[HN Gopher] Chromatone - Visual Music Language
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Chromatone - Visual Music Language
Author : samdung
Score : 150 points
Date : 2024-09-03 15:54 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (chromatone.center)
(TXT) w3m dump (chromatone.center)
| pachico wrote:
| It wouldn't be bad if it had some colour blindness mode.
| aaroninsf wrote:
| Bonus if it's called "achromatone"
| ctenb wrote:
| I was expecting some sort of programming language to describe
| music, but this isn't that. I'm not sure what it is exactly
| though. Navigating the website on mobile doesn't give me a clue
| spankalee wrote:
| Is there an easy-to-digest overview or even examples anywhere?
|
| I see a bunch of pretty deep-dive articles, a long video, a lot
| of tools, but I can't see a description of how the supposed
| visual language works yet, or even examples. How does this system
| represent notes and chords over time?
| pvg wrote:
| The github repo explains the site a little, it seems
| https://github.com/chromatone/chromatone.center
| karmakaze wrote:
| Yeah, I kept skipping sections of the video over all the theory
| of hearing parts and found that the "most popular
| visualization" discussion/demo starts at 27:40 and just before
| at 24:22 shows the hue coloring by distance from/to root note
| on x-axis (and dissonance shown on y-axis but unclear how
| that's utilized).
|
| One common trap(?) they fell into is allocating hues by
| frequency, where humans are far more sensitive in
| distinguishing hues between red and green. So many of the
| blue/greens look pretty much the same. It _may_ have been
| intentional because those higher intervals matter less but wasn
| 't clear.
| albert_e wrote:
| browser shows this permission popup:
|
| chromatone.center wants to control and reprogramme your MIDI
| devices. [Allow/Block]
|
| off-topic: is "reprogramme" a british spelling - dont remember
| seeing this spelling in a long time.
| zarzavat wrote:
| In contemporary British English "program" is used for the
| computation-related senses. "Programme" is used for all the
| other senses, e.g. a concert programme.
|
| Using "reprogramme" in a computation context is very old-
| fashioned and would be considered nonstandard spelling these
| days. I suspect this is someone taking BrE localisation too
| seriously or it's a non-British person's idea of what British
| English is.
| rendall wrote:
| I got that too, but had never seen that permission before.
|
| I just went ahead and allowed it.
|
| Current best practice is not to ask permissions like that
| (location, notifications, or programming midi devices) on
| landing, but to stick them behind an interaction like a toggle
| or button press.
| eldog_ wrote:
| Recently chrome started asking for permission to use MIDI,
| when before it did not. So lots of existing sites won't tell
| you that they will request MIDI, which is what most sites
| that request the webcam do for good UX.
| sva_ wrote:
| I suppose it could be used to fingerprint a user.
| pohl wrote:
| The most compelling use of color in music theory that I've
| encountered is a color scheme where individual notes are given
| primary colors (yellow, red, blue) like this:
|
| C is yellow, C#/Db is red, D is blue, D#/Eb is yellow,...etc
|
| First observation: the notes of each of the three diminished
| tetrads are monochromatic (their notes all have the same color.)
|
| Then, look at the major minor triads and assign them secondary
| colors (purple, orange, green) depending upon the colors of their
| constituent notes.
|
| So, for example the C major and C minor triads are both orange
| chords. F major and F minor triads are green chords. E minor and
| E major triads are green chords, etc.
|
| This is a scheme that Tom Glazebrook calls "metaharmony", and he
| uses it in the context of studying the Barry Harris approach to
| Jazz, but it's actually isomorphic to Erno Lendvai's "Axis
| Theory" analysis of the music of Bela Bartok. (The secondary
| colors correspond to the T, D, and S functions.)
| mncharity wrote:
| Going the other way, using a sound analogy to teach color
| theory, I played with a
| {B4:red,C:orange,C#:yellow,D:green,D#:green,E:blue,F:violet}
| map - frequency scaling with offset. With an equalizer-like
| keyboard - intensity from touch location, and displayed on the
| key. So kbd/equalizer to synth to spectrogram to scale-and-
| offset to pretend-they-are-lasers to a restricted spectra to
| color space and color. Keyboarding color in a color space via
| spectra.
| pohl wrote:
| I forgot I wanted to include a couple of links:
|
| Here's a video someone made to describe the idea better than I
| have:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjR13Jz7YYw
|
| Here's a screenshot of a Tonnetz I drew in SwiftUI using this
| color scheme:
|
| https://imgur.com/a/metaharmony-tonnetz-c-major-6th-diminish...
| karmakaze wrote:
| I think they're color-coding with the root note (or key?) being
| red which makes more sense than coloring the note names.
| Similar to how hearing perfect pitch can be a bit of an
| annoyance (with unnecessary detail) than useful.
| pohl wrote:
| No, they're definitely assigning the colors to the pitch
| class. It's not relative to the tonic of the key. I remember
| that being a stumbling block for me, because I like things
| that are independent of key. But, no, a C major triad is most
| certainly orange because C is yellow, and E and G are both
| red.
|
| I ultimately made peace with this because the greater goal is
| to break you out of the key prison so you can learn to move
| anywhere. In this light, it makes sense to assign the colors
| to the pitch class.
| tgv wrote:
| What is it? The web site doesn't work (FF, Windows & macOS). If
| they really propose replacing pitch by color, how are they going
| to get people to tell minute differences apart? How are they
| going to display chords, or polyphony? Octaves? And as if written
| notation doesn't exclude enough people, they're now also
| excluding color-blind people, some 5% of the male population
| where I live.
