The Circle of Fifths

We are making an interactive poster to teach the principle of the 'Circle of Fifths' to people learning music.

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Our beautiful Circle of Fifths posters are now available to purchase through the Novalia website. 

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The final poster design! 

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Here's some pictures of the poster being screen printed at our printers. We use conductive carbon ink to provide the interactivity, along with digital print for the graphics.

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This image of the Circle of Fifths (created by: Just Plain Bill, as shown on wikipedia) Helps to visually describe some of the important information that can be learned from this design. 

This image is nice because it helps to explain how the scales are organized within the design. Here, they are shown with the corresponding number of sharps and flats, with additional small key signatures outside of the design to help show which notes are sharp or flat within the desired scale. 

This information was a core concept in the design of our Circle of Fifths poster. Our first desire in this project was to make the information presented here speak to the user when they interact with it. In this way, we have prepared a design of the circle of fifths that aids musical learning with musical examples. 

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Once the colorless pallet design was complete,  sound files needed to be designed for the poster. The information and music that you hear in this sound clip is the track that gets played when someone using the poster interacts with the: 'G Major' button from the design. 

To help consolidate space, the information for the G Major and E Minor scales are placed into one track due to their parallel nature in music theory. In this way, each parallel set of scales are combined because they are identical in sharps and flats, making 24 needed buttons into 12 grouped pairs.

The voice heard in the recording is done by: Morgan Schofield 

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This is the image that was created once the blueprint image for the touch points was finished. From phase one, this image was altered to show all of the needed information that was going to be added onto the final poster design, while keeping the touch points exactly where they were in the schematic. 

This piece was needed as a blank pallet so that color could be added on later to enhance the information within the design. 

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This image is the first step that was taken in the development of the poster layout. The image was used to help figure out where the touch sensitive points on the poster would be in the final design. 

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Novalia

Founded by Dr Kate Stone, Novalia specialise in using conductive ink to add interactivity to paper. Utilising Novalia's patented technology, normal paper can become responsive to touch, play audio and connect to mobile devices and apps via bluetooth. 

Novalia is a small team of scientists, designers and programmers based in Cambridge, UK.

Please watch Kate's TED talk above, which explains the potential of printed electronics.

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The Sound Of Taste: Feel Flavour

This project was a collaboration between Novalia, Grey London and Schwartz spices to explore the concept of synaesthesia through touch. 

Using conductive ink to make the paper touch sensitive, the poster reacts to your fingertips and sends a signal via bluetooth to a mobile device, playing a sound associated with each individual spice. 

We're aiming to employ this technology in the Circle of Fifths poster.

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The Circle of Fifths : A Touch Sensitive Poster

This blog has been created to share the progress of our project: to design a touch sensitive poster which visually and aurally demonstrates the musical concept known as the Circle of Fifths.

The project is a collaboration between Alex Massar, a Stateside musician, and Novalia, UK based company who specialise in making paper interactive using conductive ink.

Together, we aim to design and develop an interactive poster that plays musical chords and notes on the touch of your fingertips, changing the experience of learning music through the Circle of Fifths.

Keep an eye on our blog to see where our progress will take us, and follow us to get the inside scoop on all of our updates! 

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"Good graphic design solutions to communication problems can improve the flow of information in society and, therefore, substantially and positively affect education, social well-being and the daily enjoyment of life"

Jorge Frascara (Graphic Design – World Views, 1990)

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To get this project up and running, we have been designing this blog to show off all of the steps being taken towards making a touch-sensitive poster of the Circle of Fifths. The first artistic step we have completed is the initiation of this blog which we will use to describe the whole process of this project to you as it gets worked on. 

To give the blog an identity, the header logo was the first major project. The series of images posted here show the process that went into creating the piece. 

However, it should be noted that this version of the Circle of Fifths will differ from the final poster design. We're going to concentrate on finding the most beautiful combination of colour, shapes and sounds. Check back for updates!

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These images are the supposed origin story of the Circle of Fifths. They were created by Nikolay Diletsky (Ukrainian: Микола Дилецький) as an aspect of his book on musical theory: Dea Grammatiki Musikiyskoy also known in English as A Musical Grammar. 

In his book, Diletsky describes each of the known musical scales with respect to the emotions they carry in their performance. The first full page image shows some of this work, describing his use of scales to describe 'joy, sadness, and mixed emotions' respectively.

The second image is his attempt to organize these concepts onto the visual shape of a circle. This was the first attempt at creating the visually educational tool used in teaching musical concepts today. It is this ancient project to which we must first pay homage on our journey of bringing these concepts to the digital age. 

~Photos taken from the Wikipedia article on Dea Grammatiki Musikiyskoy~