Why is the brown sound called the brown sound?

[andross182]

Because of his voltage reduction on his amps. When that happens with a power plant its called a brownout. Eddie voltage starving amps is the same thing, so its the brown sound.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownout_(electricity)

 

[mentoneman]

I've always wondered this too.

Some people see colors through sound some how. It's called synethesia. Sounds crazy, but I listened to a podcast with Lasse Lambert and he has it. I'm not sure if the brown sound we know if is actually brown to him though.

Also there is white noise and pink noise. A static build up of specific frequencie curves or something. Not sure if the "brown sound" was based off that somehow

A family friend of mine is a self taught MASTER pianist. She also has synesthesia. As a little girl always told us she "saw" music and sound. Amazing stuff.

eddie kramer mentioned this about hendrix as well

evh described alex's snare as the origin of brown but i always thought the term was so fitting to the guitar tone both from a warmth standpoint as well as a variac fattening and smoothing of that otherwise bright sizzling marshall tone. amazing how he evolved his playing and sound at such a young age but with a musician dad, a competitive partner in crime brother, and playing live so much he got invaluable on the job/life training.

this was a cool find (part 1 of 3)

 

[maddnotez]

Pretty sure Acid had something to do with it.

 

[Just Mike]

The Alex snare story is correct. EVH coined it. I thought I'd take this opportunity to add that I never got the "Brown" name for that sound, but I do hear a "woody" tone in some Strat players. In fact, now that "Woody" is in my vocabulary, it's really hard to describe that sound with any other words.

 

[MetalHeadMike]

Because its most closely related to the color of the thing that represents it the most: shit

Just kidding, had to.

 

[DAMIAN The MAN]

because people shit their pants when EVH hit the scene.

That's an understatement, no doubt!

Frankly speaking, in the 70-80s when you heard Eddie's guitar tone was like the water breaks to all women on earth at the same time! Crushing! Even for heavy bands like Sabbath, Priest, Maiden etc. That tone was absolutely killer in any way possible! He sent home every hard'n' heavy guitarist

 

[GOHOINC]

because people shit their pants when EVH hit the scene.

This, more or less.

How do you turn every note into the brown note? By using brown sound.

If you dont know about the brown note, http://www.letmegooglethatforyou.com

 

[Monkey Man]

Some people see colors through sound some how. It's called synethesia. Sounds crazy, but I listened to a podcast with Lasse Lambert and he has it. I'm not sure if the brown sound we know if is actually brown to him though.

Also there is white noise and pink noise. A static build up of specific frequencie curves or something. Not sure if the "brown sound" was based off that somehow

There is Brown Noise as well. White noise is equal volume across every frequency band. Pink noise is white noise with a -3dB/oct rolloff starting at 0Hz. Brown noise has a -6dB/oct rolloff starting at 0Hz.

We have black backgrounds to mixes too, and much-more-commonly these days, grey or white ones. Thriller, the Brothers Johnson's Light Up the Night and perhaps MJ's Off the Wall fall into this category for me. Interestingly, they're all Quincy Jones productions. He had that shit in his back pocket. Also interesting to me is that black-background songs are best heard at night, preferably very-late or at least in the dark.

I wouldn't say I have synaesthesia, but I've always seen certain colours from some songs and artists. The first time I heard Eddie, I can honestly say that I saw his tone as sounding brown. I think Women and Children First (the whole album) exemplifies this. It's so obvious it literally hits me in the face every time.

Prince's Purple Rain album was literally purple. I kid you not. I wonder if he knew this; so much of the movie was lit in purple too.

Funnily to me, Yello's Oh Yeah sounded distinctly yellow to me. Imagine my surprise when I heard the band was thusly named.

I've got an album called Colours, conducted by Vic Lewis and played by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Each piece is named a colour, and I had a lot of fun in my early 20s getting folks to guess which colour each song represented. I learned back then that the mood of music, created both by harmony (chordal and scalar construction) and also playing intentions, obviously, creates distinct coloured impressions. IMHO, this is no different from feeling blue (the blues, anyone?) or being in the pink... or green with envy or red with rage for that matter.

So, IMHO, the moods as well as the sounds and mixing techniques (such as is the case with black backgrounds), lend themselves to helping create impressions of colour. They cannot force this on us, which is probably one reason why so many haven't experienced this, especially in these times of needle-dropping our ways through playlists. IMHO, one has to allow one's self to become swept up in the music, just as we did in the days of vinyl where we'd save our coin for months and dedicate entire evenings to studying liner notes and images whilst savouring those first plays of our new-found delights.

