Colored Music Notation
Encyclopedia
Colored music notation is a technique used to facilitate enhanced learning in young music students by adding visual color to written musical notation. It is based upon the concept that color can affect the observer in various ways, and combines this with standard learning of basic notation.
has been widely shown to change an individual's emotional state
and stimulate neurons. The Lüscher color test
observes from experiments that when individuals are required to contemplate pure red for varying lengths of time, [the experiments] have shown that this color decidedly has a stimulating effect on the nervous system
; blood pressure
increases, and respiration rate
and heart rate
both increase. Pure blue, on the other hand, has the reverse effect; observers experience a decline in blood pressure, heart rate, and breathing. Given these findings, it has been suggested that the influence of colored musical notation would be similar.
, color is typically used in method books to highlight new material. Stimuli received through several senses excite more neurons in several localized areas of the cortex, thereby reinforcing the learning process and improving retention. This information has been proven by other researchers; Chute (1978) reported that "elementary students who viewed a colored version of an instructional film scored significantly higher on both immediate and delayed tests than did students who viewed a monochrome version".
at Westfield State College
. He is also the author of 25 articles in publications that include the Music Educators Journal, The Instrumentalist, and the Journal of Research in Music Education. In 1991, Dr. George L. Rogers did a study that researched the effect of color-coded notation on music achievement of elementary instrumental students. Rogers states that the color-coded notation used in this study was not meant to replace the present notational system; rather, it was intended as a pedagogical aid for beginners.
The subjects used for this study were 92 fifth- and sixth-grade beginner wind instrument
players who attended two different schools. The experimental group used color-coded method books and supplementary materials in which each different pitch was highlighted with a different color using felt-tip markers. The control group used identical materials, but with the notation uncolored. The students were then tested in three different parts:
The results of this study are as follows: Subjects in the experimental and control groups
performed much the same on the task of playing music from memory. For the task of sight-reading, the experimental group scored higher than did the experimental group. However, the control group (without color-coded notation) scored higher when sight-reading uncolored notation. In fact, the students who learned using color-coded notation scored significantly lower when sight-reading plain notation.
A possible theory regarding these results is that the students in the experimental group memorized the colors instead of the notation. The third task of note naming seemed to be less of a challenge for the control group who learned to read notation than the experimental group who learned which color is which fingering on their instrument. In regards to which type of notation was easier to read, in the experimental group all but three found the color-coded notation easier to play, in the control group 18 out of the 46 chose color-coded notation also easier to read. This is a deviation from standard findings, as most students prefer the method they were first introduced to.
on the music-reading skills of elementary students. Dr. Rogers states that the purpose of studying the effect of colored rhythmic notation was to determine if instruction involving the addition of color to standard rhythmic notation would affect the performance of elementary music students on the task of clapping and vocalizing rhythmic exercises on sight. The subjects of this study were 134 first- and second-grade general music students. The two particular schools involved in the experiment were chosen because most students attending were dealing with notation intensively for the first time.
The experimental subjects participated in vocalizing and clapping rhythms notated with colored chalk on the chalkboard as a regular part of general music classes. Control subjects read, vocalized and clapped identical rhythms noted in white chalk. In the experimental group, contrasting colors were used to notate the different rhythmic values. The colors used were arbitrary and changed from week to week (so no one color was identified with a particular note or rest).
The students used the Cheve
rhythm syllables, consisting of ta’s for quarter notes and ti-ti’s for eighth notes
. The students were tested by sight-reading two exercises from a chalkboard and clapping and vocalizing the rhythmic notation. One test was in colored rhythmic notation and the other was uncolored. The students performed the two exercises involving similar rhythms, with colored notation being applied randomly to either the first or second task.
The results of this study are as follows: Students in both experimental and control groups scored well, with a combined mean for all subjects of 10.66 out of 12 points. Students who experienced colored rhythmic notation during the treatment period scored somewhat higher as a group on both tasks.
. Kent Gerlach clarifies some of the symptoms of learning disorders, and establishes that certain difficulties arise, particularly with the following:
Dr. Rogers found that during the 1991 study on the effects of color-coded notation on music achievement of elementary instrumental students that:
He suggests that the scores of students identified as receiving extra academic assistance were examined separately and were found to be lower than the overall student sample, but were otherwise similar to the means for all students.
