Leonardo

Color-Encoded Music Scores: What Visual Communication Can Do for Music Reading
Author(s): Celso Wilmer
Source: Leonardo, Vol. 28, No. 2 (1995), pp. 129-136
Published by: The MIT Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1576134
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GENERAL

ARTICLE

Color-Encoded
Music
What
Can

Visual
Do

for

Scores:

Communication
Music

Reading
ABSTRACT

Visualcommunication
and
Piaget'spedagogicaltheorycan
be appliedto musicreadingwith
interestingresults.Thepurpose
of the author'sprojectis to make
musicalscores easierto readand
playandthusfacilitatethe teachingof music.Thisarticlede-

CelsoWilmer

ot long ago, a group of adventurous young

N
people-three girls and a boy-accepted my invitation to play
a Bach chorale together on the piano. Why adventurous? Because none of them could play the piano or read music. Two
hours later, the whole piece was played, from start to finish,
by these four musical novices.
For this to be possible, the traditional musical score had to
be transformed to better communicate the music. Established early in the present millennium, traditional musical
notation was clearly not meant by its creators-Christian
monks transcribing sacred music-to be accessible to a wide
public. So the system developed, becoming ever more abbreviated and complex, alwaysaiming at faithfulness to the composition, but entirely neglecting the other half of the communicative process-namely, the reading, or decoding, of this
complex notation. Now, however, as the end of the millennium draws near, two factors make the present time particularly ripe for a critique of the music-reading process: the advent of visual communication as a field of study and Piaget's
pedagogical theory.
The purpose of this article is to present the genesis of a
new musical notation system geared to expanding the musicliterate public-a self-evident musical score. My intention is
to encourage readers to try this bold experiment for themselves-that is, to try to play Mozart's Sonata XVI or Satie's
"Gymnopedies"while reading scores written with this musical
notation system.

THE SPECIFICITYOF MUSIC READING:

TIME AGAINSTTIME
To say that traditional scores do not aim at maximal expansion
of the reading public is not to say that it is in anyone's interest
that they should remain hermetic. Clearly, the idea of a truly
reader-friendly score should appeal to everyone-composers,
publishers, musicians, teachers, instrument-makers, students
and interested laypersons. But if we were to ask a conductor
how he feels about changing the musical notation system, he
might answer, with just a hint of irritation: "Well, I learned
music from traditional scores. Why should the reading public
be any bigger than it is? After all, in music as in anything else,
Celso Wilmer (visual communicator, mathematician, musician, educator),
Departamento de Artes, Pontificia Universidade Catolica, Rua Marques de Sao Vicente,
225, 22451-041 Rio deJaneiro, Brazil.
Translated by Paulo Henriques Britto.
Received 21 January 1993.

? 1995 ISAST

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ing
not."
others
do
others not.
of soundduration
doubt
No doubt
the traditionalscrepresentation
traditional score
representation
andcolor-encoded
has achieved the maximum exof pitch.Oneoftheadvantages
ofthesystem,whichhecalls
pansion of its public. The point
Rainbow
Scores,is thatitenables
is, however, that the potential
one to createvideosof musical
-h
redn
mre
fo
mui
market for music reading-the
scoresthatmovealongbefore
number of people who would be
thestudent's
eyesatmetronomecontrolled
able to read music written in an
speed.
improved system aiming at maximum communication-is
much
larger.
What, then, would be the rationale for self-evident notation? Precisely the specificity of music reading. The reader of
a score cannot afford to break off repeatedly in order to figure out the meaning of a new symbol, for this disrupts the
flow of the music and destroys the tune. It is the accumulation of these frustrating interruptions that often discourages
beginners.
Music reading is one context in which visual communicators should clearly do all that is possible to save users' time.
The communicator's task is to minimize the time span between sighting a symbol and playing the note it stands for on
the instrument: hence, the need for self-evidence.

THE ELEMENTSOF MUSIC SCORES

To illustrate the improvements behind a self-evident score,
such as the one used by my young friends, let us take the following passage from Mozart's Sonata XVI (1788) [1] and
show how this can be done (Fig. 1). Anything that a composer can play on the piano and record on paper is essentially, like any common song, a set of musical notes in temporal succession. Each note is characterized by its pitch, which
tells us which piano key was pressed, and its duration, which
tells us how long (proportionally speaking) the key in question was held.
Fig. 1. Passage from Mozart's Sonata XVI, shown in traditional notation.
A

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LEONARDO, Vol. 28, No. 2, pp. 1129-136, 1995

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Except for intensity directions, practically all the graphic elements in a musical score relate to the pitch and the duration of notes. Let us begin with pitch.

