THE SCALE OF RED

Now that the Plein Air painting experience is over I can get back to the attic where I was thinking about how to paint music.

I had my keyboard ready to go.  The problem that had me thinking so long was how to represent something that happens in time.  Notes touch only the one before they occur and the one after that.  If color interaction is what is going to create color music and there is any relationship between musical vibrations and color vibrations, then the way the colors interact is key.  I began with a scale.  I placed the first note in the middle, a low C or dark red, the second note D or violet I placed around C so that it would only touch C.  The next note E or blue went around D so that it would only touch C and the next note E or blue green. And so it goes up the scale with each note/color touching only the one before it and the one after it.  This way of arranging the colors also forces the eye to the beginning - the center - and out to the edge - the end.

The colors are very close in tone, i.e. the amount of white and or black they contain, but do get slowly lighter as they move up the scale.

Since we are operating in space, not in time, we see the whole scale, not just one color at a time.  We see how all the colors relate to each other.  We don't have to remember the colors as we do when listening to notes.  Anything in time relies on memory.  A representation of any event in space does not.  We can look at it for as long as it pleases us.

The Scale of Red