Interval Colors

**memyselfandus** · 03-05-2009, 10:39 PM

If the notes of a chromatic scale each had a color, what would they be?

**franco6719** · 03-06-2009, 07:44 AM

Wow, that's an interesting question. There are people who have something called synesthesia (a neurological disorder) that causes them to be able to see the color of sounds and other weird things like that. I'm not one of those people (unfortunately or fortunately). But I'll take a sort of stab at the question based on just personal emotion type of reaction:

m2: dark yellow (reminds me of bees)
M2: sort of light-grayish background color
m3: indigo
M3: blue
P4: greenish
tritone: black
P5: brown
m6: purple
M6: orange
m7: azure
M7: infrared (;

**Joe Dalton** · 03-06-2009, 07:48 AM

Actually I would say the tritone is a very vibrant collor. Very alive.

**theo** · 03-06-2009, 07:57 AM

b5 must be blue

**franco6719** · 03-06-2009, 08:53 AM

Originally Posted by Joe Dalton

Actually I would say the tritone is a very vibrant collor. Very alive.

Yeah. No, I didn't mean black in the sense that it sounds dead. I undertand the association between black and death. It just meant it sounds very dark (in the sense of a little bit scary) and strong (like black coffee maybe).

It's just a subjective thing. As to the blues, maybe is a dark blue note. (,

**Goofsus4** · 03-06-2009, 01:29 PM

Great question. I think the colors would change depending on the chord quality. So the b3 played over a minor chord is going to have a different color for me than the b3 played over a dom 7 chord.

Gonna go with the tritone as black too. I can't think of any other color that fits it, except maybe a really dark blood red. The tritone has a sinister undercurrent. It introduces dissonance that, to me, portends something dangerous is going to happen. In jazz, the b5 is "hip" sounding precisely because it suggests something dark - not sad dark but sensually dark. I often think that composers use the tritone interval to suggest something is hidden beneath the surface. The Simpson's theme, for instance. The Simpsons look like a typical family, but they are a bit odd underneath the visible exterior. Maybe the song "Maria" from Westside Story used the tritone interval to portend the tragedy that will befall his new found love, even though it is ostensibly a love song.

Black and reds with heavy black in them are the only two colors that I associate with sensuality or danger.

**darrenj** · 03-06-2009, 01:43 PM

Not sure about intervals, but if we take a concert A (440Hz) and go up 40 octaves we get an A with frequency 484THz which is in the frequency range of orange light (~480-510THz).
In a similar fashion Bb is yellow, C is green, D is blue and E is violet.

I'm not sure what this all means

Interesting though that we can see just under 1 octave of light but hear 8 octaves of sound.

**derek** · 03-06-2009, 01:55 PM

Originally Posted by franco6719

Wow, that's an interesting question. There are people who have something called synesthesia (a neurological disorder) that causes them to be able to see the color of sounds and other weird things like that.

Neurological disorder? I guess you could also call perfect pitch a neurological disorder also then. Synethesia is a pretty cool gift, and can be developed to an extent.

I studied jazz for a year with Tony DeCaprio, one of the best players on the planet, and he has this. He has presented lectures here and in Europe to musos and neurologists. Here is his site with some info on the topic. Click the super symmetry link on the left.

Tony DeCaprio - Jazz Guitarist Maestro

**Goofsus4** · 03-06-2009, 01:59 PM

I believe I read that some people can see numbers as colors as well and that allows them to do prodigious mental computing without the need for a calculator. The colors become tools for processing the calculations better.

**Goofsus4** · 03-06-2009, 02:05 PM

Originally Posted by darrenj

Not sure about intervals, but if we take a concert A (440Hz) and go up 40 octaves we get an A with frequency 484THz which is in the frequency range of orange light (~480-510THz).
In a similar fashion Bb is yellow, C is green, D is blue and E is violet.

I'm not sure what this all means

Interesting though that we can see just under 1 octave of light but hear 8 octaves of sound.

If you take these optical frequencies and mix them, can you get visible chords out of them? Now that would be fascinating.

For instance, a C E G B is a C Major 7th chord. If you mix the optical frequency colors for those, what color do you get? Is that the what the chord C Major 7 looks like?

