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Theater for the Mind: The Golden Age of radio dramas

Radio.png

This episode originally aired on Imaginary Worlds. Go subscribe!

The "golden age of radio drama" may have been a stellar period for storytelling -- but the stories weren't all golden bright. Sci-fi and horror radio dramas explored deep anxieties people felt from the Depression through the Cold War, and set the stage for later stories that couldn't be told yet without special effects. Eric Molinsky of the podcast Imaginary Worlds co-hosts this episode as we hear from historians like Neil Verma and Richard J. Hand, and radio drama veterans like Dirk Maggs and Richard Toscan. Plus Emory Braswell recalls the day he thought Martians invaded New Jersey. 

20K is made out of the studios of Defacto Sound and hosted by Dallas Taylor.

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View Transcript ▶︎

[SFX: radio drama starts playing for a few seconds, cues up a transmission from outer space. Effect intro line of the show to fit in the old radio drama...]

You’re listening to Twenty Thousand Hertz. I’m Dallas Taylor.

[music start]

The first radio broadcasts began about a hundred years ago. At the time, some people thought that radio technology was a novelty. They believed it was too complicated to be useful. But over time, radio technology became smaller, cheaper, and easier to operate. Eventually there was a radio in every household and every car.

And it wasn’t just music or news like today, there were full fledged dramatic stories on the radio. When you listen to drama instead of watching it, it forces you to dive headfirst into your imagination.

In this episode, we’re going to take a trip back in time to when radio dramas were king.

[music out]

We made this episode with our friend Eric Molinsky of Imaginary Worlds, which is an amazing podcast about the sci-fi and fantasy genres. Here’s Eric.

[bring in the SFX from the show….]

When Emory Braswell was growing up in the 1930’s, he used to love listening to radio drama serials.

Emory: I listened to The Shadow [SFX] and The Lone Ranger [SFX], Jack Armstrong, the All American Boy [SFX].

But Emory’s parents restricted the amount of radio he could listen to – especially at night -- although, they always made exceptions if Joe Louis was boxing, or if the President was addressing the nation.

And then one night [SFX: crickles cirp as call pulls up] in October 1938, Emory heard his father’s Model-A Ford pull up to the house, and he thought he heard the Franklin Roosevelt on the radio.

[SFX: War of the Worlds Clip]

Emory: So I ran down and got in the car and my mother was sitting there too. I said, "What's happening?" He said, "Well, there's some kind of story going on about an invasion. We're being invaded by Mars or something." My father sounded skeptical [SFX: clip continues]. So I listened to it, and sure enough there was somebody supposedly from either the state department or the “gub-mint”, as my family would say, talking about a meteor that had crashed in New Jersey and there were beings coming out of it and they were destroying all the local militia and stuff [SFX: clip continues]. One of the fascinating parts about the program was it was a music program and they would interrupt the music for many bulletins coming from Jersey.

[SFX: War of the Worlds bulletins]

I was just wide eyed listening to it, trying to decide, is this all happening or not? My father was kind of skeptical because when it was over with, he says, "I think it's a hoax." As I said, the business about the music going on and bulletins coming made it seem much more real [SFX: Bulletin clip]. Then when the program was over, it seemed to go back to regular programming, and we could understand, and we listened for further announcements and nothing came. So my father said, "That proves it's a hoax." I took it seriously.

[music start]

Eventually learned that they were listening to War of the Worlds, adapted by Orson Welles.

Neil Verma teaches radio history at Northwestern University. He says there’s a reason why young Emory Braswell thought he heard FDR during the show.

Neil: There's a moment in the War of the World's broadcast where the Secretary of the Interior comes on the microphone on the world of the fiction and originally, that piece was written to be not the Secretary of the Interior, but President Roosevelt. The CBS Network said, "No, no, no, you can't have President Roosevelt's voice if it's not actually President Roosevelt. People will get confused; we'll get in trouble. We can't do it." Orson Welles says, "Okay, well, we'll change it to the Secretary of the Interior." Then, the actor who portrayed the role goes up to Welles, according to legend and says, "Well, I don't know how the Secretary of the Interior sounds." Welles says, "Don't worry. He sounds just like Roosevelt."

Richard: I mean that's the achievement of War of the Worlds, it sounds like the weather forecast, it sounds like a radio show playing music and then gradually it shifts.

Thats Richard J. Hand. He teaches radio drama at The University of East Anglia in the UK.

Richard: And I think that's one reason it had such impact, is that understanding, we can take a genre and jump a form, and use the structures, and formula, and conventions of another form in order to tell a story.

When we think about pop culture in the 20th century, we tend to focus on movies, TV or pop music. It’s easy to forget that radio was the dominant form of entertainment for decades. There were hit shows in every genre, but science fiction in particular kept pushing the boundaries of what the medium could do.

And these radio dramas laid the groundwork for stories that couldn’t be done on film for decades because special effects weren’t good enough. In some ways, they’re like the missing cultural link between genre fiction, and the movies and shows we watch today. But they’re also stand-alone works of audio art that could play with our imagination in ways that the printed word and the visual image never could.

There is such a rich history of sound in radio dramas. They capture your imagination in a special way. It’s really a unique experience compared to watching a movie. So, let’s starting by zooming out and looking at the big picture. When did the golden age of radio dramas really start?

They really seem to have tanek off in 1934 when the FCC was created.Which is The Federal Communications Commission – which is still around today. That’s around the time when the big networks starting forming like CBS and NBC.

Which are also still around today, but mostly in the form of Television.

Yeah. Neil Verma says when the networks got into the business of making highly produced radio dramas, they were not motivated by noble reasons.

Neil: If they couldn't demonstrate a level of public service that they were giving to the listeners out there, then they ran the risk of further government regulation and intrusion, so all of the money they were making out of selling all the bootblack and soup and yeast and tea, they would be taken away. So they enshrined in their mandate the idea to create high culture content, and for a lot of them that meant radio drama.

[music start]

If we look at the big picture, each decade of radio drama had its own style. The radio dramas in the ‘30s were ambitious. They grappled with big nationalistic ideas because it was the Depression. Then in the ‘40s, anxiety around the war got channeled into radio dramas that were like film noirs, or I guess you could call them “radio noirs.” Neil Verma actually had a good way of putting it.

Neil: In the 1930s, radio is kind of a theater in the mind, so it's a big kind of theatrical space that you're supposed to imagine in your mind. In the 1940s, it becomes really a theater about the mind.

And then in the ‘50s, radio dramas are very influenced by the Cold War - with aliens standing in for the Soviets. There’s a really famous radio drama called Zero Hour from 1955, which was written by Ray Bradbury. Actually, a lot of famous Sci-fi writers got their start in radio. And the alien invasion is told from the point of view of a woman who discovers the kids in her neighborhood, including her daughter, have been co-opted by these inner-dimensional beings. The parents think the kids are playing a game, but slowly this one woman begins to realize the truth.

[SFX: Clip 1: Zero Hour]

Neil: The main character, played by Esa Ashdown, is immobile. Almost all of this play takes place in her kitchen or living room. Most of the interplay between her and her daughter the ones where she comes to suspect the daughter is collaborating with this evil alien happen at just outside the edge of our earshot.

[SFX: Clip 2: Zero Hour]

God, that’s so erie. I love it. I think a lot of people have a misconception that radio dramas from this era were goofy or naïve.

Yeah, I used to think it was just two guys banging coconuts together in front of a microphone being like “look the horse is coming”. That was true for some radio serials, especially the ones aimed at kids. But when I listened to these shows, I couldn’t believe how dark and weird they were.

Well for the era, how exactly was the FCC was okay with that?

Well, it’s funny because the FCC was more concerned with obscenity, or overt political messages, or as you heard early, you couldn’t have someone impersonate Franklin Roosevelt. But radio wasn’t under the same kind of moralistic code that Hollywood was back then, where they were really restricted by what kind of stories they could tell or couldn’t tell. Neil Verma thinks the censors feared the power of visual images, but they underestimated the power of audio to create images in our mind.

Neil: Almost everyone talks about radio as a blind medium, which is a particular way of talking about a medium, no one talks about sculpture as a deaf medium, but whenever you hear anything about radio, the first thing people say is it's blind. It's strange to characterize or essentialize a medium by something it can't provide.

People who are kind of boosters for the medium would say, “don’t talk about what radio doesn’t have, an image, and talk about how its images can be more malleable than images that take on some kind of physical visual form.

So now, I’m really intrigued. Eric, give me some more examples of this really dark stuff?

Well, thrillers were the dominant format, especially in the 40’s. But they weren’t just spy thrillers or detective shows. A lot of these radio drama’s are what we categorize as “horror” today.

Richard: Some things that we might think of post George Romero's Night of the Living Dead, this kind of unhappy ending, you're getting it in the '30s and '40s.

Again, that’s Richard Hand.

Richard: And one great example of that was Arch Oboler's play, Burial Services, which is about a young woman being buried alive in a coffin, and we hear the inside of her head, a kind of stream of consciousness because she's not dead, she's in a catatonic fit or whatever it might be. But no one rescues her. Unfortunately there's no recording of that particular piece, but the response was phenomenal. And there was lots of letters of complaints, and shock and disgust. And Arch Oboler thought he'd get sacked, but actually the station were happy saying, "Wow, if there's this many people complaining, how many people are listening? This is fantastic."

A lot of these shows, especially in the 30’s and 40’s were live, and listeners really were disgusted. If the FCC clamped down, the networks would simply promise not to do it again. And they couldn’t, because it was live.

The most famous horror story from this era was The Thing On Fourble Board from a spooky anthology series called Quiet, Please.

This was around 1948.

It’s mostly a monologue from an oil field worker, and he’s telling the story about he and his friend found this alien creature on a fourble board - which is like a catwalk on an oilrig. And he describes this creature as having the head and torso of a girl, but the body of a giant spider.

Ew.

[SFX: Clip 1 - Fourble Board]

And as the character is talking, he’s waiting for his “wife” to come out, and eventually we realize his “wife” is the creature. And we’re not a passive listener. We’re her next meal.

[SFX: Clip 2 - Fourble Board]

Oh my goodness. So...It’s like the difference between reading a book and watching a movie. There’s always something that’s lost because these words are being tapped into a different part of your brain, that are triggering this kind of deeper intelect . This whole clip is like the perfect example of how, I don’t want to see any of this stuff. And even if it was visual, you’d lose a lot of this deep inner thought. So this whole audio only communicating, I don’t think could be done the same way visually. Because it’s hitting me in a totally different place in my brain than if I was absorbing that through my eyes.

