A better way to visualize harmony

In this video, I propose a alternate way of visualizing music that has a larger emphases on representing harmony (as opposed to the regular pitch and rhythm).

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#harmony #color

[Crab_Masher]

This channel is a gold mine! I'm shocked you aren't as popular as other music theory channels.

[matheusgomesviolao]

Great video. Of course, it's a way that requires some adjustments, but it's pretty cool to know an alternative proposal.

[samueltenka]

Very cool! You should talk to Smalin about his harmonic coloring!

[RaZieL]

It looks like the first prototype of the engine, it's is revolutionary but not ready to use for everybody yet. I'm looking forward to the pre serial. Thank you !

[anhtnd]

Thanks for this marvelous explanation! a sub for ya
for many years I have been a fan of smalin (the goat music visualizer) and he have been using this harmony visualization for more than 10 years now and coincidently he also uses blue for the tonic

[arasharfa]

I would love to see this applied to spectagrams to include the colors of the overtone timbres as well as fundamentals and have the colors interfere constructively to make white where theres noise, and, and project the timeline moving towards the viewer rather than linearly from left to right. also velocity should affect how bright the note is.

[EmergencySerotonin]

You’re a lifesaver. I’m new to singing and music theory and I’ve been obsessing about the visualization of pitch while singing. It seemed like a much more logical way to recognize specific notes but I knew it was going to be a very time consuming concept to properly explore. You literally saved me days worth of time. I’m going to binge some videos in between training to help the algo and give you some time back😂

[anaghshetty]

Excellent video! The production and video quality has been raised up a notch. The wait was worthwhile lol

[Omhetehmo]

Thank you so much! One of the greatest video on the harmony topic I've seen so far

[linping]

If Debussy had known about this coloring system, he wouldn’t have hated being tied to impressionist paintings

[steliosalvanos]

Whether the theory behind this is accurate or not, this looks like a really interesting visualization.
A nice addition to it could be a change in the saturation or brightness of the notes depending on their volume.
Also, this reminds me of a rare condition where a person will visualize music and sound in general as colours they can see through their eyes. It would be interesting to compare the colours they see to music harmony for similarities.

[magnusgro]

Imho it would be better to create the color spectrum from how far you need to go in the overtone series to reach a note, rather than from the circle of fifths.
For example with your approach the E in a C Major triad would be colored very differently, but with the overtone approach it would be the three most similar colors.

[Marcotonio]

Keep it in classical notation, but add colored backgrounds on the note's line/column, that way you don't have to sacrifice anything (other than elegance) to fit the colors into the standard. :)
(Coloring the notes is also an option, but I'm not sure it has enough punch.

[uncreatedlogos]

I think the best way of writing/reading melodies is to have seven spaces for the scale separated by 5 lines for the chromatic notes. and between 7 and 1; and 3 and 4 there are no lines.

Wanna write it down?
Try to start with 6 7 1 2... Then it's symmetrical with 6 lines. And you have the 1 chord and 6 chord fit in there.

Pitch height can be managed by different shapes of the notes. For example triangles and squares.

[benclark]

Viewers: “Source?”
Polychoron: “m e.”

[mattheweleazar]

Colorblind people watching this video be like

[johnjacquard]

real cool. i like what you are working on.

there is a very important variable relevant to this topic.

instead of color coating based on the surface level shallow detail of a specific chord, you could color code based on the deepest level of meaning the function .
(* if the specific context was tonal music functional harmony language)

so 12 tone e.t. is
broken into 4 main distinct harmonic languages. ( each with different and distinct deep level of meaning )

tonal music ( functional harmony)
modal music language
polytonal music language
atonal music language

so, if one was to color code the music based on its deepest level of meaning, you would have a different color coding system for each of the 4 distinct languages.

( however, because these four distinct languages actually connect by several vertices in order to form one unified holographic and fractal harmony in those specific instances where a particular song integrated all four distinct languages, then you would have a different color coating for each separate language even though they holographically come together as 1 unified theory of harmony. )

the vertices in which the four distinct languages come together as one is

modal music language connects to tonal music language through the subdominant function
( taking a key and reorientating the gravity focus at the Lydian and dorian vertices.
so example to connect tonal music language key of cmajor ( in which the gravity is focused at Cmajor and A minor)
you switch the gravity to F lydian and D dorian,
( now in this example of connecting modal language with tonal music language at the set of vertices you have 4 positions of gravity.

