My unnamed experimental piece takes the concept of colour association with music and the idea of different genres and how well the work together. For this piece I have written several 12 to 16 bar songs of various different genres all for piano. To the back of each of these scores is a piece of coloured card, allocated to each Genre based on my own colour association with these genres. The experiment follows the idea that if a person picks a random selection of colours in whatever order they see fit, or most appeasing, completely unaware of the genres corresponding to each colour, what will the outcome be like. Would the progression of these genres selected based on colour flow nicely between genres as their colours also connect well, or will there be no correlation whatsoever. I also would like to see that if another person was to choose a colour for each genre, would it sound any different.

​

The initial concept of my piece was similar to that of a children’s ‘Choose your own Adventure’ book, wherein I would compose a piece, split it into multiple phrases of 2 to 6 bars  and have a person place them where they wished in place of the genre pieces. This however seemed to me quite lacking in creativity and depth. The concept of colour association was not one that suddenly came to me but one I conceptualised after being introduced to several similar concepts. One piece, Speedfreaks by Naked City in particular is a very unique piece that within 48 seconds manages to fit 32 different music structures within 5 main musical styles. This collection of seemingly random sounds and its ability to still, in a sense, flow nicely was an interesting point to me. Within the past month it amazed me at how many people had perfect pitch. What was comparably more astonishing to me was the concept of Synaesthesia something I’d not heard of before. Synaesthesia in essence is the creation of sense impression through the stimulation of another sense, for example people associating colour with sound and pitch. As well as this there is also the idea of how different colours can evoke and be associated with different emotions, how blue is associated with relaxation, a fact that has caused many social media sites to sport blue in their logos. These thoughts, through time grew my interest in music and colour relations, sparking me to test this idea.

​

This piece was possibly one of the hardest to do despite the incredibly short length of each piece not for the production part but the researching of each genre. In each piece, I wanted to establish a sound that was undeniably attributed to its respective genre while still maintaining a clear personal element of my own, a task immensely hard with a 16 bar limit. One of the pieces I felt gave me the most freedom in was the Ballad as its structure is more sporadic and less chord based. In researching the main traits and characteristics of each genre, I found it difficult to find information on some of the less mainstream genres in Modern Western culture, such as the Cha cha.

​

To ensure there was some level of harmony between each piece, I made each of them in the key of C, a very standard and versatile chord in my opinion. Each song was also given a tempo of 120Bpm, however this has resulted in some genres not quite having the right upbeat feel of gentle melody the tempo provides. Of course this experiment doesn’t come without several other flaws, as one possible factor may be that any person that reads the piano scores may remember the colour correlations and be biased toward certain genres from that point on.

​

This piece has been a wonderful experience for me as it has allowed me to sample each genre and created all new ideas and possibilities for future compositions. I also wish to expand on each of these mini pieces, both by adding more instruments and expanding the pieces out into full compositions. As it stands, I still feel like this piece is lacking quite significantly so over time I will be expanding on the selection of colours and genres for this piece.