🎵 The Personalities of Chords: Seeing Music Through Colour, Place and Emotion

Matt Stead
Oct 10
2 min read

Have you ever felt a chord before you really understood it? For many players, music theory can seem like a set of rules. But when you start to connect chords with colours, landscapes and emotions, harmony comes alive — it starts to tell stories.

In this post, I’ll share a creative experiment that explores how different chords can be represented visually and emotionally — and how we can even hear harmony without instruments at all.

🌈 What If Chords Were Places? The Personalities of Chords

Every chord has a personality. Some feel safe, some feel nostalgic, others build tension or lift us up. To explore that, I filmed a short video series matching familiar chords with colours and locations that capture their unique “energy.”

Here’s how I see them:

Chord	Emotion	Colour	Place
I (Tonic)	Home, peace, comfort	Warm gold	The front door or a cosy lamp-lit room
vi (Minor)	Nostalgia, tenderness	Deep pine green	A quiet forest at dusk
IV (Subdominant)	Hope, generosity	Soft sky blue	Open field or wide horizon
V (Dominant)	Tension, anticipation	Vibrant crimson	The edge of a road at sunset

In the full video, I use Stand By Me as an example — one of the simplest and most emotional progressions ever written: I – vi – IV – V.When you see those chords as a journey through light and landscape, you start to feel why they move us so deeply.

🎨 The Experiment: Hearing Harmony Without Chords

After creating the colour and place associations, I tried something new — removing the instruments completely.

In this second short video, you’ll see the same sequence of colours and locations but without any chords or vocals.And yet… many people say they can still “hear” the music.

That’s because our brains recognise patterns of tension and release, even when the sound is gone.When we truly internalise harmony, it becomes emotional memory — not just sound waves.

🎸 Why This Matters for Ukulele Players

Understanding chords this way isn’t about memorising theory — it’s about deepening your connection to music.

You’ll start to anticipate how a song feels before you play it.
You’ll learn to express emotion through chord choice and tone.
And you’ll remember progressions more easily, because each one has a visual and emotional identity.

It’s a gentle, creative way to bridge theory and feeling — perfect for visual learners and for anyone who wants to make their ukulele playing more expressive.