Fianl Project

Initial Research Question:

How to explore the relationship between music, color and emotion? What ‘color’ are different keys/notes/chords for people in music?

Research

1. Correlation between colour and emotion

I did some research about the mapping relationship between color and the atmosphere and feeling it brings to people by asking people to describe what they feel about the colour scheme. I use RGB pattern to classify the colour because an atmosphere or a feeling can be interpreted by a colour scheme instead of one specific colour. Here’s what I found:

For the next step, I want to do a survey about mapping these colour scheme to different types of music. Let people choose the colour scheme connected to their feeling after listening to an audio of a certain type of music.

2. Correlation between chords/notes/keys and color

2.1 Surveys about colour of music.

Ask people who know music about what ‘color’ that different keys/notes/chords are for them in music. I find that answers vary form person to person, but there are something in common.

• The lower the octaves get, the darker the colors get.
• C major chord is green for many people.

Here is some questions I come up with: Same chords could have different function in different chords progression and thus bring different feelings. How can I find the correlation between music and colour in this situation? Do people who play music and who do not play music have the same feeling of a particular type of music?

For the next step, I think I could ask people who don’t know music about their feelings after listening different chords. I could also ask them to describe their feeling and what picture they could imagine during listening a song of a certain type of music.

2.2 Data visualization showing the pattern of correlation between chords/notes and color

Color chord A group of hues chosen from the color circle that are spaced apart, such as red, yellow, and blue. The music chord–color chord analogy refers to the spacing of three or four color “notes” to produce harmony. Visualizing harmonies: A colored chord chart Interpretation of this chart

2.3 Documentation about how color-blind people listen to color

Artist Neil Harbisson was born completely color blind. He use a device attached to his head turning color into audible frequencies to listen to color. When he mentions the way he dresses, he says that he dresses C major chord at TED, which is a happy chord, and he would dress B minor chord which would be turquoise, purple and orange when attending a funeral.

He also gives example of how the device transform two different songs into paintings.

3. Inspiration from other related works

After checking out so many related projects, I kind of feel like there is nothing new about audio-visual art work. Some projects are about transforming music into painting to make an interesting and playful experience for user, some are to make an audio-visual performance to create a better aesthetic experience for people, some are about transforming visual work to sound with physical interaction, some are just exploration about finding a pattern to transform music into painting.

I start to think about my intension about the project. I want to explore the relationship between music and colour and find a pattern, but what can I do for people with this correlation? So I rethink the context and the research question to find my unique position on this large topic.

Conclusion

I rethink the context and the research question. When I learning music in Berklee, I was exposed to different styles of music like R&B and jazz which I rarely listen to before and started to appreciate them. I earned a deeper understanding of music type how different types of music could brings defferent feelings. For example, songs in major key give people a bright and cheerful feeling, while songs in minor key give people a melancholy feeling. Triads give a more direct feeling, while seventh chords give a complex feeling, such as melancholy in brightness. What I found interesting is that the word “color” is often used in whether learning or writing music, like the teacher always asked us to listen to the “color” of different scales/chords/chords progression, but the “color” was never visualized. However, I did see different color when I listen to different music, and I think it could help me to understdand the composition.

There is a very interesting example. Jay Chou just spent about 20 minutes to write a catchy song “Gaobaiqiqiu”, which became popular all over the country. However, the more colorful song “bedtime stories”, which combined medieval classical and rock style together and took a long time and more effort to compose, was not appreciated by the public at all. It made me think about the public’s taste of music.I am wondering that for non-professional music lovers, does audio-visual synaesthesia help them better appreciate a certain type of music?

So here comes my research question: How to use audio-visual synesthesia to expand people’s taste in music？/How can the correlation between music and color be used for expanding people’s taste in music？ I want to find a pattern/projection of music and visul painting, visualizing the music to help audience understand the mood of the composition.