Color… Music… Are They Related

Many years ago I was involved in a cool music project that I am now getting ready to pursue again with updated technology.

So what did I do many years ago? A friend of mine in Miami created a transparent flute made of Lexan–a touch space-age plastic. It wasn’t cheap, they keys were gold plated.

A professional jazz flutist (Dave Valentin) in New York took an interest and bought it. (The price was about $3,000.)

There came a point when Dave was going to play in the Blue Note club in Manhattan. Juan and I got the idea to light the flute up for special effect. This was especially cool since one you started playing the flute it got condensation internally.

I me (not being an electrical engineer) created a system of LEDs to attach to the flute. The results were fabulous and the recception was great.

Now, years later, I want to take in the notes from the flute, determine the frequency, and output a color (depending on the note) to the flute. There are three ways to approach this. The first is level zero where the note frequency is mapped to a color, which also has a frequency. The second is level one where there is another relationship based on the melody intervals. The last is a way to interpolate all of the notes as an agregate and detemine the tone/mood of the piece and respond to that.

I will keep you posted. The research is ongoing.