I respond to colour strongly, and in 21 years of studying musical instruments it has always bothered me that colour is not more fully exploited as part of the learning experience.

 

This is a representation of a guitar fretboard where each note features its own colour. The colours where chosen to match, as far as possible, how I interpret the note when it is the Tonic of a Major Key. For instance, A Major is pretensious and quite full of itself. As such, it had to be purple.

 

Care was taken to find 12 distinct colours that were different enough in hue and tone to be easily distinguishable from each other. I am cognisant that that this schema would not suit individuals with limited colour perception. A later stage of investigation will be to adjust or develop alternate versions for colour-blind individuals.

The Circle of Fourths is fundamental to understanding how notes connect and relate to each other. I also love how the adjoining colours create vivid blends.

This is a modified guitar tuning: the two highest pitched strings are raised 1 semitone above standard. The result is that the relationship between every pair of strings is a Perfect Fourth, which makes learning and transposing much easier than in Standard Tuning. For this reason All Fourths tuning is highly regarded in Jazz instruction, and used exclusively by virtuosi such as Stanley Jordan and Tom Quayle.