• Explore New Harmonic Spaces (Coming Soon)


  • This image is a screen shot from an upcoming system for organizing chords and scales. It's called a harmonic spatializer. A spatializer positions objects in space so that the more similar they are the closer they are together. This allows complex relationships to be viewed in a simple and intuitive way.The positioning is usually determined by mathematical algorithms based on the structure of the objects themselves rather than on their traditional classification.

    Each of the colored cylinders in the image represents a 6-note scale and the colored rings within the cylinder represent the tones of the scale. So each scale has a unique set of colors based on the intervals it contains.

    A specialized algorithm was used that computes a "harmonic distance" between any two scales. It was applied to this large group of scales to compute the distances between all possible pairs.

    The results were then passed to another algorithm that arranged the scales in space in such a way as to best approximate the distance measurements that were computed by the first algorithm. The result is the beautiful star pattern pictured above.

    All this work was done using the Jordan Chromatic System, which differs from traditional harmony because it's designed for much larger harmonic vocabularies. The traditional system is designed to descibe harmonies that were in common use historically, but the Chromatic System is designed to describe what is harmonically possible.
    To learn more see the course Introduction to the Jordan Chromatic System.