The Colours of Music Musicians often refer to harmony as colors.

This article is an attempt to delve into the subject more deeply but in simple terms to give a lucid intellectual understanding, which hopefully, will lead to better emotional sensing of the beauty of harmony in the context of Western Music. Since we are talking about colors, it is a good idea to draw similes with visual art, more specifically drawing and painting. Some basic understanding of simple chords scales and melody is assumed. First, the basic difference between colors and music, the canvas of music is time (we listen to music over time duration), the canvas of art is space (We view a painting all at once) . This is important because we see art in space at once and then perceiving it in time or in rhythmic sense is upto us as we observe more closely, we hear music over time, and understanding the nature of its space or canvas is upto us. That said, the common or equivalent elements of art and music are concepts of rhythm, symmetry, shape, size, attack, shade, frequency/wavelength, repetition, surprise, illusion, challenge, emotion, curvature or sharpness, arrangement, background, hue, realism, Impressionism, obtuseness, disharmony, texture, technique, medium, etc. Monophonic Tunes and Line Drawings We will begin with stating that a simple line drawing such as a square shape drawn with a pencil is like a basic whistled tune of 4 notes (think Big Ben). Using a pen or a brush instead of a pencil is like using a different instrument to play that tune, perhaps a guitar or a trumpet. When we talk about playing with "feel" it is like paying attention to the "stroke". Going further, playing the tune on a violin with feel is like drawing the shape with a Japanese calligraphy brush. If you minutely notice the stroke, you will know its character of attack, decay, boldness and slight curvatures, and yet it clearly communicates our basic shape. If a child were asked to draw our basic square, his lines may become unintentionally crooked or jagged which is akin to playing out of tune or in an amateur manner. He will not go out of tune in a piano, which is like drawing with geometric instruments, but the weight of his strokes may be inconsistent or he may overshoot the points. More intricate lines Using line drawing we could draw freehand curves, for example the outline of a leaf. Similarly we could play a flowing tune with curves, apexes and inflexion points. It is also possible to use just line strokes to give the shape of the leaf more detail and even an illusion of shading. No wonder, it is possible to take a simple basic tune and give it more detail, embellishments, and even a sense of the underlying basic harmony with just a monophonic instrument such as a flute. Color Which brings us to colors. Our detailed monochromatic line drawing of the leaf above can be created using pens of different colours, even purple, and yet it would convey to us it's meaning of being a representation of the leaf. To begin with, let us paint the leave with a flat green

colour. That is how a small child would perhaps paint his leaf. A more advanced child may use and blend darker and lighter shades of green to give it some depth. This, in music is like using simple triads over a simple tune. The notes of the triads come from a simple scale, the shades of green come from the family of green. While still on triads, a more advanced bolder artist may use blacks and white spaces to denote shadows and reflected light on the leaf drawing. In effect, he is able to convey an advanced concept of "texture " of the leaf surface, and the viewer is able to immediately understand whether it is a shiny or a dull surfaced leaf. He is also able to convey undulations on the leaf surface. In music, a musician uses different voicings and inversions and even spaces between notes to convey such texture of music. The shape of Sound Musicians are aware of the concept of the ADSR characteristics of tone: Attack, Decay, Sustain, Release. To my mind the ADSR equivalent in art is the characteristic of the Brush. If we use a spray can of green paint and spray at a spot, we will probably get a round shape with an area of full flat colour in the centre and vignetted fading edges. This brings to mind the sound of an instrument with a slow attack, such as a softly bowed violin or a gently blown flute. On the other hand the sound of a note on the piano or guitar is like a brush stroke, sharp attack and slowly decaying away. On could also mute these sounds just as one could stunt a brush stroke midway in its path.

