Rainbow Figures for Piano Scales

I've been using Grimm's Rainbow figures for explaining scales to my piano students for years. I love that these figures come in the seven colors of the rainbow which typically matches the number of different scale tones in Western Music. I like that the figures don't have faces and can be configured to represent many different types of scales. For instance, I like to count half steps and whole steps using the figures to create both minor and major scales and sometimes even whole note and mixolydian scales. And because Newton chose the original seven rainbow colors, I also like to arrange the figures in light wavelength order (rainbow color order) with the longest light wavelength (red) being the tonic. That way it matches the longest light wavelength with the lowest and longest sound wavelength in a scale (because sound wavelengths get shorter with higher tones). It is kind of fun to inject a little science into the piano lessons!

However, these figures have a slightly larger diameter than I would like and they take up more than one white piano key width and they have trouble balancing on a black keys. So, I recently ordered a batch of plain wooden peg dolls from Amazon and colored them myself using paint pens. The new peg dolls have a smaller dimension and will fit on my piano keys much better (plus they are a lot cheaper than the Grimm's Rainbow figures). I'm pretty excited about this project.

Materials for making your own rainbow figures:

Plain wooden peg dolls

Paint Pens

The wooden peg dolls I ordered came in a box of 50 with various sizes, so I'm able to make multiple sets of rainbow figures at different sizes. I also looked to make sure that the paint pens I selected had the official 7 colors of the rainbow. I needed red, orange, yellow, green, blue (light blue), indigo (dark blue), and violet (purple). It didn't take me too long to make these figures once I had the supplies, but it did require a steady hand.

So, these are my new rainbow scale friends and they fit on my piano keys so much better. 

Here are some some suggestions for ways to use Rainbow Scale Friends:

1. Talk about the tonic or home of your scale with the red rainbow figure. Mention that the home of any scale can be any note on the piano and discuss what makes that note the "home" of a piece of music.

2. Arrange your rainbow scale friends in rainbow color order. I always have two red color figures so that we can talk about octaves (double the frequency - double the fun). I like to talk about how western scale tones have a lot of different names.

* 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, Octave

* Tonic, Supertonic, Mediant, Subdominant, Dominant, Submediant, Leading Tone, Tonic

* Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So, La, Ti, Do

* Major Scale - half steps and whole steps

3. Introduce the minor scales

* Minor Scales - half steps and whole steps

* Solfege the minor scale as appropriate: Do Di/Ra Re Ri/Me Mi Fa Fi/Se Sol Si/Le La Li/Te Ti Do

4. Create the different scale modes simply by keeping the steps and skips the same and moving the tonic around - Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, Locrian

5. Whole note scales

6. Pentatonic and Blues Scales

It is also great to use your rainbow scale figures for intervals and chords:

1. Create a scale using intervals. 2nd, 3rd, etc.

2. Create a scale and then start to remove figures to create chords. I really like doing this because it helps students visualize how scales help you to create chords.

I adore my new smaller rainbow scale friends and use these figures with my all my students regardless of their age because they fit well into my multi-sensory learning approach. They are a different sort of scale visual, tactile if the students place the figures on the keys, and aural if you use solfege.