Music > Diffraction/grating

Pitch and color have a tangled history together. They cohabit within Pythagoras’ planes and spheres. Scriabin—that synesthete composer—assigned colors to the circle of fifths. Liszt too. We speak of the “chromatic” scale and “blue” notes.

Nevertheless, my fascination lies not in tonality but rather the texture of musical sound. This piece imagines each ROYGBIV as its own unique timbre—also called tone color, ironically. A naïve melody is first introduced in "white," then rendered repeatedly across the spectrum.

There was a live performance that re-interpreted this piece via semi-autonomous software "instruments".