As now, there's no relationship between colors beyond different notes, different colors
Perhaps choosing similar colors by distance on the circle of fifths or similar
This makes main triads be smooth gradients instead of random three-color flags.
1 and 5 pitches are neutral because:
- they are neutral (a hollow tonic power chord)
- they don't convey any information about the scale. they only give a reference point to measure everything else against
I would imagine that would be red(1), orange(3), yellow(5), green(7), blue(2), purple(4)
But it seems you have white(1), green(3), grey(5), yellow(7), red(2), purple(4)
I can't quite see what going over the rainbow in thirds here means, but I can see why a fifth would be neutral. Could you expand upon this?
Here's the question. If we can allow one color not to be "colorful" (chromatic), what pitch would that be? It's the tonic (pitch 1).
If we allow two such colors? 5 is a good candidate, it's present in almost all popular scales. (Locrian isn't very popular.)
The rest 10 colors go in rainbow by thirds, as you proposed.
So, using two grayscale colors, I've reduced the demand to make distinct enough color palette from 12 colors to 10 chromatic + 2 grayscale.
Which (10), in my experience fighting with different screens and projectors, is almost the limit of having something stable, distinguishable, nameable and memorable.
Funny enough, those 10 can be further split into 5 brighter and 5 darker pitches. Exactly as they turn from bright to dark if we go from bright to dark modes: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/dku7jezn00yltb607j2un/Screens...