| a2128 wrote:
| Website is unusable for me on Firefox as well. Nothing is
| clickable and "This page is slowing down Firefox. To speed up
| your browser, stop this page". If I block 3rd party scripts and
| frames in uBlock then it works better
| dberst wrote:
| The landing page doesn't seem very exciting (on mobile at least)
| but the "practice" area of the site contains quite a few web apps
| to demonstrate the concepts. I think the basic idea is that
| western music uses 12 tones, and chromatone gives each of those
| tones a color, and uses those 12 color/tone pairs as a basis for
| teaching music theory in a visual way.
|
| Here's a simple app that works on mobile (android/chrome anyway):
| https://see.chromatone.center/
|
| And also here's where I found a lot of additional web apps. I'll
| look through them more when I'm at my PC. But just thought I'd
| post these here for anyone who clicked on the hn link but was
| underwhelmed or confused by the landing page:
| https://chromatone.center/practice/
|
| https://chromatone.center/practice/experiments/
|
| https://chromatone.center/practice/sound/
| dberst wrote:
| For those lost from the landing page here's a visualization that
| worked for me on mobile (chrome/android)
| https://see.chromatone.center/
|
| There's a bunch of web apps in the "Practice" section of the
| site:
|
| https://chromatone.center/practice/
|
| https://chromatone.center/practice/experiments/
|
| https://chromatone.center/practice/sound/
| adamc wrote:
| I liked it, but... is there a way to script it? Clicking on notes
| gets old fast.
| entaloneralie wrote:
| Half expected the landing page to be written in Solresol.
| brcmthrowaway wrote:
| What I've been obsessing about is a way to get the "feeling" of a
| particular piece of music.. is there a field dedicated to this
| study?
| andoando wrote:
| Can you explain what you mean?
| recursive wrote:
| I think that's just music composition. Or maybe arrangement.
| jdietrich wrote:
| _
| keymasta wrote:
| I really like the link you provided and have watched it before!
|
| But - I do want to say that C == green is not arbitrary at all.
| It is consistent with my calculations, which are consistent
| with Newton's calculations. Usually I see the colours being
| assigned to notes as wrong.. but this C == green is consistent
| with mapping light, using octave equivalence, given by the
| following: f_prime = f * 2 ** (i / 12) #
| Where, # f' is the derived f, (in this case Green {5.66
| x 10^14 Hz}) # f is the reference f (in this case 261.63
| Hz) # i is the interval in semitones
|
| Let's say that C == 261.63 Hz, and that Green == 5.66 x 10^14
| Hz. Using the preceding formula we can make a small (python)
| program to check whether C == Green.
| light_range_min = 400 * 10 ** 9 # Hz light_range_max =
| 790 * 10 ** 9 # Hz C = 261.63 # Hz octave = 0
| for octave in range(100): # we are just using a high number
| here f_prime = C * 2 ** (12 * octave / 12)
| if f_prime >= light_range_min: octave = octave
| break print(f"C in the range of light has f == {f_prime},
| which is {f_prime / 10 ** 9} THz. We had to go {octave} octaves
| up to arrive there") # outputs: C in the range of light
| has f == 561846146826.24, which is 561.84614682624 THz. We had
| to go 31 octaves up to arrive there
|
| We can look up colour charts like [0] or [1] and find that this
| frequency is in fact associated with the colour green.
|
| The rest of your commentary seems valid.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visible_spectrum
|
| [1] https://sciencestruck.com/color-spectrum-chart
| keymasta wrote:
| Not sure why I got down voted but the parent has deleted
| their post so ok! :D
| vermarish wrote:
| I'm not a huge fan of the color/pitch relationship they seem to
| be trying to establish.
|
| What I do appreciate is the engineering design in these
| interactives. The circular metronome in the rhythm apps is very
| cool, might be good for generating musical ideas once I get past
| the semi-opaque UX.
| recursive wrote:
| This seems kind of like inventing a QWERTY alternative. The best
| thing about QWERTY is that its ubiquitous and good enough, not
| that it's optimal.
|
| Although in the case of chromatone, I don't see any arguments
| made about technical improvements. Instead of spelling note names
| with letters, we have colors. Why is this better? This some
| argument about the visible spectrum mapping. But like, how is
| that useful? I can tell a group of working musicians "1-4-2-5 in
| E minor", and we'd probably be able to play something moderately
| coherent based on that. How do I do that in Chromatone? What's
| the advantage?
|
| Most people (aside from those with perfect pitch) experience
| pitch relatively. Things like intervals or scale degree given a
| tonic. Maybe there's something interesting one could do mapping
| colors to something in this domain, a la solfege, like a minor 9
| chord becomes green or something. I'm still not totally sure what
| the point would be. Maybe you could read a chart quicker.
|
| But like, what's the problem in traditional notation/theory that
| we're trying to solve here?
| 867-5309 wrote:
| it is a cool toy
|
| just play with it
| recursive wrote:
| I'd rather just play a real instrument. Also, the author
| seems to believe that this is a Big Idea, not just a cool
| toy.
| thenoblesunfish wrote:
| The big question underlying this kind of analogy: are the spectra
| of visible things (EM) and the spectra of mechanically vibrating
| things similar? Naively, I'd say no, so this is yet another fun
| but ultimately arbitrary mapping which people endlessly invent to
| make music. Is it deeper than I think at first glance?
| slaymaker1907 wrote:
| This really doesn't reflect the actual structure of Western music
| for those without absolute pitch (the vast majority of people).
| Instead, it's pretty much just relations that matter between
| pitches which makes things way more difficult to visualize.
| Mixing red and blue gives you a different color than red and
| green, but A-C is pretty much the same as Bb-Db, they're both
| minor thirds.
|
| If you want to analyze it algorithmically, you probably need to
| start looking at topology or something so that you can correctly
| relate musical structures in a way that is resistant to
| transposition.
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