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Chord Colourizer: A Near Real-Time System for Visualizing Musical Key

Paul Haimes

TL;DR

Chord Colourizer presents a near real-time system that detects musical keys and chords from audio and visualizes them on a GUI and an Arduino LED array mapped via Newton's colour wheel. The approach combines a CQT-based chromagram with a multi-stage processing pipeline (averaging, enhancement, significance filtering, root-third-fifth analysis) and a confidence score to gate visualization. It features a color-coded keyboard on screen and a parallel LED display, enabling multimodal engagement for education and performance. Limitations include latency and lack of extended-chord support, with future work focusing on adaptive thresholds, incorporation of sevenths/augmented chords, alternative visualizations, and formal user testing.

Abstract

This paper introduces Chord Colourizer, a near real-time system that detects the musical key of an audio signal and visually represents it through a novel graphical user interface (GUI). The system assigns colours to musical notes based on Isaac Newton's original colour wheel, preserving historical links between pitch and hue, and also integrates an Arduino-controlled LED display using 3D-printed star-shaped diffusers to offer a physical ambient media representation. The method employs Constant-Q Transform (CQT) chroma features for chord estimation and visualization, followed by threshold-based filtering and tonal enhancement to isolate the root, third, and fifth. A confidence score is computed for each detection to ensure reliability, and only chords with moderate to very strong certainty are visualized. The graphical interface dynamically updates a colour-coded keyboard layout, while the LED display provides the same colour information via spatial feedback. This multi-modal system enhances user interaction with harmonic content, offering innovative possibilities for education and artistic performance. Limitations include slight latency and the inability to detect extended chords, which future development will aim to address through refined filtering, adaptive thresholds, and support for more complex harmonies such as sevenths and augmented chords. Future work will also explore integration with alternative visualization styles, and the comparison of audio analysis libraries to improve detection speed and precision. Plans also include formal user testing to evaluate perception, usability, and cross-cultural interpretations of colour-pitch mappings.

Chord Colourizer: A Near Real-Time System for Visualizing Musical Key

TL;DR

Chord Colourizer presents a near real-time system that detects musical keys and chords from audio and visualizes them on a GUI and an Arduino LED array mapped via Newton's colour wheel. The approach combines a CQT-based chromagram with a multi-stage processing pipeline (averaging, enhancement, significance filtering, root-third-fifth analysis) and a confidence score to gate visualization. It features a color-coded keyboard on screen and a parallel LED display, enabling multimodal engagement for education and performance. Limitations include latency and lack of extended-chord support, with future work focusing on adaptive thresholds, incorporation of sevenths/augmented chords, alternative visualizations, and formal user testing.

Abstract

This paper introduces Chord Colourizer, a near real-time system that detects the musical key of an audio signal and visually represents it through a novel graphical user interface (GUI). The system assigns colours to musical notes based on Isaac Newton's original colour wheel, preserving historical links between pitch and hue, and also integrates an Arduino-controlled LED display using 3D-printed star-shaped diffusers to offer a physical ambient media representation. The method employs Constant-Q Transform (CQT) chroma features for chord estimation and visualization, followed by threshold-based filtering and tonal enhancement to isolate the root, third, and fifth. A confidence score is computed for each detection to ensure reliability, and only chords with moderate to very strong certainty are visualized. The graphical interface dynamically updates a colour-coded keyboard layout, while the LED display provides the same colour information via spatial feedback. This multi-modal system enhances user interaction with harmonic content, offering innovative possibilities for education and artistic performance. Limitations include slight latency and the inability to detect extended chords, which future development will aim to address through refined filtering, adaptive thresholds, and support for more complex harmonies such as sevenths and augmented chords. Future work will also explore integration with alternative visualization styles, and the comparison of audio analysis libraries to improve detection speed and precision. Plans also include formal user testing to evaluate perception, usability, and cross-cultural interpretations of colour-pitch mappings.

Paper Structure

This paper contains 13 sections, 12 equations, 3 figures, 2 tables.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. System design
  3. Audio processing and chord detection
  4. Chromagram averaging
  5. Enhancement of stronger tones
  6. Significance filtering
  7. Root note identification
  8. Third interval analysis
  9. Fifth note computation
  10. Confidence assessment
  11. Visualization system
  12. Results and limitations
  13. Conclusion and future work

Figures (3)

  • Figure 1: An example chromagram time–frequency representation showing pitch classes (C to B, regardless of octave) across 10 seconds of audio
  • Figure 2: Prototype of the simple hardware interface, displaying colours for the three notes of G major, which are also shown in the figure on Page 1
  • Figure 3: Newton's original colour wheel c. 1704, with notes assigned to colours