Self-Evident Representation
of Pitch
The first question a layperson might ask
about Fig. 1 is: "Which key should I
press?"
To show clearly the correspondence
between the lines and spaces in the staff
(where the notes are placed) and the piano keys, the score need only represent
a keyboard, with the same lines as those
in the staff marked on it [2]. (This correspondence is brought home in Fig. 2,
which will be explained in due time. As
examination of Fig. 2 shows, the system
employs exactly the same staff lines as
those used in the traditional system.)

Thus the F and G clef signs may be

omitted, since the correspondence is
now evident. The brace linking the leftand right-hand staves should be replaced by a symbol that more transparently represents the possibility of moving the two apart so that additional lines
may be placed between them. In the
new system a stylized spring will be used
instead.
The piano can be seen as the most
the
complete of all instruments-in
sense that its range of pitches from the
lowest to the highest contains those of
all other instruments. For this reason, I
have given the piano the privilege of being pictured in my score. If, on the piano, the lower notes are on the left and
the higher ones on the right, of course
the score should reflect this fact. The
reason the traditional system does not

A
Fig. 2. The Raindrop score for the
passage from
Mozart's Sonata
XVI pictured in Fig.
1. (a) The notation
is written according
to the new system.
(b) The keyboard
diagram with the
same lines as the
staff shows the correspondence between notes and
keys. (c) The correspondence is the
same as that in the
traditional system,
which allows immediate conversion of
a score from the
new system to the
old, and vice versa.

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do so is that it was devised with the intention of recording vocal music, long
before the piano had been invented.
But, given the pressing need for making
readers' response to the score as prompt
as possible, the representation of pitch
from bottom to top is anachronistic and
unjustifiable [3].
The staff should be vertical rather
than horizontal, so that pitch variation,
which is perpendicular to it, may be represented analogously to its arrangement
on the keyboard. This means that the
musical text can progress either from
top to bottom or from bottom to top, in
either case accompanied by the keyboard diagram.
But we will make our choice only after the criteria involved are better understood. Although at first it would
seem that just about anyone would favor a top-bottom direction, caution is
required before accepting the dictates
of common sense unfounded on pedagogical sense.

Self-Evident Duration Symbols

Since there is a direct correspondence
between notes and keys, the musician
knows from the startwhich keys to press.
Now he or she must be told for how long
each key must be pressed. The traditional notation of oval symbols with various kinds of stems provides this information, but training is required before one
can decode the text fast enough to play
as one reads. In fact, these symbols were
devised for fast writing-not for fast
reading.
Imagine what the result would have
been if Mozart's fingers did not touch a
keyboard, but rather touched a sort of
wax-covered conveyor belt moving towards or away from him. Every touch of
Mozart's fingers would have left a track
in the wax: the pitch of each note would
be shown in the location of the corresponding track on the horizontal axis,
whereas the note's duration would simply correspond to the track's length.

REQUIEM FOR AN
UNWRITEN OPUS
The resort to an imaginary conveyor belt
should not deceive us as to the real convenience of this form of representing duration. For if in place of the wax-covered
belt we have a paper reel and instead of
fingers we have pens activated by keys,we
get an automatic way to record music on
paper. Since the complexity of such a
mechanism surely does not exceed that
of a piano, it follows that this method has

(c)

130

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Conceptual

C33

(IIi5
Graphic

musical ideas such as pitch and duration) from one level to the next, on
each of which the idea must be elaborated before progress is possible:
concrete -> graphic -, conceptual

Concrete

Fig. 3. Levels of abstraction of an idea, according to Piaget.

been technologically feasible since at

least the early eighteenth century, when
the piano was invented.
At that time, the theoretical basis for
the representation of time through
length had recently been established,
with epochal consequences for science.
It was Ren6 Descartes (1596-1650) who,
with the creation of analytic geometry,
introduced this novel approach, which
opened up a whole new world of possibilities for mathematics, physics and
many other fields-but not music. This
is an ironic omission, for it is precisely in
music that subjection to the inflexible
passage of time requires a notation allowing fast reading.
If musicians had realized the possibility of representing duration by means of
the Cartesian method instead of relying
on an abstract convention, automatic recording would have been invented long
ago. Rather than interrupting the flow
of their ideas to transcribe each passage
they conceived, composer-pianists since
Mozart might have been able to write
much more than they actually did [4].