Basis
Viewing colorColor
Color or colour is the visual perceptual property corresponding in humans to the categories called red, green, blue and others. Color derives from the spectrum of light interacting in the eye with the spectral sensitivities of the light receptors...
has been widely shown to change an individual's emotional state
Emotion
Emotion is a complex psychophysiological experience of an individual's state of mind as interacting with biochemical and environmental influences. In humans, emotion fundamentally involves "physiological arousal, expressive behaviors, and conscious experience." Emotion is associated with mood,...
and stimulate neurons. The Lüscher color test
Lüscher color test
The Lüscher color test is a psychological test invented by Dr. Max Lüscher in Basel, Switzerland.Max Lüscher believed that sensory perception of color is objective and universally shared by all, but that color preferences are subjective, and that this distinction allows subjective states to be...
observes from experiments that when individuals are required to contemplate pure red for varying lengths of time, [the experiments] have shown that this color decidedly has a stimulating effect on the nervous system
Nervous system
The nervous system is an organ system containing a network of specialized cells called neurons that coordinate the actions of an animal and transmit signals between different parts of its body. In most animals the nervous system consists of two parts, central and peripheral. The central nervous...
; blood pressure
Blood pressure
Blood pressure is the pressure exerted by circulating blood upon the walls of blood vessels, and is one of the principal vital signs. When used without further specification, "blood pressure" usually refers to the arterial pressure of the systemic circulation. During each heartbeat, BP varies...
increases, and respiration rate
Respiration rate
The respiration rate is a parameter which is used in ecological and agronomical modeling.In theoretical production ecology and aquaculture, it typically refers to respiration per unit of time , also referred to as relative respiration rate...
and heart rate
Heart rate
Heart rate is the number of heartbeats per unit of time, typically expressed as beats per minute . Heart rate can vary as the body's need to absorb oxygen and excrete carbon dioxide changes, such as during exercise or sleep....
both increase. Pure blue, on the other hand, has the reverse effect; observers experience a decline in blood pressure, heart rate, and breathing. Given these findings, it has been suggested that the influence of colored musical notation would be similar.
Music education
In music educationMusic education
Music education is a field of study associated with the teaching and learning of music. It touches on all domains of learning, including the psychomotor domain , the cognitive domain , and, in particular and significant ways,the affective domain, including music appreciation and sensitivity...
, color is typically used in method books to highlight new material. Stimuli received through several senses excite more neurons in several localized areas of the cortex, thereby reinforcing the learning process and improving retention. This information has been proven by other researchers; Chute (1978) reported that "elementary students who viewed a colored version of an instructional film scored significantly higher on both immediate and delayed tests than did students who viewed a monochrome version".
Effect on achievement
A researcher in this field, Dr. George L. Rogers, DME, is the Director of Music EducationMusic education
Music education is a field of study associated with the teaching and learning of music. It touches on all domains of learning, including the psychomotor domain , the cognitive domain , and, in particular and significant ways,the affective domain, including music appreciation and sensitivity...
at Westfield State College
Westfield State College
Westfield State University is a comprehensive, coeducational, four-year public university in Westfield, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1838 by noted educator and social reformer Horace Mann as the first public co-educational college in America without barrier to race, gender and economic class...
. He is also the author of 25 articles in publications that include the Music Educators Journal, The Instrumentalist, and the Journal of Research in Music Education. In 1991, Dr. George L. Rogers did a study that researched the effect of color-coded notation on music achievement of elementary instrumental students. Rogers states that the color-coded notation used in this study was not meant to replace the present notational system; rather, it was intended as a pedagogical aid for beginners.
The subjects used for this study were 92 fifth- and sixth-grade beginner wind instrument
Wind instrument
A wind instrument is a musical instrument that contains some type of resonator , in which a column of air is set into vibration by the player blowing into a mouthpiece set at the end of the resonator. The pitch of the vibration is determined by the length of the tube and by manual modifications of...
players who attended two different schools. The experimental group used color-coded method books and supplementary materials in which each different pitch was highlighted with a different color using felt-tip markers. The control group used identical materials, but with the notation uncolored. The students were then tested in three different parts:
- Students performed a 26-note melody from memory (The materials were presented either in color or uncolored notation).
- Students sight-readSight readingSight-reading is the reading and performing of a piece of written music, specifically when the performer has not seen it before. Sight-singing is often used to describe a singer who is sight-reading.-Sight-reading:...
two 12-note melodies (One melody was presented in color coded notation, the other uncolored. The students were then asked which notation was easier to play). - Students named the letter names of the notes in two 7-note melodies.
The results of this study are as follows: Subjects in the experimental and control groups
Scientific control
Scientific control allows for comparisons of concepts. It is a part of the scientific method. Scientific control is often used in discussion of natural experiments. For instance, during drug testing, scientists will try to control two groups to keep them as identical and normal as possible, then...
performed much the same on the task of playing music from memory. For the task of sight-reading, the experimental group scored higher than did the experimental group. However, the control group (without color-coded notation) scored higher when sight-reading uncolored notation. In fact, the students who learned using color-coded notation scored significantly lower when sight-reading plain notation.
