what is the color equivalent for each note of the musical scale?

Question

i heard that the notes "do re mi fa so la ti" are equivalent to certain colors
is this true? and if so, which is to which? im guessing its with the rainbow colors since they are also 7 and are "basic"

Answer 1

You might want to ask this on the Religion and Spirituality section. This is a New Age-y belief, I think, but it might have its roots in older religions. I read about it once; and I don't remember all of it, but I THINK that it is either

a-red
b-orange
c-yellow
d-green
e-blue
f-indigo
g-violet

or

c-red
d-orange
e-yellow
f-green
g-blue
a-indigo
b-violet


Note that Do, Re, Mi and so on are just place-markers and can fall on any note of the musical scale.

Answer 2

No way. The Russian composer Aleksandr Scriabin tried that in the early Twentieth Century with a piece for "color organ" - a transcendental symphony where people around the world were to hold hands during its performance (I am not making this up). I saw the color-tone equivalents he mentioned and did not see the logic in his choices (which were emotional and not science-based).

The reason in scientific terms why there cannot be any equivalence is that colors have frequencies in the megahertz range (millions of cycles per second) whereas musical notes are in the teens, hundreds and thousands of cycles per second, with each successive half-step (the smallest musical interval) being equal to the "twelfth-root of two" times the one below it in pitch.

Yet Purple, Red, Yellow, Green, Blue and Violet (in the subtraction (sunlight) system, as well as in the addition (paint) system have no such mathematical relationship between them in ratio terms that remotely resembles "the twelfth root of two".

Nice if there could be such a relationship (or smells and tastes for that matter) - but it all depends on your view. I personally see A major as red, e minor as yellow, but that is my thing, not yours, and probably not the same view as that held by any one of the other 5 billion interpretations (except by coincidence).

Additional Info: The musical notes are separated by about a 6% increase, whereas the main colors in the spectrum are separated by an erratic change of between 5.5% and 13.0% depending on which adjacent colors are measured - and it is not a log function where the increase is exponential as you go thru the spectrum - in fact, some changes are smaller after large distances (the one between blue and green is almost twice that of violet to blue, yet that from green to yellow is only 60% of that from blue to green). And for all you fans of Fibonacci, sorry to dissapoint you - NEITHER of these phenomena fall into ratios such as 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, etc.

Answer 3

Never heard that either. Do consists of dark blue. re ...pink..mi blue. .fa purple ..so light blue.. la dark pink.. ti a light shade of yellow. Just my idea since the shades of the rainbow arent consistant. You might have an idea there. Do a deer ...thing.

Answer 4

I've never heard that in my 8 years of working with music...but there could be

Answer 5

it varies depending on the theory... but here's what i know:
c=yellow-green, c#=green, d=green-blue, d#=blue, e= blue-violet, f=violet, f#=violet-red, g=dark red, g#=red, a=red-orange, a#=orange, and b=yellow.

and that my friend is pretty much a rainbow. kudos to you.