Making bands of color

For my part you are welcome, speedartist.

I for one hope that you will report your findings.

You (too) have described that way often enough, Ton, so I came to think of it as the dirty job.

speedartist,

And then there is the silly way if you wish to keep it as a single live/editable Type object only (with the benefit of exact band proportions, yours look like 27/46/27, maybe intended to be 25/50/25):

1) Select the Type (with the Selection Tool) and change the Fill to None (Toolbox), then in the Appearance palette Add New Fill and (with that selected) set it to a gradient (Toolbox), then in the Gradient palette set the Linear Gradinet angle to 90 degrees, then:

2) Set the colour at both end stops to the green colour and set two new stops at the desired colour switches; for each just click somewhere off and insert the value (for easy proportions/percentages like quarters (25% and 75%) just insert 25 and 75, for more tricky proportions like thirds (33 1/3% and 66 2/3%) insert the corresponding divisions (100/3 and 200/3));

3) To make the hard transitions to orange, for each just click somewhere off in the middle and insert the value equalling that in 2), then change the colour to the orange.

This will be determined by the height from bottommost to topmost, so if you work with Type that has ascenders and descenders and/or upper/lowercase and wish to have the proportions relative to the x-height or something, you will have to adapt the proportions.

Thank you for your taking a photo; and for your using the Insert Photos button (attaching only gives a link which will have to be followed to see anything).

We are one big happy community!

And I agree totally with Ton!

Create green/orange/green rectangles and group them.

Select them with the text on top and choose Object > Clipping Mask > Make