Estimated reading time 6 minutes
Table of Contents
Why Color Code Music Notes for LD and Special Needs Students?
Parents, have you had a hard time finding a music teacher to teach your special needs child? Music teachers, do you have students who are reluctant readers? Read more to learn how to color code music notes for student success.
Color coding provides a scientifically proven multisensory strategy.
- George L. Rogers found that the LD, autistic, and other special needs students in his scientific study excelled when the notes were color coded.
- However, they failed to read any notes without the colors.
This post uses musical and technical terms. For definitions and music notation and art software links, see the Glossary at the end of the article.
Video: How Effective is the Color Coding?
How to Color Code Music Notes
This post discusses how music teachers can color code music notes in students’ scores. For hands-on posts that show you how to teach your students using adapted sheet music:
- Playing the Piano with Color Coded Notes
- Playing Piano with Color Coded Left Hand Notes
- How to Color Code Guitar Tab for LD Achievement
- Color Coded Quarter Note Clapping
- Color Coded Quarter Rest Clapping
- Color Coded Eighth Note Clapping
As the pandemic starts to wind down in parts of the world, many students still prefer the convenience of online lessons.
- This makes a hybrid learning environment (that mixes in online teaching) often necessary.
- Color coding needs to have enough contrast so that online students can distinguish individual notes.
- This stems from the fact that the students’ printers will not be color calibrated with yours.
The notes are:
- C is Orange
- D is Gray
- E is red
- F is Pink
- G is Green
- A is Purple
- B is Blue
Using Finale Notation Software to Color Code Music Notes
You can input the color values (see below) into Finale Music Notation software, which will color code the music notes for you.
Mobile users: for best results for viewing the music notation, tilt your screen 90o to the right.
Printable RGB Color Coding Values
Here are the values for the color coded music notes:
- Orange: Hue 26, Sat 240, Lum 110, Red 234, Green 152, Blue 0
- Gray: Hue 160, Sat 0, Lum 181, Red 192, Green 192, Blue 192
- Red: Hue 0, Sat 240, Lum 106, Red 225, Green 0, Blue 0
- Pink: Hue 213, Sat 178, Lum 200, Red 244, Green 181, Blue 224
- Green: Hue 80, Sat 240, Lum 120, Red 0, Green 255, Blue 0
- Purple: Hue 185, Sat 148, Lum 149, Red 173, Green 99, Blue 218
- Blue: Hue 160, Sat 174, Lum 120, Red 35, Green 35, Blue 220
How to Color Notes with Finale
Once you have set up the color pallets in Finale, color coding music notes is easy.
- Go to the Window menu and select Scoremanager
- Among the list of instruments, select the instrument(s) to be colorized
- Click the checkbox for Color Noteheads
- Click on the Settings box to the right of Color Noteheads
- Uncheck “Show boarder around colored noteheads” checkbox
- The “Select a color for each concert pitch below” section contains a list of notes. Click from the list of notes to change the color for each note. This brings up the color pallets.
- Click Define Custom Colors. This expands the dialog box to the right.
- Input the values from the “Printable RGB Color Coding Values” list (above in this post) into the Hue, Sat, Lum, Red, Green, Blue fields respectively in the program.
- Click “Add to Custom Colors” to save the color to the Custom Colors pallet (below the Basic Colors pallet) for later use.
After you have saved the color values into Custom Colors, colorizing a score goes very quickly.
Note: some instruments cannot be colorized, such as the piano. To get around this:
- I took two instruments that could be colorized, violin and cello, and connected them with a bracket.
- Next, I changed the bracket to a piano brace.
- Then, I deleted the instruments labels from the staff.
- This way it looked like a piano part when printed.
How to Color Code Music Notes Using Other Notation Programs
I started with writing about Finale, because I own it. Therefore, I can show you how to get good results. However, I’ve found many other options online for notation software that can colorize the score for you.
For example:
The popular music notation software, Sibelius, has a plug-in that will allow you to colorize the notes.
- It’s not as flexible at colorizing notes as Finale, but it costs less.
- A YouTube tutorial below shows you how to color code the music notes in Sibelius.
- The section on colorizing the notes starts about 2:30 into the video.
Before you make up your mind, you also have the music notation software called Flat.
- Flat can colorize the notes.
- To see how it works: click here.
- They do have a free version.
- However, I don’t know if the free version has the colorizing feature.
In addition, you have Soundslice.
- It can colorize sheet music.
- To see how it works: click here.
- They have a free version.
- However, even the paid plans don’t cost too much.
I’ve saved the best for last: Musescore.
- Musescore seems to be as flexible as Finale.
- Their website claims that you can download it for free with no limitations.
- It also has a YouTube tutorial (see below).
However, don’t take this as an endorsement. Because I haven’t used any of the programs listed in this section, I don’t really know how good they are. I’ve provided them here for informational purposes only.
Video - Color Coding Notes with Sibelius
Video - Color Coding Notes with Musescore
Color Coding Music Notes Using Illustrator and Word
Alternately, you can create the score and colorize the notes yourself in an art program.
- First, export the file from your notation software as a TIFF or JPEG.
- Once you have it saved, import it to an art program such as Illustrator or Corel Draw.
- Next, color code the music notes in there.
- Then, you can export it to a PDF file (which works well across platforms).
- Or you can insert the example into Word, add text content, and save the Word document to a PDF.
- Finally, you can email the music material to your students.
The LD & Special Needs Color Score
Without color coded music notes, the LD, ADD, ASD, and other special needs students in Rogers’ study were entirely unable to read the notes in the score. However, with the color coding they performed as well as or better than typical learner students.
This shows the power of multisensory teaching. Empower your students through the effective use of the color score.
© 2020 Geoffrey Keith
Join me for in-person or online music lessons!
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