Yea, when I was listening to this as well, I started to imagine ok if this were live action in the ‘70s or ‘80s, they would’ve used stop motion creature.

Yea.

Which may have seen scary, or a puppet, but it would have gotten dated. Today the creature would be CG. Which I have a big issue against, a lot of CG stuff I think looks so fake.

Yea

Either way something would’ve been lost.

Horror films in the 1940’s we’re nothing like this. When this episode came out in 1948, the big kind of quote, “horror” movie that year was Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein.

[music in]

In the 1950’s, the television became more accessible. Because of this, radio dramas began to slowly decline in popularity. But in the 1970’s, and even today, radio dramas have made surprising comeback. More after the break.

[music out]

[MID ROLL]

[music in]

Radio dramas create some of the most vivid and exciting listening experiences. But, one of the things that fascinated me in researching the history of radio dramas was just how people listened to them.

Typically we imagine entire families sitting around staring at the radio, waiting for it to evolve and eventually become a television set.

Which is true to some extent, but in this era, people were used to listening to the radio in the car. And there were these little devices called crystal sets. They were crude pieces of technology with a copper wire that acted as an earbud. So these people were listening on these portable devices just like we do.

Richard: And that makes it such a unique experience. It’s no cinema is it? It’s not these other cultural forms. It’s something that’s invading your domestic space and I think that’s why science fiction and horror understood that on radio.

It’s also fascinating how they used sound effects to stimulate the listener’s imagination. Neil Verma talked about a pioneer in the field named Ora Nichols. She worked with Orson Welles for years.

[music out]

Neil: In the War of the Worlds there's this famous scene where you can hear the Martian vessel cooling and she did that by taking a cast iron pot and rubbing its two sides together to make that really specific, grindy voice.

[SFX: Clip - War of the Worlds, vessel cooling sound]

Neil: She also built machines and there were companies that would put together what would we think of as sound effects libraries on transcription discs.

And Richard Hand says audio engineers had all sorts of short cuts ready to go like that. If you wanted to simulate a gunshot...

Richard: Sometimes they'd use a metal rod and hit a leather seat, and you get that crisp bang sound, and that would work really well [SFX]. And this is one of my favorite things I demonstrate with while doing a practical session of radio, where you can take a cork and wet it, and squeak it against the side of a bottle or a saucer. And that was effect they would use for the sound of rats, because you get this squeaky, squeaky sound [SFX].

[music in]

But none of this mattered if the mic wasn’t placed properly. That may sound like a minor detail but Neil Verma says mic placement was crucial – not only with props but with actors too.

Neil: The world that is the off-mic environment, that's where radio drama happens. And that's how you create really important relations, like what character are you close to? What character do you listen to?

In the ‘30s and ‘40s, radio dramas were performed live, so there was a limit to how many of tricks you could do. But in the 1950s, they moved over to pre-recorded magnetic tape, which gave the audio engineers a lot more creative freedom. And radios themselves became more sophisticated, so listeners could hear this subtler sound design.

[music out]

Speaking of advances in technology, the conventional wisdom of the time is that radio dramas went out of fashion in because TV came along.

That’s true to some extent. The networks moved a ton of money and talent to Television. But something else pushed radio dramas off the air: It was rock n’ roll. Remember, these were commercial radio stations. They catered to the marketplace.

But radio dramas kept going in the UK.

Well, that’s because the BBC is government funded and that’s not something that happens in the States as much. They also have multiple outlets so they could play rock on one channel, and radio dramas on another, and on top of all of that they could create a television network and multiple television networks.

It wasn’t a zero sum game.

Not at all. And you talked with someone who’s worked with the BBC at that time?

Yeah, Dirk Maggs. He’s been directing radio dramas for decades.

Dirk: I try and think through the sequence of events of even the shortest, quickest sound.

He’s mostly worked with BBC, but he’s been working with Audible lately. He did this adaptation of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels, this big flat world on the back of a group of elephants that are on the back of a giant turtle -- that’s swimming through space.

Dirk: You know, you're thinking, "How the hell'd you do that?" But, you take it sequentially. Describe the turtle, describe the elephants, describe the world that's on there, and then go into the world. That would be my way of going at it.

But, when Dirk got to the BBC in the ‘70s, he says radio dramas were still going, but they were feeling a little stale creatively. There were a lot of legacy shows that had been around for years. Then in 1978, Douglas Adams – who was a writer on Doctor Who – created this really unusual radio drama called The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. In fact it wasn’t even a drama. It was an epic sci-fi comedy, which had never been done before at least on the radio.

Dirk: They really didn't think it was gonna get much of a listenership, so they put it on at half past 10 at night. It was not expected to do much business. And by the third week the listening figures they were getting back were through the roof. For myself, going into the BBC as a technician, it was the only thing everybody was talking about.

[SFX: Clip 1 - HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE]

The radio show was such a hit; Douglas Adams adapted it into a best selling novel – actually a series of novels. And the BBC adapted those novels back into radio. And eventually, Douglas Adams chose Dirk Maggs to work on the later radio shows.

Dirk: I think Hitchhiker’s worked as a radio drama for the reasons that it really didn’t quite come off as a television series or as a movie. If you have a story, that the very beginnings of it, is the end of everything. That’s the conceit. The first episode of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy destroys the Earth and everybody on it and it leaves just two humans, actually only one human in the first episode alive. That is so vast and so ambitious an idea that, for a start, you're gonna listen to the next week's episode to know where does this go from there. But secondly, the enormity of it -- if you are in that imaginative state where all these images are coming to you and you combine that with writing, which says, the Vogan ships hung in the air and in precisely the way that bricks don't. You know, it could only be born in an audio medium. It's too big, in a way, to combine those elements, and that was Douglas' achievement.

[music start]

Eventually radio drama got a second life in the U.S. too.

Thanks again to science fiction again. This was around the same time, late ‘70s. NPR was struggling – which is hard to imagine because NPR is a powerhouse today but it was pretty new back then. The president of NPR, Frank Mankiewicz, thought that a radio drama event could bring in new listeners. So he asked John Houseman for advice.

John Houseman was an actor and one of the founders of Juliard. He also worked with Orson Welles back on War of the Worlds. Houseman recommended that they hire an audio engineer named Richard Toscan to create this big radio drama event.

Richard T.: Having been handed this hot potato, I went back to John Housman, and I said, "Okay, you got me this job, how do you think I could develop an audience for public radio in America?" "How would you do that?" And in his Professor Kingsford voice he, after thinking a moment, he said, "create a scandal."

[music out]

This was the late 1970s, I mean at that point what is still shocking? And a friend of Richard said, sort of jokingly, why don’t you do Star Wars on the radio? And he thought, huh.

[start music]

Richard T.: Here was, at the time, the most visual film Hollywood had ever made, and to say you were going to turn that into radio just sounded so outlandish that it had to be possible. And I think the other thing that was feeding into that is everybody at NPR, or anybody under Frank Mankiewicz, that is anybody below Frank, was scandalized by the idea. This was seen as, you know, the most lowbrow, boring kind of thing. The result, of course, was that after the 13 episodes aired, despite all the sniping, and whatever, of NPR, the measurements that then came in showed, according to NPR, that it had raised the audience of NPR by 40%.

[music out]

NPR’s Star Wars was groundbreaking in other ways. It was also in stereo – which was not common back then. They got LucasFilm to lend them Ben Burtt’s sound effects, and the John Williams score. They had to recast most of the actors, except Mark Hamill. But Richard Toscan says the recasting worked in their favor.

Richard T.: Part of the idea is that we didn't want the series, or at least I didn't want the series to be a clone of the film. I didn’t want people to sit down in front of their radio and say oh, I remember this from three years ago or whatever.

Remember, Star Wars was a 2-hour movie. This was a 6-hour, 13-part radio drama. So they got the late writer Brian Daley – who had written Star War spin-off novels – to add additional scenes that were not in the movie [SFX]. So we got to hear Leia’s relationship with her father on Alderaan.

[SFX: Clip 1 - NPR STAR WARS]

And, we got to hear Luke’s training with Obi-Wan Kenobi:

[SFX: Clip 2 - NPR STAR WARS]

And Neil Verma says that NPR’s Star Wars had a huge influence on the generation coming of age in the 70’s and 80’s, that may have seen radio dramas as passe.

[music in]

Neil: You know a lot of people who make audio dramas today look back at this as the gold standard. But I think it's not just the gold standard because of the great score or the great sound effects or any of those sorts of things. I think because it really creates these deep senses of character out of what had been relatively two-dimensional characters and that's something that a lot of audio dramas these days like to explore. It's become a much more writerly medium.

Most of those old radio dramas are available for free online… so it’s a hidden treasure trove to discover. I find it amazing that these shows were built for the analog world, but they’re also perfect for the digital age. Today thanks to podcasting, audio dramas are making a huge comeback. ...and not only that, they’re becoming so popular that there are major television networks are starting to notice. We’re now seeing television adaptations of audio shows. Look at Homecoming, Lore, Startup and others. I believe audio dramas are going to continue to grow in popularity. And who knows, maybe we’ll make one. In the meantime, if there are any big shot studio executives looking for a television series about sound, wink wink nudge nudge.

Twenty Thousand Hertz is produced out of the studios of Defacto Sound. Find out more at defactosound dot com.

This episode was was written by Eric Molinsky with help from assistant producer Stephanie Billman. You should take a moment to immediately go subscribe to Eric’s podcast, Imaginary Worlds. I have no doubt you’ll love it. Just search Imaginary Worlds in any podcast player.

Over on the 20k side, thanks to Sam Schneble who helped produce this episode, along with Nick Spradlin who mixed and adapted the episode. Thanks also to our guests - Emory Braswell, Richard J. Hand, Richard Toscan, Dirk Maggs, and Neil Verma.

The music in this episode is from of our friends at Musicbed. ...and now you can also use their music too! For the first time ever they now have membership plans. Check it out and sign up at music.20k.org. Finally, you can engage with me and the rest of the Twenty Thousand Hertz team through our website, facebook, twitter or by writing hi at 20 kay dot org.

Thanks for listening.

[music out]

Recent Episodes

Theremin: The instrument that defined classic sci-fi & horror

Etherwave_Theremin_Kit7.png

This episode was written & produced by Colby Hartburg.

If you've ever watched an old sci-fi or horror film, you've probably heard the hair-tingling, alien sounds of the Theremin. It's a spooky, strange instrument that's played without being touched, and has become a staple for classic horror movies. This is the story of the Theremin's mysterious journey. Featuring Thereminist Rob Schwimmer, Michelle Moog-Koussa, daughter of Bob Moog and Executive Director of the Bob Moog Foundation, and Albert Glinsky, courtesy of Moog Music.