Black and White The darkest possible shade of any colour is always black (no colour). It is like a pure single note played on a very low register, even barely audible. Yet it has a powerful effect by its intrinsic nature of absence or emptiness, and conveys a lot of energy. The lightest shade of any colour tends to white. From basic physics we know that the colour white has all frequencies of visible light and similarly white noise has all frequencies of audible sound. Sound generated by a pure sine wave is without any overtones and harmonics. It sounds bland and characterless. One way to sythesize tonal quality in sound is to add harmonics and overtones. Depending on the mix of these two we can get a tonal quality that may be bright, dull, rounded, shrill, even noisy. The similarities of such sound with visual colour is not hard to imagine. Temperature, anyone? We often refer to yellows, oranges, reds and browns as warm or hot colours and blues, greens, whites as cool or cold colours. By mixing hues and shades we also give musical sound its warmth or coldness as the case may be. The sound of piano can have incredible warmth or extreme coldness depending on the touch. On the face of it, it seems like only the attack is being controlled. But due to the nature of the instrument, its resonating surfaces and mechanisms, a varying mix of overtones and harmonics is created giving it a general sense of warmth (or coldness).

Perception and Artistry Consider a young banana leaf. If you ask anyone what it's colour is, he will instantly reply "pale green". So, is it okay to draw a banana leaf shape and paint it a flat pale green? Much more is expected out of an artist. He will perhaps use slivers of very dark green, swathes of yellow, patches of white and still convey a pale green colored banana leaf and convey so much more effectively. It is possible to teach this kind of advanced painting by breaking the technique down to simple principle steps. One of the basic principles is a deep understanding of the behavior of light, and the ability to imagine the play of light on objects. Similarly, in music it is possible to teach such advance artistry by training the ear on "sound". By using different registers, octaves, spaces, attacks, etc., we are essentially understanding and conveying the behavior of sound, interaction of sounds, the way they propagate in air, reflect in spaces, reach the listener's ears. And we are still at our basic triad music. Scales and Chords In music, we have to consider that all tones and colours are transparent, and are affected by both the underlying base colour and the overlaid additional hues. So it is important to think in terms of the resultant colour. Let us move on to 7th chords. The root of the chord places it in context and can function as either the applied background/base colour or even the colour of the canvas. The 5th of the chord establishes the outcome of the base colour with the applied colour. The root and the 5th together give us the sense of the basic reference point and we are able to identify the sound as belonging to a register. By itself, the root could actually be a note in any degree of the scale. By playing the 5th with it, we probably give the root its identity and establish the degree of scale. But this is incomplete information, unless it is intended to be used as such. The 3rd and the 7th are perhaps the two most important notes in a chord as they define the chord quality. The 3rd gives it the quality of happiness or sadness depending on whether it is major or minor. The seventh goes a step ahead in defining the scale to which the chord belongs. In art, the whether a surface is being directly lit by the main assumed source of direct light or whether it is away from the direction of incident light is what determines its major or minor quality. The moment we have determined in such a manner, we have begun to give our painted object a three dimensional shape in space. So a major or a minor chord is not just defining whether it is happy or sad, it is also giving the moving music its shape, and perhaps a direction in which to go. Now what if we eliminate the 3rd altogether and play a suspended 4th instead? Is it like surface shape cut off abruptly giving an impression of absurd physicality? It has to resolve either in another object thats causing such an illusion or leave our emotion unresolved into suspension. The seventh of the chord in my view gives a colour patch its shine or reflective nature. In essence it determines the texture of a painted surface to some degree. A major 7th is nice and bright and shiny and polished. Too much of major 7th brightness can actually either look kitsch or overtly sweet. A minor 7 gives it a flatness or dullness quality which is in many contexts desirable. Notice that such a painted surface can seem to be either in shadows or be firm and solid even under bright lights. Often it is useful to convey soft velvetiness or a richness of resolve in appearance. So how can we think of a Dominant 7th? To my mind it is bright in

