Colors in Music?

[soultrap]

When we hear great pianists perform, a commonly used word for description is "Colour". When someone's outstanding in the control of the piano, you can hear the different colours, even in phrases and passages that have the same volume and character.

For example, Debussy's images book I:

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Here, around the 1:20 mark in Reflets dans l'eau, you can hear the different shades and characters in the runs.

Now, I want to ask, how do you PRODUCE these colours on the piano? What even is the definition of colour, and what factors do you manipulate to give this feeling of different "shades" of music?

[lostinidlewonder]

... how do you PRODUCE these colours on the piano? What even is the definition of colour, and what factors do you manipulate to give this feeling of different "shades" of music?

How to produce any sound needs to come from the minds eye (or the minds ear?) and then through your playing capabilities you can recreate that sound. First one needs to know what sound they want to produce and that requires that they have the musical creativity, experience and understanding of the music language to be able to visualize it, also one needs to be able to listen to themselves closely as they play since you might imagine you are doing something that is exactly what you are imagining but actually the reality may be different if you cannot hear what you are playing closely enough.

Color, shades it is just a term people use to define the presentation/observation of musical expression, these kind of ideas are often more powerfully observed when there is a juxtapositioning of two contrasting expressions close to one another, I guess then "color" is a visually handy term to use although not very musically specific. Personally I don't use the term to describe someones playing because to me it is quite an arbitrary, general measurement.

The only factors you can control is timing and volume which seems rather sterile when you look at them simply like that however the art of combining these two effectively requires understanding of music language and the variations of the two are quite huge.