So all the colors follow the exact same patterns as the scale degrees in music … which is cool. You can see how the different notes are spaced out at whole-step and half-step intervals. And nothing is really complex at all.

But you might still be wondering, “Wait a minute … why do we use both letters and numbers to name each note? Isn’t that kind of confusing?” And the answer is, “… yes. It is a little confusing.” But we can blame that on a few monks from the Middle Ages. It’s not that they were trying to mess with us. They just didn’t have a choice—letters and numbers were the best they had.

You see, in music, these letters and numbers are used to tell you two different things:

• The letter names for notes tell you which note is which … a lot like the names “Jane,” “Bob, “Sally,” and “Tim” are used for people to let you know who is who.
• The numbers, on the other hand, tell you how the notes relate. In other words, they explain the general connection between each note … in the same way words like “Mother,” “Father,” “Sister,” and “Brother” describe the relationships between people.

It’s pretty basic, really. But for musicians, these symbols can get confusing. And that’s why Color Music is so awesome—it simplifies everything. The colored shapes show us which note is which (just like the old letter names). And at the same time, they also show us how all the notes relate (just like the old number names).

In fact, that’s why I say it’s like having x-ray vision. We can see through all the layers of symbols to look at the real patterns that have been there all along. And what’s even better is these note patterns work in the same way for every key. In other words, we can see the exact same intervals whether we say the tonic (note 1) is G … or D … or A … or any other note. In fact, how about I just show you?