“Background noise” is a phrase that has been familiar to me since my work-in-a-big-office days. Once you got used to working in a busy space, you could sit at your cubicle and type away, and all the talking, phone ringing, book dropping noises merged into a single blur of sounds. It takes practice, but you eventually tune out the sounds around you… until the person in the cubicle next to you starts having an argument with someone on the other end of their phone – NOW your attention snaps back into laser-like focus… THAT conversation becomes all that you can hear above and beyond the general babble.
Elevator muzac, or the songs played at low levels in the supermarket or mall are a version of a deliberate background noise that aims to cancel out the talking, ringing, banging. The shop wants you to stay in a good mood, to stay focused on your task at hand – which is spending money in their store.
If you’re lucky enough to go for a massage for Mother’s Day, then there’s a high chance that they’ll be playing “ambient music”, such as waterfalls and pan flutes, to drown out (or warble out) the sounds of traffic that might be sneaking in through the window glass.
What I have more recently discovered, is that gentle music can have the same effect when you are trying to sleep off a migraine.
For me, spa-like music, with minimal or no lyrics, works best. Music that is soft and has maybe a low-frequency heartbeat of a drum in the background, but not too many high-frequency tinkly ding-dongy sounds that get under my heat-pack-beret and dig into my sore brain. It’s still a work in practice, but my Spotify Healing Music for Migraines represents the music that currently works best for me.
For other people with migraine, however, I have heard that some of them like noise that is labelled different colors: brown noise / green noise / black noise / white noise.
One of my blogging besties, M’chel at M’Chel’s Musings, had been talking to me about ‘Brown Noise’ and when I told her I hadn’t heard about it, she wrote a blog post: Frequency tunes for you | M’chelsMusings (wordpress.com).
[Apologies to M’Chel; she did this months ago and I kept promising I’d do a shoutout and kept forgetting… it’s a reflection on my rotten brain not her excellent post!]
In M’Chels post she includes links to try and includes a selection of brown and green music videos to try on YouTube. M’Chel notes that she uses Brown Noise to distract her busy brain, calm things down a notch and rest a bit easier.
So, what do all these different colored music mean?
Here’s a short list, in order of how popular they are on Spotify:
+ White noise = I’ve heard about this before – it basically sounds like a whirring fan, or static from a radio or TV set that aren’t tuned to a station – it sounds like I would imagine my brain fog to be if it were a noise. I’m NOT a lover of this sort of sound because it is just an onslaught of nothingness that hurts my head; there’s nothing I can hold onto, no message in the madness… I feel like there is the constant risk that it will give me tinnitus without any benefit. But millions of other people apparently love it!
[1.5 million followers: White Noise | Spotify Playlist]
+ Brown noise = named after scientist Robert Brown, it includes deeper, low-frequency sounds such as thunder, an engine growling, heavy rain on a tin roof, the shower running, a strong wind in tree leaves, the sea-surf during a storm…
[Nearly 1 million followers: Brown Noise | Spotify Playlist]
+ Pink noise = is apparently white noise but with the very top end, high frequency sounds turned down. Examples apparently include waterfalls, normal rain, gentle wind rustling leaves, or a heartbeat. The sounds are somewhere between brown and white.
[370K followers: Pink Noise | Spotify Playlist]
+ Green noise = sits on the spectrum between white and pink according to one site, but more specifically, is the sound of nature. Instead of whirring fans or the hum of a washing machine, this is all waterfalls, babbling brooks, and waves on the shore.
[250K followers: Green Noise | Spotify Playlist ]
+ Black noise = is almost silent… voidal… but if you turn the volume up there are gurgling, bubbling, drumbeats… I hear witchy-poo-voodoo sounds at midnight on the moors. The idea is apparently if you can’t handle complete silence, then this almost liquid murmuring helps distract you from the nothingness.
[50K followers: Black Noise | Spotify Playlist]
+ Blue noise = this HURTS – it is the opposite of pink – the low frequency noise is turned down, and only the high frequency sounds remain. Imagine the hissing of a hose, high pressure steam escaping a bent pipe, the sound of a horror movie machine designed to give you radiation poisoning… UGH. This time, the rest of the world seems to agree with me; it is unpopular.
[20K followers: Blue Noise | Spotify Playlist]
There was no official playlist by Spotify, but grey, yellow and red noise also appeared as playlists uploaded by others.
Here’s some websites I read about the different colors and how they might help your brain relax and fall into a deeper sleep:
What Is Brown Noise? The Benefits (clevelandclinic.org)
What is green noise and does it help you sleep? — Calm Blog
Pink Noise Vs. Brown Noise, Black Noise, and White Noise for Sleep (healthline.com)
The Real Difference Between Noise Colors (thelist.com)
[Disclaimer – just a reminder that I am not a doctor – but look after your ears – don’t have the volume up too high or listen for too long (especially if you are wearing headphones) – and be sure to check in with your healthcare provider if you have tinnitus or other ear issues before listening to any noisy playlists!]
Hope this post gives you something to think about. For me, it’s green music or bust… (although I might make an exception for black noise) – the others have no appeal whatsoever (at the moment)… but everyone’s ears are different.
Let me know below whether you have a colored music you like best and whether you use it to help you concentrate better or sleep deeper.
Take care musically, Linda x
PS – here’s the healing sounds video that M’Chel sent me (thanks M’Chel) – it goes for 10 hours, and slowly works its way through low and high frequencies – some resonate better within my soul than others, but you can try it out and see how they feel for you (the ‘chapters’ of the different sounds are marked in the banner at the bottom so you can skip sections if they don’t feel right). Oh, and if you’re curious (like me) “Solfeggio Frequencies” are apparently sound vibrations as old as medieval Gregorian chants, and in the same way that music in a gothic cathedral reverberates off the walls and seems to get into your cells and soul… these vibrational sounds also have the power to make our mind, body and spirit feel better:
The Mindful Migraine 
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