MUSIC IN THIS EPISODE

Optimistic Robot by Eric Kinny
Valentine by Makeup and Vanity Set
Potential Energy by Cultus
Spiral Dynamics by Cultus
Ceto by A.M. Architect
Aurora by Tony Anderson
Station Twelve by Steven Gutheinz
Unlimited by Dario Lupo
Waltz in A Minor-Op. 34, No. 2 (Variation) by Chad Lawson

Twenty Thousand Hertz is produced out of the studios of Defacto Sound and hosted by Dallas Taylor.

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View Transcript ▶︎

[SFX: Leon Theremin playing his own instrument]

You're listening to Twenty Thousand Hertz, the stories behind the world's most recognizable and interesting sounds. I'm Dallas Taylor.

[SFX:Continue Leon Theremin music]

What scares you? What makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up? There are plenty of haunting sounds out there, but perhaps the most strange, the most alien, and the most mysterious one comes from an instrument you may never have heard of. The Theremin.

[SFX: Theremin, Leon’s musical performance continued]

Sound familiar? If so, it’s probably because it’s commonly tied to old sci-fi and horror films from the 1950’s and 60’s, such as The Day the Earth Stood Still.

[SFX: Clip from The Day the Earth Stood Still]

But there’s more to the Theremin than just eerie sounds. Its story actually starts…and ends with a mystery. And there’s a whole lot in between.

[music in]

The most intriguing part of the Theremin is that you play it without ever touching it. Take that in for a moment. It’s like playing a ghost instrument.

Rob: Imagine your eyes are closed and you're hearing this sound that's maybe like a voice or a violin. You're in the same room and you're hearing that sound. When you open your eyes, you will see somebody moving around who is actually not touching anything, and yet is controlling this sound by where their hands are. You watch this person moving the one hand and the other hand. You're looking at something that is impossible and is magic.

[music out]

That’s Rob Schwimmer. He’s a renowned musician and Thereminist.

Rob: When you can just hear it, maybe you're thinking of old sci-fi movies or older scary movies where the person is cowering as the flying saucer comes down and some high, wavery, scary sound is happening. Sometimes that's a Theremin that they would use in the movies.

[SFX: Theremin – Sci Fi movie]

Rob: It's a freaky thing to see, it's a freaky thing to hear, and it's really fun to play.

And its origin is almost as freaky.

[music in]

Around 1920, a Russian scientist named Leon Theremin, stumbled across a bizarre confluence of electromagnetic waves that created… sounds. He was working on a device to measure the density of gasses. Instead of just having a normal meter, he also decided to add a kind of whistling device. This whistling device [SFX: theremin] would change the pitch depending on the density of the gas. When he moved his hands around the device, he noticed a shift in pitch and volume. Eventually he was able to manipulate it into a melody. It caught on and became a sensation across Russia, Europe and eventually the United States.

[music out]

Oh, and he was also allegedly a KGB spy, but more on that later.

Rob: He was not looking to do this when he came across the phenomenon of being able to hear something that was influenced by his physical position. He was doing another experiment.

Now I think most inventors, when they would come across such a thing, would discard it as an unwanted byproduct of what they were trying to do. With him, the light bulb went on over his head and he realized, "This is not what I'm looking for, but I have something here." That to me is the genius moment, is that he actually recognized that moment is there's something here.

And that something wasn’t anything tangible.

Rob: You actually don't touch anything when you're playing the Theremin [SFX: theremin]. You just move your hands in the air. Now when you look at that, that looks really weird and you go, "Well, how is that possible? This person isn't touching anything."

The basic design looks like a thin, rectangular box with one rod sticking straight up - that controls the pitch [SFX: Theremin pitch going up] - and there’s a horseshoe-shaped rod attached to the left side – that controls the volume [SFX: Theremin volume going up and down] . There are some knobs that adjust the overall pitch, but the basic design has remained the same since its invention.

Rob: There are two electromagnetic fields, one around each side, that you cannot see, of course. Your right hand, when it enters the electromagnetic field, that changes the pitch that you hear.

[SFX Theremin pitch and volume adjusting]

Rob: The left hand controls the volume, which is weird because it gets louder as you lift up. We're used to gas pedals, volume pedals. We typically think more is down, downward motion, gas pedal. But in this case, it gets louder when you lift up. It's a little strange to get used to at first.

That’s putting it mildly. Learning to play the Theremin takes a lot of practice and a good ear. Albert Glinsky, an American composer and author, wrote the book on Leon Theremin’s life and career. He explains the basics of the instrument here.

[SFX: Albert Glinsky Clip “So you have this basic siren sound like this [pause] and then we want to chop that up into individual parts using the volume antenna, so that we can create individual notes like this [pause] that kind of idea.”]

Rob: Theremin's have sounded different over the years. Actually, from Theremin to Theremin, they sound different, they feel different.

But what it is, is really that they actually have different sounds and different characters for each of them, and some of them are good for, oh ... You know how a guitar player will have a bunch of guitars and he goes, "Oh, this guitar isn't right for this song." Well, Theremins, it's the same way. Why? It's magic. I don't know.

Rob actually had the opportunity to play one of Leon Theremin’s last known instruments before he…well, disappeared. It’s called the November Theremin.

[SFX Rob playing November Theremin]

Rob: For me, when I first turned the thing on, when I said it was a masculine sound, I'm used to my Theremins at home. They're a little more gentle. I turn this on, it's like playing a rhinoceros. I mean it's like taming the wild beast.

The story of the Theremin doesn’t stop with it’s inventor, in fact it saw a resurgence in popularity around the mid 20th century. This was mainly due to the help of film, most notably, Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound in 1945.

Rob: It was a big year for Theremin up because it wasn't the very first movie that it appeared in, but it was the first big movie that Theremin played a big part in the soundtrack, which also won the Academy Award for Best Soundtrack that year. The Theremin was a huge part of that.

[SFX: Spellbound music]

Rob: That brought it to everybody's attention. Right around the same time, it was used in another movie called Lost Weekend.

[SFX: Lost Weekend clip]

Rob: Two big movies right around 1945, 46 that brought it to Hollywood.

The artist behind these early Theremin sounds was a man by the name of Dr. Samuel J Hoffman… Pretty much any early Hollywood movie with a Theremin? There’s a good chance it’s him.

[SFX: Hoffman music]

Rob: He had this fast, kind of psychotic vibrato that he used in everything, which is part of why the Theremin got to be known as the scary instrument or the sci-fi instrument, is just because of the way his vibrato was. That's just the way he played, and it was just perfect for his scary, psychotic stuff.

Immediately that became the go-to for ensuing sci-fi movies in various states of cheesiness or whatever, none of them were as good as The Day the Earth Stood Still.

[SFX: Clip from Day the Earth Stood Still]

But somewhere during this period, the Theremin changed course and worked its way into popular music. Songs you know but may not recognize the instrument in.

Rob: There were a couple of bands that started using it. There was one called Lothar and the Hand People. Then the sound of the Theremin in The Beach Boys' Good Vibrations was another big thing that brought that sound back into the popular eye/ear.

[SFX: Good Vibrations clip]

Rob: Then Jimmy Page used it in Whole Lotta Love, during that psychedelic part.

[SFX: Clip from Whole Lotta Love]

Rob: Now there were a lot of players that used it strictly as kind of an effects thing rather than melodic playing. There was two schools of that. Jimmy Page was never a melodic player of the Theremin. He just used it as a very cool sound effect.

[SFX: Clara Rockmore song]

So from a lab in Russia to Rock Legends, the Theremin has seen a wide spectrum of experimentation.

Rob: Over time, people started hearing Clara Rockmore, she had a record, of her playing classic stuff, which was just spectacular. People started hearing it. It came back out on a CD, and people started going, "Oh, you can actually use it. It doesn't have to be scary, it doesn't have to be psychotic, it could also be a beautiful thing."

[SFX: Continue Clara’s song]

Rob: People started getting into the idea of playing it melodically.

They're popping up in all sorts of bands for all sorts of reasons. They're everywhere. I mean they're not like electric guitars yet, but there's a lot of them out there, a whole lot of them doing all sorts of music, like everything. Everything.

Rob has played the Theremin with a number of well-known musicians, including Stevie Wonder, Willie Nelson, The Boston Pops, Queen Latifah, Josh Groban, Bela Fleck, and he even went on tour with Simon and Garfunkel in 2004.

Rob: That part in the middle of The Boxer, there's an instrumental that goes “Da, da, da, da, da”. They let me play it on Theremin. It was a fantastic honor and a lot of fun to do it in such a setting.

[SFX: Clip from Rob playing The Boxer live]

[music in]

Rob: I think Theremins are really popular at this point because there is nothing that really replaces an amazing magic trick, when you can look at something and go, "How is that happening? How is this possible?" And still, to this day, people react in that way when they get that visual of actually seeing somebody play it. There's nothing like it.

The Theremin has left its mark throughout pop culture. But it’s impact actually reaches far beyond what you might think. How did this strange instrument inspire electronic music as we know it today? And what secrets did it’s creator hide? We’ll get to that, in a minute.

[music out]

[MIDROLL]

[music in]

The Theremin’s chilling sound is synonymous with classic sci fi and horror films, and it even found its way into rock music. But its story didn’t stop there. It found new popularity around the 1950’s, thanks to one particularly curious prodigy named Bob Moog.

[music out]

The inventor of the Moog Synthesizer was also an early enthusiast and manufacturer of the Theremin. ...and even to this day, Moog Music is the largest producer of Theremins. Early on, Bob Moog was obsessed with this weird instrument. He was also really fascinated by the man behind it’s creation.

[music in]

Michelle: My name is Michelle Moog-Koussa. I am the executive director of the Bob Moog Foundation here in Asheville, North Carolina.

Michelle is one of Bob’s daughters and heads up the foundation to carry on the legacy of her father and his instruments.

Michelle: He was introduced to electronics by his father, my grandfather, who was an electrical engineer himself, and they started off just making small hobbyist projects, like three note organs and Geiger counters, and they were HAM radio operators together so they were definitely two geeks in a pod, if you will, down in the basement of their house.

[SFX: HAM radio]

Michelle: That really sparked my father's love of discovery through electronics. He did do a lot of reading at a very early age, and he came upon an article that kind of introduced how a Theremin is made, and he thought he would take it on. That basically began a lifelong love affair with that instrument. He really was very taken with the elegance of the design and the expressivity of the instrument. That was around the time that he was 15 years old.

[music out]

Bob Moog was brilliant. Even in his teens became so proficient at making Theremins, that he made one for a Science Fair at his high school. At 19, he wrote an article for Radio and Television News magazine, an electronic hobbyist publication.

