The "Color" of a song/instrument

[blueroommusic]

Allright...I've been around the studio since I was a kid, and I've learned over the years how to deal with unreasonable requests from clients, so this isn't the first time I've had a client request that a song be made to sound "blue" or "orange" or whatever.

My question is this: how do YOU go about creating a "color" in a song/instrument, and what essentially makes that "color" come out?

is it the boost/cut of particular frequencies?
is it the reverbs & delays on that instrument?
is it mic placement?
is it all of the above?
how does a sound fundamentally change "color", when it's allready been recorded?

I'd like to know what you all think, and what your experiences have been with this odd request.

I had a client come in for a mixing session, which I don't usually allow, and they're sitting there saying..."I want that lead guitar to sound blue..I want that synth part to sound orange, blah blah yackity smackity"

 

[chessrock]

First, you have to find some sort of creative and tactful way of placing the burdon back on to the client.

If he wants the keys to sound more "orange," then ask him/her why it wasn't played more orange in the first place.

And of course you're going to have to ask them to be more specific: "What does orange mean to you? Can you give me examples of what you mean by "orange?" yackity smackity.

And finally, if they insist on using the color analogies and can't be more specific, or translate their wishes in to audio terms ... then you just have to tell them to lay off the drugs and to stop wasting your time. Unless of course you just need the money (and they're paying by the hour I'm assuming). In which case you should just humor them and have fun with the whole process, and just try and get as many billable hours as you can get.

You're basically dealing with what is known as a "difficult client." Perhaps even a first-class nut job. Don't let it worry you too much.
.

 

[blueroommusic]

yeah...I figured he had smoked something, PCP perhaps.. I know that a description like that would be in the ear of the beholder if you will...I asked him for a better description, which he was unable to give me...

do you have any experience with this kind of thing chess?

 

[chessrock]

do you have any experience with this kind of thing chess?

You mean insane clients? Sure.

One guy even told me about the conversation he had with Satan.

It happens.
.

 

[Robert D]

These guys have just done too much purple haze and orange microdot, with a lot of green and some occasional acapaulco gold and panama red in between.
They may also be in touch with auras, and relate those colors to music. i'd suggest you all do large amounts of drugs together and some pre-session meditation to get on the same page.

 

[blueroommusic]

no I meant with altering a sound to emulate a color...

I deal with insane clients every day it seems...

for instance, when the guy asked me to make his lead guitar sound "blue", the first thing I thought of was water...what kind of effect would water sound like...so I put the track through a leslie emulator, and brought the effect up till it was barely audible in the mix...it definitely changed the sound, and he seemed pretty happy with it...I just don't know if it sounded blue or not.

anyone else have experience with this..

 

[blueroommusic]

They may also be in touch with auras, and relate those colors to music. i'd suggest you all do large amounts of drugs together and some pre-session meditation to get on the same page.

lol...I would, but that wouldn't be very professional now would it?

I save that for after the session

 

[michael_lifshit]

This is called synaesthesia, this might help you out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synaesthesia

 

[peopleperson]

Yeah, sometimes people will come up with funny ways to describe what they're looking for. I haven't run into colors yet, but I distinctly remember dealing with a particularly inexperienced 'musician' who kept throwing the word 'cosmic' at me over and over. It took me a while to decode that 'cosmic' meant 'shitty vocal reverb'. The more I put on, the happier he was. I asked him to not put my name on it because by the time I did what he wanted me to do, it was absolutely dreadful but he was happy with it, probably because you could barely make out his voice.

I guess different terms will mean different things to everyone. It's our job to figure out what the hell they're talking about.

 

[Fishmed]

Here is what you do. Mix the song to the best of your ability to the point where you are happy with it leaving your studio. If your client asks you to make it a certain color, say green, and then agree with him as say,” Yes, it does need more green". Move some knobs on your gear (nothing that affects the mix of course, unless it needs something more) and then say, "Yea, it did need more green."

Some people feel they need to have a part of what is happening. Even if you really don't do anything other than feed their ego they may feel better.

 

[blueroommusic]

This is called synaesthesia, this might help you out:

interesting...this guy wasn't nearly as crazy or creative as Syd Barrett or Beethoven, but he was pretty damn wierd...I guess he could have that disorder.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

I wouldn't be too fast to write everybody who talks that way as a crackpot or even a crackhead. Nor does it require full-blown synaesthesia*. Most perceptive and/or creative people tend to associate, on at least some level, many of the different senses from touch to taste with color.

