Thank you!
Your support is sustaining the future of local news in our communities.

The color of music: Sarah Davis Hughes’ ‘The Colorways and the Circle of Fifths’

The color of music: Sarah Davis Hughes’ ‘The Colorways and the Circle of Fifths’

Sarah Davis Hughes demonstrates Colorways, a visualization tool she developed that maps musical notes to colors by aligning the circle of fifths with the color wheel.

L. Tomaino

Artist Sarah Davis Hughes had always loved music, but after winning an accordion from the New England Accordion Connection and Museum in Canaan, that love became a musical journey, ultimately leading to her book “The Colorways and the Circle of Fifths.”

Hughes explained that the idea for the book came after studying with Paul Ramunni of the Accordion Connection for a year. “He introduced a piece of music that I knew well by ear but had never seen written down.” Upon seeing the music, Hughes described a sense of blindness. “The chords looked like thorny blueberry bushes on the page,” she said.

Determined to figure it out, Hughes said, “I knew color systems, design and theory, so it was simply a matter of organization. If I could assign a color to each note and color that black-and-white score, I would instantly recognize the notes.”

She set out to create a system. “The colors that I assign to each note should make sense together like the notes make sense together,” she said.

She recalled the color wheel, which illustrates the harmonic structure of color, and the Circle of Fifths, which shows the harmonic structure of music. Both serve as foundational systems —one for color, the other for music. “What if I simply superimposed a classic color wheel onto the Circle of Fifths?”

She began by placing the primary colors — red, yellow and blue — then set the note C at the top. The next primary color, yellow, aligned with E, followed by blue at A-flat/G-sharp.

“I was very surprised to see that all of the hot colors — blood red, vermilion, orange, gold, hot yellow, chartreuse — fell on the white notes C, G, D, A and B,” Hughes said. “The cool colors — green, teal, blue, lavender and purple — are black notes.”

Once the colors were mapped onto a miniature keyboard, Hughes saw clear correlations. “For instance, there are two oranges: G, vermilion, and D, orange,” she said. “The notes are diatonic partners” and harmonize with one another. She found similar relationships between the two yellows — hot yellow and gold, corresponding to E and A — as well as chartreuse and green, B and F-sharp.

She also observed that the triangular relationships among primary, secondary and tertiary colors mirrored musical thirds, or counterbass notes. Mixing all three primary colors produces “mud,” she said, just as playing all the notes in the triangle creates dissonance. But pairing two colors, such as yellow and blue, produces green, while their corresponding notes — E and A-flat — form part of a major chord. “Add B, chartreuse, as the fifth — E, A-flat, B — and you get a beautiful chord,” she said.

In songs that move upward by thirds — from C to E to A-flat, as in “The Impossible Dream” — she said the effect is a vertiginous sense of ascent. Compositions built on the three primary colors, she added, are similarly bold and striking, citing Mondrian’s circus paintings as examples.

“Everything was about setting it up so that I could look at a color and immediately know what to play,” Hughes said. “I practiced chords and scales on the keyboard, fixing my eye on each color as I played it. It worked.”

“At that point, Paul and I started to plan how we could share it with people and wondered if it might help others enter music,” Hughes said.

The result is “The Colorways and the Circle of Fifths,” a guide for students, teachers and musicians of all levels to help them understand, play and compose music. The book includes worksheets to support learning.

“The Colorways and the Circle of Fifths” is available at Oblong Books and Music in Millerton. Hughes is artist in residence at the Accordion Connection and Museum, where her pastels, prints and original artwork from the book are on view upstairs.

Latest News

Angry bees close Mudge Pond Beach

Angry bees close Mudge Pond Beach

Officials closed the Sharon town beach at Mudge Pond on Wednesday, July 15, after a fallen tree limb exposed a large beehive. The beach is expected to reopen Thursday.

Alec Linden

SHARON – The town beach on Mudge Pond closed on Wednesday, July 15, but the cause wasn’t the smoky haze drifting in from Canadian wildfires – it was angry bees.

According to Sharon’s Parks and Recreation Director Bryan Failla, a large limb fell from an old tree near the lifeguard stand overnight, exposing a hole that houses a large beehive. He said the town made the decision to close the beach Wednesday morning “out of an abundance of caution.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Millerton dressmaker forged path as early businesswoman
Mary Kisselbrack, left, and her husband, George.
Provided

If you’ve driven down Main Street in Millerton, you’ve passed the former home and shop of one of the village’s earliest female entrepreneurs. At a time when most businesses were owned by men, Mary Kisselbrack made a name for herself in the late 1800s as a well-respected milliner and dressmaker.

On April 11, 1891, train conductor George Kisselbrack purchased a 124-by-232-foot vacant lot at 54 Main St. and hired locally renowned builders Beers and Trafford to design what would become their home and Mary’s business.

Keep ReadingShow less
Wastewater project coming to fruition after decades of debate

Millerton’s business community will soon see the completion of a public wastewater system, addressing what local officials and business owners have called a major constraint on commercial development in the community for decades.

The $13.8 million project, which is expected to serve the core of the Village of Millerton and a commercial stretch of the Town of North East along U.S. Route 44, represents one of the largest infrastructure investments in the community in decades, and brings an end to calls for a sewer system that stretch back to World War II. Officials say the system will safeguard local waterways while creating a foundation for long-term economic stability.

Keep ReadingShow less
google preferred source

Want more of our stories on Google? Click here to make us a Preferred Source.

Millerton Moviehouse marks 120 years with structural upgrades

Wooden beams made from tree trunks comprise the load-bearing structure under Millerton’s Moviehouse.

Graham Corrigan

There are a handful of buildings that have stood the test of time over Millerton’s 175-year history. But if there’s one that stands out as a singular representation of the town, it’s the Millerton Moviehouse and its iconic clock tower.

Built in 1903 as a grange hall, it was soon converted into a movie theater with a second-floor ballroom. It was one of a handful of buildings that came to define the town in the following decades, standing tall across the street from the Episcopal Church and Millerton Inn, next to Terni’s, and up the hill from Millerton’s train station.

Keep ReadingShow less
Irondale Schoolhouse: a piece of living history

Ralph Fedele sits at a desk in the historic Irondale Schoolhouse, which he led the effort to relocate to downtown Millerton.

Aly Morrissey
“It was in dire straits. Right on the road, but beautiful. I remember thinking, ‘Wouldn’t that be a great building to move into the village?’” —Ralph Fedele

A one-room schoolhouse sits on Main Street along the Harlem Valley Rail Trail, offering an opportunity for locals and visitors to step inside a piece of living history.

The Irondale Schoolhouse that now sits in downtown Millerton was not originally located on Main Street. The building was first constructed in 1858 along what is now Route 22 in the Irondale section of town, defined by Irondale road and the Old Mill that still sits along Webatuck Creek. At the time, the schoolhouse was one of 14 that served the Town of North East’s children.

Keep ReadingShow less
New Water Department building expected by summer’s end

Millerton’s former Water Department building, ravaged by fire, as it awaited demolition in summer 2025.

Aly Morrissey

Nearly 18 months after a fire destroyed Millerton’s Public Works building, which housed the Highway Department and Water Department, construction is expected to begin within weeks on a new Water Department facility and pumphouse.

The new building would restore the village’s full water pumping capacity and allow officials to end the state of emergency declared after the fire. Village officials are also planning a separate Highway garage, with details of that project still being finalized.

Keep ReadingShow less
google preferred source

Want more of our stories on Google? Click here to make us a Preferred Source.

google preferred source

Want more of our stories on Google? Click here to make us a Preferred Source.