nature but not reflective in a shine. Often such patches of colours are used by artists to move to either a bright shiny area or another such dominant swathe in a different root, depending on context. The good thing is that with just 4-note 7th Chords we are able to establish several ideas in music, such as the scale/scales, root, root motion, functional harmony, harmonic movement, etc., and create a seemingly complete piece of music. In fact, much of western music has just made up of these harmonic elements. However, as artists we are not satisfied with beautiful classical painting, or beautiful classical music. Surely artistry can challenge itself towards higher goals. Enter Stravinsky and Charlie Parker! The Crayon Box and the palette of 3rds Consider a large crayon box with 48 or 96 colours, all neatly arranged rainbow-like. It is a lovely sight to behold and it is fun to see 9 shades of red and 7 shades of pink and 6 kinds of yellow, all arranged in incremental hues and blending into another. The interesting part is, instead of this arrangement, it is possible to remix the family of colors so that instead of blending into oranges and reds, the yellows blend into greens, which blend into browns and so on. The problem with crayons is that they dont blend too well and so we need so many shades ( and of course, artistic skill) to create a masterpiece. When I look at such a box of crayons, it reminds me of the piano keyboard. An artist who uses oil paint or water colours, often likes to use very few colour tubes and likes to blend them together to create whatever hue he wants. He may mix green and yellow to make pale green, green and blue to make a darker green, or green and brown to create a nice rich olive-green hue. In music we use stacked notes to create chords. Common stacking intervals are 3rds, 4ths and 5ths. In lower registers we might stack 10ths and in higher registers we might even blend 2nds. However, chords are normally built by stacking 3rds. A stack of 4 gives us 7th chords. If we continue stacking in 3rds, it gives us 9ths, 11ths and 13ths. However, it is not necessary to include all 7 notes in the stack. Often, are dropped and implied. Sometimes, these extended chords can be thought of or played as two distinct triads played together. So why must we need to extend 7th chords at all? Here is an attempt to explain: Our aesthetic sense arises out of our emotional response to various stimuli we receive through our sense organs. A dog can have clearly evident emotions like happiness, sadness, anger, fear. As humans, our emotional content is more complex. We might shed a tear of happiness, we might smile in irony, we might scream in delight, tense up in stress, or be morose in brooding over the state of the economy. We might express fake anger on a naughty kid, while still having deep adoration for him in heart. We might laugh in victory or blush in achievement. In movies and stories, the simpler ones had the good guys and the bad guys. In more complex and evolved stories the characters had all shades of gray making them complex humans that they are. So is with music. Consider the song Twinkle Twinkle Little Stars. While it is nice, bright and chirpy to play Twinkle twinkle with its basic chords, such emotional communication has a childlike simplistic character, and fine by itself for its intended purpose. By playing around with

its rhythmic structure we may respond to the song either as a quiet nights ad lib lullaby or a twirling dancing number.What if we were to play a reharmonized complex version of twinkle twinkle? Here we begin to tread adult mature ground. Consider the context of the line Twinkle twinkle Little Stars//How I wonder what you are. A grown up person may brood about this line in astrophysical terms and dimensions, in metaphysical realms or even in the context of the possibility of alien life-forms. He may think it is a wasteful exercise to pursue the study of stars while humans suffer in hunger on earth, or he may draw pictures of animal shapes over constellations or may even hallucinate about space travel. Depending on his thoughts, he will be filled with complex emotions, subtle or strong. By reharmonizing the first 2 lines of twinkle twinkle in sophisticated ways, we can move from conveying childlike wonderment at the beauty of a night sky to more brooding aspects of beholding the first 2 lines of this song. This is effectively done using advanced harmonic concepts. As a corollary, advanced jazz harmonies are not just an intellectual expansion of musical thought, they are also associated with deeply complex human emotions, and communication thereof. Play a CM9 instead of CM7 and instantly notice the added richness. In place of an A7-Dm, play an A7b9-DmM7 and your emotional response is to the palette of sounds is instantly broader and deeper, more meaningful. While a dominant 7th chord is nice to bring you back home from work, let us say you decided to stop by the park and check out people for a minute, watched a near-miss car accident, pick up a lolli to suck on, on the way and decided to climb 5 flights of stairs instead of taking the elevator. A friendly #11th, a dim7, a b13, an alt chord will all be indispensable.

Coming back to our painting of a leaf, to create a realistic painting an artist might use Orange to convey twilight, white and gray to create mountain mist, brown and purple to give a damaged or decaying edge to the leaf. He might use a dash of red to show an almost imperceptible reflection of a red flower on the leafs shiny surface, and he might paint the whole damn thing in blue to show the leaf in moonlight. And yet you would claim that the colour of the leaf is Pale Green!