Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Research blog - some music theory

For this blog I want to read up on some music theory because now that I am dealing with color relationships, I should better understand musical relationships. The first thing I came across looks like an excellent piece of the puzzle, the circle of fifths. To relate this to color, using my graph I've charted out how the colors are related according to the way the notes are related in the circle of fifths. However, I am unsure of how to deal with the inner circle of relative minors, here I have just colored them the same as their major counterparts. Perhaps when dealing with chords of minor, major, or other orientation, each note that is in the chord should be included somehow in its color representation. This chart is begining to show me some very complex relationships that seem to work mutually in color and musical theory. I will have to study this a lot to figure out what all these colors and notes mean for each other, however I may limit it to F-B which are the keys I tend to use most often when making music. The first thing I noticed and something that was confusing me in my other color chart was when I attempted to find the complimentary colors for G and its fifth, D, I got green and purple, rather than green and red. It seems in music complimentary notes do not work back and forth as in color theory, however it makes sense when I read that when the colors are made by light the visual complimentary of green is purple, or violet. Basically, when colors are made subtractively then red and green compliment, but when made additively green and purple compliment. This is very interesting because it seems the same things that makes a melody sound good or give a certain feeling, is the same thing that makes a color field painting look good or give a certain feeling.


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