Post by 1dave on Apr 25, 2020 10:57:12 GMT -5
warrenmars.com/visual_art/theory/colour_wheel/music_colours/music_colours.htm
Scriabin's Musical Colour Wheel
First of all, before any wheel can be produced, one must decide whether to pair colours with notes or keys. A child or a non-musician will probably plump for notes but any quality musician or composer can tell you it is far more useful to pair with keys. Any given piece of music will likely involve a multitude of notes producing a cacophony of colours if notes are used. Assigning colours to keys imbues any piece with a single colour and mood of its own.
Although I don't have Chromesthesia, as a fairly prolific composer who works everyday in all 24 keys I DO have an acute awareness of the fact that each key is different and you CANNOT simply transpose any piece of music into any key and expect it to sound pleasing. I don't know why this is but I know it to be true. It varies from piece to piece too. Some pieces CAN be played in any key and others CANNOT1. I find that generally there will be certain keys that best suit a given piece and if I am transposing a piece for performance I will try various keys until I find the one that works best. This is not just about suiting the range and character of the singer or instrument, (although this is a factor), but you can take one piece written out in two keys, both eminently singable, and one will work and the other will just sound wrong!
To my ear at least: Flat keys sound sophisticated and rich, especially those with 2 or more flats. They seem well rounded, mellow and civilized. They are the keys of the elite. Sharp keys on the other hand seem more incisive, brighter, freer and more lively, especially those with 2 or more sharps. They are the keys of the common people. I don't know whether this is objectively true though... How could one measure such an inherently subjective thing?
I posit that my feel for keys is formed from a lifetime of playing and listening to music in all keys from all genres. Perhaps there is a pattern to each genre however that builds a consistent feel for keys over time...
The Sharp Keys
Folk music, (which is something very dear to my heart), is the simplest music and tends to be restricted to C and the early sharp keys: G, D and occasionally A. The popular music when I was growing up was strongly guitar based and was thus almost always in the sharp keys, as flat keys do not suit the guitar. In particular E, A and D were very common as they are the natural keys of the guitar. The steel stringed guitar features a fast attack which gives its music a slightly harsh percussive character. Pop music also features a strong drum component with various cymbals which load the sound with many high frequencies and again the percussive attack. This is all music for the common people and perhaps this affected my feel for those keys...
The Flat Keys
Most brass instruments have a natural key of Bb or Eb and therefore the flat keys are their natural territory. Brass bands are mellow in tone, (due to the construction of their instruments), with a heavy bottom end, (due to the instrumental composition of such bands), and their attack is slow, (also due to the nature of brass instruments), all of which means that their music boasts a well-rounded, rich, deep tone. Perhaps that is why I associate those keys with that character...
The Neutral Keys
C is the beginner's key on the piano and features no sharps or flats. It is thus seen as neutral and also as simple. F and G are the two closest keys on each side featuring only 1 accidental apiece. They are the introduction to the sharps and flats and thus do not exhibit the characteristics of their side quite as strongly as the keys a little further along, such as Eb and A.
Just as C is the neutral point between sharps and flats Gb/F# holds the same job on the other side of the circle of fifths. It is neither a sharp key nor a flat key since it holds 6 of either. I choose to call this key Gb. It is rarely heard, due to it's being the most remote key of all and falls most naturally only to Eb instruments such as: the alto saxophone, baritone saxophone, tenor horn and Eb tuba. The alto sax is the only one of these that is a regular solo instrument so Gb is rarely written for.
Gb is playable on the piano, as is Db, (most notably by children mucking around using only the black notes), but pianists tend to stick to what they know and although they will play Gb scales for practice they generally prefer keys that are less remote. Gb is difficult to play on all the members of the string family including violins and guitars. Interestingly, with the use of a capo its chords can easily be fingered on the guitar but folk musicians playing melody instruments will not be able to play along.
