Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup tuning one system to match wavelength (colour) to frequency

The system that i have used for freq to colour can be found at:

http://www.harmonics.com/lucy/lsd/freq2wl.html

Its shortcomings may serve to focus some minds.

I had assumed the speed of light in a vacuum as the "link".

Other values could be used e.g. speed of sound in appropriate media etc.

--
~====================================================~
Charles Lucy - lucy@harmonics.com (LucyScaleDevelopments)
------------ Promoting global harmony through LucyTuning -------
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--- In tuning@y..., Charles Lucy <lucy@h...> wrote:
> The system that i have used for freq to colour can be found at:
>
> http://www.harmonics.com/lucy/lsd/freq2wl.html
>
> Its shortcomings may serve to focus some minds.
>
> I had assumed the speed of light in a vacuum as the "link".

This is the method by which I arrived at my answer that middle "C"
(or any octave of C, for that matter) is green. I made the
assumption that, inasmuch as the violet end of the spectrum appears
to be headed toward something looking like red, light 2:1's
(or "octaves"), like those of sound, if we could see them, would
probably be perceived as having the same "chroma," if I may use that
word.

The speed of light enters into the calculation to convert frequency
of light to wavelength, from which we determine color. The speed of
light in air is very close to that in a vacuum, so the difference
between the two doesn't affect the calculation significantly.

>
> Other values could be used e.g. speed of sound in appropriate media
etc.

This is totally irrelevant, inasmuch as the speed of sound doesn't
enter into the calculation.

As for the other individual I had in mind who came up with "green"
for C by an entirely different method, I don't remember his name. I
received a brochure from him in a mailing in the mid-1970's
advertising "perfect pitch seminars" that he was conducting, in which
he claimed to be able to teach this ability. (Inasmuch as I already
have absolute pitch or tonal memory, as some prefer to call it, I had
no interest in it and eventually discarded the brochure.)

He compared the perception of pitch in persons having this ability as
analogous to our recognition of visual color (with which I can agree
in a very general sense), and he went so far as to relate specific
pitches to specific colors: in particular, he thought that F-sharp
had a "twanginess" that suggested red, and his diagram associated all
of the C's with green. I suspected that any twang that he associated
with F-sharp was due more to the quality of the tritone (either
melodically or harmonically) it makes with C (assuming that he was
probably C-centric), although I couldn't disagree with his
observation based on my own subjectivity, being rather C-centric
myself. I never thought that there was much of a perceivable
relationship between pitch and color, and the closest I ever came to
that was perhaps thinking that B-flat might suggest a golden yellow
(or shades of brown in the lower octaves).

It immediately occurred to me to try calculating a frequency
conversion between sound and light, and I found that transposing
middle C up 43 octaves did indeed give green. However, F-sharp did
not come out red, but in the near infrared (or ultraviolet, depending
on the octave), and I thought that, if we could see it, would
probably appear to be magenta, which color I would describe as
even "twangier" than red (which ends up closer to A-flat). Also, B-
flat does come close to golden yellow.

So go figure! Is this a coincidence or not?

--George

one system to match wavelength (colour) to frequency

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