The brown note.

Truly, if this actually were to exist, it would be one hell of a way to get revenge.

Tell me aboot it!

The brown note does exist,they couldn't really play it on TV because everyone would shit their pants.

In article , [email] (tickleme elmo) wrote:

But just think how funny that'd be. Hm. I guess you're right.

Imagine Howard Rosenberg's column the next day. "Wednesday night was a new low for cable television. A few moments before 11:30 PM, everyone tuned into Comedy Central pooped their pants. Including me. I ruined the upholstery on my chair, my wife ruined the couch, and the noise and smells from everyone else on the block was revolting. The HazMat men are still here. Still, it had to be one of the boys' best episodes so far. I'm writing off all our cleaning expenses off as a business deduction. And Saturday night I will be equipped with earmuffs and a Bob Dole Depends. Copyright 2000 by the LA Times."

No, they couldn't get it to work on TV becaue most TV speakers are not subwoofers capable of playing the real note, not it's upper harmonics.

I don't think it's the actual note they played, which is on a regular piano. I think it's the one an octave lower, which can be found on a 97-key Bosendorfer piano.

Imagine one of those assholes with super-loud subwoofers going down the street, those speakers could play them, and not affect the guys in the car.

Working from memory here, which has been subjected to various illegal substances in the past 15 years, so I may be wrong, but I think it's actually a 12Hz tone that causes you to lose bowel control. Since it is below 20Hz, it is technically sub-audible but you can feel it (and would notice even if you didn't feel it if it really works). I wouldn't expect a piano, even a 97 note piano to be able to play it but there are certain pipe organs that go down to 8-10Hz. Hmmmm, maybe I really do need that great big Velodyne subwoofer, that would keep the salespukes out of my office. :)

Jeremiah

D.G. Porter wrote in message ...

I'm not sure, but I think the low C on a Bosendorfer is around 16-17 Hz. The low A on a standard keyboad is 27.5 Hz. I've forgotten the formula for determining the half-steps. If it is around 12 Hz then it would be below the E-flat an octave lower than the one on the Bosendorfer.

A 32-foot low C? Plus you'd have to be in the right place to catch the frequency. In '74 I heard Harry Partch's "The Bewitched" at UCLA, and we sat way up in the balcony, and only up there could you "hear" the upper three notes of the Marimba Eroica, but I still culdn't "hear" or even feel the lowest 2 notes as pitches.

You could try bombaring them with Varese's Poem Electronique!

D.G. Porter wrote in message ...

a

OK, warning, sometimes tech guy with very little musical background here, so I'm sure I'm going to step all over my dick. I think I remember that an octave is a doubling of the frequency, so if the low A is 27.5 Hz, the next A is 55Hz. Anyone know what note is at 24Hz? I'll talk to my roommate about this later this week; he's the guy who told me about the Brown Note. We work different schedules, so I only see him on the weekends though. He may be able to point me to the correct source to confirm this.

This is where I start to get confused. Too much work with beat frequencies and hemi-sync tones as part of my girlfriends master's thesis, but I know you can notice beat frequencies below 20Hz, just not sure if that counts. I think it comes down to amplitude. You just have to push insane amounts of air to make a sub-audible *loud?* enough to be felt.

Hmmmm, I think I'll have to check that one out. How do I convince IT that I really need a 24inch subwoofer for my workstation?

Yes, the next is 110 (bottom space in bass clef), next is 220 (top line in bass clef), next is your tuning-note A=440 (2nd space in treble clef). Now, mind you, in Bach's time that A was anywhere from �- to �-step flatter than our current A.

Claim it's a tax-deductible expense! I was just thinking about this time Varese had a guest over and he went into his tech room to play the guy some tapes, and the guy was in the other room right in front of this huge speaker, and Varese had the volume cranke up so high that the guy was being physically assaulted by the sounds, and his physical defense reaction was to fall asleep! (I also think these were the tape interpolations for "Deserts," either the first version [which was on a Finnadar LP with notes by Frank Zappa] or the processed 2nd version [which was on the Robert Craft LP set].)