if you use C major or A min as force of gravity you get consonance and dissoance with the tonic and dominant relationship.

if you switch the force of gravity to F lydian and D dorian you have 1 unity of harmony


next, connecting the vertices of tonal music language with polytonal language and atonal music language.
these are connected through the dominant function in tonal music language.

by expanding the dominant chord G7 in the key of cmajor to include its substitutions of G altered and G HW diminished
you can connect the vertices of polytonal and atonal distinct languages.
( the same also goes for the relative minor A minor its dominant function E7)

so in total the modal language connects to the tonal language through the subdominant function ( by reorientation of gravity into lydian and dorian)
and the polytonal and atonal languages connect to the tonal language by the dominant function ( by reorientation of gravity into Altered dominant combined with diminished and augmented.)

one could color coat, first each language by its meaning, and second the vertices in which each language combines into 1 unified holographic fractal harmony.

( this may be a fruitful undertaking to invest energy into creating because it could revolutionize human learning regarding expert level harmony of music)

if i just sound crazy to you lol :D then i hope yo at least appreciate the conversation fine sir!

[milesbano]

Amazing stuff thank you for the content!

[stephenspackman]

It's a lovely visualisation, but it's all based on a pun!

Pitches in sound have to do with harmonics, frequencies that exactly divide each other or that have a nearby common divisor. Octaves in sound are the 2:1 ratio, the simplest (and therefore strongest) harmonic, and our perception of octaves most likely exists because harmonics and overtones are the same thing—if you hear a pitch it might actually be caused by something that would also resonate an octave lower, so it's adaptive to perceive the one as closely related to the other. The “circle” of pitches is the transposition of one octave to another over the multi-octave audible range, which (for purely mathematical reasons) maintains the relative relationships of pitches. The entire audible range is detected continuously and almost uniformly, and the relationships between pitches are recovered (as I understand it, anyway) neurally. Importantly, if you hear a chord, you (to a first approximation) hear all the component frequencies of that chord.

Light, meanwhile, we perceive over a range of less than one (optical) octave (for most “normal” people with undamaged/unmodified eyes, and under “normal” circumstances). Not only that, but we do not perceive it continuously, as we do sound; rather, we (most of us—some people are exceptional—and speaking of brightly lit scenes) perceive only three distinct colours, red, green and blue. We perceive a continuum of colour not because we have detectors for many different optical wavelengths, but because the frequency selectivity of our sensors is very low. So low, in fact, that the “red” sensors are triggered by green light and vice versa. The “red” sensors are not even red-specific, they are merely red-preferential. In any case, our colour vision works because within the slightly-less-than-one-octave visible range, any frequency stimulates _at least_ one of those kinds of sensors, and our brain estimates the frequency by considering the ratio of the strengths of the R, G and B signals. This means that if you see a (visual) chord you do not perceive the individual components; you see the same colour you would have seen if a single frequency had stimulated the R, G and B receptors in the same ratios. Despite the fact that visual range is not far from an octave, the actual reason that colours can be arranged into a “colour wheel” is _not_ a 2:1 harmonic ratio; you simply cannot see an octave up into ultraviolet or an octave down into infrared. Rather, it is due to a different piece of mathematics, that three points make a triangle, which is a planar (rather than a linear) figure. Discounting white, the brightest perceived colours are yellow (when red and green both respond as strongly as possible), cyan (when green and blue respond), and magenta (when red and blue respond). This observation leads us to the organisation of the colour wheel, like shifting our weight on a three legged stool. However, while a perceived yellow can be the result of monochromatic yellow light OR simultaneous red and green (which is how a computer monitor makes yellow—it has no way of emitting yellow light); and while a perceived cyan can come from either cyan light OR simultaneous green and blue (again, a computer uses this chording method); a magenta perception can come only from a “chord” of red and blue light, because any single frequency that stimulated both red and blue would necessarily also stimulate the green receptor. Indeed, it would stimulate the green receptor more than the red and blue ones, and would appear green.

So, it's a sad thing for pseudoscience, but pitch circles and colour wheels are related more by coincidence than physics, beguiling though the appearances may be.

And—I remain to be convinced that you revised “circle of fifths” representation is continuous, which you took as one of your initial requirements (though for a certain level of not unrelated mind-blowage, look up p-adic numbers).

All that said, I reiterate that it's a lovely and charming visualisation!

[alessiosandro]

what if light is the pitch of the eyes and color is the instrument (the sound in the end)