PIAGETAND MUSIC
TEACHING
Let us now turn to pedagogy to find a
criterion for choosing the most ador botequate direction-top-bottom
tom-top-for reading a musical text, as
well as to find corroboration for the decisions we have already made.
As a result of the in-depth research
into cognitive development in children
carried out byJean Piaget (1896-1980),
mathematical education has undergone
a major revolution in recent years. One
consequence of this revolution is the
present practice of making abundant
use of concrete materials and graphic
resources as necessary aids in the process of abstraction of mathematical concepts [5]. The same must be accomplished for teaching music. Let me sum
up Piaget's thesis in a few words: There
is a natural order in the abstraction of
any new idea by a learner (in this case,

It makes sense that a new idea should

be more readily understandable on
lower levels. On the concrete level, students rely not only on reasoning (an attribute of the conceptual level) but also
on the judgment of the eye (graphic
level) and particularly on touch,
changes in perspective and familiarity
with objects-which are specific to the
concrete level (Fig. 3).
This is why so many people find it difficult to read traditional scores: in them,
all the symbols are placed on the most
abstract level, the conceptual. All the
conventions used in traditional scores
are beyond the scope of the visual. For
this reason I have decided to bring the
representation of pitch and duration
down to the graphic level, which is accessible even to the self-taught.
It follows that a pedagogically ideal
score would be one that, short of reaching the concrete level-which would
amount to the composer at the piano
showing how to play the piece in question-would remain on the graphic level
and, if possible, allude to some equivalent concrete experience of the reader's.
Upon closer examination, I found
that the conveyor-belt image suggested
the appropriate shapes of the symbols to
be used in this ideal score because it is a
vivid representation of what the composer plays on the piano. In the conveyor-belt image, each track in the wax
startswith a round shape (where the finger touches the wax) that, after a while,
narrows and vanishes when the finger is
lifted. The result is a drop-shaped figure. So, like the tracks in the wax, I de-

Round
Drop

Sharp
Drop

Flat
Drop

Tone
Sharped lbne
Fig. 4. Musicalnotes in the new system.
Eachnote of the scale in use is represented
by a round drop. Accidentalalterations
(sharpsand flats) thatraise or lowerthe
note by a semitone are representedby the
sharpdrop and flat drop.Withthis redefinition of the concepts of sharpand flat, the
new score is the same for anykey.

sounds

colors
COLORlf

CODE 1Q

CONCLUSION

COLORS
ABOUT
J

Fig. 5. Stages in the pedagogic process of

representing musical sounds by means of
colors.

cided that the symbols should resemble

drops-falling drops.
So, applying this criterion to the two
possible directions to follow in reading
the score-top-bottom or bottom-topone can conclude that it is much easier
to visualize drop-shaped notes falling directly on the keyboard diagram or on
the piano keyboard right below them.
That is, the logic of the system springs
into view when we imagine, in place of
the composer's fingers, a sort of cascade
made up of drops, each of which presses
a given key for a period of time corresponding to the note's duration.
I believe that the advantage of this
analogy over the conveyor-belt image is
that it demonstrates a rationale for reading music from bottom to top. For, if,
according to the Bauhaus school of design, form follows function and the
function of the score is above all pedagogical (in my opinion), then the best
form is the one following the logic most
easily assimilable by the public. The idea
of falling drops evokes a vivid mental
image that is consistent with Piaget's
concrete level (corresponding to the
composer playing the piece). The
reader needs only to grasp that (1) as
they fall, large drops press the piano
keys for a long time and short drops for
a short time, and (2) the positions of the
drops move to the left or to the right,
equivalent to the positions of the piano
keys themselves. So the reader's responses are ready.

