What is the Color of that Music Performance?

The representation of expressivity in music is still a fairly unexplored field. Alternative ways of representing musical information are necessary when providing feedback on emotion expression in music such as in real-time tools for music education, or in the display of large music databases. One possible solution could be a graphical non-verbal representation of expressivity in music performance using color as index of emotion. To determine which colors are most suitable for an emotional expression, a test was run. Subjects rated how well each of 8 colors and their 3 nuances corresponds to each of 12 music performances expressing different emotions. Performances were played by professional musicians with 3 instruments, saxophone, guitar, and piano. Results show that subjects associated different hues to different emotions. Also, dark colors were associated to music in minor tonality and light colors to music in major tonality. Correspondence between spectrum energy and color hue are preliminary discussed.