, or construct a table with four piccolos as legs, but it was almost that bad. (Actually, the mechanical brain did bizarrely suggest turning a guitar into a shelf.)
So I was thrown back on my own resources. I’m not exactly psychic, but I do possess a highly developed intuition. I thought of the solo albums of George Harrison, and asked myself, “What kind of room equals that music?”
Then it came to me. One wall should be a waterfall. What about Radiohead? A kitchen table covered with a layer of concrete. Ozzy Osbourne? Four small trampolines, one in each corner of the room.
You know how some houses have nautical themes? Fishnets hanging from the walls, an anchor, maybe a stuffed seagull, a big pilot’s wheel? There are two musical sources for such a motif: Beyoncé and The Kinks.
One of my musical practices is to listen for two or three minutes a day to a record on my record player in my bedroom. At the moment I’m slowly progressing through Franz Liszt’s Preludes. And what is my decorating touch, for Liszt? A bedspread bearing the logo of the Pittsburgh Steelers.
No end to suggestions
Here are more expert suggestions:
Crosby, Stills and Nash: Thirty coat hangers displayed on a wall
Frank Zappa: a room with no artificial light, where dim shadows gather at dusk
Herbie Hancock: Two or three rope ladders
Bob Dylan: Three books upside down on a bookshelf
Snoop Doggy Dogg: A chair carved out of a giant bar of soap
Lady Gaga: A terrarium filled with moss
Nirvana: A coffee table made from a manhole cover
Elton John: A bird feeder in the kitchen window
Mos Def: A row of metronomes
The Rolling Stones: Plaid linoleum
Leonard Cohen: Tiger-skin upholstery
Neil Young: An ottoman covered with duct tape
The Beatles: Wildflowers in a spittoon
Ornette Coleman: A rolltop desk
Metallica: A pet rabbit
Dolly Parton: Paper lanterns hanging from the ceiling
Dr. Dre: American eagle statuettes
Lynyrd Skynyrd: Two prominently displayed ouija boards
Prince: A powder blue cradle
Harry Styles: Motel-room furniture
Talking Heads: A rusted pitchfork
Whitney Houston: Russian Matryoshka dolls
Blondie: A Coca-Cola machine
John Cage: A room entirely empty, except for white cups and saucers
Guns N’ Roses: A handcarved wooden chess set
The Beastie Boys: A Victorian dollhouse
And how much should you spend on interior furnishings? Here is a guide, by type of music:
Trance music: $2000-$4000
Country: $4000-$5000
Indie rock: $5000-$5250
Albanian folksongs: $5250-$5750
Techno: $5750-$5800
Hiphop: $5800-$6800
Bollywood soundtracks: $6800-$6900
Join the family! 