EXAMPLE OF A RAINDROP
SCORE
Referring to the Raindrop score of the
passage from Mozart's Sonata XVI (see
Fig. 2) one can determine the following:
1. The positions of the symbols show
which key to play for each note, since
the same lines appear in the keyboard
diagram and in the staff.
2. The number of beats to each measure (3) and the duration (length) of
each beat are shown graphically, instead
indicated by the symbol
3. The staff is a Cartesian axis, divided
in numbered measures of equal length.
It is also subdivided into beats or other

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131

Dmin FMi,

Avm

BC
c Mj

Z ma

(a)

(b)

(c)

132

Mi

nM

Fig. 6. (a) The harmonic neighborhood of C major

consists of the
chords made up of
the notes in the
scale of C major
(C, D, E, F, G, A, B).
(b) When these
notes are colored in
thirds (C, E, G,
etc.), this color
method expresses
the concept of consonance in terms of
relationships of
proximity between
colors. This is done
at first with a base
key-in the major
mode, C major. (c)
The solution is generalized for any key,
replacing each
chord with the harmonic function it
represents. Thus, respecting the way the
chords are structured, the color code
is compatible with
key transposition.

fractions, so that the duration of any two

notes can be compared visually.
4. Thus, there is no need for ties joining two note symbols to show that the
duration of a note should be extended.
The system also dispenses with any other
special duration symbols, such as dotted
notes, triplets, appoggiaturas, etc.
5. No rest symbols are needed: silence
(no sound) is represented by empty
space (no symbol).

EASY-TO-TRANSPOSE SCORES
Key transposition is the process by which
the key of a musical piece is changed in
order to adapt it to a singer's register, to
allow more convenient fingering on a
different instrument or to otherwise
adapt the piece to musicians' needs.
Generally speaking, any given composition will tend to predominantly use the
seven notes in the scale of the key in
which it is written, other notes being understood as alterations of these seven
(accidentals). This is reflected in the design of the piano keyboard: for the key
of C major, the full scale is played on the
white keys, while the accidentals are
played on the black keys. On the piano,
fingering is easiest in C major. On the
guitar, however, A major is the most convenient key; in it the bass line is played
mostly on open strings.
Up to a certain point, the traditional
system acknowledges the frequent need
to effect key transposition. When the
piece uses only the notes in the scale of
its key, all that need be done in order to
transpose it is to raise or lower all the
notes on the staff the same number of
lines or spaces.
But when the piece employs accidentals, transposition in the traditional system requires a complete rewriting of the
text. This is so because accidentals can
be indicated differently in the two keys
involved. For example, the seventh step
in C major is B, whereas in G major it is
F#-hence the sharp sign in the key signature of G major. So this seventh step
lowered by one semitone is, in C major,
B flat (indicated on the staff by t), and,
in G major, natural F (on the staff, #).
It is this use of different symbols (in
this case, 1 and #) that prevents sight
transposition when the musician must
play in a key other than the one in the
score he or she is reading.
To overcome this problem, accidentals
must be treated as functions, in the
mathematical sense of the term. The
sharping function raises the note by one
semitone and the flatting function lowers

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it by one semitone, regardless of whether

the original note is # or 6, or whether it
refers to a white or a black key.
Thus the seventh step lowered by one
semitone will be equally represented in
the two keys, and indeed in any other, by
a flat drop (Fig. 4) (in a color score, by a
red flat drop). This makes it possible to
produce an easy-to-transposescore. In it,
the notes, represented by drops, are
printed on a transparent sheet of paper,
while the staff lines are on an opaque
sheet behind it. By changing the relative
positions of the two, we automatically get
a transposition of the piece in any keysomething that musicians have always
longed for, but that was quite unfeasible
in the traditional system.

COLOR-ENCODED SCORES
As a teaching resource, colors make it
easier to apprehend Gestaltenin music
scores, highlighting the relative values
of the various features. Of all the different ways colors can be used-to signal
repeating passages, the sections of a
song, the parts of a choral, etc.-I believe the most interesting is in notes and
chords.
On the surface level, the use of color
in notes, together with verticalization of
the staff, reinforces the positional representation of pitch, making it easy to
identify the key corresponding to each
note. On a deeper and more original
level, color provides a visual model for
the teaching of certain relationships between sounds that are far from obvious
in the field of harmony. A schema of the
three stages in the development of this
model is shown in Fig. 5.
The first stage in the model's development establishes the correspondence
between notes and colors. Here one
must be careful, for if we are to reach
conclusions concerning relationships
between sounds, it is necessary at this
stage to choose colors that are also related to one another [6]. (The second
stage refers to the observation of the colors, for instance, in a particular chord,
followed by conclusions that can be
drawn from them-such as, blue, purple
and magenta are neighboring colors.
This leads to an initial conjecture and
later to a conclusion in terms of music
such as "this chord.")
The basic relationship between colors
is expressed by their proximity in the
rainbow or in Newton's disk (the color
spectrum in a circular shape). The following circular sequence of colors
should be visually memorized by stu-

