The Colors of Music

Bloomington Journal, March 26, 2010


After days of wandering in the real world, here I am again, in the IU Herman Wells Main Library, writing this journal to ease the loads my mind has been bearing. The dark sky and a can of mass-produced lemon tea keep me company tonight. How I miss the taste of real lemon tea. But that is not what I wish to discuss right now.

Once again my mind search through the mist of music. As if collecting sands on the beach, the search for music will never end. I realized this as soon as I dedicated my self in this search. I am sure although the number of truth needed to be uncover is infinite, my work will not go in vain.

Today I want to share one aspects of music that I've been using for years. The color of music. We musician always understand when said "give a different color" in a particular part of music. But how we did it, it is as well a mistery as why the earth is round. Of course we are able to do it but we cannot tell others HOW to do it. Not that we don't want to but we really literally can't because we don't know ourselves. Many approach has been made for this matter although non of them provide a general solution that fits everybody. It appears that the task of giving colour to music is a very subjective one. One cannot do it properly unless one finds out the most fitting way for oneself. Another magic of music.

I, myself, have a particular way to give colours to music. In my case, I see the colours itself in every sound. Imagine a glass of pure transparent water. When a sound is produced, imagine a dip of ink dripping into it and spreading allover. It's the exact same thing. Imagine your whole blood transport system as the pure transparent water. When the ink touches the water and spread, you can feel the gland in the back of your neck (I can't particularly remember the scientific name for this gland) shoots out an amount of hormone throughout your blood transport system and you can feel a thrilling sensation comming afterwards. Another way to put it is like painting. You're given an empty canvas and how would you paint it with music. The problem now is to differ from note to note, chord to chord, even phrase to phrase.

This is where imagination and fantasy plays it's greatest part. Apparently, my perspective of the note's colour are as the following :
C = yellow or gold
D = blue
E = green
F = brown (from dark to some particular level of bright brown)
G = black
A = red
B = azzure or skyish blue
C-sharp = black (particularly in the higher register)
D-flat = dark blue (particularly in the lower register)
E-flat = darker green than E
F-sharp = brighter brown
A-flat = maroon red
B-flat = blue as a sea
This only apply in the case of one note being produced. When a chord is build up and a phrase is constructed, I see an entirely different colour depending on how my feeling react to the music. Afterall music is all about feelings and sensation.

After knowing what I see, I'd need to imagine them. Of course I have to know what colour am I in at the moment and what is it that I intend to change into. The more I practice this idea, the bolder the colour, the faster it can change, and the easier to pull out the tingling sensation of this colouring with music. As if I were traveling through the barrier of human being and in a split second, I, as human being, can feel the presemce of afterlife without dying, be it heaven or hell or even a world God only knows about.

This is as far as I go today. I hope this concpt isn't to abstract to understand. As I say before, this is MY approach and everyone has their own approach to it. Best of luck if this can be useful to any musician in the world. Once again I shall went back to the real world where dreams are only as good as gold and fantasies are nothing but a mad people's amusement.