Well, I have all the information I need to supply an equation for the frequency of notes using the base frequency of A=27.5 Hz:

y = 27.5 * 2 ^ (x/12)

The note played on the show is F-sharp (46.25 Hz).

--- Willie Westwood

Willie Westwood wrote in message ...

frequency

OK, this is pretty close. If you were to go two octaves below, you end up at about 11.56Hz, which is pretty close to the 12Hz I remember. Maybe it is a really low F-sharp. Hmmm, give me a 24" cone and a 55-gallon barrel and we can have some fun. :)

Jeremiah

HAHA, are you serious? Get on public access and see if it works.

In article ,

Yeah, I heard it exists too. It has to do with the French Government trying to find a way to use sound waves for riot control. If there was a large crowd that needed to be broken up, the French figured that if they could have some noise/sound that was so obnoxious they could play it and people would forget about the riot or demonstration they were attending and would go home. If played over a large PA system, this would have been an easy way to break up the conflict without getting riot police into the fold. I think it may have been during WWII ( I don't know, that's just what I heard). I guess that during the "testing" process; you know, finding the "offensive note", they found that there was a particular freequency that caused people to loose control of their bowels and with some, their lower intestinal tract exploded. However, I have nothing to back up the story. I don't suppose you know where I can find more information?

[email] wrote:

(snip)

I've heard of this! It's the French version of the Killer Joke.

Bill Lynch :-)

I don't know where you can find more information; perhaps you can just go to Lycos or whatever and do an advanced search of some type so that you don't get 20000 hits.

Anyway, the best part of the story I heard, which was very similar to your retelling except that it didn't involve a particular government (e.g., French), and there was a reason explained for why it wasn't used.

You see, low frequency waves *are* basically omnidirectional. (That's why you only need one subwoofer in a home theatre setup and it doesn't matter much where it goes. Well, if it's near a wall or especially in a corner, the bass increases, but what I mean is that it doesn't have to be in the middle of the soundfield...) This means that they spread out in all directions. High frequency waves can be aimed. So, playing this ultra-low colon-resonating frequency had a tendency to affect unintended parties. What a riot!!

er, kinda like "friendly fire" (pardon the pun).

I remember now that the way I heard the story, it was a technique that the US was contemplating using on Vietnam War protesters...can you imagine?

"Hell no, we won't go! Hell no, we won't go!...say, I really gotta take a big dump!! Let's get outta here."

Kinda makes those earmuffs the boys wore ineffective, huh? If the brown noise affects the bowels, there's no point to wearing the earmuffs.

--- Willie Westwood

I dunno. When I heard it played, I kinda felt the need to spill poo. :-)

On Wed, 19 Jan 2000 12:32:22 GMT, Steve Sutton wrote:

Y'know.If this actually became a weapon of war,the only nation that would be left standing is Ethiopia.Since they don't have anything to eat,they don't have anything to shit.All countries would be incapacitated with the hershey squirts.All they would need to do is march in with their army(if they have one) and walk into the world's capital buildings while our world leaders are in the commode trying to regain bowel control.It's ingenius!

(snip)

Like nukes, very messy cleanup. Back to the neutron bomb.

Bill Lynch :-)

Too bad I missed this. I should've taped it. This kinda reminds me of that bit from Howard Stern's movie where he gets that chick to really get it on with the speaker. Now that was funny. I bet though I wouldn't have the bad case of the s**ts if I had to hear and/or feel this.

Arigatoo to Sayonara, Chris S.

--"Fightin' the Frizzies since 1978"--

Are you a chick? Meheheheheheheh, I wouldnt mind fighting a chick's "frizzies" since 1978!

That's the first thing I remembered when I heard it! And it IS funnier than mere loss of bowel control. Trey and Matt should try that with Cartman's mom.

--- Willie Westwood

Wow. The lowest audible note is at 20 Hz or so. Seven Hz is 7/7 of a second, so you you can actually see the vibrations as undulations if you have a source powerful enough to move things with pressure waves. Anybody know the frequency of a jack hammer at full force?