Michelle: That article was so popular that people began writing him, saying, "I would like to build my own Theremin based on your article but I can't find the parts." He then launched his company, R.A. Moog Co with his father to provide both Theremins and Theremin parts.

That was in 1954 when Bob was a freshman in college. It was very much a small, homerun operation. He had no idea how much it would grow in popularity.

Michelle: The way it would work is that my father would build the circuitry and wind the copper coils. At that time, of course, everything was analog parts and they were very large copper coils that needed to be wound very precisely and very tightly for the instrument to work correctly, and my father had quite a knack for that and for building the circuitry itself.

My grandfather was an accomplished woodworker. So he would build all the cabinetry, so the two of them had a nice partnership.

[music in]

Bob and his father continued to build these homemade Theremins throughout his time in college. When he attended Grad school at Cornell, he and his wife moved the operation to Ithaca, New York.

Michelle: There was a pivoting point in 1961 because my mother became pregnant with my oldest sister, Laura, and she said to my father, "What are we going to do for money now because I'm going to have to stop working," and my father said, "Well, you know, I've been wanting to write this article about how to build a new transistorized Theremin."

So hid did, and with it he changed the course of the Theremin and its impact on modern electronic sound.

[music out]

Michelle: He wrote an article, how to build your own Theremin with transistors, and that again kind of re-launched his business because he wound up selling Theremin kits to build something called the melodia theremin, and he sold a thousand of those kits for $50 a piece within about a years’ time.

His exact words are, "That was a huge cachet of wealth for a graduate student at that time," which it was. $50,000 then would've probably been like a quarter million dollars now.

I remember my mom telling me that at that time when she was quite pregnant, she was putting together Theremin kits on the kitchen table.

[music in]

Bob Moog’s fascination with the Theremin was deeper than just its design; he had a great appreciation for its creator.

Michelle: He felt a really deep connection to Leon Theremin as well his entire life, and he talks about him. He refers to him as his virtual mentor. He really felt that he had Theremin's guiding hand almost his entire career. A lot of his ethic, both the visual ethic of his instruments and the design ethic of his circuitry, can be traced back to Leon Theremin's ethic.

Moog met his idol, a few times. This is , something Michelle says were the highlights of his life.

[music out]

Of course Bob Moog went on to eventually create the Moog Synthesizer, expanding the realm of electronic music. It exploded in the infamous Summer of Love, 1967.

[SFX: Music , Buffalo Springfield]

Michelle: It began being incorporated into pop music, and that's when we see The Byrds, The Doors, The Beatles using it. That all came out of one my father's reps, Paul B from Bernie Krause, bringing the Moog modular to the Monterey Pop Festival, and after that is when all of the bands started integrating it.

[SFX: Pop music]

Michelle: He was constantly seeking the feedback of these musicians, especially as you can imagine in those early years there was still a lot under evolution, these as a very evolutionary stage, and he was listening to what the musicians needed and he was creating it for them. The needs of the musicians was very much his creative beacon.

A similar dedication to the craftsmanship he admired in his idol, Leon Theremin. Not a musician…but still an artist.

Michelle: People would ask him if he was a musician and he would say, "No, I'm a toolmaker. I make tools for musicians,"That was really his calling. He did have a very high standard for his work, that, combined with the growing needs of musicians as the instrument and technology grew, really propelled him on this path, where he was constantly trying to think of new ways to put expanded sonic expression into the hands of musicians in the most accessible way.

[music in]

While the Moog Synthesizer took off, Bob never forgot his original passion and fascination with the Theremin. He started Big Briar Incorporated and refocused his energy on making Theremins again. He developed a small Theremin called the ether wave which went on to sell more than 10,000 units. This prompted yet another resurgence of the instrument, thanks in large part to the Internet.

Michelle: People have a lot more exposure to how the Theremin is being used and they have been inspired by it, and the number of Thereminists, has grown quite a bit and so have the offerings of different kinds of Theremins made by Big Briar, and now by Moog Music, but also by other companies all around the world.

[music out]

Bob Moog was also in the record business. In the late 70’s he and his wife produced, an album featuring Clara Rockmore. She was a child prodigy on the violin. But, when she injured her wrist at the age of four, she turned her talents to the Theremin.

[SFX: Clip from Clara Rockmore]

Michelle: She really had an astounding technique, and she devoted her life to the Theremin and played it her entire life. That's one more step in my father trying to gain a wider appreciation for this instrument, he believed so deeply in its importance that he passionately promoted it in one way or another almost his entire adult life.

Moog had enormous respect for Rockmore, who had a deep connection with Leon Theremin herself. She was even featured in the documentary,Theremin, An Electronic Odyssey, directed by actor and musician Steve Martin.

Michelle: He told me that when they went to film Clara for the documentary, and she was playing. Steve said, "I looked over at your father and his jaw had dropped to the floor, and when she finished playing he just looked at me and said, 'You know what she was just playing? That was technically impossible.'" So he really felt like she was able to achieve things on that instrument that nobody else could.

[SFX: Clip from Clara Rockmore]

[music in]

From a lab in Russia, to Hollywood movies, to all sorts of musical genres this instrument continues to inspire intrigue. But maybe the most fascinating story, comes from its own creator.

Rob: Regarding the disappearance of Theremin from the New York area in 1928, there have been two theories: the one that he was kidnapped by the KGB to work for them because he was an electronic genius, the other was that he was a Russian operative the whole time doing, what, industrial espionage or whatever, and that he was called back. I cannot definitively tell you what happened, but I can tell you that he did wind up working for the KGB and making all sorts of electronic inventions for them.

[music out]

[SFX: Clara Rockmore song]

The Theremin’s mysterious sound is a reflection of it’s story. It’s an instrument so strange that it astounds people nearly a hundred years after its creation. But at the same time, it can be hauntingly beautiful.

Rob: It's like magic. It's just magic, and everybody loves a good magic trick.

You look at this history of Leon Theremin, the spy and all the crazy things that happened to him, you look at the instrument that's played without being touched, you look at the movies, it's been in all these crazy movies as an iconic sound. You look at that, it's being used everywhere now, and people are still drawn to that singular magical trick. When it's combined with really cool music, it's just a winning combination.

It's just nothing like it.

[SFX: Clara Rockmore song]

CREDITS

Twenty Thousand Hertz is produced out of the studios of Defacto Sound. A sound design studio for television, film, and games. Learn more at defacto sound dot com.

This episode was written and produced by Colby Hartburg… and me, Dallas Taylor. With help from Sam Schneble. It was edited, sound designed and mixed by Colin DeVarney.

Thanks to our guests Rob Schwimmer, Albert Glinsky courtesy of Moog Music and Michelle Moog-Koussa of the Bob Moog Foundation and soon to be Moogseum in Asheville, North Carolina.

The music in this episode is from of our friends at Musicbed. ...and now you can also use their music! For the first time ever they now have membership plans. Check it out and sign up at music.20k.org.

A special thanks goes out to Delos Music for letting us use Clara Rockmore’s hauntingly beautiful recordings. Her album, “The Art of the Theremin”, is available from Delos at delosmusic.com.

You find find us on Facebook, Twitter, and twenty kay dot org. You can drop us a line anytime at hi at 20k dot org. Lastly, if you enjoyed the show, please tell someone about it.

Thanks for listening.

[Music out]

Recent Episodes

Cartoon Sound Effects: From Steamboat Willie to The Jetsons

cartoon .png

This episode was written & produced by James Introcaso.

Cartoon sound effects are some of the most iconic sounds ever made. Even modern cartoons continue to use the same sound effects from decades ago. How were these legendary sounds made and how have they stood the test of time? Featuring Oscar-winning sound designer Mark Mangini of the Formosa Group, and Advantage Audio’s Heather Olsen.


MUSIC IN THIS EPISODE

Still Good - UTAH
Wait and Without - Steven Gutheinz
On Paper - Steven Gutheinz
Allen Street - Steven Gutheinz
Younger - Tony Anderson
The Story Never Ends - Chad Lawson

Defacto Sound is a sound team dedicated to making the world sound better. Twenty Thousand Hertz is hosted by Dallas Taylor.

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View Transcript ▶︎

[SFX: Wile E Coyote clip with fall whistle]

You’re listening to Twenty Thousand Hertz. I’m Dallas Taylor.

[SFX: Crash from fall]

If you watched cartoons as a kid, you probably knew instantly that the sound you just heard was from Looney Tunes. You probably also know that sound meant Wile E Coyote failed to catch the Road Runner...again. It’s pretty crazy how we can fill in the whole scene based solely on the sound effects. Even without a single “Meep Meep” from the Road Runner.

[SFX: Meep meep]

Wile E Coyote started falling off cliffs in 1949. Yet we still hear that falling sound effect in modern cartoons like Teen Titans [SFX], here it is in Justice League Action [SFX], and here it is even in Family Guy [SFX]. It’s been almost seventy years since the first Wile E Coyote cartoon - and that sound, along with many other cartoon sounds remains constant.

[music in]

Mark: The beauty and the joy of cartoon animation is that the characters do not have to obey the laws of physics. They also don't have to obey the laws of logic. Therefore, sound doesn't have to obey those laws either.

That’s Mark Mangini, an oscar winning sound designer who works with the Formosa Group.

Mark: I don't very often get to talk about my early days… and cartoons.

Mark doesn’t get a lot of question about cartoons, because he has an impressive resume designing sound for Hollywood blockbusters.

Mark: I've worked on 142 live-action films. Most recently Blade Runner 2049, Mad Max: Fury Road, which I won an Oscar for and I'm very proud of. Warrior, Gremlins, four Star Treks, a Die Hard, a Lethal Weapon, the Green Mile...

[music out]

But before Mark did sound for films, he worked for one of the most famous cartoon studios in the world.

Mark: My first job in sound was at Hanna-Barbera studios in their sound department. I started as a track reader, which is a subset of sound editing where you're charged with transcribing the recordings of the voices, so that the animators know when to open and close the mouths of the characters [SFX: cartoon dialogue]. That led to subsequent promotions to becoming a sound effects editor in that department at Hanna-Barbera, and an apprenticeship with a number of really amazingly gifted sound editors. Back then, this was 1976. I didn't know anyone who was called a sound designer, but I would argue that everything that we were doing at Hanna-Barbera was every bit as designed as maybe something more profound that was being heard in a motion picture.

Mark worked on some of Hanna-Barbera’s most famous cartoons.

Mark: … the Flintstones...

[SFX: “C’mon Barney. Let’s go” and crash]

… some Huckleberry Hounds...

