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Harmonic Coloring: A method for assigning colors to musical pitches

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Re: Harmonic Coloring: A method for assigning colors to musical pitches

#21

Post by e7b9 »

cwmoore wrote: post #7
labster wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The color wheel doesn’t really wrap around. We just take a cut of the visible spectrum, and overlay the red and the blue ends. We don’t perceive periodicity in light; near infrared is not one octave lower than violet light. The color range we see is just one that happens to be most useful in a nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere under a Class G sun.

So it happens that we can hear several octaves in sound, via pressure waves, where a note an octave higher or lower is defined as twice or half the frequency, and when the "same note" in different octaves are played together the sounds are full and noticeably harmonious. The range of the electromagnetic spectrum we see is indeed very close to "an octave" if defined as the doubling of frequency, but it makes no partic…

What about intervals within the octave of light?

Re: Harmonic Coloring: A method for assigning colors to musical pitches

#22

Post by mkl »

taejo wrote: post #10
labster wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The color wheel doesn’t really wrap around. We just take a cut of the visible spectrum, and overlay the red and the blue ends. We don’t perceive periodicity in light; near infrared is not one octave lower than violet light. The color range we see is just one that happens to be most useful in a nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere under a Class G sun.

Red and *violet ends. But why do purple and violet look the same?

A quirk of human vision. Our "red" cone receptors in our retinas are mostly sensitive to redder hues, but also have a bit of a bump down in the violet part of the spectrum. This shows some graphs that sort of explain it: https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/433119/why-does-...

However, such spectral sensitivity graphs vary a lot (perhaps because people's vision does, but also they'll be measuring things differently): https://duckduckgo.com/?q=retina+cone+frequency+response&atb...

Re: Harmonic Coloring: A method for assigning colors to musical pitches

#23

Post by dfan »

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #11

I've often wondered if people with Chromesthesia (who associate sounds with colours and/or colours with sounds) fall into sets of people with similar colour/sound mappings. "..studies to date have reported that synesthetes and non-synesthetes alike associate high pitched sounds with lighter or brighter colors and low pitched sounds with darker colors, indicating that a common mechanism may underlie those associations…

I associate some pitch classes with colors and I think it's because of a toy glockenspiel I had when I was a kid.

Re: Harmonic Coloring: A method for assigning colors to musical pitches

#24

Post by mkl »

I love this! I have been trying to figure out sensible colouring for my Janko-layout Chromatone keyboard (https://chromatone.jp/chromatone/index.html, no longer available). All its keys are white. The original Janko keyboards used the same black and white as traditional piano keyboards, like this: https://imgur.com/a/OUAsobE

(A C major scale is shown with bold key outlines in all these pictures.)

But some people have used a 3-colour layout like this: https://imgur.com/a/ya07LGU

Still, that leaves quite a bit of ambiguity, as different notes are the same colour, and it's hard to orient yourself.

So I tried a spectrum-organised 12-colour layout: https://imgur.com/a/Is9sQiA

But with so many colours, there are very similar ones close together.

So I tried looking at 6-colour layouts, and at putting tactile dots on some keys to both disambiguate which note it is (since each colour is used for two notes), and also allow for playing by feel, so you can better know where you are: https://imgur.com/a/sFzEH0G

It's not clear where the best locations for the dots are (they'll be little rubber feet, and I have found two different shapes for better touch information).

The 12-colour pattern in this article, using the circle of 5ths, avoids the problem of similar colours close together: https://imgur.com/a/0RN7dqY

I would still like some dots somewhere on it for tactile playing. With this layout, each major scale gets its own distinctive colour scheme: https://imgur.com/a/6FhrAcK

This makes accidentals really obvious on the piano roll pictures in this article.

Re: Harmonic Coloring: A method for assigning colors to musical pitches

#25

Post by dspig »

e7b9 wrote: post #20

Musical intervals map mathematical ratios to emotional perception (i.e. all minor thirds: feel similar, are { lower, (6/5)*lower } frequency pairs). For a long time I've wondered if there's anything analogous in the world of color (since both are waves), but have been unsatisfied with the non-answers I've found.

Maybe there is, but not for humans!

If we sensed sound like we sense colour we'd only hear the amount of bass/mid/treble not the individual pitches.

But if there's such a thing as a non-linear medium for light, then transmitting two wavelengths through it should do interesting things depending on the ratio of the wavelengths?

