Brown became serious about music in his teens and chose to learn the drums. His greatest inspirations in music at the time were Santana, Earth Wind and Fire and Chicago. He later became proficient playing timbales, conga drums, and a large number of other percussion instruments. Later, Brown was one of the pioneer users of the musical synthesizer, and for a time he was spokesman for the ARP Synthesizer company, since he used their products almost exclusively in performances and recordings. He has also been credited as being one of the founders of house music in the 1970s.