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Chromatone – Visual Music Language
51–60 of 97 posts
Re: Chromatone – Visual Music Language
#52Reminds me of the method used for sonifying periodic table elements here[0], but in reverse.
Re: Chromatone – Visual Music Language
#53Love all the features of this app, the chromatone part is just an element but the theory and scales stuff is nice.
Re: Chromatone – Visual Music Language
#54This really doesn't reflect the actual structure of Western music for those without absolute pitch (the vast majority of people). Instead, it's pretty much just relations that matter between pitches which makes things way more difficult to visualize. Mixing red and blue gives you a different color than red and green, but A-C is pretty much the same as Bb-Db, they're both minor thirds. If you want to analyze it algori…
> This really doesn't reflect the actual structure of Western music for those without absolute pitch (the vast majority of people).
It’s worth mentioning that this includes the majority of musicians (professional and otherwise). Having perfect pitch is in no way necessary to be an excellent player or composer of music. Most of the greats didn’t have it. It is a very rare skill.
Re: Chromatone – Visual Music Language
#55The big question underlying this kind of analogy: are the spectra of visible things (EM) and the spectra of mechanically vibrating things similar? Naively, I'd say no, so this is yet another fun but ultimately arbitrary mapping which people endlessly invent to make music. Is it deeper than I think at first glance?
Physically, they're pretty analogous. But perceptually, sound and sight are very different. We're much less interested in abstract visual arrangements and there's no visual analog of harmony.
Re: Chromatone – Visual Music Language
#56What I've been obsessing about is a way to get the "feeling" of a particular piece of music.. is there a field dedicated to this study?
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Re: Chromatone – Visual Music Language
#57_
I really like the link you provided and have watched it before! But - I do want to say that C == green is not arbitrary at all. It is consistent with my calculations, which are consistent with Newton's calculations. Usually I see the colours being assigned to notes as wrong.. but this C == green is consistent with mapping light, using octave equivalence, given by the following: f_prime = f * 2 ** (i / 12) # Where, #…
Perceptually, the C pitch class and the color green have nothing to do with each other.
Re: Chromatone – Visual Music Language
#58The big question underlying this kind of analogy: are the spectra of visible things (EM) and the spectra of mechanically vibrating things similar? Naively, I'd say no, so this is yet another fun but ultimately arbitrary mapping which people endlessly invent to make music. Is it deeper than I think at first glance?
Check out this page https://chromatone.center/theory/interplay/spectrum/ - there's this exact question answered with diagrams and an interactive tool down in the bottom of the page. It shows that just by going up in octaves you get to THz territory on the 44th octave step and the frequency of note A44 matches red color. And other notes fall on the spectrum quite spectacularly.
Re: Chromatone – Visual Music Language
#59Someone sure did put a lot of work into this. I can appreciate that. That said, as a musician, I’d prefer if someone just told me the key and progression, or just started playing and I could jump in. I’m not that good with colors.
Chromatone is useful on the way there while you're still learning those keys and scales. Just open that panel with a note name on the left, choose click the tonic note and choose a scale and you will immediately see the notes to play on your keyboard and guitar/ukulele without any need to memorize or calculate the interval steps. Then you memorize them and don't need the colors any more. But they help you get there much faster and with less pressure on memory and long hours of practice.
Re: Chromatone – Visual Music Language
#60_
I really like the link you provided and have watched it before! But - I do want to say that C == green is not arbitrary at all. It is consistent with my calculations, which are consistent with Newton's calculations. Usually I see the colours being assigned to notes as wrong.. but this C == green is consistent with mapping light, using octave equivalence, given by the following: f_prime = f * 2 ** (i / 12) # Where, #…
Exactly! It's all made visual and interactive here https://chromatone.center/theory/interplay/spectrum/ - you can even slide the tuning of A4 by dragging left-to-right the last graph - it will show the distribution on 44th octave notes along the visual spectrum