Association between color and major and minor keys of music in school-aged children

One of the content areas of study in elementary music education is tonality, and students must be able to distinguish between major and minor keys. However, this is a difficult task, raising the question of whether colors could be used as an aid for discrimination. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to clarify the direct nonverbal correspondence between color and tonality in schoolage children. Experiment 1 explored the relationship between music and tonality among upper elementary school students. When asked to choose a color while listening to music, the students selected green, blue, or yellow for the major key and purple for the minor key. However, when presented the single color corresponding to a specific tonality from Experiment 1, they could not differentiate between major and minor keys. This suggests the limitation in using only color to distinguish between major and minor keys.