The effect of all this is that Gb is so rarely heard that although it is, (in theory), a neutral key, it is felt as something mysterious. Since it is rarely heard in popular music it tends to be associated with orchestras and brass bands and is therefore perceived as rich and well rounded. Serious composers are eventually attracted to it for its unique character and rarity and force themselves to compose in it despite its unfamiliarity. Fortunately it IS playable on the piano and most composers are pianists, so once the mental block is broken down the music will flow. To me the key of Gb sounds distant and esoteric but again that is probably due to its inherent difficulty and consequent rarity.
Orchestral Music
Orchestral music is a marriage between the woodwind and brass on one side and the strings on the other. Most of the woodwind and brass prefer the flat keys and the strings certainly prefer the sharp keys. Classical composers understand both sides and like variety, so orchestral music exists in all keys. An orchestra has a wide range of possible tones depending on which instruments are playing so it is difficult to assign any tonal bias to any key due to it other than to say that pieces that feature strings are more likely to be in sharp keys and pieces that feature brass or woodwind are more likely to be in flat keys, however there are plenty of examples to the contrary.
Constructing The Wheel
I realise that the appreciation and internal association of music is an intensely subjective and personal thing, and that what one person reads into the music is not necessarily read by another, but the above facts have been true for two hundred years and are likely to remain so for the next two hundred, so it is reasonable to base a subjective feel of the character of keys on the tone of the instruments that favour them and the style of music that they play. With this in mind I came up with the following:
Sharp keys are bright in timbre, due to being played by violins and guitars, therefore they should be bright in hue. The brightest key is E and brightest colour is yellow, therefore those two are matched together and the wheel is fixed at that point. Greens are brighter than reds so sharp keys are biased a little in that direction and extend from emerald (G) to turmeric (B). G and B are the first and last of the sharp keys so they are not quite as bright in hue as the others.
Flat keys are dark in timbre, due to being played by played by the brass, therefore they should be dark in hue. The dark hues are the purples and blues and that is where they may be found. The darkest hue is blue and one may argue about which is the darkest key, however my wheel lists it as Bb, which is as good a choice as any.
Everyone agrees that minor keys are darker in mood than major keys, therefore they should be darker in shade when in comes to assigning them a colour. This doesn't mean they will be a different hue, rather that they will simply a deeper shade of the hue of their relative major. This doesn't come from the any of the preceding rationalisation, just from the universally accepted feeling that sadness is darker than happiness. When you have the "blues" it means that you are depressed, since blue is the darkest hue. Taking this to its conclusion would imply that G minor is the saddest key of all, but I feel that that is taking the analogy too far. One should bear in mind that most music combines both major and minor chords and therefore should have a shade of colour somewhere between the two extremes.
Introduction
Chromesthesia is a type of synesthesia in which heard sounds automatically and involuntarily evoke an experience of colour. Of these people, some see individual notes as different colours, others see musical keys as different colours. This article is primarily about the latter: the association of specific colours with specific musical keys.
There is no real agreement between chromesthesiates as to precisely which colours go with which keys although there are a few general principles that seem to be consistent. One doesn't need to be a true chromesthesiate to appreciate the association of music with colour. We can all make some attempt at this even if we don't actually see the colours.
It is interesting that there are 12 keys that progress in the Circle Of Fifths through all the sharps and flats and come back again to the beginning and likewise there are 12 major hues in the Martian Colour Wheel that progress through the blues, greens and reds and come back once more to the beginning. It's probably just a coincidence but one might as well make some use of it.
I don't know why it took me so many years to put the two together... No doubt it had been bubbling away in my subconscious all this time but at last it bubbled to the surface and I thought it out and produced a wheel that combines the two. I am not the first to do this but hopefully my version is a bit better based that the others and hopefully will be more useful.
If children are taught the scheme at an early age perhaps they will develop a stronger and more consistent association between colour and music, and if chromesthesiates are likewise taught then perhaps their key-colour associations can be trained to be consistent with the others. Then at least we will all be on the same page!