(a)

(b)

Fig. 7. Two examples of color-encoded scores. (a) The passage from Mozart's Sonata XVI.
(b) A passage near the beginning of Satie's "Gymnopedie 1." An examination of the colors
shows us that the top example is a classical piece (with the initial chord [here, the tonic]
containing the first three colors-blue, purple and magenta-of the system I propose); the
bottom example, a modern piece (the initial chord contains four colors-yellow, green,
blue and purple; yellow replaces blue [the tonic's color] in the bass).

dents learning the system I propose:

The chords pictured in Fig. 6a constitute the harmonic neighborhood of a

piece written in C major. When I applied
As for sounds, relationships of "near- the colors of the sequence above to the
ness" are expressed by the notion of chords in Fig. 6a, I obtained a color enconsonance-their
ability to "sound coding for C major (which is explained
good" when played simultaneously in a in detail in the caption of Fig. 6). The
chord. Those chords traditionally held visual result in notation is shown in Fig.
to be definitive of consonance in West- 6b. We can see that each note in the
ern music may be either major or minor, scale (horizontal axis) lends the color it
and one of each kind is built upon each is assigned in this key to the whole
of the 12 existing tones.
chord built on it (vertical axis). This
blue -o purple -> magenta -> red ->
orange -> yellow -> green -> (blue).

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133

Sonata

XVI

Trois Gymnopedies (1)

W.A Mozart

E. Satie

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12

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Andante

Fig. 8. Example of a Raindrop Score of the first 16 bars in the andante of Mozart's Sonata XVI. Even in black and white, the notekey correspondence is made clear by the piano keyboard diagram.

color appears in the spaces of the right-

hand staff.
On the basis of this particular example, I devised a color code for any
key. Notes were replaced by the steps in
the scale, and chords by harmonic functions. We might say that a harmonic
function is the place occupied by a
chord within a musical piece. Let us
consider the tonic, the subdominant
and the dominant. For instance, in the

Table 1. Key for adding color to

color-encoded scores.

Color
blue
purple
magenta
red
orange
yellow
green

134

Step
1 (and 8)

3
5
7
2
4
6

Wilmer, Color-Encoded

Harmonic
Function
I tonic
IIImediant
V dominant
VIIsubtonic
IIsupertonic
IVsubdominant
VIsubmediant

Fig. 9. Example of a Rainbow Score: Satie's "Gymnopedie 1." In

this example, the color code was applied not only to notes but also
to chords built on notes. Thus, the background color of the lefthand staff repeats the bass color, while the background of the righthand staff is in the color of the chord as a whole, which is based on
the chord's keynote. An examination of these colors and their relationships shows important aspects of chords and their harmonic relationships.

key of C major the chord that occupies

the place of the tonic is C major (C-EG), while F major (F-A-C)is the place of
the subdominant and G major (G-B-D)
is that of the dominant [7] (Figs 6b and
6c). (In mathematical terms, steps and
harmonic functions are functions of the
key, and for each key they are actualized
as notes and chords.)
At this point, to understand better the
color model adopted in this project
(Fig. 6c), the reader is invited to apply
colors to Fig. 6 according to the instructions in Table 1. In Fig. 6c, I recommend
the use of felt-point pens to color in the
small circles, and the use of color pencils to color the background rectangles.
For Fig. 6b, after the circles on the
horizontal axis are colored, note that
the circles on the staff above should be
given the same color as the corresponding circle on the horizontal axis below
them. (Note that after step 7, the sequence returns to step 2.) Figure 6b is

an application of the color model to the

C major key-therefore the colors correspond to those in Fig. 6c. Figure 6a
shows how this method of coloring by
thirds applies to the piano in the case of
C major, therefore the colors for the
circles are those of Fig. 6b (whether or
not the note has an alteration-thus
both F and F#are yellow).
Since this color code respects the way
chords are structured, it is compatible
with key transposition. This means that,
even when colors are used, the score remains the same for any key. This is so
because colors are not assigned to particular notes or chords, but rather to the
steps and harmonic functions they stand
for. The notes and chords of a key receive color as a consequence of the steps
and harmonic functions that they occupy in each particular score. In any key,
the color blue represents the tonicand also stands for the key. For example,
in Fig. 7, we can conclude that the keys

Music Scores

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are G major (Fig. 7a) and D major (Fig.

