Billy Corgan thinks paint colour affects tone.

darthed1981

octatonic said:

Jesus, what a dick.

https://www.musicradar.com/news/billy-corgan-paint-colour-actually-changes-the-sound-of-a-guitar

To be fair, he has done a fuck-tonne of drugs in his time.

pintspiller

Any publicity is good publicity. If more threads in discussion forums are written about any comment he makes they are all extra results in a Google search.

impmann

Bridgehouse said:

JerkMoans said:

For @Bridgehouse 's benefit, is this really about the effect of tone upon timbre?

Is timbre a colour?

Is colour a timbre?

Bridgehouse

impmann said:

Bridgehouse said:

JerkMoans said:

For @Bridgehouse 's benefit, is this really about the effect of tone upon timbre?

Is timbre a colour?

Is colour a timbre?

Good question

prowla

With the lights out everything is the same colour.

Danielsguitars

How bout just clear coats, surely the purist tone of all

TeleMaster

He might mean it in a synesthesia sense. He relates the way certain guitars sound to them being brighter in colour etc. 

If if he means it literally, it’s nonsense. 

Bigsby

Some of the world's leading chefs have worked closely with scientists to determine what influences peoples tastes. The result of this collaboration is a considered choice regarding the way each meal is served, and this includes both the shape and colour of the plate it is served on. Yes, having the same food served on a plates of different colour can change the taste you experience. With that in mind, perhaps Billy doesn't sound so bonkers.

If his perception of the sound of his guitars changes according to colour, then his claim is accurate in one sense: But it doesn't mean there is an objectively measurable change, nor that others will experience the same (or any) change. From the video, I'm not sure quite what he's claiming: Whether he is simply reporting his experience, or claiming a difference exists such that it could be heard or measured by others. I suspect the latter would be nonsense, but the former is quite reasonable, IMO.

We all intuitively believe our senses to be independent, accurate, and consistent reporters of the external world. They're not. Each is the result of extensive processing, that includes memories, beliefs, biases and inputs from other senses, and all are experienced in exactly the same space of consciousness: You don't 'hear' in one place, and 'see' in another. Even the prior state of your brain will influence your sensory experience, and thus your experience of the external world, even when that hasn't changed at all.

NelsonP

Hmm. Does he also believe that the earth is flat? ;-)

Three-ColourSunburst

Bigsby said:

We all intuitively believe our senses to be independent, accurate, and consistent reporters of the external world. They're not. Each is the result of extensive processing, that includes memories, beliefs, biases and inputs from other senses, and all are experienced in exactly the same space of consciousness: You don't 'hear' in one place, and 'see' in another. Even the prior state of your brain will influence your sensory experience, and thus your experience of the external world, even when that hasn't changed at all.

True that, whether we are talking about the taste of wine, the interpretation of an ambiguous visual image or the (perceived) sound of a Stradivarius, 'directional' speaker cables or electric guitar 'tone wood'*.

*To be fair differences in sustain can be misinterpreted as differences in timbre as the higher partials tend to decay more quickly, but even here factors such as the attack and decay of a note play at least as big a role in the characteristic sound of an instrument as the partials themselves.

One reason for this is that electric guitar pickups, because they only sense a small part of the string, acts as filters, changing the relative strength of each partial at every fret (even eliminating some). Yet despite these significant changes in the balance of the partials from note to note we still perceive the timbre to be constant. A major reason for this is because it is the amplifier  that adds most of the colour to the basic 'twang' of the string, by generating harmonic overtones and clipping the wave form. This is also why even a '59 Les Paul will sound 'sterile' though a truly hi-fi amplifier. (And there is no such thing as a truly 'clean' guitar amp.) In reality the signal generated by the pickups of an electric guitar is 'sterile' with the partials (well those on the string) almost perfectly matching the mathematical model of a fixed string (apart from some small variations due to the stiffness of the string).

