Nanopublication — Spread Voicing as Compositional Structure

Context

When I play a G minor [1] triad as a spread voicing, the chord tones are distributed across registers rather than clustered in close position. The root may sit low, the fifth high, with the minor third occupying the middle register — each tone given its own space. This registral separation is the compositional principle I translate into visual form in this study.

The painting reflects this spacing directly. The large purple circle, split between a darker and lighter value, occupies the lower portion of the composition — Bb asserting its presence as the defining minor interval. The orange and red-orange tones extend across the upper areas, separated by geometric divisions and a vertical bar that creates distance between color zones. The dark block at the top anchors the upper register. Rather than blending the three tones into a unified field, the composition preserves the gaps between them, the visual equivalent of open voicing at the keyboard.

This approach — letting the physical geometry of a chord voicing dictate spatial arrangement on paper — is central to my systematic exploration of triadic harmony across the Synesthetic Explorations collection.