The hard part is in the translation. There is a general tendancy for a general association that works something roughly like this:

black --> silence
red --> bass / warmth
bright red --> heat / punch
orange --> mid-bass / warmth
yellow --> midrange / voice
bright green --> high mids
dark green --> cool / thick / lush
dark blue --> cool / placid / calm
bright blue --> cold / harsh / sibilant
white --> hiigh freq / air / hiss

Though this is very generalzed and can vary from person to person. If they start using colors to describe, try translating to other adjectives and give them a sample. WWhen the say "more orange", ask them if they mean "warmer" and try warming up the 100-300HZ a bit to see if that's what they mean. It'll at least give you a starting point from which you're speaking the same language and working from the same reference, and it shouldn't be too difficult from there.

Where it gets really difficult is when the client lacks both the creative and the technical vocabulary to explain what they are aor are not hearing. I had a piano player last year that was like that. A real nice guy with a super-sharp ear and a fantastic keyboard player, though a bit the perfectionist. I have no problem with the struggle for perfection, but when he just wasn't satisfied and his only explanation as that "it just doesn't sound 'right' to me yet" or "it's not 'piano-y' enough yet" along with apologies that he didn't know how to explain it, I had to apologize back to him and say, "Hey, man, you gotta give me better than that; I have no dial marked 'piano-y' on any of my gear. I you want change, you gotta be able to tell me what or how you want it changed, otherwise we're getting nowhere fast on your dime and my time."

G.

* My own encounter in the past with a form of induced synaesthesia was with migrain headaches I used to get up until about 10 years ago or so. My migrains almost always had a "flavor" assocaited with the pain. I don't mean a taste in my mouth, I mean I actually "tasted" the migrain in my head, where the pain was located. It was always the taste of a bitter, cold, day-old cup of black coffee, and the taste sensation was actually located at the source of the migrain, in my case in my forhead just above my right eye. I "tasted" coffee sludge in my head. It's difficult to explain unless/until you actually experience it yourself, and definitely a very weird sensation; one that might have actually been interesting and enjoyable had it not been for the accompanying absolutely dibilitating pain .

 

[blueroommusic]

cool...I had gathered that colors refer to frequency ranges, and moods, but you put it into perspective...thanks SS. I am going to try and incorporate this phenomenon into the creative process of mixing, when I feel there is a need.

 

[legionserial]

Just change the color of the waveform on your DAW

Serioulsly tho. All my life I have attributed colors to everything. Its hard to explain. Sounds, textures, numbers, even the days of the week have colors. It doesn't seem so promenant nowadays, but it used to, and still does sometimes lead to some really fucked up trains of thought if I am having to concentrate on a repetitive monotonous task.

Like, a while back, I turnd down a job because it seemed too 'grey', wheras my job was kinda multicolored. I know its a bit of a metaphore anyway, cos I would have been going from working with lots of different people into a finance job, but I wasn't thinking of it from a metaphorical angle...

 

[LIMiT]

It's all in the interpretation..

http://www.legendarytones.com/brown_sound.htm

Check out this link on Van Halens 'brown sound'. (I get requests for this tone all the time)

The 'colour' definately depends on the person who's asking...let them explain.

Easiest way is to say,..'can you give me an example on another CD?'...

Hope this helps,

-LIMiT

 

[legionserial]

Check out this link on Van Halens 'brown sound'. (I get requests for this tone all the time)

Isn't the 'Brown sound' an infrasonic frequency that makes you lose bowel control?

 

[Reggie]

walters knows all about the colors of sound, if you can track him down. Where is he anyway? I miss that guy...

 

[blueroommusic]

Isn't the 'Brown sound' an infrasonic frequency that makes you lose bowel control?

that's the brown NOTE...Mythbusters tried to replicate this on one of the episodes, but to no avail. supposedly the army has replicated this tone, but hasn't found a use for it yet, as the enemy would have to be stationary, and the rig to produce a note that low would be ginormous...I think the frequency is supposed to be like 13 Hz or something ridiculous like that.

 

[Reggie]

Yeah, but if you could reproduce the brown note with a brown sound....Oh man, then the military would be onto something!!


Actually, I though it was somewhere around 6-7Hz, depending on the specific body cavity you are trying to resonate. Maybe not, I dunno

 

[blueroommusic]

you could be right...