Show HN: See chords as flags – Visual harmony of top composers on musescore https://ift.tt/pZW6xmN

Exploring Creative Tools: Whether you're into music, design, or data visualization, this post offers a unique way to see harmony. It maps chords to colors—like flags—making complex compositions instantly readable.

Show HN: See chords as flags—Visual harmony of top composers on musescore I designed a relative piano-roll-based music notation. I used 12 colors arranged in a specific way to make visible the main effects and oppositions of Western tonal harmony. The tonic is always white, so a manual annotation/interpretation is required for each MIDI file. 

All chords are flags of three to four colors. Minor mode is darker; major mode is lighter. Colors are arranged in thirds. I sorted the pieces from simple to complex harmony. I also wrote a bit of text to explain what you may see. There's also a corpus of structures: hyperlinks of tags that allow you to find similar patterns throughout my corpus of 3000+ popular pieces. My method makes chord progressions memorizable and instantly visible in the scores. No preparation of Roman numeral analysis/chord symbol analysis is required. After a bit of training the chords will stare right in your eyes. It's not synesthesia; it's a missing script for tonal music, which makes harmonically identical things look the same (or similar). I've also recorded lectures on my method in Russian ( https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzQrZe3EemP5pVPYMwBJG... ). I'm sorry I haven't yet found time to re-record in English. I've also sketched a friendlier intro: https://vpavlenko.github.io/d/ Sorry, but this thing won't make any sense if you're color-blind. It's open-source: https://ift.tt/WZ7LOHr. Earlier context: https://ift.tt/gHsdtC5 (Back then colors were less logical, and there was no corpus of 3000+ piece annotated et.) https://rawl.rocks/ November 5, 2025, at 07:57PM