Of course, it’s one thing to play through different notes and intervals. They sound nice enough … and they give us some good target practice. But it’s another thing to actually play music. And by that, I mean musical scales, melodies, chords, and progressions. We just need to arrange the 12 notes into new and special patterns. And the best way to do this is using music notation.

Now, I know what you might be thinking … didn’t I already say that music notation is kind of confusing? And that it was designed by a bunch of strange medieval monks? Why, yes … I did say all of that. And I meant it. But I was talking about traditional black-and-white notation—which, honestly, can be confusing.

Only now, with Color Music, everything is different. Because we can finally see exactly what it is we’re doing. And we don’t have to worry about getting lost. In fact, music notation is useful for two main reasons. It’s a great way of showing:

1. Pitch (that is, how high or low a note should sound), and
2. Duration (or how long or short a note should last)

Together, these two things—pitch and duration—are what make a song. It’s really very simple … we just have to play different notes of the chromatic scale for certain lengths of time. And by rearranging these notes into new and interesting patterns, we can come up with all sorts of cool sounds.

So to understand music notation, let’s first look at pitch … since we already know which note is which. And as you might have guessed, it’s super easy. Because all we have to do is look at our old, familiar friend—the chromatic scale.