It started me thinking when a director said he wanted a mix of a scene in their film to sound more ‘green’, and I didn’t really understand what they meant… And to make matters worse, they didn’t either. They just ‘felt’ sound as a colour when they tried to describe it.
This eventually led to me researching and writing a book that incorporated colour references to help analyze soundtracks and sound design. (It’s called ‘Sound for Moving Pictures’ and it’s available on Amazon, by the way.)
But it turns out that noise – often defined as an unwanted function of sound – actually is categorized by different colours:
White noise – Something that most of us have heard and heard of, it contains all the frequencies of audible sound in equal measure. Sounds like static on a television set.
Pink noise – Often used for calibrating sound systems, each octave (a halving or doubling of frequency) has an equal amount of energy. Sounds like a waterfall.
Blue noise – a type of noise that has more energy in the higher frequencies, and sounds like a hissing steam pipe.
Violet noise – an extreme version of Blue noise, with even more energy in the high frequencies. Sounds like a Dentist’s drill.
Red noise – (also called Brown noise*) has a deep and steady sound that decreases in power as the frequency rises. Sounds like steady, heavy rainfall.
Green noise – amplifies mid-range frequencies with uniform intensity, and sounds similar to ocean waves or a stream. (Sadly, this was not what ‘my’ director was after at all…)
Sound is one of the most expressive mediums available to us as humans, and as a coach I help creatives to express themselves; frequently, but not exclusively, by the way that they use sound in their work.
The waiting list for my coaching services and details of my coaching content, including how to download my free eBook on the benefits of coaching for creatives, awaits you here:
www.soundproducer.com.au/coaching
(*Not to be confused with the ‘Brown note’, a frequency allegedly used by Adolf Hitler to great effect… More on this later.)