[SFX: Ringing phone and “Fireman Huckleberry Speaking”]

... a whole raft of Scooby-Doos...

[SFX: Running feet and “Scooby Doo! Where are you?”]

... the Super Friends…

[SFX: “Their mission, to fight injustice! To right that which is wrong! And to serve all mankind”]

... and my personal favorite because it starred Mel Blanc, Captain Caveman.

[SFX: The BOING followed by “Captain Caveman!”]

Long before Mark worked for Hana-Barbera - and even before Wile E Coyote was falling off cliffs - [SFX: Steamboat Willie] Walt Disney made history with Steamboat Willie in 1928.

This was the first cartoon with synchronized picture and sound.

Mark: Walt and Roy and Ub Iwerks themselves would be the sound effects guy in their live orchestral recording sessions for those early Steamboat Willies.

In the early days before there was multi-track recording or mixing, you had to perform the sound effects live with the orchestra in one straight pass. So, these sound effects guys had to assemble props, put them in front of microphones and perform anything that they could acoustically, live and in sync with the orchestra.

[SFX : bump out]

Music and sound effects had to be performed at the same time in the same space. Musical instruments were used to make the effects because they were easy to find, and easy to manipulate. In this Tom and Jerry clip, the sound of a frying pan hitting Tom’s face is played by a cymbal crash.

[SFX: Tom and Jerry hit]

And that falling whistle from the beginning of the episode? That’s played on a slide whistle.

Mark: The percussionist would probably have it as part of their kit, and it was just natural to convey going up [SFX] or down [SFX]. You could manipulate them in any one of a number of ways, very quickly [SFX] or very slowly [SFX].

Sound effects played by musical instruments became an iconic part of all cartoons.

Then, new audio technology in the 1930’s allowed sound editors to add sound effects after recording the orchestra. They could use any prop to make a sound, but often still chose musical instruments.

And because sound effects and music were tightly linked, they worked together to create unique soundscapes. Listen to this audio clip from the very first Bugs Bunny cartoon called, “Porky’s Hare Hunt,” In it, you can get an idea of how effects and music can come together.

[SFX: Porky’s Hare Hunt]

The sounds for “Porky’s Hare Hunt” were created by an editor named Treg Brown. Treg worked on Looney Tunes for decades and created many of the iconic cartoon sounds we still know today.

Mark: Once we divorced ourselves from the need to record live to picture, Treg had this fundamental understanding of how to de-contextualize a sound, how to take the sound of your finger in a coke bottle and make that the sound of the Road Runner tongue flip.

[SFX: Road Runner Tongue Flip]

Mark: Or, why the sound of an inertia starter, the sound of this motor that makes a biplane engine start, why that's the sound of a spinning Tasmanian Devil.

[SFX: Tasmanian Devil] [Alt sound]

[music in]

Mark: He learned to be a genius at taking sounds out of one context and placing them in another context. That's what made him so amazing, and when you listen to those Looney Tunes shorts, there isn't a lot of cartoon sound in those. There isn't a lot of comedic sound. It was in his ability to take a sound from somewhere else and put it where it didn't belong, creating this bizarre juxtaposition that made it funny. I don't think there was anybody better than he was at that.

Around the same time Treg was working at Warner Brothers, William Hanna and Joseph Barbera were creating the Tom and Jerry cartoons at MGM. Mark’s mentor Greg Watson was a sound editor on those early Tom and Jerry cartoons.

Mark: When I met him, he was in his 60's, late in his career but immensely proud to be still working in cartoons. He still saw it as an art form, something he was very proud of.

He would never take credit for anything unless I asked him, "Hey, Greg. Where did this come from?" And he said, "Oh, I remember back in '51 when Bill did this one funny scene with Jerry and we needed a funny sound, and we thought it would be good to do this." He was a man that was just thrilled to be a part of the process.

[music out]

Bill Hanna and Joseph Barbara eventually created their own studio. ...and during their 30 years of making cartoons they created a massive library of totally classic sounds.

Mark: I think they're unique, at least because of their own merit they're just silly. So many of them even out of the context of the cartoon just sound like that's the silliest thing I've ever heard. But then, within the context of the cartoons and the way that they were used and the life that they brought to those cartoons, they just get better basking in the limelight of the animation.

For instance, this sound is pretty silly on its own.

[SFX: Pluck]

Now imagine Tom hanging from his whiskers, and the unavoidable fall as each one is plucked from his cheeks.

[SFX: Pluck]

There were hundreds of familiar sounds like this created at Hanna-Barbera studios.

Mark: They had such a signature quality to themselves that it made them stand out as a unique piece of quality artwork, or sonic artwork.

In the 1960s, Hanna-Barbera started selling their sound library. Other production companies, like Warner Brothers, use these sounds to this day. The popularity of the Hanna-Barbera sound library has given cartoons an almost universal sound-language. But, Mark feels some sounds are overused.

Mark: I was on a one-man campaign to eradicate head take.

[SFX: Head Take]

Mark: It was this inane noise that, again, I think was a recording accident that you would use whenever a character all of a sudden caught themselves in the midst of thinking or experiencing something bizarre, and it was way overused.

And did you ever notice how it sounds when a cartoon character runs??

[SFX: Blop Gallop]

Mark’s not a fan of that one either.

Mark: That running sound was called 'blop gallop.' And again a sound that was I felt overused and I tried to not use it as often as I could. That's illogical, but I tried not to use it as often as possible.

It's a testament to its effectiveness. But even in 1976, I was turning into an elitist, I suppose. How embarrassing.

Of course there are plenty of sounds that Mark loves. Like a tip-toeing xylophone.

[SFX: Xylophone Tip Toes]

Mark: Oh, that's a classic sound. I have actually used that sound. I did the two Flintstone live action movies, and I did use that in that because that was a sound that Brian Levant, the director and I just loved. We just couldn't avoid using that.

[SFX: Xylophone Tip Toes]

Mark: My favorite was The Jetsons's spaceships, and I never found out what those were made from, I tried to deconstruct them, I asked around the studio if they know who made them and nobody knew, but that sound always brings a smile to my face.

[SFX: Jetsons sound]

[music in]

Sadly, some of the old techniques have been lost. But remember, this was a busy studio, and everyone was focused on getting the work done on time, and getting cartoons on air.

Mark: It was a real machine. It always started with track reading [SFX: track reading], which is to say the voices would be assembled in a studio with a script and storyboards. The director of that show would walk the talent through the recording session so that you captured all the voices, speaking all the lines that you needed for that particular episode.

Then, the animators would go off and then draw the characters doing these things, and then a month later, all the animation would come back in short rolls of completed scenes, then we and the editorial department would assemble them in their storyboard order, and then cut them down to show length.

There wasn't like animatics in between like we have in live-action. We'd assemble a show, then cut sound to it.

[music out]

When Mark was working with Hanna-Barbera, they didn’t have a department dedicated to creating new sounds. If he wanted an effect that wasn’t in the library, he had to find it himself.

Mark: You were just kind of on your own. I was the most adventurous, especially for the Super Friends I would go across the hall to talk to the two composers Paul Decort and Hoyt Curtin and I'd ask them for musical sounds, and especially synthesizer sounds, so they would give me long recorded stretches of just weird noises they'd make with their synthesizers. And they would always be used as the science fiction components, if I had a spaceship or a flying saucer in an episode that's what I'd use the electronic sounds for, because that felt futuristic to me.

[SFX: Space noises]

And if Mark couldn’t find a sound he wanted, he had to create it, even if he had to use his own voice.

Mark: If you can't find it, you do it with your voice. It's the easiest tool to manipulate, you have total control over it.

I use it for creatures and animals and funny noises. I did a lot of gremlins voices for the Gremlins movies.

[SFX: Gremlins]

It's just something where you feel the character inside of yourself and you think, "I can do this better," and you just do it.

Mark also went on to work on some of the most classic animated films.

Mark: I did Beauty and the Beast…

[SFX: Opening line of Be Our Guest]

… Aladdin…

[SFX: Opening line of A Whole New World]

… and the Lion King.

[SFX: Opening line of Circle of Life]

Mark’s experiences with animated films were different from the grind of televised cartoons.

Mark: If nothing else, you get much better schedules. You usually get the time to design and create something that no one's ever heard before. Another sort of unique distinction is that you have the option to create sound first, and then have animation be done to what you did. It's not that often that we get to actually drive the image, and on the Disney animated films and the Pixar films and the Dreamworks films and others, they're smart enough to know the value of sound and how it can be the inspiration to the artist to draw something that they might not otherwise have drawn.

For example, in Beauty and the Beast Belle's dad was this inventor and he had built that funny ax chopping machine. That was a sound that we made before animation.

[SFX: Maurice’s Invention]

Mark: That's just pure design. That's when you get to let your imagination run wild. You can see a picture from a storyboard, and then you just get to dream up what it might sound like. That's just gold for a sound designer, when you're sort of allowed to design unfettered.

[music in]

With all of the cable channels and streaming services available today, there’s more animation than ever before. So how does sound design work in modern cartoons? ...and which iconic sounds are still used today? We’ll get to that, in a minute.

[music out]

MIDROLL

[SFX: Quick montage of SFX we haven’t heard]

If you haven’t watched a cartoon in years, it might surprise you that sounds from decades ago are still being used today.

Heather: I use the older sound effects quite a bit still working in cartoons. The Hanna-Barbera library, the Warner Brothers library, it's still the go to for certain gags, and certain shows.

That’s Heather Olsen, an Emmy-nominated sound designer for animation. She works at Advantage Audio.

Heather: I'm working on Star vs. the Forces of Evil for Disney XD...

[SFX: “Rainbow fist punch!” and SFX]

… Trolls: The Beat Goes On…

[SFX: “DJ the party” and SFX]

… and Spirit Riding Free for Netflix.

[SFX: Horses SFX]

I worked on a lot of Butch Hartman shows, The Fairly Odd Parents [SFX], Tough Puppy [SFX], Bunsen is a Beast [SFX], Pig Goat Banana Cricket for Nickelodeon [SFX]. I also worked on The Adventures of Puss in Boots for Netflix [SFX], Gravity Falls for Disney XD [SFX], and The Boondocks for Sony [SFX].

Heather is an expert in modern cartoon sound design.

Heather: Cartoon sound effects are different from live action sound effects because with live action you start with production sound. You're recording a picture and they're recording the audio at the same time wherever the actors are. So if they're on a street you have cars going by. Whereas in a cartoon if you're doing a street scene, all I get is dialogue. It's just the actors who are recorded, and I get to start with a blank slate. I don't have to try to hide production backgrounds. I get to get the dialogue, and I get to create a world around it.

