• TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
    Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
    Join free Log in
    Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.

What do colors sound like?

Thunderscreech

Thunderscreech

Jun 4, 2008
6,707
271
Fredericksburg, Virginia
#1
I mean, if you were to figure out a way to convert the Visible Range of the EM spectrum to sound, using a computer and sensing device, what would it sound like post-processing? I'm thinking that certain colors would sound as terrible as they looked.

I really don't have any idea how to do this, though, so suggestions are wanted.
 
#3
Take some LSD and find out. ;) I kid...please, please don't take LSD.

My old music teacher was adamant that keys corresponded to colours; C major was yellow or white, Bb minor was a rich crimson, F# major was a royal blue etc.

Douglas Adams wrote some interesting stuff about converting data into music (it wasn't anything factual, just a couple of interesting/humourous concepts) in 'Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency'.

On a scientific level, the frequency intervals of the 7 colours aren't linear (the 'gaps', or 'bands' get larger as you travel towards violet), I guess this could (in theory) be manipulated to follow the harmonic series. Interesting stuff! You could then, in theory, see what a piece of music 'looked' like, or (maybe even cooler) see what a painting 'sounded' like.

What if the Mona Lisa turned out to be analagous to a piece Mozart's Fur Elise? We could open up a whole new realm of science here! :p
 
#6
There are 7 colours in the visible spectrum, if we're talking about converting what you see to what you hear here. :p

As you said, one colour (or wavelength) would be a single note, then a simple triad would be a selection of wavelengths close together. Something like a note on a bass would be brown (lol, brown note) have lows (reds) from one end of the spectrum, then a set of harmonics spread throughout, then the 'sibilance' of the note would be from the indigo-violet end. Black would be silence and white would be white noise!
 
#11
I seen a video a bit back where a man who couldn't see colors was an artist and he painted in black and white, too. He wanted to paint things in color so he created an "eye" that transferred different colors into different sound waves so he could distinguish from them. I'll see if I can find it again. He also painted sounds as the corresponding colors. Pretty cool.
 
#12
TOOL460002 said:
does not compute... am i missing something? the visible range is measured in terahertz.

as far as synesthia goes, is there any evidence that two individuals with this rare condition see the same color when they hear the same note?
Click to expand...

Sound and electromagnetic waves are produced by different mechanisms. Sound is a longitudinal pressure wave. Light is a transverse electromagnetic wave. But they share some properties such as dispersion and diffraction.
 
#13
TOOL460002 said:
does not compute... am i missing something? the visible range is measured in terahertz.

as far as synesthia goes, is there any evidence that two individuals with this rare condition see the same color when they hear the same note?
Click to expand...

So just convert from terahertz to regular hertz. I don't think it would be that hard to do.

I could use a MIDI keyboard controller and write a program to output colors instead of sounds, and then have a color organ.
 
#14
Here's what I suggest. At this point you can buy out of the Mouser catalog, LED's of a dozen wavelengths or even more. Buy a bunch, and hook them up to the keys of a keyboard. Or have your program choose color numbers that are applied to your display. The mapping between note and color can be whatever pleases you.
 
#16
I have known someone with perfect pitch, it was quite an amazing skill, kettle whistling, floor board squeaking, he could tell you the note, and if it was slightly sharp or flat exactly, I used to test him against a tuner, he was 99.9%. Anyways, he explained it as seeing colours for the notes, and shading them according to flat or sharp, it was a truly uncanny skill. There is a name for the condition, but I can't remember it right now.

Edit: This,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia
 
#19
Interesting idea. I'd actually like to see some software that did the opposite and gave a visual representation of a music signal in something like the following way. I think stuff like the visualisers in Winamp work in a similar fashion but they seem to use very complex models rather than a simple and direct one.

There'd be no need for sound or colour to be quantised into seven or thirteen steps or whatever, as frequencies of both sorts of wave form continous spectra. You could take the full 16 million or so discernibly different colours in the continous frequency range of visible light and devise a conversion process for displaying a particular frequency of light when triggered by a corresponding sound vibration in the 20Hz-20KHz range (or thereabouts). The lowest freqency sounds would be reddish and the highest ones bluish, et cetera. This part would be fairly simple arithmetic.

Then write some software for displaying the visual "version of the sound" according to a model. The software would have to sample a sound signal at regular intervals and analyse it for frequency components (Fourier transform). Then it could display the corresponding colours for those components and other information about the sound signal. For example, any time a particular frequency is present in the sound signal, a dot of the corresponding colour could be displayed with a brightness or diameter proportional to the intensity of the frequency being represented by that dot. The frequency could also be indicated maybe by the vertical position of the dot on a two-dimensional display, with the horizontal position indicating the sound's stereo positioning.

In this way, every aspect of the sound signal (frequencies present, their relative intensities and stereo positioning) would correspond to the colour, brightness/size and position of the dots and the display could represent this in a continual way as the sound signal was processed.

A monochrome display could do just the same job by mapping frequency to only the y axis position as described above, but it wouldn't look anywhere near as cool. :D

Google chromoacoustics for other ideas about this.
 
#20
Jimbob Jones said:
There are 7 colours in the visible spectrum, if we're talking about converting what you see to what you hear here. :p

As you said, one colour (or wavelength) would be a single note, then a simple triad would be a selection of wavelengths close together. Something like a note on a bass would be brown (lol, brown note) have lows (reds) from one end of the spectrum, then a set of harmonics spread throughout, then the 'sibilance' of the note would be from the indigo-violet end. Black would be silence and white would be white noise!
Click to expand...

There are more than 7 colours in the visible spectrum ;)

Me thinks I'm being anal retentive and you're simplifying things ;)
 

Latest posts

Top Bottom
Back