Associate a colour with each falling note (A,..,G)

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nelsius
Posts: 7

Post by nelsius »

Hello,
I use synthesia under licence and I appreciate its functioning. There is just one improvement which I believe could be very beneficial to the reading of falling notes, it would be to be able to associate a colour to each note of the scale, for example C red, D orange, etc. (with a darker shade for the sharp note). This would be a very effective and quick visual aid by colour-note association and would be a real plus for the user. Is this possibility in the development projects of Synthesia? I saw in a previous message that the colourisation of falling notes would be an option not too difficult to develop. What is your opinion on the interest or not of such an add-on, is it planned? Thank you for your reply. Thank you very much for your reply. Nelsius

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Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

I've got "Pitch-Based Color" a little over 470 lines down on the task list at the moment. It is planned and something I've wanted to add for years.
nelsius
Posts: 7

Post by nelsius »

Thank you, I think that the reading (identification) of the falling notes would be enormously facilitated and very fast by the association which would quickly become an atomatism in our brain. This would be a plus for this software. Moreover, many people, especially artists and musicians, naturally associate a colour with a sound (Sinesthesia) and it is surprising that this characteristic, and therefore this possibility of optimising reading, is little exploited in the ergonomics of software. You have a lot of development requests, do you think you will be able to offer this add-on soon. Thanks again.

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Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

I generally go down the task list in order (although there is a little movement, sometimes). So once the chart on that page drops by another ~470 items, it'll be time to add that feature.
nelsius
Posts: 7

Post by nelsius »

Hello Nicholas,
I know you have a long list of modifications but I'm contacting you again because I'm convinced that my idea is not a simple addon but a very important evolution of Synthesia. There are now several products with similar features to Synthesia but they all display falling notes in a single colour. However, the display of coloured falling notes would considerably improve the contribution of these products in 2 aspects: learning and memorization.
- Learning: the reading (identification) of the falling notes would be enormously facilitated and very fast by the association note-color which would quickly become an atomatism in our brain.
- Memorization: We memorize the image of the notes indicated on a musical staff of a score. The descending notes of one colour do not allow this memorization whereas descending notes of different colours would. The main bars, the beginning, and particular passages would be easily recalled, just like in a printed score.

This note colour setting would be done by the user by associating a hexa colour code for each of the 12 notes of the scale (e.g. #FF0000 for red for note C). It is important that this is user configurable as it is common for a sound to be associated with a colour in a person's mind.
This could only concern track 1 of the midi file.
When the software is first installed, the notes could be set to #569D11 and #A1E55C, the colours of the 2 current greens, leaving the display in its current version to the user who does not wish to differentiate the colouring of the notes.
Currently the software proposes the display of the names of the notes in the descending notes. Since this link is already programmed, it would be necessary to associate the loading of the colour with the loading of the note name.

Thank you for reading this far, I'm sorry if I've been a bit long but I'm so convinced of the contribution - in terms of reading and memorization - of this colour display (which nobody does today!) that I'm asking you again.
I will buy a licence from the first software that proposes it. I will buy a new Synthesia licence if you propose this major evolution. I am only one of your customers but I will certainly not be the only one to want to use this solution.
Sincerely
Nelsius
diggidoyo
Posts: 9

Post by diggidoyo »

This would certainly be a fantastic feature for establishing further connections with the music.
Learning how certain chords and notes relate to each other using the spectrum of color is bound to provide unique insights.
Here's a video that describes the color wheel and it's association with the The Circle of Fifths.

User-defined colors would give us lots of options to play around with, such as arranging the colors chromatically, aligned with a certain key, or in specific intervals.
There's plenty of design space in the falling notes for communicating information to the player.
Another possibility could be indicating dynamics with a brightness or opacity scale: bright and opaque for fff, dim and transparent for ppp.


Until pitch-based color is added to Synthesia, there is a MIDI visualizer on Steam that lets you customize the colors associated with each note using hex codes called Keysight.
jwa171964
Posts: 1

Post by jwa171964 »

I've been requesting this from quite literally for several years now based on your exact reasoning. I'm a neuropsychologist and the learning implication is tremendous. Further to my knowledge no other software (including vr ones) offer this.
diggidoyo
Posts: 9

Post by diggidoyo »

Thanks for your input, it seems there's already been a lot of research on music and chromesthesia.


Alexander Scriabin's "keyboard with lights" clavier à lumieères. (1915).
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Ciuha, Peter & Klemenc, Bojan & Solina, Franc. (2010). Visualization of concurrent tones in music with colours.
Key spanning circle of thirds assigned to the colour wheel. A particular tone is represented by a radius vector pointing in the direction of circle of fifths denoted by majuscule letters.
Image

Lopez-Rincon, Omar & Starostenko, Oleg. (2019). Music Visualization Based on Spherical Projection With Adjustable Metrics.
Hue representation of notes (left), corresponding RGB values with coordinates of 3D positions in an icosphere.
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It will be great to see how the field develops once more people have access to tools that provide greater control over these variables.
As a bonus, this feature would also push Synthesia into an even closer alignment with it's actual namesake, Synesthesia.
Surely that would help pull search traffic away from that AI company that must not be named. ;)
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