Re: Harmonic Coloring: A method for assigning colors to musical pitches

#26

Post by mandmandam »

quinnjh wrote: post #18
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #11

I've often wondered if people with Chromesthesia (who associate sounds with colours and/or colours with sounds) fall into sets of people with similar colour/sound mappings. "..studies to date have reported that synesthetes and non-synesthetes alike associate high pitched sounds with lighter or brighter colors and low pitched sounds with darker colors, indicating that a common mechanism may underlie those associations…

From what ive gathered (doing interactive light/sound stuff and chatting with folks at CymaSpace) the issue is that its subjective. Synaesthetes are often frustrated with color to pitch mapping that claims it is "inherent" because the root color (this author picked blue because "it seemed settled") is the creators personal synaesthetic correlation. The issue gets complex when you consider what training set makes each…

> the circle of fifths is very much a "relative" thing to begin with

I'm not sure what you mean.. Is this a pun?

The circle of fifths is right on the intersection of music and physics; each perfect fifth is (very close to) a 3:2 ratio on the previous frequency, which is probably why pentatonic scales are found across cultures. I don't know how much less "relative" you can get with something so subjective as music.

Re: Harmonic Coloring: A method for assigning colors to musical pitches

#27

Post by lioeters »

e7b9 wrote: post #21
cwmoore wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it happens that we can hear several octaves in sound, via pressure waves, where a note an octave higher or lower is defined as twice or half the frequency, and when the "same note" in different octaves are played together the sounds are full and noticeably harmonious. The range of the electromagnetic spectrum we see is indeed very close to "an octave" if defined as the doubling of frequency, but it makes no partic…

What about intervals within the octave of light?

About intervals within the octave of light..

The first thing that came to mind was "complementary colors", which are two colors opposite each other on the color wheel.

> They create the most contrast and therefore greatest visual tension by virtue of how dissimilar they are.

- From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmony_(color)

This is like "tritones" in music, which are two notes with an interval spanning six semitones. If there was such a thing as a "note wheel" with a circumference of an octave (12 semitones), two notes that form a tritone are opposite each other on the wheel.

---

There are "split-complementary colors".

> Split-complementary colors are like complementary colors, except one of the complements is split into two nearby analogous colors.

> This maintains the tension of complementary colors while simultaneously introducing more visual interest with more variety.

..And "analogous colors", three colors that are next to each other on the color wheel, and a tertiary.

A musical equivalent of these might be like different types of chords.

---

Also, there are "triads", like primary and secondary colors.

> Art education materials commonly use red, yellow, and blue as primary colors, sometimes suggesting that they can mix all colors.

> A secondary color is a color made by mixing of two primary colors in a given color space.

Re: Harmonic Coloring: A method for assigning colors to musical pitches

#28

Post by rolha-capoeira »

dfan wrote: post #23
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #11

I've often wondered if people with Chromesthesia (who associate sounds with colours and/or colours with sounds) fall into sets of people with similar colour/sound mappings. "..studies to date have reported that synesthetes and non-synesthetes alike associate high pitched sounds with lighter or brighter colors and low pitched sounds with darker colors, indicating that a common mechanism may underlie those associations…

I associate some pitch classes with colors and I think it's because of a toy glockenspiel I had when I was a kid.

Interesting. I do think some of my forms of synesthesia are from colors in my childhood, but not my sound-color experience.

Re: Harmonic Coloring: A method for assigning colors to musical pitches

#29

Post by rolha-capoeira »

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #11

I've often wondered if people with Chromesthesia (who associate sounds with colours and/or colours with sounds) fall into sets of people with similar colour/sound mappings. "..studies to date have reported that synesthetes and non-synesthetes alike associate high pitched sounds with lighter or brighter colors and low pitched sounds with darker colors, indicating that a common mechanism may underlie those associations…

I think that is largely true for my personal experience, however, the timbre of the sound also affects the color for me.

Re: Harmonic Coloring: A method for assigning colors to musical pitches

#30

Post by solarmist »

furiens wrote: post #16
dane-pgp wrote: post #12

I was hoping this would be about using different colours in musical notation, as I think that black-and-white sheet music doesn't use all the visual tools available to modern designers. It might be hard for musicians to decide what note to play just by looking at an associated colour (especially if they are colour-blind), but there shouldn't be any downside to doing something like "syntax highlighting" for musical no…

You certainly find this kind of thing in numerous beginner books, but I’m skeptical that it’d be of much use for complex scores, or for someone with mastery of sight-reading. We don’t tend to do the same for text, after all. That said, it is easy enough to miss a dynamic marking and plough through a section at the wrong volume. That one might be worthwhile!

I'd say that due to tradition/expense rather than lack of value.
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