It's kind of the best thing and the worst thing at the same time to work on a cartoon, because you're not trying to hide anything, but you have nothing to start with, so in your head you have to think, what would this sound like?

Much like Mark’s time at Hanna-Barbera, Heather gets a fully animated show and often adds sound effects from a ready-made library of sounds. This includes many from the Hanna-Barbera and Warner Brothers’ libraries. Here are some of her favorites.

Heather: It's called the tube thunk sound effect.

[SFX: Tube thunk]

I think everybody knows what this sounds like, maybe not what it's called, but it's that sound when a character gets their head stuck in a jar, you hear that thunk [SFX]. I love that old sound. It just so clearly conveys my head is stuck in this jar, and it's not coming out again.

And I also love all the old running sounds.

[SFX: Run]

Heather: And I'm using the xylophone blink in Trolls all the time.

[SFX: Xylophone Blinks]

Heather: Those sounds I think have just persisted in everybody's mind and every show because that's a language that we've started to understand. So instead of blinks, you kind of expect to hear that xylophone at this point.

And of course, Heather uses the falling whistle.

[SFX: Falling whistle]

Heather: I think in our sound effects library it's called Bomb Drop, but it's the same thing. I mean it's another piece of the language that everybody knows.

Since some of the shows she works on are more realistic, Heather wants us to hear the sounds of the characters moving around and interacting with their world. Kinda like a live action movie.

Heather: The foley department really brings the show to life. They record footsteps [SFX], things characters touch [SFX], which we call props. They do more of the smaller sounds, and it's great to have foley doing that instead of a library, because then you're not hearing the same footsteps over and over. They really make it sound more real.

And just like in the past - if you can’t find a sound, you have to make it.

Heather: One of the stranger things I've actually recorded and done myself for a sound effect is we had a bit in Robot and Monster where everyone was in a crowded restaurant. So it was supposed to be this crowd of people gagging and grossed out by something, and that's not exactly an effect I had sitting around in my library. So I grabbed a bunch of people around the office, and we recorded ourselves gagging in lots of different ways...

[SFX: individual people gagging]

...and then I pieced it all together into a crowd.

[SFX: crowd of people gagging in a restaurant]

Sometimes layering multiple sounds together is the best way to create something new.

Heather: An odd combination that you might not expect and I did not invent this… animals and engines is a really great one. You put animal roars under engines, growls, it really kinda of brings a vehicle to life.

[SFX: TIE fighter]

A lot of shows do it, but Star Wars definitely the TIE fighters, there's some growls under there as they go by.

It's fantastic. Inspiration.

Another option Heather has, is to take a classic library sound and change its pitch to make a new effect. Take this cartoon boing sound effect.

[SFX: Boing]

she can pitch the sound up.

[SFX: Boing] (pitched up)

Or down.

[SFX: Boing] (pitched down)

Heather uses a lot of classic - non literal - sounds while working on cartoons. But some modern cartoons are more realistic than slap-stick, her choices really depend on the show.

Heather: When we get a new show, we'll do what we call spotting the show, where the clients come in and we watch it together, and we talk about what they'd like where, and just the overall feel of the show. Is going to be a realistic show like Spirit, or is it going to be really cartoony like Fairly Odd Parents?

[SFX: Fairly Odd Clip about coming into room with crash]

Fairly Odd Parents taught me how to speak cartoon.

It's just not stop cartoon, cartoon, cartoon, whereas something like Spirit it feels more like you're making a movie with horses out in the fields with the girls…

[SFX: From “What’s the matter boy…” to horse’s snort reaction]

Because Spirit Riding Free has more natural sounds than a cartoon like Fairly Odd Parents, Heather needed some new sounds.

Heather: We got a whole new horse library, because in that show there's three characters who are horses. So, there are no actors voicing them and the each have a different personality. So, we had to find different vocals for each of the horses.

[SFX: Horse 1]

[SFX: Horse 2]

But even Spirit Riding Free still sometimes needs a dose of the vintage cartoon sounds.

[SFX: Ball scene]

Heather: A lot of times people will come in with their show and say, "I don't want to use those old Hanna Barbera sounds, I want to do something completely different." But they've kind of animated it the traditional way. So when you put new sounds to that, it feels wrong, and a lot of times they eventually go back to using the older sound effects.

[music in]

When it comes to cartoon sound design, Mark and Heather both agree that the medium pushes the boundaries of creativity.

Mark: Characters stretch unnaturally out of their body shapes. Those are just of the simplest examples of visually what's happening with these characters. So, in a way it gives you permission to break the laws of what sound you should hear when you see something.

Heather: I really like working for animation because I like to build a world with sound from the ground up, because in animation the best part is you're designing a world from nothing, a world that no one's ever heard before. And sound design I think is a huge part of the process for animation because there's no sound except the talking, so you get to do that backgrounds and the sound effects, and the foley, and I think it all combines to really bring the animation to life.

Mark: So now, there's so many tools that anyone can get their hands on. You're really free to design sound in any way your imagination desires. It's important for us to follow our hearts. When we follow our heart and then we make a career out of that, we make a day-to-day avocation to something, that gives all of us purpose and it allows us to make a contribution to the world.

[music out]

[music in]

CREDITS

Twenty Thousand Hertz is produced out of the studios of Defacto Sound. If you do anything creative that also uses sound, go check out defactosound dot com.

This episode was written and produced by James Introcaso… and me, Dallas Taylor. With help from Sam Schneble. It was edited, sound designed and mixed by Nick Spradlin.

Thanks to our guest, Mark Mangini for sharing his stories. He designs audio magic with Formosa Group, a talent-based company that does amazing movies. Formosa created the soundtracks for Blade Runner 2049, Molly's Game, and Game of Thrones. And are staffed with Oscar-winning talent just like Mark. You can find out more about their work across the film industry at FormosaGroup.com.

Thanks also to Heather Olsen. Heather’s been designing sound for animation for more than 10 years at Advantage Audio where she has earned multiple Emmy nominations. You can learn more at advantageaudio.com.

All of the music in this episode is from our friends at Musicbed, and for the first time ever, they just announced a new subscription plan. So whether you’re Youtuber, a production company, a freelancer or even a podcaster, Musicbed has a plan waiting for you. Sign up at music dot twenty kay dot org and we’ll get a little finder’s fee. Again, that’s music dot twenty kay dot org.

You can sign up for our superfan newsletter at newsletter dot twenty-kay dot org. Also, we make this show for you, so don’t ever hesitate to drop us a note. And if you were as inspired by Mark and Heather as we were, be sure to share this episode with your friends.

Thanks for listening.

[music out]

[SFX: That’s All Folks]

Recent Episodes

Behind the Mic: The making of Twenty Thousand Hertz

20k group.png

50 episodes! When we launched this podcast two years ago, we never imagined our passion project would come this far. To mark the occasion, we’re taking a peek behind the scenes of the show. Join the Defacto Sound team as they take you into the inspiration, creation, and people behind Twenty Thousand Hertz.


MUSIC IN THIS EPISODE

Sasask by Uncle Skeleton
Density by Steven Gutheinz
White11 by Tangerine
We Never Left by Stray Theories
Igloo by Steven Gutheinz
Open Waters - Instrumental by Lael
That Trap, Part II by COSSY
Switchovers (Part 2) by Dario Lupo
Cities by UTAH
Fields by SisterBrother
Mirrors (No Sample) by UTAH

20K is hosted by Dallas Taylor and made out of the studios of Defacto Sound.

Follow Dallas on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and LinkedIn.

Join our community on Reddit and follow us on Facebook.

Consider supporting the show at donate.20k.org.

To get your 20K referral link and earn rewards, visit 20k.org/refer.

Get a free month of Splice at splice.com/20k and enter promo code 20k.

Consolidate your debt by going to lightstream.com/20k.

If you're looking for another great podcast, check out Moonshot.

View Transcript ▶︎

[music in]

You're listening to Twenty Thousand Hertz. I'm Dallas Taylor.

This is our 50th episode! Seriously, I never could’ve imagined getting this far. We’ve now produced over 1,000 minutes of ultra-highly-polished, sugary sugary audio candy. The amount of work behind those 1000 minutes though, is crazy. It’s been a huge adventure and we couldn’t have done it without all of you. So, because of this occasion we’re going to do something we don’t usually do. We’re going to talk about ourselves. This is the story… of Twenty Thousand Hertz.

[music out]

Jai: My name is Jai Berger and I’m a sound designer.

Colin: My name is Colin DeVarney. I’m a sound designer.

Nick: My name is Nick Spradlin. I’m a sound designer.

Sam: I’m Sam Schneble and I am the producer at Defacto Sound.

If you listen to the credits of our show, which you should… you probably recognize these names. Together, we all make up Defacto Sound, which is the sound design studio where Twenty Thousand Hertz was born. I started Defacto Sound in 2009, after working as a sound designer and mixer in LA for NBC, and Fox, and G4, then later on the east coast for The Discovery Channel. Defacto essentially just started as me, but has grown into the incredible sound team we have now.

[music in]

Jai: Defacto Sound does sound design and mixing for post production. Basically we try to help tell someone’s narrative through sound.

Colin: We work for video game companies, we work for different TV networks, we work for lots of independent filmmakers.

Nick: I guess the simplest way to say that is that we create and finish the soundtrack.

Sam: So we make all of your awesome film and TV shows sound really freaking cool… Basically without us, they would be really boring…. [laughs], that’s what I think.

[music out]

Audio post production might be a familiar industry to some of our listeners. But for those who’ve never heard about it, it can be difficult to explain exactly what we do.

Colin: Usually, by the time I come into the process we have a video that the editor has put together. They’ll send us over some raw dialogue which is just the recording that was done, and they’ll have some music they’ve picked out and that’s all been edited in there.

So when I receive it, we have all this raw audio and I’ll take dialogue and that music and I’ll make it sound as nice as possible and I’ll mix those so that you can comfortably hear the dialogue but the music is pushing through. And then what I do is I look at the cut and see what we can enhance with some sound design.

Sam: Sound design is basically adding sound effects to picture or even radio. For example say you are seeing on-screen someone running through the woods and they tripped over a log.

[sfx: someone running, tripping, shuffling on leaves to get back up]

Without sound design you wouldn’t hear the crunching of the leaves under someone’s shoes and the hitting the log… thumping to the ground, trying to shuffle to get back up. And you hear the leaves and even maybe the birds being disturbed in the background… That is all added through sound design.

Nick: I mean you can think of it like mixing paint. Every different piece of sound is a different color, and if you just don’t pay attention it just becomes brown [SFX: white noise] . But if you are really careful about it, it becomes this pretty painting.