However, it looks like from the colors you've already shown that you'd just basically get "mud" from mixing optical chords. But if musical theory did relate to color theory in a predictable manner it would be amazing!

**derek** · 03-06-2009, 04:16 PM

Originally Posted by darrenj

Interesting though that we can see just under 1 octave of light but hear 8 octaves of sound.

Now THAT is very interesting.

**montgomerwes** · 03-06-2009, 05:05 PM

I agree with the tritone being black, its dissonance reminds me of the "void." The way it splits the octave in two is suggestive of the infinite.

I've always found particular chords colourful.

Maj7 seem to have a cloying quality, orangey-pink
13(b9) really has a striking flavour, very bright coloured on the high registers
Minor6 a dark brown/blue

But context is everything. The chords become woven into shape by the surrounding melody and harmony. Taking one chord apart is like taking the word "chord" apart. You're left with c, h, o, r and d.

**derek** · 03-06-2009, 05:20 PM

Originally Posted by montgomerwes

But context is everything. The chords become woven into shape by the surrounding melody and harmony. Taking one chord apart is like taking the word "chord" apart. You're left with c, h, o, r and d.

I have no trouble seeing C and D, but damned if I can find an H, O, or R on my fretboard.

**darrenj** · 03-06-2009, 06:33 PM

@derek "Now THAT is very interesting."
Do I detect a note of sarcasm there Derek?

Goofsus4, you raise an interesting point.
CMaj7 would generate its own unique spectrogram (as would each unique combination of notes) but my knowledge of physics isn't up to working out how they combine let alone what the receptors in our eyes would map them to.
I'd guess more complex chords would be lighter though - the more notes you add the closer you'd get to white.

Of course it turns out this is not a new idea. A quick search revealed this thread Google Answers: Science: Sound to Color

They've done the whole chromatic scale:

G (196): deep crimson (4.31 E14)
G#(208): red-orange (4.57 E14)
A (220): orange (4.84 E14)
A#(233): yellow (5.12 E14)
B (247): yellow-green (5.43 E14)
C (262): green (5.75 E14)
C#(277): turquois (6.10 E14)
D (294): blue (6.46 E14)
D#(311): blue-purple (6.84 E14)
E (329): violet (7.25 E14)

(F and F# are not visible)

So I think we've answered the original question (in physics terms at least).
Nice quote from that thread - "If we could hear green, it would be a C".

**Goofsus4** · 03-06-2009, 07:15 PM

Okay, so in the best tradition of Friday afternoon (for my time zone, anyway) goofing off, or Goofsusing off, I should say...

I took Darren's color values and did some optical mixing of colors on an electronic color wheel, trying to see what a C Major 7 might look like.

It's a dark green. An Ab Major 7, on the other hand, makes a nice royal purple. An E Major 7 is almost black, with just a tinge of purple showing.

I wonder about the mixing weights though. I assigned more or less equal values to the colors in the mix. But the root of a chord seems so important, perhaps it should be given more weight. I don't think that alterning notes, such as flatting the 5th would make that much difference to the color of the chord. So, this suggests little correlation between optics and sound as far as the human brain goes. Because I think the difference in how I perceive a chord changes remarkably when I alter an interval. From a color mixing perspective, it would just change the color slightly, almost imperceptibly.

But again, I think there is a weighting thing involved here, but who knows what the weights should be?

**Claudi** · 03-07-2009, 12:15 AM

Originally Posted by derek

Neurological disorder? I guess you could also call perfect pitch a neurological disorder also then. Synethesia is a pretty cool gift, and can be developed to an extent.

Tony DeCaprio. Here is his site with some info on the topic. Click the super symmetry link on the left.

Tony DeCaprio - Jazz Guitarist Maestro

...and I'd sell my soul to the devil to have this gift. Thanks for the site.

**franco6719** · 03-07-2009, 05:01 AM

Neurological disorder? Neurological phenomenon or "condition" then. I didn't mean anything pegorative or insulting by using the term disorder. My point was just that is has a definite and pretty well-studied basis in the brain. it can be either congenital or induced by trauma or drugs, etc..

