Kite's color notation: Difference between revisions

Color notation was primarily developed by [[Kite Giedraitis]]. This is a brief summary. See "Alternative Tunings: Theory, Notation and Practice" for a full explanation. For a great web app that converts to/from ratios, monzos and color notation, see Xen-calc. It also does [[Ups and Downs Notation|ups and downs]].

Color notation has many features that other microtonal notations lack:

* No new symbols: all new accidentals are familiar characters; hence they are immediately speed-readable.

* Furthermore, they are all on the QWERTY keyboard, making the notation easily typeable.

* Every new accidental has a spoken name (colorspeak), making the notation speakable.

* Most importantly, one can name not only notes but also intervals. As a result, color notation can name scales, chords, chord progressions and even prime subgroups and temperaments.

 

Colorspeak is designed to be an international language, a sort of microtonal Esperanto quickly learned and spoken no matter what one's native language is. Almost every term in colorspeak is one syllable ending with a vowel. The five basic vowels are pronounced ah-eh-ee-oh-oo as in Spanish or Italian.

     3-all = '''wa''' = white (strong but colorless) = often perfect

 

   5-over = '''yo''' = yellow (warm and sunny) = often major  

 

5-under = '''gu''' ("goo") = green (not as bright as yellow) = often minor  

 

   7-over = '''zo''' = blue/azure (dark and bluesy) = often subminor  

 

The colors make a red-yellow-green-blue rainbow, with warm/cool colors indicating sharp/flat intervals. The rainbow of 3rds runs 9/7 - 5/4 - 6/5 - 7/6. Colors are abbreviated as '''w''', '''y''', '''g''', '''z''' and '''r'''. Use z (azure or Spanish/Portuguese azul), not b (blue), because b already means flat. Mnemonic: Z looks like 7 with an extra line on the bottom.

A color and a degree indicate a ratio, and vice versa. Every ratio has a spoken name and a written name. For 3/2, they are wa 5th and w5. Colors and degrees always add up predictably: z3 + g3 = zg5 = zogu 5th. Zogu, not guzo; higher primes always come first. Opposite colors cancel: y3 + g3 = w5.   

The JI lattice consists of many '''rows''', each one a chain of 5ths. Each row has its own color, and each color has its own row.<imagemap>

The following table lists all the intervals in this lattice. See the [[Gallery of Just Intervals]] for many more examples.   

Yo and ru intervals tend to be major, and gu and zo ones tend to be minor. But interval quality is redundant (if a third is yo, it must be major), it's not unique (there are other major thirds available), and quality isn't used with color names (see [[Color notation#Color%20Names%20for%20Higher%20Primes|#Color Names for Higher Primes]] below for why). Intervals on the lattice's far right or far left are called not augmented and diminished but '''large''' and '''small''', written as L and s, and abbreviated as '''la''' and '''sa'''. La and sa can always be distinguished from solfege's La and saregam's Sa by context. '''Central''', the default, means neither large nor small. This lattice shows the boundaries between the large, small and central zones:  

The general term for large/small/central is '''magnitude'''. Only intervals have a magnitude, notes never do, and L and s never appear on the staff. A ratio's magnitude is the sum of all the monzo exponents except the first one, divided by 7, and rounded off. 0 = central, 1 = large, 2 = double large, etc. 81/64 = [-6 4>, and 4/7 rounds to 1, so 81/64 = Lw3. 135/128 = [-7 3 1> = Ly1. Unfortunately, magnitudes do not add up predictably like colors and degrees: w2 + w2 = Lw3.