Chromesthesia & What Has Gone Before
Chromesthesia or "sound-to-color synesthesia" is a type of synesthesia in which heard sounds automatically and involuntarily evoke an experience of colour. Precisely which colour is paired with which frequency or key varies with the individual so that THERE IS NO ABSOLUTE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SOUND AND COLOUR. Having said that higher pitches tend to be associated with brighter colours and lower pitches with darker colours. Note that this relationship is more about shade than hue.
The phenomenon has been studied but is still poorly understood. There are a variety of theories including the cross-activation theory and the disinherited feedback model. Suffice it to say that there is still much work to be done in this matter.
There have been some notable composers with Chromesthesia, the most famous being Alexander Scriabin, although some doubt whether he actually a chromesthesiate as his musical colour wheel is too perfect compared to the haphazard pairings of true chromesthesiates. Scriabin's musical colour wheel is based on keys rather than pitches and progresses through the circle of fifths. This is similar to mine except that he uses the Newtonian colour wheel rather than the more accurate Martian colour wheel. He also assigns yellow to D major instead of E as I did and progresses in the opposite direction to me.
Chromesthesia is a type of synesthesia in which heard sounds automatically and involuntarily evoke an experience of colour. Of these people, some see individual notes as different colours, others see musical keys as different colours. This article is primarily about the latter: the association of specific colours with specific musical keys.
There is no real agreement between chromesthesiates as to precisely which colours go with which keys although there are a few general principles that seem to be consistent. One doesn't need to be a true chromesthesiate to appreciate the association of music with colour. We can all make some attempt at this even if we don't actually see the colours.
It is interesting that there are 12 keys that progress in the Circle Of Fifths through all the sharps and flats and come back again to the beginning and likewise there are 12 major hues in the Martian Colour Wheel that progress through the blues, greens and reds and come back once more to the beginning. It's probably just a coincidence but one might as well make some use of it.
I don't know why it took me so many years to put the two together... No doubt it had been bubbling away in my subconscious all this time but at last it bubbled to the surface and I thought it out and produced a wheel that combines the two. I am not the first to do this but hopefully my version is a bit better based that the others and hopefully will be more useful.
If children are taught the scheme at an early age perhaps they will develop a stronger and more consistent association between colour and music, and if chromesthesiates are likewise taught then perhaps their key-colour associations can be trained to be consistent with the others. Then at least we will all be on the same page!
Chromesthesia & What Has Gone Before
Chromesthesia or "sound-to-color synesthesia" is a type of synesthesia in which heard sounds automatically and involuntarily evoke an experience of colour. Precisely which colour is paired with which frequency or key varies with the individual so that THERE IS NO ABSOLUTE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SOUND AND COLOUR. Having said that higher pitches tend to be associated with brighter colours and lower pitches with darker colours. Note that this relationship is more about shade than hue.
The phenomenon has been studied but is still poorly understood. There are a variety of theories including the cross-activation theory and the disinherited feedback model. Suffice it to say that there is still much work to be done in this matter.
There have been some notable composers with Chromesthesia, the most famous being Alexander Scriabin, although some doubt whether he actually a chromesthesiate as his musical colour wheel is too perfect compared to the haphazard pairings of true chromesthesiates. Scriabin's musical colour wheel is based on keys rather than pitches and progresses through the circle of fifths. This is similar to mine except that he uses the Newtonian colour wheel rather than the more accurate Martian colour wheel. He also assigns yellow to D major instead of E as I did and progresses in the opposite direction to me.
Scriabin's Musical Colour Wheel
The Rosicrucians also invented a musical colour wheel based on pitch rather than key though which had far too many reds. It also assigned yellow to B. Charles Fourier also had a go using only the natural notes of the C major scale and assigned yellow to G. Check out Charles Lucy's page for more on these pairings.