As to 'string- body coupling' and 'resonance', these tend to be either misplaced over-generalisations based on what is known about the way acoustic guitars work, where you listen to the sound waves directly generated by the vibrations of the sound board, and / or misinterpretations of the mathematical models developed by researchers such as Gough [see 'The Theory of String Resonance on Musical Instruments', Acustica, Vol 49 (1981) ], which actually concern the behaviour of low impedance / highly coupled systems under certain conditions, such as a cello when a 'wolf' note is generated.

poopot

Didn’t he bang Devi Ever? If he can’t tell the difference there how can we trust his opinions on  paint?

Three-ColourSunburst

Bigsby said:

We all intuitively believe our senses to be independent, accurate, and consistent reporters of the external world. They're not. Each is the result of extensive processing, that includes memories, beliefs, biases and inputs from other senses... Even the prior state of your brain will influence your sensory experience, and thus your experience of the external world, even when that hasn't changed at all.

A classic illustration of how visual information influences what we 'hear' is the McGurk effect. A good explanation of this effect here:

Bellycaster

Of course it affects tone, have you never heard of the "Brown" Sound.

crunchman

Three-ColourSunburst said:

Bigsby said:

We all intuitively believe our senses to be independent, accurate, and consistent reporters of the external world. They're not. Each is the result of extensive processing, that includes memories, beliefs, biases and inputs from other senses, and all are experienced in exactly the same space of consciousness: You don't 'hear' in one place, and 'see' in another. Even the prior state of your brain will influence your sensory experience, and thus your experience of the external world, even when that hasn't changed at all.

True that, whether we are talking about the taste of wine, the interpretation of an ambiguous visual image or the (perceived) sound of a Stradivarius, 'directional' speaker cables or electric guitar 'tone wood'*.

*To be fair differences in sustain can be misinterpreted as differences in timbre as the higher partials tend to decay more quickly, but even here factors such as the attack and decay of a note play at least as big a role in the characteristic sound of an instrument as the partials themselves.

One reason for this is that electric guitar pickups, because they only sense a small part of the string, acts as filters, changing the relative strength of each partial at every fret (even eliminating some). Yet despite these significant changes in the balance of the partials from note to note we still perceive the timbre to be constant. A major reason for this is because it is the amplifier  that adds most of the colour to the basic 'twang' of the string, by generating harmonic overtones and clipping the wave form. This is also why even a '59 Les Paul will sound 'sterile' though a truly hi-fi amplifier. (And there is no such thing as a truly 'clean' guitar amp.) In reality the signal generated by the pickups of an electric guitar is 'sterile' with the partials almost perfectly matching the mathematical model of a fixed string (apart from some small variations due to the stiffness of the string).

As to 'string- body coupling' and 'resonance', these tend to be either misplaced over-generalisations based on what is known about the way acoustic guitars work, where you listen to the sound waves directly generated by the vibrations of the sound board, and / or misinterpretations of the mathematical models developed by researchers such as Gough [see 'The Theory of String Resonance on Musical Instruments', Acustica, Vol 49 (1981) ], which actually concern the behaviour of low impedance / highly coupled systems under certain conditions, such as a cello when a 'wolf' note is generated.

Please don't start this again.

If that was true, then a Les Paul would sound the same as an SG and a 335, or even a fully hollow ES175.  The all have the same scale length.  I'm pretty sure that Gibson have made versions of all of those with 57 Classic pickups over the years, so you can get them all with the exact same scale length, and exact same pickups, so they should sound the same according to your logic.  It's obvious to anyone with a pair of functioning ears that those four guitars sound different.

At this point I'm beginning to wonder if you are just trolling.

poopot

Joking aside... there is some truth to it!
i have a blue telecaster and it sounds totally different tonally to my white strat.

thegummy

crunchman said:

Three-ColourSunburst said:

Bigsby said:

We all intuitively believe our senses to be independent, accurate, and consistent reporters of the external world. They're not. Each is the result of extensive processing, that includes memories, beliefs, biases and inputs from other senses, and all are experienced in exactly the same space of consciousness: You don't 'hear' in one place, and 'see' in another. Even the prior state of your brain will influence your sensory experience, and thus your experience of the external world, even when that hasn't changed at all.

