Representing notes of the musical scale with color

Question

I know this might sound a bit like the bikeshedding problem, or what's the best pizza topping in the world...

But if you have to choose a way to use color to represent notes of the musical scale (e.g. in a computer-aided music composition software) what rationale would you use?

E.g. Hookpad uses color hue in direct correlation with pitch:

if the tone more closely related to the 1, is the 5 (as per the circle of fifths), wouldn't it be more logical to assign to 5 (and 4) a color similar to 1? e.g. if 1 (C) is red, maybe 5 (G) is orange (one shade above red) and 4 (F) is magenta (one shade below red)?

Is there a reason not to? Or they simply haven't put much consideration in which color to use?

Answer 1

Representing notes with colors always results in important pros and cons, also depending on the chosen approach.

First of all, we should always remember that human color perception presents issues in being able to distinguish the relation between colors, and that colors are actually an abstract representation of wave length of light.

A pair of colors, even when closely related in their wave length, may seem more "different" than others. That's why shades going from green to red normally show more visually important changes than going from red to blue.

Then, we should remember that there are lots of people with various levels of color blindness, for which some colors or shades simply do not exist, as they look completely identical to other shades a "normal" color perception would allow.

Finally, there's the problem of the approach in color choice: considering that there are not so many distinct colors to define the whole "note palette" the human hear could perceive, the common approach is to just repeat the color range every octave. But, then, how shades between colors should be chosen? Even in the octave realm, we have 12 distinct notes, and choosing 12 colors that are equally "distant" while having each one distinct characteristics is fundamentally impossible.

There are at least two common choices.

Following the scale sequence (either diatonic or chromatic)

Using the chromatic scale may be useful in contexts in which melody and diatonic scale are the main reference: the octave uses a circular color spectrum (hypothetically from Cx to Cx+1), with closed notes having similar shades.
This is quite helpful in primary music learning, where the diatonic scale is the main reference and its alterations show the similarity with the fundamental notes of that scale.

Notes are usually played/shown individually, in linear form (we could use the term "melody"), and "distant" colors help understanding the relation between each note, possibly within a sequence.

The sequence usually follows the color spectrum (normally starting with red for C), and is quite intuitive for children and beginners.

Typical examples are the Boomwhackers already reported in other posts:

which is probably based on some Orff Schulwerk aspects, as shown in the Sonor Orff Glockenspiel:

Note how some notes seem to be more distinct than their "neighbours". Most importantly, colors that are "brighter" to human perception seem to be more recognizable than others, so the difference between C and D seems "smaller" than that between E and F.

Another important drawback of this approach is that important consonances (starting with the perfect fifth) have quite different colors, showing no visual correlation, even if there could be. If taken out of the context of a full scale, two notes having quite "similar" colors will not sound well when played together: imagine having the full chromatic set of boomwhackers, taking the lowest C and finding the octave above only based on its color.

Using the circle of fifths

This approach is theoretically more "acoustically consistent", as notes with simpler mathematical factors are also closer in the color spectrum. C will have a color that is closer to F or G, also showing a slight correlation between those two.

Here is the alleged color system used by Scriabin for his Prometheus, to be played on the [Clavier à lumières](clavier à lumières):

We can clearly see the relation between colors and fifths, but also an issue similar to the above approach: some colors seem more distant than others. For instance, while having the same distance in the color spectrum, E♭ and A♭ seem much closer than D and A.

In general, colors "going flat" are more similar and less bright than their counterparts.

Trying color alternatives doesn't change that much. Here is an example that uses the full chromatic spectrum, equally divided in 12 steps:

In any case, using fifths presents an issue that is the opposite of the above: closer notes (C, C♯) have extremely different color, which is quite unintuitive when exploring the alterations of a diatonic sequence, or, simply put, how close notes are depicted. Showing the notes arranged in a piano keyboard make everything less intuitive:

While some efforts could be made by trying to find colors that have more similar brightness, the problem remains: either some equal intervals will show more "distance" than others, or most colors would be too similar.

