o f
M u s i c & C o l o r
~ the role of the ISL ~
~ "GoMAS: The Geometry of Music, Art and Structure" white paper ~
~mouseover~
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ISL (The Inverse Square Law |
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| Music . .. ... . .. ... . .. ... . .. ... |
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Color . .. ... . .. ... . .. |
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| cursor over images, text and dots above to reveal |
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| Major Diatonic Scale Pentatonic Major Scale
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| Minor Natural Scale Pentatonic Minor Scale
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| Minor Harmonic Scale Pentatonic Blues Scale
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| Minor Melodic Asc. Scale Diminished Scale
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| Minor Melodic Dsc. Scale Whole Tone Scale cursor over images above to reveal |
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click below to see the 12 Whirling Squares Color-Music Spirals |
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| SAFARI & CHROME browsers click here | FIREFOX browsers click here | INTERNET EXPLORER* browsers* click here |
Color Music Composer
click above for either the Verticle (left) or Horizontal (right) composer
| INTERNET EXPLORER browsers click
here for Basic -Vertical | INTERNET EXPLORER* browsers click
here for Basic -Horizontal |
Color Music Composer
click above for either the Verticle (left) or Horizontal (right) composer
Advanced ---REQUIRES BROADBAND and COMPUTING POWER
| INTERNET EXPLORER browsers click
here for Advanced -Vertical | INTERNET EXPLORER* browsers click
here for Advanced -Horizontal |
| Super Color Music Composer-no sounds
Super Color Music Composer -sounds*
click above for either without clickable sound (left) or with clickable sound(right) composer Super-Advanced ---REQUIRES BROADBAND and COMPUTING POWER |
NEW: Piano Waves Interactive 
Color_Music_The ISL Monochord |
Copyright©2009, Reginald Brooks, BROOKS DESIGN
All rights reserved.
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Technical Reference: Dolmetsch Online
G E O M E T R Y
of Music - Color and the ISL
Say...what are you talking about?
~ISL is the Inverse Square Law.
Can you give us a clue as to what the hell you are referring to?
~yes, is it not more than a little curious that a simple relational law of Nature should define so much of what we, as sentient beings, are privileged to experience…indeed to inform our esthetic?
Hey buddy, can you reel it in a bit…you know, bring it down to earth?
~yes, but we are going to get lost if we start to focus on the details instead of grasping the bigger idea.
Ok…so can you give us the big idea and then back it up with some actual real world examples…as in actual facts?
~trust me. "Nature in all her glory and profound richness nevertheless builds diversity upon the scaffolding of simplicity...efficiency...and the path of least resistance." That quote is from my recent work on the Butterfly Primes. It's just as valid here. The ISL describes the distribution of influence over distance from its source. That influence can be a force…as in gravity and the electromagnetic force. It can also be a density…or concentrations…of energy as variously expressed as combinations of space and time, and the matter and fields that are embedded within. Not surprising, atomic structure…being a product of that particular combination of space-time combinations resulting from the interactions of the forces of Nature…reveals itself to be patterned on the ISL, as well. Taking it one step further…and when you think about it not all that surprising either…the experience of color and sound is profoundly affected by the ISL.
Uh?
~ the experience of color and sound is profoundly affected by the ISL when either one is selectively presented by the same number relationships found in the ISL. Such correspondence resonates with the Universe and elicits the esthetic response of beauty…of the sublime.
OK, so you are saying we are all one. Doesn't everyone already know that? So what is new about your connection to the Universe at large?
~the history of music and art is nearly as old as the history of women and mankind. Blowing on a shell, a blade of grass…plucking a filament, a string of plant or animal fiber…sets up a vibration of the air molecules that our ears pick up as sound. Nearly every culture has organized the spectrum of possible sounds into an orderly array whose intervals…or space between the tones…is pleasing to the ear. In most cases the common factor is that such pleasing tone arrangements follow…or nearly follow…simple number ratios. The process of dividing up the "monochord" into simple divisions and comparing the resulting tones has formed the essential foundation of all music. It is fundamental. Next, we have the building and evolution of various musical instruments within each culture…influenced by the materials, technology, and social-spiritual-political environment of the times. The simple ratios of just intonation become "tempered" and adjusted to fit with the instrumentation. The modern piano becomes based on a further tweaking of the monochord…this time by strict mathematics…the 12twelve square root of 2…dividing the frequency spread of any octave into 12 equal steps…thus our "equal temperament" tuning of Western music.