To cut a long story short there is, (once again), NO AGREEMENT on the pairing of colour with either pitch or key. This clears the way for me to create a sensible pairing based on modern facts. Behold!
To cut a long story short there is, (once again), NO AGREEMENT on the pairing of colour with either pitch or key. This clears the way for me to create a sensible pairing based on modern facts. Behold!
The Martian Version
Simplistic Explanation
Essentially you just start with E major as yellow and work around the wheel so that the flat keys are on the purple side. Interestingly, this results in C being cyan, aka aqua, or the colour of water, which is perfect for the neutral key, the beginner's key, the key of simplicity. G and D are the greens which is the colour of nature, the rural keys, the folk keys. Gb is red, neither purple nor green, neither sharp nor flat, the opposite pole from C, but warmer and more mysterious. Ab is purple, the colour of royalty. Bb is blue, the coolest colour of all and the natural key of the trumpet.
Essentially you just start with E major as yellow and work around the wheel so that the flat keys are on the purple side. Interestingly, this results in C being cyan, aka aqua, or the colour of water, which is perfect for the neutral key, the beginner's key, the key of simplicity. G and D are the greens which is the colour of nature, the rural keys, the folk keys. Gb is red, neither purple nor green, neither sharp nor flat, the opposite pole from C, but warmer and more mysterious. Ab is purple, the colour of royalty. Bb is blue, the coolest colour of all and the natural key of the trumpet.
First of all, before any wheel can be produced, one must decide whether to pair colours with notes or keys. A child or a non-musician will probably plump for notes but any quality musician or composer can tell you it is far more useful to pair with keys. Any given piece of music will likely involve a multitude of notes producing a cacophony of colours if notes are used. Assigning colours to keys imbues any piece with a single colour and mood of its own.
Although I don't have Chromesthesia, as a fairly prolific composer who works everyday in all 24 keys I DO have an acute awareness of the fact that each key is different and you CANNOT simply transpose any piece of music into any key and expect it to sound pleasing. I don't know why this is but I know it to be true. It varies from piece to piece too. Some pieces CAN be played in any key and others CANNOT1. I find that generally there will be certain keys that best suit a given piece and if I am transposing a piece for performance I will try various keys until I find the one that works best. This is not just about suiting the range and character of the singer or instrument, (although this is a factor), but you can take one piece written out in two keys, both eminently singable, and one will work and the other will just sound wrong!
To my ear at least: Flat keys sound sophisticated and rich, especially those with 2 or more flats. They seem well rounded, mellow and civilized. They are the keys of the elite. Sharp keys on the other hand seem more incisive, brighter, freer and more lively, especially those with 2 or more sharps. They are the keys of the common people. I don't know whether this is objectively true though... How could one measure such an inherently subjective thing?
I posit that my feel for keys is formed from a lifetime of playing and listening to music in all keys from all genres. Perhaps there is a pattern to each genre however that builds a consistent feel for keys over time...
The Sharp Keys
Folk music, (which is something very dear to my heart), is the simplest music and tends to be restricted to C and the early sharp keys: G, D and occasionally A. The popular music when I was growing up was strongly guitar based and was thus almost always in the sharp keys, as flat keys do not suit the guitar. In particular E, A and D were very common as they are the natural keys of the guitar. The steel stringed guitar features a fast attack which gives its music a slightly harsh percussive character. Pop music also features a strong drum component with various cymbals which load the sound with many high frequencies and again the percussive attack. This is all music for the common people and perhaps this affected my feel for those keys...
The Flat Keys
Most brass instruments have a natural key of Bb or Eb and therefore the flat keys are their natural territory. Brass bands are mellow in tone, (due to the construction of their instruments), with a heavy bottom end, (due to the instrumental composition of such bands), and their attack is slow, (also due to the nature of brass instruments), all of which means that their music boasts a well-rounded, rich, deep tone. Perhaps that is why I associate those keys with that character...