For example, using the same color spectrum concept, but applying different brightness:

Finally, a trivial but still important problem: both systems above naturally chose red for C. But is it a valid choice?

Maybe, we could use brighter colors for more common "notes" or "keys" (eg. green or yellow for C), with "paler" ones for less common ones.
It would make also sense, though, to do the opposite, so that less common keys and notes would shine, highlighting their distance.

As you can see, while note colouring may be useful and/or interesting to use and explore in some contexts, it always shows some form of weakness, no matter the approach.

There are obviously many possibilities (I only explored a few), but, at least for the most common, intuitive and logic methods, finding which one is better or if it "makes sense" just depends on the context of its usage.

^{And it doesn't matter what toppings you prefer, just remember the basic rule: pineapple on pizza is an abomination ;-)}

Answer 2

The issue with coloring according to harmonic function is that it only works if the entire song remains in the same key. Were the song to modulate, the entire color scheme would have to shift.

The same issue pops up in decided whether to teach/learn fixed or moveable do. Fixed do means that ever pitch is associated with a syllable; whereas, moveable do associates functions with syllables.

See, for example, Solfege - Fixed Do versus Movable Do

Answer 3

This color scheme looks very familiar. It appears to correspond to the Boomwhackers color scheme. (For the uninitiated, Boomwhackers are colored, pitched, plastic percussion tubes. Boomwhackers Website). Google's Chrome Labs "Songmaker" app quite helpfully uses the same colors. It may simply be that they copied the color scheme. I have no idea who used it first.

There is no harmonic significance to the color scheme, but each of the 12 tones has its own color - repeated at the octave.

Answer 4

Consider using the circle of fifths as an organizing principle. The keys directly opposite each other on the circle of fifths are a tritone apart and are the most distantly related keys. That is, keys opposite each other on the circle of fifths share the fewest notes; on the other hand, adjacent keys on the circle are the most similar and share the most notes.

This is similar to the situation of a color wheel where colors opposite one another are the least similar and called complementary, while colors adjacent to one another are the most similar and called analogous.

If you spell the notes on the circle enharmonically you can associate the colors with the notes of scales. The notes which do not belong to a diatonic scale have colors that are grouped together and are the most distant from the notes of the scale.

Answer 5

I have used some coloring schemes for cheat sheets I made for myself. But, over time I moved to using less and less color, and not coloring all scale degrees. I used fewer colors, because too many colors just created a rainbow effect of garish colors that did not help clarify the music. From the perspective of visual art rainbow color schemes are usually not good. Rainbow solfege ends up making bad visual color design.

Anyway, for a while I tried coloring just the main harmonic function levels: predominant, dominant, tonic. Eventually, I just colored dominant and tonic. I preferred blue=tonic, red=dominant, and - when used - green=subdominant.

But if you have to choose a way to use color to represent notes of the musical scale (e.g. in a computer-aided music composition software) what rationale would you use?

G = green
R = red
B = blue

        IV V  I

^7      -  R  -
^6      G  -  -
^5      -  R  B
^4      G  R  -
^3      -  -  B
^2      G  R  -
^1      G  -  B

In music "color" is often used in connection with harmony. And while scale degree do have certain harmonic tendencies, they do not have discrete harmonic function. That is probably the main problem with color solfege, seven fixed colors, and the garish rainbow effect I mentioned earlier.

Notice how in my chart 4 of 7 scale degrees has more than one harmonic function and therefore more than one color. My coloring actually was chord coloring and put scale degrees into their harmonic context. That's the musically meaningful way to color things, IMO.

I'm speaking of tonal music. Perhaps 12 colors for atonal music could work in some way.

Answer 6

Before this gets closed, one more opinion on why coloring individual pitches might be unintuitive and not be the best idea ever. For me, chords and harmony feel like colors, individual pitches are not very colorful, definitely not bright colors like in the examples here. For example a IV chord could feel brownish, but if you put the bass to II, it becomes II minor seventh, and the color is more like yellow. Maybe the chord colors have changed in my mind over the years, but individual pitches are not intuitively colorful to me, except if I think of them as chord roots or as additions to existing harmony.