Colour Organs & Light Music
📋 What it is
Colour organs play coloured light from a keyboard, from Castel's 1720s ocular harpsichord to today's concert lighting.
🗣️ Coach says
People have long tried to PLAY colour. Newton compared the seven colours of the spectrum to the seven notes of a scale; Castel imagined a harpsichord whose keys showed colours; Rimington patented a colour organ; Scriabin wrote a light part into his orchestra piece Prometheus. They all chose different colours for the same notes, because a colour-note match is a design choice, not a fact about the note.
🧠 Memory hook
Colour organ = a keyboard that plays light. Each inventor chose different colours: it's a design, not a law.
😂 Giggle
What's a synesthete's favorite subject in school?
Art AND music — they can't tell them apart!
😲 Whoa!
Newton named seven rainbow colours (adding orange and indigo) partly so the spectrum would match the seven notes of a musical scale.
✅ Quick check: Why do Castel, Newton and Scriabin give the note C different colours?
Say your answer out loud first — then reveal.
Because each built their own system: a colour-note match is a design choice, not a property of the note.
Colour-note mappings vary by inventor; none is the one true version.
🧪 Try it! (2 minutes)
Open Castel's colour keyboard and give each key your own colour. Play a tune and see if your colours feel right.