A possible theory regarding these results is that the students in the experimental group memorized the colors instead of the notation. The third task of note naming seemed to be less of a challenge for the control group who learned to read notation than the experimental group who learned which color is which fingering on their instrument. In regards to which type of notation was easier to read, in the experimental group all but three found the color-coded notation easier to play, in the control group 18 out of the 46 chose color-coded notation also easier to read. This is a deviation from standard findings, as most students prefer the method they were first introduced to.
Effect on music-reading skills
In 1996, Rogers did another study researching the effect of colored rhythmic notationRhythm
Rhythm may be generally defined as a "movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions." This general meaning of regular recurrence or pattern in time may be applied to a wide variety of cyclical natural phenomena having a periodicity or...
on the music-reading skills of elementary students. Dr. Rogers states that the purpose of studying the effect of colored rhythmic notation was to determine if instruction involving the addition of color to standard rhythmic notation would affect the performance of elementary music students on the task of clapping and vocalizing rhythmic exercises on sight. The subjects of this study were 134 first- and second-grade general music students. The two particular schools involved in the experiment were chosen because most students attending were dealing with notation intensively for the first time.
The experimental subjects participated in vocalizing and clapping rhythms notated with colored chalk on the chalkboard as a regular part of general music classes. Control subjects read, vocalized and clapped identical rhythms noted in white chalk. In the experimental group, contrasting colors were used to notate the different rhythmic values. The colors used were arbitrary and changed from week to week (so no one color was identified with a particular note or rest).
The students used the Cheve
Chevé
Chevé is the family name of the following people:* Émile-Joseph-Maurice Chevé , French music educator* Jacqueline Chevé , French politicianChevé can also refer to:* Chevé Cave, one of the deepest caves on Earth...
rhythm syllables, consisting of ta’s for quarter notes and ti-ti’s for eighth notes
Note value
In music notation, a note value indicates the relative duration of a note, using the color or shape of the note head, the presence or absence of a stem, and the presence or absence of flags/beams/hooks/tails....
. The students were tested by sight-reading two exercises from a chalkboard and clapping and vocalizing the rhythmic notation. One test was in colored rhythmic notation and the other was uncolored. The students performed the two exercises involving similar rhythms, with colored notation being applied randomly to either the first or second task.
The results of this study are as follows: Students in both experimental and control groups scored well, with a combined mean for all subjects of 10.66 out of 12 points. Students who experienced colored rhythmic notation during the treatment period scored somewhat higher as a group on both tasks.
Special needs students
Students who need academic assistance are often students who have learning disordersLearning disability
Learning disability is a classification including several disorders in which a person has difficulty learning in a typical manner, usually caused by an unknown factor or factors...
. Kent Gerlach clarifies some of the symptoms of learning disorders, and establishes that certain difficulties arise, particularly with the following:
- Poor visual memoryVisual memoryVisual memory describes the relationship between perceptual processing and the encoding, storage and retrieval of the resulting neural representations. Visual memory occurs over a broad time range spanning from eye movements to years in order to visually navigate to a previously visited location...
- forgetting what has been seen or read. - Poor visual discrimination, especially when distinguishing between squares and rectangles, circles and ovals, the letters m, r, h, n,r, p, b, d, g, and q, and the numbers 6 and 9, 21 and 12.
- Poor figure ground - difficulty selecting one thing from a group, such as a particular letter in a word or word in a sentence.
Dr. Rogers found that during the 1991 study on the effects of color-coded notation on music achievement of elementary instrumental students that:
The high level of dependence on color-coding among learning disabled and mentally handicappedDevelopmental disabilityDevelopmental disability is a term used in the United States and Canada to describe lifelong disabilities attributable to mental or physical impairments, manifested prior to age 18. It is not synonymous with "developmental delay" which is often a consequence of a temporary illness or trauma during...
students may reflect a situation similar to that reported by Chute in which students of different ability levels were affected differently by the presence or absence of color in instructional materials. Not only did the learning-disabled and mentally handicapped students in the experimental group score much higher on the tasks that involved color-coded notation than on the uncolored notation, but it also appeared that the color-coded notation enabled them to score as high as or higher than the other students"
He suggests that the scores of students identified as receiving extra academic assistance were examined separately and were found to be lower than the overall student sample, but were otherwise similar to the means for all students.