Raising awareness of basic music theory and harmony concepts

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The Colors of Music

The Colors of Music - Introduction


Everyone knows that there is emotion in music. In some music the emotional energy is pure and identifiable. That is the kind of music we will be talking about here. But it can occur in any genre, whether classical, popular, jazz or anything else.

The Colors of Music theory is more than simply an assignment of colors to different kinds of music. It claims that music, in a way not fully understood, can carry emotional energy. As light frequencies can be seen with the eyes, the emotional ‘light’ can be felt with the heart. These energies are not visible, but they can be characterized by a spectrum, in the same way visible light is. The different energies can therefore be identified with the seven rainbow colors.

The emotional light that pure music can carry spans the most important or significant feelings in the experience of being human. The seven energies are the highlights of life. They are emotions, but it may be more correct to call them states of being.

Whenever an author presents information that can’t yet be proven in the scientific sense, it is critical that the author’s process of arriving at that information be given. This aspect is missing from many, many books that purport to provide spiritual truths, and then we have no way of knowing if the information is truth or was made up arbitrarily.

My process of arriving at the seven categories started with my experiences listening to music. One experience in particular. At a performance of Bach’s St. John Passion in 1991 there were parts of it that seemed to have an energy that I couldn’t place or connect to. It was a new experience; it had never happened before, and I was astounded by it. That led me to study the Bach Passions more closely, and that led to the theory of the color associations. Bach’s musical works encompass all the energies, and they are especially pure and recognizable in his music.

Part of my process was a self-published book by Mary Bassano, In the Flow (no ISBN). That book relates the rainbow colors to music energies, and comes close to doing so correctly. My theory refines and expands on her work. I have relied on my intuition, with verification and correction through the pendulum from my guides in spirit who I have very high confidence in at this point. My intuition had it mostly right, but not entirely.

Even though we are dealing with intuition, the principles of truth-seeking in science still apply. The best theories are what scientists call elegant: simple, yet powerful. The highest truths are always large in scope, with minimal detail, and admit of more than one interpretation. (The Shroedinger equation comes to mind.)

And they do not conflict with other known truth. The number seven is not just the number of rainbow colors, it is also the number of notes in common musical scales, and the number of chakras in the human body. Seven is the basis of the ‘music of the spheres’ theme, which has been a prevalent idea since ancient times (see Jamie James, The Music of the Spheres).

The greatest composers all knew that the best music is divinely inspired, and they said so in their writings. They knew the composing process to be one in which they were channels for an energy coming from spirit. They knew the energies in music were of spiritual origin, and were not surprised that music could be powerful. In this light, it is not difficult to believe that there are seven fundamental energies spanning all of creation and all of existence, and that they are conveyed through powerful music.

In the last twenty years there have been many books and workshops that relate color to the seven chakras. But there is not universal agreement on the significances of the individual chakras, which means that while we know the chakras exist, we don’t have the full truth yet on their functions. It would be a mistake, therefore, to use chakra teachings to describe the seven fundamental energies. The seven energies in the color of music theory are all emotional states of being. As an example of the problem with the chakra teachings, consider that many of them relate the color blue and the fifth chakra to speaking and communication, which is a mechanical function, not an emotion. In the color of music work, one of the things blue represents is appreciation of and devotion to truth. Communication is just a part of that mode of being.

And finally, the Color Rays of the Theosophists are unrelated to this work.


Principles of the color theory


1. Emotional intensity is variable: the amount of power in music depends on how deeply the composer was plugged into the divine source. It is not so much which notes and harmonies are used, but how they are used. Sometimes the most profound music is created using the simplest of harmonies.

2. Ability to access: different people have different readinesses to access the energies. Many people can easily relate to the first part of the energy color spectrum, from red through yellow or green. Somewhat fewer will resonate with blue, fewer still with indigo, and only a very few with violet. If a person hears music that is beyond his/her level of accessibility, that music will sound like noise or at least bad composing and it will not be enjoyable. (But the converse is not true; if you hear what sounds like bad composing, it may be just that.)

Even someone who is able to tune into the “higher” energies will still find that she can appreciate the full power of those works only after hearing them several times. On each listening, a little more of the subtlety and sublimeness becomes apparent and the emotional reaction is stronger.

3. Progression of the colors: each of the colors relates to certain attributes in the human experience, and to the feelings that are bound up in them. On a deeper level the colors also associate with steps or phases of the evolutionary journey from separateness to oneness. At each stage an entity evolves itself to the next level out of the previous one.

4. Relative importance of the colors: The colors form a progression, but still it is not true that any of the colors, or energies, are “better” or more important than any others. All of the energies are equally important. They each relate to a unique aspect of life or of being, and a wholesome approach to life balances them. But there will be times in everyone’s day-to-day life when he/she is in a space that music of a particular color will enhance. And someone’s personal evolution might be aided by focusing on the color that is just beyond the highest level of their current existence (but without abandoning the others).

5. Relative intensities of the colors: Red contains the most "kinetic" energy, and violet has the most 'potential' or subjective energy. Green music is lowest in intensity.

intensity chart

6. The relevance of the key: in the history of music the idea of relating particular colors to specific notes goes back at least to Greek times. Traditionally the note C is associated with the color red, D with orange, E with yellow, F with green, G with blue, A with indigo, and B with violet. And it is a known fact that sensitive listeners hear certain qualities in the different keys: C and D, and the sharp keys in general, are bright-sounding keys; G has a majestic sound, F and the flat keys have a more solid and grounded feel.

Does this mean that C is a red key, or G is a blue key? Not in the sense that the key determines the color, for it is the emotional quality of the music, primarily, that determines the color. But it does mean that C, for example, is more suitable to red energy music than say E flat or B flat. And in fact martial music often is written in C. The most powerful music is music that is written in the key that corresponds to its color energy. As another example, consider Bach's B minor Mass (which actually has more D major sections than B minor). Several sections of it have obvious orange energy, and being in the key of D, that energy is all the more enhanced. In the case of minor mode, the natural color is the color for the relative major key; thus the “natural” minor key for indigo would be F# minor (the relative minor to A major).

Bibliography

(c) 2008 Music Awareness

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red  orange  yellow  green  blue  indigo  violet