A friend of mine is a top neuroscientific researcher in the field and has worked with VS Ramachandran. I'm fairly sure that those who suggest it can be "developed" by training or something, similar to all the prefect pitch salesman, are selling you a bill of goods. But I will ask him about it.

Thanks for that interesting link on the physical correlations. Fascinating.

**derek** · 03-07-2009, 10:10 AM

Originally Posted by darrenj

@derek "Now THAT is very interesting."
Do I detect a note of sarcasm there Derek?

Goofsus4, you raise an interesting point.
CMaj7 would generate its own unique spectrogram (as would each unique combination of notes) but my knowledge of physics isn't up to working out how they combine let alone what the receptors in our eyes would map them to.
I'd guess more complex chords would be lighter though - the more notes you add the closer you'd get to white.

Of course it turns out this is not a new idea. A quick search revealed this thread Google Answers: Science: Sound to Color

They've done the whole chromatic scale:

G (196): deep crimson (4.31 E14)
G#(208): red-orange (4.57 E14)
A (220): orange (4.84 E14)
A#(233): yellow (5.12 E14)
B (247): yellow-green (5.43 E14)
C (262): green (5.75 E14)
C#(277): turquois (6.10 E14)
D (294): blue (6.46 E14)
D#(311): blue-purple (6.84 E14)
E (329): violet (7.25 E14)

(F and F# are not visible)

So I think we've answered the original question (in physics terms at least).
Nice quote from that thread - "If we could hear green, it would be a C".

Absolutely not. I find the whole topic facinating, and the fact that there is such a difference in our perception of sound vs light. I didn't know that till now.

**derek** · 03-07-2009, 10:14 AM

Originally Posted by franco6719

Neurological disorder? Neurological phenomenon or "condition" then. I didn't mean anything pegorative or insulting by using the term disorder. My point was just that is has a definite and pretty well-studied basis in the brain. it can be either congenital or induced by trauma or drugs, etc..

A friend of mine is a top neuroscientific researcher in the field and has worked with VS Ramachandran. I'm fairly sure that those who suggest it can be "developed" by training or something, similar to all the prefect pitch salesman, are selling you a bill of goods. But I will ask him about it.

Thanks for that interesting link on the physical correlations. Fascinating.

No problem at all. I just thought it odd to think of it as a disorder, when most of us would love to be "disordered" in such a way. Yeah, there are certainly pitchmen for perfect pitch, but it is pretty well proven that you can develop relative pitch with diligent work. Will be curious to hear what your friend says.

**franco6719** · 03-08-2009, 05:26 AM

It seems that he subscribes to one of the current theories about perfect pitch: it is an innate ability that all of us have at birth but that has to be reinforced strongly at a very early age with exposure to music teachers and so on. It can be developed in other words, in this view, but it has to be done by massive amounts of training at an early age. We lose this ability with the more amount of time that we are exposed to the world and learn to do things and live our lives in an ordinary way.

At any rate, for those of us who don't have these extraordinary traits (or lost them in childhood, if that is the right way to put it), relative pitch seems to be definitely learnable and that's the area to focus on, IMHO. Actually, I know that it is from experience. My ear is vastly better than it used to be, but not nearly where I want it to be. Huge amount of work and a lots of time..

**music_tech** · 03-08-2009, 05:34 AM

tritone is what i like the most. Satans sound in music and all the churchys dont like that interval. I want my b5

**4 strings** · 03-19-2009, 03:43 PM

another interesting thing is
if someone played C# on the piano [not in a scale or chord]
would you say it's a C# or Db?

**darrenj** · 03-19-2009, 04:17 PM

The whole C#/Db thing annoys me. I wish the twelve notes all had unique names (or numbers). I don't like referring to a note in terms of one up or down from another "more important" note. I blame the piano - the guitar has no prejudices. Equal rights for accidentals! :-)

**Joe Dalton** · 03-20-2009, 03:54 AM

It depends on context.

**franco6719** · 03-20-2009, 04:57 AM

Yeah, I think this does seem to depend on context for relative pitch. That's an interesting sort of puzzle though with the enharmonics for people with extraordinary gifts like synesthesia!! I hadn't thought about it. I should ask my neuroscientist friend if he knows anything about whether such people can see different colors for the same notes with different names. It seems unlikely, but who knows.