# Emotions and Colors associated with Musical keys; also Pitch associated with Colors



## Bob Morabito (Dec 29, 2017)

These articles contain a selection of information from the Internet about the emotion or mood associated with musical keys, and also the correlation between musical keys and Goethe's Color wheel.

Also included are pitch and color associations.

What is your opinion of all of this? Agree,disagree, or simply dismiss it all?

Please share!

Thanks Bob https://soundcloud.com/bob-morabito
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*Characteristics of Musical Keys*
http://biteyourownelbow.com/keychar.htm

*Affective Musical Key Characteristics*
http://www.wmich.edu/mus-theo/courses/keys.html

*Musical Keys and Goethe's Color Wheel*
http://zarathustra574.blogspot.com/2015/01/musical-keys-and-goethes...

*Pitch, Colour, Scriabin, and Others* 
http://www.harmonics.com/lucy/lsd/colors.html


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## Vardaro (Dec 30, 2017)

As I have defective colour vision, I take these correspondences with a large pinch of salt, more so when I see that proponents do not agree amongst themselves!

However even I have strong affective associatons with both keys and (my) colours; but the remain entirely personal. I do not have absolute pitch.


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## muk (Dec 30, 2017)

These are two interesting phenomena. They are personal and not consistent between people. But it is interesting to read how certain people perceived certain things. Beethoven, for example, noted in a sketchbook 'h moll schwarze tonart' (b minor dark key signature). It can give an interesting spin on Beethoven's understand of Bach's mass in b minor, for example. It is also interesting to note that for Schubert the note b often occurs in the context of death and fate (Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise are two examples). And it is similar with synaesthesia. Always interesting to read which composers and interpreters had it, and how they perceived certain sounds.


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## Living Fossil (Dec 30, 2017)

muk said:


> It is also interesting to note that for Schubert the note b often occurs in the context of death and fate (Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise are two examples).



Actually, in Schubert's time in the region of Vienna, E-major was the "typical" key for death. "Die schöne Müllerin" also ends in E-major, which is no coincidence.
(outside of Vienna, E-major had a much more positive meaning).

However, i wouldn't put too much meaning into this circle of Goethe etc. 
There is synesthesia, but the way it is perceived is totally subjective.
Myself, i usually do lots of musical decisions depending on my visual perception of the music, which helps me a lot in some situations. But it's not as simple as assigning colors to notes.
It has to do more with timbres and textures.
And it's completely subjective


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## Leandro Gardini (Dec 31, 2017)

Living Fossil said:


> It has to do more with timbres and textures.
> And it's completely subjective


I agree!
I could never see color in keys or notes but I see colors in timbres and registers.
I guess when it come to this kind of perception there's always someone wondering what the other is talking about. 
This connection between colors and sound is totally personal and has no relation to any teachable music theory.


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## Living Fossil (Dec 31, 2017)

douggibson said:


> Additionally, in music theory papers, this point is often a criticism of equal temperament; individual color of notes gets dulled for the sake of the "whole".



This is often stated, however, this often mentioned argument is not really true.
Allthough all distances are equal, still each note has a specific color.
The reason why lies in the fact that people's hearing is influenced to an extreme amount by the language/dialect one is used to use.
And in every language and dialect the exact shape/position of the formants are crucial.
Therefore, the nonlinearity in the perception of frequencies is influenced by the language one speaks & hears.
It's even shaped by the color of the voices that are usually heard.
(The voice of one's mother has usually the biggest impact).

So, the overtones of specific pitches are perceived each in relation to patterns in the frequency curve in one's hearing,
even in perfectly equal temperament.
(p.s. there are great articles on this and similar topics by Diana Deutsch, a leading expert in psychoacoustics.)


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## Soundhound (Dec 31, 2017)

I'm always playing around with this unconsciously when looking for color choices for instruments groups etc in daws. Only thing that seems to really stick is red for percussion and grades of light to dark brown for strings, and that's really me thinking of shades of wood.


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## Paul Grymaud (Jan 1, 2018)




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## SergeD (Jan 1, 2018)

Hi Bob,

Though this musical study is not expressively related to colors, it might be of some interest for you,

https://sergedaigno.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/the-echo-nest-study.pdf


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## Bob Morabito (Jan 1, 2018)

Thank you SergeD!  Much appreciated!



SergeD said:


> Hi Bob,
> 
> Though this musical study is not expressively related to colors, it might be of some interest for you,
> 
> https://sergedaigno.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/the-echo-nest-study.pdf


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## Living Fossil (Jan 1, 2018)

@douggibson: i totally agree, i was just refering to the question if different keys can sound differently in equal temperament.
(btw. pros and contras of different temperaments and tuning systems is a very interesting topic on its own...


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