Rawl: 12-colored visual music theory for pop/rock MIDI arrangements

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  • rawl

    Western tonal harmony and arrangement as seen in 12 colors. An interactive book built around a readable piano roll for MIDI files

  • Tldr no synesthesia (everyone is different), no "physical" idea, rather an attempt to do meaningful metaphors for I, IV, V chords and minor/major opposition.

    My a bit outdated writeup: https://github.com/vpavlenko/rawl?tab=readme-ov-file#12-colo...

    Also I wrote why I specifically don't want to use any psychological research on color-audio relations like https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5835347/:

    "in this article they try to find connections between the basic parameters of sound and colors at the level of existing unconscious sensations. in particular, the “pitch” parameter (height, note) - the only parameter that interests me - is very roughly scaled by them as higher pitch and darker pitch, with a spread of four octaves. my task is to find 12 colors in order to use all 12 within one octave, and to create from them a script in which the complex and variable structures of Western music are visible. i.e. they become visible if you look closely and compare

    my task is not about the basic sensations of people from high or low notes. I simply show the height of the notes along the vertical axis: high notes at the top of the screen, low notes at the bottom. I need the color to:

  • chromatone.center

    Chromatone web site built as a digital garden of music theory and interactive tools to experiment with

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