Sound Design one of those things that super difficult to get across in a few sentences. Even the entire sense of sound itself is something that most people don’t really consciously think about. I mean, we think about taste at least three times a day, we make sure everything around is comfortable to appease our sense of touch. We also make sure things smell nice, and literally everything around us is designed visually. Take a second to look around. Think about how many things have been visually designed by humans? Anyway, those other four senses are well covered in our conscious as well as in pop culture. Really, aside from music, people don’t actively engage with sound in their everyday lives.

Jai: A lot of the times when we talk about sound it feels very alien and technical.

Nick: The speakers and the cables and the oxygen-free copper headphone wires...

Those were the type of ideas I hoped to change with this show.

[music in]

Colin: The mission of Twenty Thousand Hertz is to get, basically, casual listeners - people who like podcasts - but people who don’t think about sound, to really think about their sense of sound in a much more deep and rich way.

[SFX: Clip for Disney Parks episode, “Sounds can make you relax, they can make you sweat, they can make you get chills, feel calm or terrified.”]

Jai: We’re trying to make it more exploratory, and more fun, and interesting.

[SFX: Clip from Level Up,“This is story of how video game sound designers create new worlds, tell stories, and bring imaginary characters to life”]

Sam: Kind of open people’s ears and have them listening more, because it’s just really fascinating once you start listening to your world more and recognizing things.

[SFX: Clip from Wilhelm Scream, “You may be thinking… What’s the Wilhelm Scream? If you think you’ve never heard it, it’s been used in movies such as Batman… Star Wars… Toy Story…”]

Nick: We don’t talk about audiophile stuff on purpose because we try to talk about the things that just happen out there that do affect you. They’re entering your world through your sense of sound and they’re affecting you. And you may or may not be thinking about it or realizing it but it’s still your sense of sound that’s the center of the conversation.

[music out]

We knew at some level what we wanted to achieve. But having an idea is one thing. Turning that idea into something tangible is an entirely different matter, and honestly, we had no idea what we were doing. The first two episodes took us nearly a year to do research, editing, and reworks before finally being released.

[SFX: clip of Siri, “I’m Siri, you’re personal assistant.”]

[SFX: clip of NBC Chimes, “This is the National Broadcasting Company”]

Sam: This was the very beginning of our podcast and we were still trying to get our feel for how we’re going to do this show and we didn’t really know what we were doing at that time. So it was just a huge experiment so there were a lot of hours spent on it.

You learn a lot about making podcasts after two years of producing one. The lessons we learned account for many of the differences you might notice between our first episodes and today’s shows. If you listen to some of our early work, the difference is pretty obvious. For one thing, I sounded like I just rolled out of bed.

[SFX: clip of NBC Chimes, “There are only about 100 sounds that have actually officially become US trademarks and most of them are incredibly iconic”]

Over time, the research became more streamlined, the number of rewrites went down, and the tone of the show became more defined. But we still spend upwards of 150 hours or more on each and every episode. So what exactly does that process look like?

[music in]

Colin: It all starts with an idea for a topic, and obviously early on that came from us. And then, it’s become largely from listeners as well. Now that we have a bit of a following, we take a lot of ideas from listeners and we’ll kind of rank the ones that we like.

Sam: We have a kickoff call with the writer, being like, this is kind of the angle we want to go down, these are the type of people we want to try to find to interview. Once the writer, producer does some research on the topic and finds the best people to interview, they’ll contact me to schedule a recording session. Basically I’ll find either a freelance recordist or a recording studio nearby for them to record the interview.

We put a ton of time and effort into capturing the highest quality recordings we can. This can be extremely challenging when we’re talking with experts in other countries or remote locations. So, why do we put so much time and money just into the recording of the guests?

Nick: Because we’re a sound podcast.

[SFX: Gradually filtering Nick’s voice as he describes the phone speaker sound here]

Nick: I mean, if I just talk into my phone then it’s going to sound like a tiny cheap microphone and it’s going to sound like a phone call, and other podcasts do that and there’s nothing wrong with it. It fits their style. But for us, we’re just a bit obsessive about audio and we just want it to sound as good as it can.

[music out]

When the interviews are done, we send them out to get transcribed. When we get these transcriptions back, it’s time for the writers to step in.

Colin: When we’re writing the episode, we never want somebody to be bogged down with details, or if there are a lot of details we want to make it as interesting as possible. If the guest is speaking about a topic but they take a long time to say what they’re trying to saw, we often will have that said in VO instead so that it gets right to the point and the listener can take in that information and move on and not have to wait for two minutes to get this idea across that they could have gotten in 15 seconds.

The writing is a balance between information and entertainment. This podcast is not designed to be comprehensive, or a one stop resource for these topics. In a perfect world, I want people to spend another 2 hours going down some obscure Wikipedia rabbit hole. This podcast’s only mission is to get people in tune with their sense of hearing. So, once we feel like we’ve reached that information/entertainment balance and the script is done, I’ll record my voice, like I’m doing right now, then it’s the sound designers’ turn.

[music in]

Jai: First thing we do is get all those bits and pieces from the interviews that we’re going to be using. We get all of Dallas’ VO laid out and then we just start editing all of that. Cutting out any breaths that feel a little awkward or uncomfortable [SFX: Dallas’ breaths], any stumbles [SFX: Dallas’ stumbles], a lot of umms [SFX: Dallas’ umms], a lot of likes, a lot of the little stuff that might be slowing down the pace a little too much. But at the same time there’s a balance with that because we really want to keep it feeling natural. We want people to feel like their best selves when they hear themselves talk on the show.

[music out]

One of the most common questions we get asked is how do we process the voiceover on our show? Without getting too too detailed, there are a few common audio processing tools we use to get the sound you’re hearing now.

[music in]

Nick: Our basic chain is an equalizer, a de-esser, a fader, and a compressor. So with the EQ, that’s the lingo term for an equalizer. Everybody's seen these, you have a bass knob and a treble knob on your stereo and that is an equalizer, just a very simple one. It’s not really meant to be creative, it’s meant to take things back to correct. Like if you take a photo and it’s too dark, you brighten it. You’re not really being creative, you’re just making the photo look right.

We use the fader and the compressor to keep the dynamics very level. I listen to a lot of shows and I’m in the car or something, I can hear one sentence perfectly. The next sentence is super soft so I turn the volume up [SFX: volume turns up] and then the next sentence is super loud again, I turn the volume back down [SFX: volume turns down]. And that’s really annoying. So in part of mixing the show, I’m always worried about the dynamics and the volume of everything that’s playing.

[music out]

Another vital element of our show is the music. We use music to help reinforce an idea, to mark a transition, and to help sell the emotional tone we’re hoping for. It’s hard to overstate how much thought goes into the music alone.

[music in]

Sam: We’re very particular about the type of music that we like on this show. It has to be the right the right feel for the episode. It can’t be overpowering, or have lyrics, or very intense instrumentation [SFX: music intensifies] when it’s covering up a very important interview where they’re trying to say something important and all of a sudden this music slams you in the face.

[SFX: music slams]

Sam: It matters a lot because it also plays into the tone of the interview and what’s going on, but if you have the wrong track it’s going to completely change what you’re listening to, so we’re very particular and careful about how to play up the exact emotion that we’re trying to go through.

[music out]

Last, but certainly not least, is the sound design. We realized early on that sound design for an audio-only medium like podcasts is really different than sound design for TV, film, or games.

Jai: It just needs to be very clean and concise. It needs to speak really really well because we don’t have that visual component.

[SFX: Clip from Movie Soundtrack]

Jai: When you’re just listening it needs to be really spot on with the sound choice, otherwise it can be interpreted a million different ways. The other thing that’s really cool is we can use it to reinforce an educational moment. When someone is talking about some sonic thing and we can kind of do a subtle example underneath to help reinforce and educate what they’re saying.

[SFX: Clip from Amen Break] - “You can choose between snares. You can start chopping up the Amen Break and rearranging the individual beats into other configurations”]

Colin: Once all the editing is done, and this is days of work at this point, then it comes down to the final mixing. Making sure everything’s fitting in the pockets. Then I’ll send it off to Dallas to review. He’ll give his notes, sometimes we will also decide that we need to rework the episode a bit at this point.

Nick: And usually, there begins a multiple week phase of adjusting and rewriting and refining.

This reworking period has become a regular part of the process. And almost without exception, every episode of Twenty Thousand Hertz has felt like a bit of a disaster a few weeks before they go live. In a nutshell, two weeks before we launch, we always feel like it’s the worst show we’ve ever made, then somehow it all gels together in the final 2-3 rounds of tweaking.

Nick: It’s really challenging to write something for radio without hearing it or speaking it. And you come up with an idea and you try it out and you find out if it works or not. And sometimes you think of a better idea, and sometimes you refocus the show because you realize one section is more powerful than the other. We have to edit it for the way that it sounds and flows when you listen to it, and that’s just different than it is on the page.

Jai: Getting that fresh pair of ears makes all the difference for fine tuning everything after that first version. It’s really a lot of pacing things that is the difference between the first version and the last version I think that really takes it from OK, to great.

Colin: So once it’s done, and everything’s approved.

[SFX: Ta-da]

Colin: Then we post it to our platform for sending the podcast out to everybody.

Nick: We schedule it in a calendar and it gets released automatically and it just sort of, I guess it’s sort of weird, it like evaporates, you’re like “well, I was just working on this nonstop for the last three months and now it’s just kind of gone, and people will hear it I guess, but the only thing we can see is a like a little number, a little graph just raising. “Oh, I guess people are listening to this.”

[music in]

So that’s how a show goes from being a simple idea to an mp3 in your podcasting app. The process can take hundreds of hours per show, and with 50 episodes under our belt, that’s a huge amount of time put into the podcast. It’s pretty amazing to look back at all the episodes we’ve produced over the past couple years.

Colin: I’ve worked on NBC Chimes, 8-Bit Sounds, Mystery Hum, Sound of Extinction, From Analog to Digital, Space, 20,000 DB’s Under the Sea, Sound Firsts, Watergate, Disney Parks, The Bleeps, The Sweeps, and the Creeps, The Gift, 3149146093, Hamilton, The Music in Speech, Amen Break, and Casinos.

Jai: Movie Soundtracks, Foley, Voice Acting, Evolution of Accents, Sonic Seasoning, Spooky Sounds, Musak, Live Theater, Misophonia, and Jingles, oh and ASMR. I forgot that one and that’s one of my favorites.