Can you elaborate a bit…and keep it brief?
~you're right. This is all laid out in the accompanying white paper "The Geometry of Music, Art and Structure…linking the esthetics of Science and Art," so we don't need to labor the details here. Suffice it to say that when you look at the division of the monochord "geometrically" one finds that the same numbers that inherently define the ISL intimately defines the modern chromatic scale and its diatonic major and minor scales! This is new. But that's not all!
O please…do tell, hey?
~applying the same principles to the color spectrum also reveals a relationship between each color and its natural color complement…as well as relationships to the other colors within the spectrum. Three ideas here: first, treating the wavelengths of color like a monochord and applying the ISL derived ratios generates a natural color spectrum with the complements; second, these ISL ratios are identical to those of the musical spectrum…so much so, that one can arbitrarily assign the color spectrum, beginning with red, to any key and the remaining color ratios will naturally fall on each of the music ratios within the scale of that key; and, thirdly, and perhaps more important to fields outside of the arts, the ISL relationships of the color spectrum extend out and beyond both ends of the visible light spectrum. That's right, if we had eyes that could see beyond the single octave of one color spectrum…see like we can hear across a large number of octaves…we would see that the color ratio relationships also extend beyond the single octave of light perception. This is a vast and untapped relationship. It is very new!
Quite bragging! Don't you have something concrete to offer?
~discoveries are meant to be shared. They are gifts to us all. Bragging is when you try to live off the past.
O really! And how is this relevant?
~the first thing that came to mind was synesthesia…you know, where individuals have cross-sensory experiences hearing colors, seeing sounds, etc. The educational possibilities of actually presenting formation, structure and the resulting esthetics of color as a musical composition, and vice versa, has enormous appeal.
How so?
~there is whole exciting field out there under the banner of "music visualization" in which various correlations between sound and color form are exploited…often in a somewhat arbitrary fashion. This personal esthetic in no way distracts from the artistic expression. In some cases, there is a real relationship between the rhythmic and pitch presentations of the sound and that of the color and/or geometric/abstract forms.
And so what are you complaining about?
~well, I want to see a firm, scientifically based relationship between the sound and color dynamics to be present in an interactive, real-time form. From that firm foundation, one can then jump off into realms of personal expression that nevertheless relate back to the truth of the Universe. In other words, though the choices for personal expression may be arbitrary and individual, they nevertheless will always relate back to the harmony of the Universe since they are truly based on the same laws. Using the ISL-derived ratios for both the music and color spectrum ensures that the expression is universal.
Let me get this straight,…you want music to flow out of your paintbrush?
~that's exactly right! And when I go to compose music, I want to be able to visualize the entire work as to tone and color…sequentially breaking it down to musical sections, phrases, measures and notes…each with its own color.
What planet did you say you were from? Here on earth, there is no such tool or instrument. Did you ever think about that? Are you on drugs? Or maybe one should ask, "Have you stopped your meds?"
~funny! Personally, I find that trying to do things is more rewarding than dreaming about them.
Are you building a prototype now?
~not exactly. The ideas presented here are large and hopefully will engage others to pursue their exploitation. I have started a rudimentary interaction of color and music (see above) but this is nowhere near what I envision. And yes, the ideas are doable and I believe will be realized within the next few years. The technology is mostly there. It just takes the right combination of technical, programming, musical and artistic skills to bring it off. Jump on board! "Want to know more"...as they say...Part II
Do you think that we invented numbers or that numbers invented us?
~again, the numbers, or as I like to refer to them, the geometry informs the space, the time, and the energy it contains. It is us.
"All the numbers are special. The prejudice is not in our perception that there are differences in the numbers and the various patterns and permutations that they can make, but in our conception that this difference for this number group is more valid...deserves more favor...than that of another, where in fact, the very existence of the one is built and predicated on the existence of the other. It's all by design. The negative space of one is defined by the positive space of the other!" (quoted from "Butterfly Primes ~prejudicial numbers~")
Click here for the "The Geometry of Music, Art and Structure..."
Click here for the "Butterfly Primes"
Click here for the "Butterfly Prime Directive"
Click here for the "Butterfly Prime Determinate Number Array"