--- Willie Westwood

That's not at all that fast. I can easily play a septuplet at MM = 60 on a big bass drum in a resonant hall and no one ever melts.

(not

I would be interested if anyone could locate this supposed documentary or a reference to it. I was told a similar story long ago and didn't necessarily believe it, but found it amusing. Since posting here about the "facts" of the story I heard, others have debunked it as nonsense, with which I cannot (nor want to) disagree. However, I would like to see if there is any truth to the story, which is quickly becoming an urban legend of sorts.

And I thought it had already been achieved by Yoko Ono in her music.

In article , "Bill K." wrote:

I'd assume that was their point.

On Thu, 13 Jan 2000 12:30:57 -0600, Howard S Shubs wrote:

No, Yoko's music doesn't cause spontaneous shitting, it causes one's eardrums to disintegrate.

----- Lone Wolf And so ends another episode of trailer park theatre.

"No ticket." - Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade/Dogma

"No cake for the impuritor." - Moses, South Park

In article , [email] (Lone Wolf) wrote:

Correction accepted. All I know is her "music" sucks ass.

On Thu, 13 Jan 2000 19:43:52 -0600, Howard S Shubs wrote:

Why, o why did that asshole have to use EVERY bullet on Lennon? Just one clean shot to Yoko's head... sigh...

----- Lone Wolf And so ends another episode of trailer park theatre.

"No ticket." - Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade/Dogma

"No cake for the impuritor." - Moses, South Park

[Here's a sick idea that Trey and Matt haven't though up yet!]

"Oh, Paul, Paul!" "Yes, Yoko?" "My work done, I get rid of John, and now cancer I give Linda work, we can be together now!" "Blimey!"

I think I've heard that mentioned before...heh.

In article , [email] (Lone Wolf) wrote:

Perhaps he could only take so much hypocrisy? John Lennon: massive hypocrite. He spoke approvingly of doing w/o stuff, but meanwhile he lived in an expensive New York City apartment...

It has nothing to do with whether you are wearing headphones...Also, the frequency is supposed to be the "resonant frequency" of the colon and has nothing to do with whether you can hear it.

Resonant frequency...imagine the wine glass breaking in those Memorex ads? That was the resonant frequency of the wine glass.

*The rest of David S. Chesler's post is below my response*

Are you saying that I need to relax because of what I wrote? Or are you saying that I should relax because you don't want to be bitched at for writing what you wrote?

Anyway, what I wrote was simply an explanation of a story I heard, and I didn't say it was true. I just noticed while watching the episode that the concept of wearing headphones (to block one's hearing) to prevent the effects of the "brown note" didn't jive with the story I heard, which was about the resonant frequency of the colon. It was a story I heard years ago.

Anyway, to address your points (in the way I interpreted the story I heard, with some basic extrapolations):

1) Resonant frequency of the average human colon, which would cause the "note" to affect the largest # of people. (Remember now, we're talking fiction now, so please don't try to pick apart my words with scientific experiments and the like. I haven't thought about it in my lifetime as much as you did in your one post; I was simply repeating the details of a story I heard.)

• See parenthetical notes in 1).

3) ...then I suppose you would have an urge to defecate. That's what most people feel when their guts start churning and rumbling. And that was the *supposed* point -- to make unruly crowds disperse; unless you have no qualms about shitting your pants in public, you head for an isolated/private place -- ideally a toilet.

Remember, it's just a cartoon and we are trying to have some fun talking about it. Discussing the actual medical physics to debunk another person's comments about a story they heard takes all the fun out of it.

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Your first post with all the medical physics didn't sound all that fun, though. It sounded like you were trying to prove what I wrote was stupid, which it was. No offense taken...my girlfriend's brother-in-law is a medical physicist, though I don't know if he has studied the brown note. :)

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It does, but you need a lot of voulme and one marklar of a subwoofer to get it.