Sorry for the rant. I'm simply inviting those who're sceptical to cast their minds back to these things and perhaps note that upon careful consideration of life experiences listening to music, patterns emerge.

 

[evhfan]

That's how Ed described AVH's snare sound...

 

[thiswaythatway]

The brown note is a hypothetical infrasonic frequency that would cause humans to lose control of their bowels due to resonance. Attempts to demonstrate the existence of a "brown note" using sound waves transmitted through air have failed. The name is a metonym for the common color of human feces.

 

[Just Mike]

Some people see colors through sound some how. It's called synethesia. Sounds crazy, but I listened to a podcast with Lasse Lambert and he has it. I'm not sure if the brown sound we know if is actually brown to him though.

Also there is white noise and pink noise. A static build up of specific frequencie curves or something. Not sure if the "brown sound" was based off that somehow

There is Brown Noise as well. White noise is equal volume across every frequency band. Pink noise is white noise with a -3dB/oct rolloff starting at 0Hz. Brown noise has a -6dB/oct rolloff starting at 0Hz.

We have black backgrounds to mixes too, and much-more-commonly these days, grey or white ones. Thriller, the Brothers Johnson's Light Up the Night and perhaps MJ's Off the Wall fall into this category for me. Interestingly, they're all Quincy Jones productions. He had that shit in his back pocket. Also interesting to me is that black-background songs are best heard at night, preferably very-late or at least in the dark.

I wouldn't say I have synaesthesia, but I've always seen certain colours from some songs and artists. The first time I heard Eddie, I can honestly say that I saw his tone as sounding brown. I think Women and Children First (the whole album) exemplifies this. It's so obvious it literally hits me in the face every time.

Prince's Purple Rain album was literally purple. I kid you not. I wonder if he knew this; so much of the movie was lit in purple too.

Funnily to me, Yello's Oh Yeah sounded distinctly yellow to me. Imagine my surprise when I heard the band was thusly named.

I've got an album called Colours, conducted by Vic Lewis and played by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Each piece is named a colour, and I had a lot of fun in my early 20s getting folks to guess which colour each song represented. I learned back then that the mood of music, created both by harmony (chordal and scalar construction) and also playing intentions, obviously, creates distinct coloured impressions. IMHO, this is no different from feeling blue (the blues, anyone?) or being in the pink... or green with envy or red with rage for that matter.

So, IMHO, the moods as well as the sounds and mixing techniques (such as is the case with black backgrounds), lend themselves to helping create impressions of colour. They cannot force this on us, which is probably one reason why so many haven't experienced this, especially in these times of needle-dropping our ways through playlists. IMHO, one has to allow one's self to become swept up in the music, just as we did in the days of vinyl where we'd save our coin for months and dedicate entire evenings to studying liner notes and images whilst savouring those first plays of our new-found delights.

Sorry for the rant. I'm simply inviting those who're sceptical to cast their minds back to these things and perhaps note that upon careful consideration of life experiences listening to music, patterns emerge.

Your soliloquy does not match your avatar.

 

[Monkey Man]

LOL Yeah, it's... not brown enough, no? Sounds like you read my dribble at least; thanks mate!

The brown note is a hypothetical infrasonic frequency that would cause humans to lose control of their bowels due to resonance. Attempts to demonstrate the existence of a "brown note" using sound waves transmitted through air have failed. The name is a metonym for the common color of human feces.

I was taught 30 years ago that this is 7Hz, the same frequency area that causes folks to feel really uncomfortable in confined spaces and feel the urge to rush outside. Interestingly, it's a predominant frequency felt during earthquakes. Makes sense to me.

If experiments have failed through air, perhaps it was because the waves weren't transmitted through the ground. The guy who taught me about psychoacoustics had 3 phDs and I had little cause to question his wisdom, but who knows, maybe he was wrong?

All I know for sure is that various much-higher frequencies can affect mood, as I discussed previously. Heck, even a bell-boost at 16k causes folks to feel happier and chattier. Ran experiments myself on unwitting groups decades ago and the results were clear-cut, no doubt. I don't know what they do today, but I knew of nightclubs that boosted 16k in order to encourage a happier vibe, one who's positivity would lead to larger takings at the bar no doubt. LOL

I mention this because I don't see it as any sort of stretch to therefore suggest that low and even ULF's could have many as-yet-undocumented effects on both the physiology as well as the human psyche.