True that, whether we are talking about the taste of wine, the interpretation of an ambiguous visual image or the (perceived) sound of a Stradivarius, 'directional' speaker cables or electric guitar 'tone wood'*.

*To be fair differences in sustain can be misinterpreted as differences in timbre as the higher partials tend to decay more quickly, but even here factors such as the attack and decay of a note play at least as big a role in the characteristic sound of an instrument as the partials themselves.

One reason for this is that electric guitar pickups, because they only sense a small part of the string, acts as filters, changing the relative strength of each partial at every fret (even eliminating some). Yet despite these significant changes in the balance of the partials from note to note we still perceive the timbre to be constant. A major reason for this is because it is the amplifier  that adds most of the colour to the basic 'twang' of the string, by generating harmonic overtones and clipping the wave form. This is also why even a '59 Les Paul will sound 'sterile' though a truly hi-fi amplifier. (And there is no such thing as a truly 'clean' guitar amp.) In reality the signal generated by the pickups of an electric guitar is 'sterile' with the partials almost perfectly matching the mathematical model of a fixed string (apart from some small variations due to the stiffness of the string).

As to 'string- body coupling' and 'resonance', these tend to be either misplaced over-generalisations based on what is known about the way acoustic guitars work, where you listen to the sound waves directly generated by the vibrations of the sound board, and / or misinterpretations of the mathematical models developed by researchers such as Gough [see 'The Theory of String Resonance on Musical Instruments', Acustica, Vol 49 (1981) ], which actually concern the behaviour of low impedance / highly coupled systems under certain conditions, such as a cello when a 'wolf' note is generated.

Please don't start this again.

If that was true, then a Les Paul would sound the same as an SG and a 335, or even a fully hollow ES175.  The all have the same scale length.  I'm pretty sure that Gibson have made versions of all of those with 57 Classic pickups over the years, so you can get them all with the exact same scale length, and exact same pickups, so they should sound the same according to your logic.  It's obvious to anyone with a pair of functioning ears that those four guitars sound different.

At this point I'm beginning to wonder if you are just trolling.

The SG and Les Paul have different pickup placement so that will be the main factor in the sound difference between those guitars.

Not sure about the 335; if it has the same placement as the Les Paul then I think you might be surprised how hard it would be to tell which is which on a blind test.

Three-ColourSunburst

Here's another illustration of the fact that the sound of an electric guitar is almost wholly a product of 1) The attack, decay and overtones generated by the way the string is picked, its length, mass tension and stiffness. 2) The way those partials are filtered by the pickups and 3) The way the signal is modified by the amplifier, thereby creating the classic electric guitar sound.

If you take an electric guitar with a body made of mahogany and fit piezo pickups under the saddles, what will it sound like? According to the 'tone wood ' theorists what will happen is that an instant after a note is sounded, the body will 'resonate' with the string, and as a result certain partials on the string will be suppressed and others enhanced, leaving only the 'mahogany sounding' partials to be sensed by the pickup. In reality no such enhancement or suppression occurs, and all the partials that the string had as a result of where and how it was plucked, its tension, mass and so on will still be intact, although their amplitude will fall as the overall energy of the string is dissipated, their decay following basic mathematical principles, .

That this is the case is illustrated by the fact that the piezo pickups will produce a sound much like that of a normal acoustic guitar, with its thin soundboard made of spruce, its hollow body and so on.  The reason for this is that, just like the soundboard of an acoustic guitar, a piezo pickup is driven by all the partials on the string, with none of the filtering that occurs with an electromagnetic pickup, and obviously, if the partials are there to be sensed by the piezo pickups, the mahogany body cannot have somehow selected only the 'mahogany sounding' ones. 

