Originally Posted by
alkratzer
Thanks D.
I have flirted at times with assigning chords a color - Cmaj7 is yellow orange or e-7 flat 5 is blue-green for example - and then painting abstracts based on jazz chord progressions. Kinda like guitarist Pat Martino assigning the letters of the alphabet different note designations and then making compositions based on phrases like "John Coltrane."
I fully understand and you may want to try one. Depends on the bassist of your relationship with your wife, cause she might get jealous of your flirtations and diminish your chord.
Other than that, why not? I'm sure all ideas have been explored by somebody -- just that yours would be unique to you. Remember the old Kris Kristopherson line from Me and Bobby McGee: "Looking back and longing for the freedom of my chains. . ."
For me, that is one of the most profound lines in song owing to the myriad implications.
I've found that once I get past seeing it as a limiting structure, it often has the reverse effect and offers some new ideas. For one thing, it allows a level of focus that takes me deeper into it quicker where I explore aspects of a painting I might have previously knocked in because I was looking at the end game too soon -- a pitfall sometimes of getting handy doing something well the same way. And when I play by the "arbitrary" rules of the new parameters it can open up a whole new range of considerations and re-introduces the element of wonder.
Anyway, it's a brilliant notion, if you wanted to try it. Just a caution: I wouldn't recommend looking at it so much like a computer where you feed in a line of music and it merely assigns a color to a pitch. That may be a good starting point. But I would do a few by hand to get the dialog happening with the fresh ideas and how they're playing out. Then after that you can lead it toward a system.
Sounds like great fun. I think the art and the music would open up for you as you orchestrate the relationships.
Go man go!
"Not a bit is wasted and the best is yet to come. . ." -- remembered from a dream