7b) because the tones in blue are 6 and
0, respectively.
EXAMPLES OF COLORENCODED SCORES
The reader is again invited to apply
color to the examples of Rainbow Scores
and their respective keyboards shown in
Fig. 7. The letters that appear in these
scores correspond to the colors previously discussed: B stands for blue; 0, orange; P, purple; Y, yellow; M, magenta;
G, green; and R, red.
* A passage from Mozart's Sonata XVI
is shown in Fig. 7a. (The Raindrop
Score of this passage is shown in Fig.
8.) The colors indicate the following:

1. The melody begins on step 3

(purple) of the tonic, resting on step
1 (blue).
2. Background colors (blue-magenta-blue) indicate the tonic-dominant-tonic harmonic movement.
3. The tonic chord is complete
(steps 1-3-5; blue-purple-magenta);
while in the dominant chord (magenta-red-orange) step 3 (red) is
missing and step 7 (yellow) has been
added.
4. The tonic is in its root positionfrom low to high we have steps 1-3-5
(blue-purple-magenta).
* A passage from Satie's "Gymnop6die
1" (1887) [8] is shown in Fig. 7b and
in Fig. 9.
The common procedure I have
adopted is to give the color of the
bass (the lowest note) to the lefthand staff and the color of the chord
to the right-hand staff.
It should be observed that this
piece begins outside (yellow-green
background colors) the tonic, arriving at it only in the second measure
(blue-purple background). The
chords used here, unlike classical
chords (three colors), result from
the combination of neighboring
chords, with four colors: for instance, G maj + B min (yellow-greenblue-purple in this key).
This example shows that the color
code can also be applied to contemporary harmony, which arose in the
late nineteenth
century with
Debussy, Ravel and others. The concept of consonance was expanded,
and a perfect chord was no longer
defined as one that is major or minor, but as one that is a combination
of two neighbors in the major-minor

Fig. 10. A triad of notes in the G major scale (G-B-D#)is represented in every system discussed in this article, illustrating the five improvements in music reading brought about by
the new musical notation system: (1) representation of duration by a Cartesian system;
(2) representation of accidental alterations by a functional system; (3) representation of
melody and chords by a color-encoded system; (4) teaching of music reading by a Piagetian
system; (5) dynamic music reading, introduced by the possibility of a video music score
[11].

sequence. The new chords-maj

min, min + maj, maj + min + maj,

etc.-came to express new moods,

paving the way for the chords used
in jazz, bossa nova and contemporary music. I believe this color coding is adequate for any musical
piece-classical or popular, old or
modern.
* I have used the example

of Stevie

Nicks's "Sara"(1979) [9] in lectures

to test whether our color code makes
sense for untrained ears. The following three combinations of bass (left
hand) and chord (right hand) were

played in some order (without mentioning their names): F-F maj, F-G
maj, F-Amin (where A min = A + C +
E); the audience

is invited

to ar-

range them as to consonance. Most

of the people gave the correct answer. Next, I asked which combination should correspond to each of
these pairs of colors for bass and
chord (which I also presented in
random order): blue-purple, blueorange and blue-blue. Again, the
majority of people answered correctly: the most consonant combination (F-F major) was related to the

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135

closest colors (blue-purple), and the

most dissonant combination (F-G
major) to the most contrasting pair
of colors (blue-orange).

ADHESIVE DROPS
The use of color allows an additional resource for immediate identification of
the key to be played for a given note in
the score: colored notes made of adhesive paper. If a student using a score notated with this system glues color paper
notes onto the piano keys-following
the keyboard diagram-his or her eyes
can move directly from the score to the
instrument, skipping the diagram. (The
same can be done on a guitar or other
stringed instruments.)

CONCLUSION AND FINAL

EXAMPLES
This system of music writing is called
Raindrop Scores, in its black-and-white
version, and Rainbow Scores in its color
version. This project originated in my
study (as a teacher of mathematics and a
student of visual communication at the
Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de
entitled "O quadroJaneiro-PUC)
negro de Matematica" ("The Mathematics Blackboard"), an analysis of visual organization of the blackboard in terms of
how to use text, figures, colors, etc. on
the blackboard to communicate mathematical ideas more efficiently.
The judicious use of color proposed
in the blackboard study suggested the
same treatment for musical scores,
which was the subject of a term paper I
wrote and presented for the visual communication course I was taking, "Cores
no ensino de Musica" ("Color in Music
Teaching"), supervised, as was the earlier study, by Ana Maria Hirsch at PUC's
Art Department.
It was only later that I acquired an