The Neutral Keys
C is the beginner's key on the piano and features no sharps or flats. It is thus seen as neutral and also as simple. F and G are the two closest keys on each side featuring only 1 accidental apiece. They are the introduction to the sharps and flats and thus do not exhibit the characteristics of their side quite as strongly as the keys a little further along, such as Eb and A.
Just as C is the neutral point between sharps and flats Gb/F# holds the same job on the other side of the circle of fifths. It is neither a sharp key nor a flat key since it holds 6 of either. I choose to call this key Gb. It is rarely heard, due to it's being the most remote key of all and falls most naturally only to Eb instruments such as: the alto saxophone, baritone saxophone, tenor horn and Eb tuba. The alto sax is the only one of these that is a regular solo instrument so Gb is rarely written for.
Gb is playable on the piano, as is Db, (most notably by children mucking around using only the black notes), but pianists tend to stick to what they know and although they will play Gb scales for practice they generally prefer keys that are less remote. Gb is difficult to play on all the members of the string family including violins and guitars. Interestingly, with the use of a capo its chords can easily be fingered on the guitar but folk musicians playing melody instruments will not be able to play along.
The effect of all this is that Gb is so rarely heard that although it is, (in theory), a neutral key, it is felt as something mysterious. Since it is rarely heard in popular music it tends to be associated with orchestras and brass bands and is therefore perceived as rich and well rounded. Serious composers are eventually attracted to it for its unique character and rarity and force themselves to compose in it despite its unfamiliarity. Fortunately it IS playable on the piano and most composers are pianists, so once the mental block is broken down the music will flow. To me the key of Gb sounds distant and esoteric but again that is probably due to its inherent difficulty and consequent rarity.
Orchestral Music
Orchestral music is a marriage between the woodwind and brass on one side and the strings on the other. Most of the woodwind and brass prefer the flat keys and the strings certainly prefer the sharp keys. Classical composers understand both sides and like variety, so orchestral music exists in all keys. An orchestra has a wide range of possible tones depending on which instruments are playing so it is difficult to assign any tonal bias to any key due to it other than to say that pieces that feature strings are more likely to be in sharp keys and pieces that feature brass or woodwind are more likely to be in flat keys, however there are plenty of examples to the contrary.
Constructing The Wheel
I realise that the appreciation and internal association of music is an intensely subjective and personal thing, and that what one person reads into the music is not necessarily read by another, but the above facts have been true for two hundred years and are likely to remain so for the next two hundred, so it is reasonable to base a subjective feel of the character of keys on the tone of the instruments that favour them and the style of music that they play. With this in mind I came up with the following:
Sharp keys are bright in timbre, due to being played by violins and guitars, therefore they should be bright in hue. The brightest key is E and brightest colour is yellow, therefore those two are matched together and the wheel is fixed at that point. Greens are brighter than reds so sharp keys are biased a little in that direction and extend from emerald (G) to turmeric (B). G and B are the first and last of the sharp keys so they are not quite as bright in hue as the others.
Flat keys are dark in timbre, due to being played by played by the brass, therefore they should be dark in hue. The dark hues are the purples and blues and that is where they may be found. The darkest hue is blue and one may argue about which is the darkest key, however my wheel lists it as Bb, which is as good a choice as any.
Everyone agrees that minor keys are darker in mood than major keys, therefore they should be darker in shade when in comes to assigning them a colour. This doesn't mean they will be a different hue, rather that they will simply a deeper shade of the hue of their relative major. This doesn't come from the any of the preceding rationalisation, just from the universally accepted feeling that sadness is darker than happiness. When you have the "blues" it means that you are depressed, since blue is the darkest hue. Taking this to its conclusion would imply that G minor is the saddest key of all, but I feel that that is taking the analogy too far. One should bear in mind that most music combines both major and minor chords and therefore should have a shade of colour somewhere between the two extremes.
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