Polychromatic system

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Not to be confused with Kite's color notation.

The polychromatic system is a musical notation system devised by Dolores Catherino for notating large edos, such as 72edo and 106edo. It expands on circle-of-fifths notation by using colored noteheads that indicate pitch-color. Additional inflections may be notated using arrows, similar to those of Kite's ups and downs notation.

Pitch-color is determined by a sequence of hues: (flatter) red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, pink (sharper). Yellow is generally treated as the "middle" color, e.g. for the reference pitch.

Catherino uses the following color schemes:

  • 24edo: 72edo subset (yellow and violet);
  • 36edo: 72edo subset (red, yellow and blue);
  • 53edo: (violet), orange, yellow, green, blue, (violet, pink)
  • 72edo: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet;
  • 106edo: 53edo superset with up/down arrows

External links