136

overall view of the specificity of music

reading and the urgent need to prompt
immediate responses from readers. This
led to the project for my notation system.
This article is a summary of the project,
which I have described at greater length
in "Partiturasde Arco-Iris-a genese de
uma escrita musical auto-evidente"
(Rainbow Scores-The Genesis of a SelfEvident Music Writing) [10].
The resulting work, then, stands at
the crossroads of music, pedagogy, visual
communication and mathematics, and
what it boils down to is: anyone should
be able to read a score. Anyone can play
Satie's "Gymnopedie 1." The final examples, shown in Figs 8 and 9, are offered to all adventurous readers.
Finally, I would like to present the
reader a single diagram of the synthesis
of the features of the music writing system discussed here. Through this diagram, the reader can gain an idea of
other possibilities for systems that combine some of these features (Fig. 10).
Acknowledgments
Clarice Johnson kindly offered me her home and
her friendship when I was living abroad. Both were
special, and they made Rainbow Scores not only possible but also a pleasure to work on. Rejane Spitz is
a dear friend who iinspires me with her enthusiasm.
The editors of Leonardo were kind to offer me a
chance to present this project in their journal, for
which I thank them. I also thank Cristiana and Luisa.

Piano Sonatas (score)

4. Techniques for recording traditional scores autoHowever,

matically have receintly beern designed.
because of traditional duration symbols, computer
memory is needed: the duration of each symbol
can only be indicated after its total relative time has
beeni calculated. The mechanical recording system
proposed here could have a vastly larger public,
because of its much lower cost.
5. See, for instance, "Modelos na aprendizagem
da
matematica"
("Models in the Learning of Mathematics"), my master's thesis in mathematics, supervised by Aristides Camargos Barreto at PUC's Mathematics Department (1976).
6. In mathematical
terms, we could say that there
should be not only a one-to-one
correspondence
between notes and colors but also isomorphism between the two sets, so that relationships of proximity in one would correspond to their counterparts
in the other.
7. The theory of harmonic functionis describes the
chord according to its furnction in a given musical
piece arnd not in isolation, as it tends to be treated
in traditional
music teaching.
to
According
"The theory of harmonic functions
Koellreutter,
[was] created by Hugo Riemann in the late nineteenth century (1893), developed and perfected by
Max Reger and Hermann Grabher, as an extension
of step harmony theory [i.e. harmony structured
according to the steps of the scale], the only one
then in use. ..." Koellreutter observes: "This seems
to the author of the present work an excellent resource to use in place of anachronistic or obsolete
methods still in use." See H.J. Koellreuter, Harmonia
funcional (Sao Paulo: Ricordi Brasileira, 1978).
8. E. Satie, Three Gymnopedies (score)
1969).

(G. Schirmer,

9. S. Nicks, "Sara" (score) (Welsh Witch Music,

Home Box Office, 1982), from Fleetwood Mac Deluxe
Anthology (New York: Warner Bros., n.d.).

References and Notes

1. W.A. Mozart,
Augener, n.d.).

Press, 1982), Eloise Ristad, all American therapist

who specialized
in musicians'
wrote
difficulties,
that some of her students could make sense out of
traditional scores only after rotating them so that
the notes stood exactly above the keys-that
is,
verticalizing the staff, precisely as I propose.

(London:

2. The keyboard diagram that appears on the score

does not imply that it is meant only for the piano.
The score resembles a traditional score in that it
can be used with any melodic or harmonic instrument. A diagram representing the fingerboard of a
guitar or violinl, for example, could appear instead.
In a generic score, the piano keyboard is only an
additional feature, chosen not only because the piano is such an important instrument for composers
and audiences but also because it is one of the few
instruments orn which the tones are placed in a linear progression from bass to treble.

10. C. Wilmer, unpublished

1987.

manuscript

written in

11. A video score is a common videotape that exhibits a music score written not in the traditional
system, but in a Cartesian system (a necessary condition for it). It moves before the student's eyes at
one of a few metronome-corntrolled
speeds (very
slow, slow, regular), so that it may fit the student's
current needs. It also includes the possibility of the
student's simultaneously
listening to the music of
that score. A prototype of a Rainbow Scores video
score was presented
to the public at the 1993
Mostra Atlantic de Realidade Virtual (Atlantic Virtual Reality Exhibition).

3. In A Soprano on Her Head (Moab, UT: Real People

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