It also follows that the sound of an acoustic guitar is essentially the sound of an amplified string, although variations in the wood, bracing and so on will cause some of the partials to be amplified more than others. In effect the soundboard is itself a set of filters. Again the partials on the string will be pretty much unchanged, other than a gradual decrease in their amplitude as energy is lost through the bridge as it drives the soundboard. Interestingly, the many natural vibration frequencies of an acoustic guitar's soundboard - its eignemodes - do not correspond to the harmonic series, so the vibrations of the soundboard will still be 'forced' rather than involve 'resonances', although these resonances can still colour the sound produced.

Situations where a higher degree of string-body coupling can occur. In an electric guitar the impedance between the string, bridge and body is far too high for body resonances to affect the string, and the long sustain of an electric guitar is a direct consequence of this high impedance. However, areas of lower impedance can sometimes occur at the string- fret- neck interface. These will typically cause a 'dead spot', where the energy of the string leaks away as a result of it driving the vibrations in the neck. As a consequence there will be very little sustain for that particular note in that particular location.

Instrument such as the violin will have much lower impedance values at the string-bridge-body interface. (One reason being the low mass of a violin bridge, typically under 2g.) As a result of this the violin has very little sustain, which is why a bow is needed to constantly feed energy into the system. (A guitar built with a similarly low level of impedance would sound much like a violin played pizzicato.) With a violin or cello there can be a sufficiently  high degree of coupling between the string and body for the vibrations of the body to directly influence the harmonic balance of the string, but this usually only happens when the primary resonance of the body has a frequency close to that of a played note, typically resulting in the famous 'wolf note'.

An example of electric guitar with a piezo pickup under the saddles.

crunchman

thegummy said:

The SG and Les Paul have different pickup placement so that will be the main factor in the sound difference between those guitars.

Not sure about the 335; if it has the same placement as the Les Paul then I think you might be surprised how hard it would be to tell which is which on a blind test.

Neck pickup is in a different place, but the bridge is in the same place as far as I can see.  Bridge pickup on an SG sounds different from the bridge pickup on a Les Paul.

I've seen it with PRS as well.  I had one of the original PRS Singlecuts with #7 pickups, which was basically a Les Paul style guitar with a maple cap.  I've now got an S2 Singlecut Satin, again with #7 pickups, which is all mahogany.  The S2 has a thinner body, as well as different wood, but according to 3CS that shouldn't make a difference.  They have the same scale length and same pickups (in the same locations) so they should sound the same.  They don't sound the same.  Interestingly, the all mahogany thinner bodied guitar sounds a lot like an SG!  The thicker bodied guitar with a maple cap was a lot closer to a Les Paul.

It's not just LP vs SG vs 335.  If 3CS is correct (which he's not) then the ES175 should sound exactly the same.  It has the same scale and pickups.  If you can't tell the difference between an SG and an ES175, then I respectfully suggest that you get your hearing checked.

That's all I'm saying on this.  I've got drawn into silly debates with 3CS in the past and I'm not doing it again.

Bigsby

Three-ColourSunburst said:

Bigsby said:

We all intuitively believe our senses to be independent, accurate, and consistent reporters of the external world. They're not. Each is the result of extensive processing, that includes memories, beliefs, biases and inputs from other senses... Even the prior state of your brain will influence your sensory experience, and thus your experience of the external world, even when that hasn't changed at all.

A classic illustration of how visual information influences what we 'hear' is the McGurk effect. A good explanation of this effect here:

Yes, a good illustration of the way all senses influence each other, but it's also really significant that our brains process and even create much of what we experience as a sensory input, in other words, the eyes don't simply project an image of the world into our minds. Anil Seth has a great way of describing our conscious reality as being a controlled hallucination by the brain, he gave an interesting TED talk on the subject a while back.

Funkfingers

It's all in the mind.

Colour can certainly influence human mood and perception. Thus, it could influence a player's attitude to a specific guitar.