Nick: I worked on Audio Descriptions, Cars, The Good, The Bad, and the Irritating, Hearing Loss, The Wilhelm Scream - which is probably my favorite - Noise Pollution, Fight or Flight, Level Up, The Acoustical Umbilical Cord, The Emergency Alert System, Ultrasonic Tracking, THX Deepnote part 1 and 2, Sonic Branding.

So many of these episodes have had a profound impact on us and have even changed the way we think about sound. We’ll talk about the moments that were the most special to us, after this.

[music out]

[MIDROLL]

[music in]

With topics ranging from Siri’s voice, to mysterious hums, to people whispering in your ear, and even outer space, we’ve covered a lot of ground over the past 50 episodes. While we were putting this episode together, we all looked back through the archive and talked about some of our favorite moments from the show. Sometimes it’s the episode that sticks out, other times it’s the story behind the episode.

For me, the NBC Chimes show will always be special.

[SFX: Clip from NBC Chimes,“NBC hired an electronic organ pioneer, Captain Richard Ranger, to build more of an automated system for building chimes”]

This episode was the introduction of Twenty Thousand Hertz for many of our listeners. It was also great because the history is so cool and it embodies exactly what our show tries to do. The not so great part of that show was just how long it took us. Almost a year of frustration and discovery went into the episode. We were just trying to figure out how in the world to make this podcast. But ultimately, it was an amazing way to set the tone for our show.

[music out]

Sam: Rick’s entire story about how he was there when NBC was purchased and they had to stop playing the chimes and then he just had to rip the tape out of the machine and he just took it home with him because he was like “I don’t know what to do with this, they no longer want it to be played.” I think that’s hilarious cause that doesn’t happen nowadays.

[SFX: Clip from NBC Chimes,“The 9 o'clock hour comes we do the network newscast and at 9:05 - 30 the newscaster says, “Gary Nun, NBC News New York.” I played the chimes. I then pulled that tape cartridge out of the machine where I played it. Well, no sooner had I had gone that, general manager shows up. He just looked at me and he said, “Make sure no one else can do that.” I did that by taking the tape cartridge home. It’s sitting on my shelf.”]

[music out]

Many of our shows have a relatively clear structure. We talk about a particular sound, the history of it, the importance it holds, and we’ve got a show. Other episodes can be a much bigger exercise in experimentation.

[music in - from the Space episode]

Sam: I loved everything that happened with the Space episode, especially because Dallas got to go to NASA Goddard and interview people and when Dallas had asked, “If I was on Venus, like how would I sound?” And all of a sudden we morph his voice to make it sound like he’s actually on Venus. That is super cool to me.

[SFX: Clip from Space, “I wonder what other things, like my voice, might sound like? I’m on Venus, in this ethereal world that’s a mix between a gas-like atmosphere and water. I’m almost floating, yet it’s not as restricting as being submerged in water. My voice, the thunder, it’s all slightly muffled and distorted as it travels through the thick atmosphere.”]

[music out]

Sometimes we go into a topic with some prior knowledge on the subject. Other times, it’s a completely new idea to us. Those are often the most challenging and rewarding shows we work on.

Nick: Audio description still sticks with me. It was just something I had never heard of and it made me aware of this whole other side of the world that I never thought of. We used the Matrix in the show and so as part of my research for that episode I just listened to the entire audio described version of the Matrix.

[SFX: Clip from Audio Descriptions, Matrix description]

Nick: And it was unbelievably good. They’re not enjoyable for people with vision impairments. They’re enjoyable for anybody who just wants to listen and visually focus on something else, or, it’s just enjoyable for anybody.

[SFX: Matrix scene continues]

Jai: Spooky Sounds was probably my favorite episode in terms of sound design that I worked on. I mean the demon Dallas voice in the intro was a lot of fun to mess around with.

[SFX: Clip from Spooky Sounds, “You’re listening to Twenty Thousand Hertz, the stories behind the world’s most recognizable and interesting sounds. I’m Dallas Taylor.”]

Jai: Basically what’s happening is we’re creating multiple versions of Dallas’ voice pitched lower and they’re kind of modulating in and out with each other so it’s like you get the normal Dallas voice, but then these multiple lower pitched versions of his voice [SFX: vocal effect] start sweeping in.

So that vocal effect was never in the original script, so when I first reviewed the episode and heard it, I burst out laughing. At first I was like, “I don’t if we should do this, it’s kind of weird”. But, it was just too much fun to pass up and I had too much of a reaction out of it. It’s awkward to hear your voice already, but to hear your voice pitched in a demonic way was just hilarious and it worked immediately. The line between sound design that sells and sound design that doesn’t can be razor thin, and in this case it worked perfectly.

Jai: One thing that has been great about working on the podcast so long is I think we’re all more willing to take risks. And, there’s things that we try now that I feel like we would not have the guts to do before. There’s… Oh! ASMR.

[SFX: Clip from ASMR, “To get everyone on the same page, we listened to some popular ASMR tracks all together… “This one’s close for me… it’s close. Okay Sam it sounds like you have something to say about this.” “I really don’t like it”... ]

Jai: That’s part of what I love about that episode is I feel like that episode is such a different vibe in some ways. I loved how kind of off the cuff that intro was.

[SFX: Clip from ASMR, previous clip can crossfade with this one under Jai] “Sam can describe what’s happening on screen right now?” “Well, she has these fluffy windscreens on each of the mics, and she is caressing them gently.” “Can you describe her facial expression?” “She’s really into it.” [laughs]

Each and every episode goes through a lot of revisions. Sometimes the reworks can be minor, and sometimes they can represent an entirely different way to tackle the subject. This is especially true when the episode is a potentially sensitive topic.

Misophonia was a challenging one for us. We debated how best to illustrate the struggle many people go through because of these intense, negative reactions to sounds. Ultimately we decided to design the episode with exaggerated examples of some common misophonia triggers.

[music in]

[SFX: Clip from Misophonia,“What does it feel like? And how is it that two people’s brains can have such a drastically different response to the same sound? In order to figure this out we'll be using sound examples throughout this episode. This may cause discomfort for someone with triggers, but I think it’s important to attempt to recreate the sensation for those without misophonia.”]

Jai: Originally when we talked about this episode I was actually pretty concerned with the sounds moments that we chose because I wanted someone with Misophonia to hopefully be able to enjoy the episode without too many triggers.

But at the same time, we discussed it and we decided, maybe it’s more important in the grand scheme to go kind of the flip direction and help put someone in someone else’s shoes a little bit through the sound design in that.

[music out]

Jai: Either direction could have worked but I think going with something that we’re trying to make people more empathetic was a good choice in the long run.

It seems like it was well received from some of the people we talked to that we were working with, so that made me feel a lot better because I was a little concerned about that episode.

[music in]

Another goal we have is to provide moments of awe for our listeners. We want people to be amazed and inspired by the sounds around us. We’re always trying to create moments that give a sense of wonder.

[SFX: Clip - Play clip from 20,000 DBs Under the Sea with music playing underneath,“Songs have meaning… From even hearing a very small piece of a song you can kind of relate the whole meaning.”]

Colin: One moment that sticks out in my mind is when we’re talking about whale songs. Essentially we have John Hildebrand talking about how whales use their songs to communicate, and we have this music track going on under this explanation and all of a sudden we hear these whales coming in. And they’re basically in pitch or in harmony with the music track underneath.

[SFX: Clip from 20,000 DBs Under the Sea with music playing underneath, “A song is a very efficient way, if there is a standardized message you want to get across, it’s a very efficient way of doing that, because from tiny pieces of it you get the whole message.”]

Colin: The whole episode has a bit of a somber feel to it because we talk about some of the ways that there is noise pollution in the ocean and how that’s affecting some of these animals like whales. So it’s this really beautiful and almost haunting moment.

[music out]

Choosing just a handful of our favorite moments over the past two years was really challenging. There are so many fascinating stories, inspiring guests, and rewarding challenges that went into creating this show. One thing we discussed when putting this episode together is why do we think Twenty Thousand Hertz is important? What makes the show more than just some sound nerds geeking out about technology? Each of us had a slightly different answer.

[music in]

Jai: Sound is approached from such a technical mindset and I’ve grown to have an appreciation for that but also that wasn’t the driving force that got me interested in this stuff in the first place. I think a lot of people think that, “oh they just love working in Pro Tools, they just love their software and they just love their hardware, and that’s all they want to do all day is just push buttons and move faders. That’s more of a means to an end, and even if it’s not post-audio or something, it’s such a wide open field.

Colin: I’ve been into music my whole life. I was originally going to be a musician. Even when I was a musician, I didn’t think about sound as intimately as I do now. Being a sound designer, it really is amazing how much you can pick out in the world because you get so used to using your ears everyday and listening really intently. I think Twenty Thousand Hertz is a great avenue for getting other people to experience this without having to be a sound designer and it’s a really accessible way for people to experience sound in the way that we do.

Nick: At some point, audio reached me and it stuck, and that’s the path I went down and I became a sound designer and a mixer. And maybe somebody’s going to hear the Audio Descriptions show and it's going to change their path and it’s going to make sense for them and they’re gonna go down that road.

Sam: I feel like we’re answering the questions that people had in the back of their heads that they never had answered. But we’re like, “Oh, hey. We’re going to tell you how they did it!”

Nick: We want to make a show that’s engaging and educational, but it’s not forcing you into a certain opinion. We don’t want to preach at you. We don’t want to tell you how to think. You don’t have to take a massive stance on these issues. We just want to present part of the world.

Sam: We’re not just talking about music. We’re not just talking about film. We’re talking about literally every day sounds and things you interact with. And that is really special because a lot of people try to focus on the one thing that they love, but we’re trying to get everybody involved in this and not just one tiny group of sound.

Colin: Even if we can change the way a single person thinks about sound and how that not only affects themselves but also the world around them, in both positive and negative ways. I think that’s really, really amazing.

To me, Twenty Thousand Hertz is in many ways the world’s most obvious podcast. It’s a show about sound, that is told through a medium of sound. Twenty Thousand Hertz is important because sound is important. I think that over the next few decades, sound is going to come to the forefront of design and the way people interact with it. People will realize the ways sound helps us navigate our world, makes us feel certain ways, and how it can be an integral part of our experiences.

And if this show can help that process, we’ll have accomplished what we set out to do.

[music out]

[music in]

CREDITS

Twenty Thousand Hertz is produced out of the studios of Defacto Sound. Find out more, at Defacto Sound dot Com.

This episode was written and produced by Colin DeVarney… and me, Dallas Taylor with help from Sam Schneble. It was edited, sound designed and mixed by Colin DeVarney.

This episode featured the whole Defacto Sound team. Which is Sam Schneble, Jai Berger, Nick Spradlin, Colin DeVarney, and me. We all want to send a special thanks to you, our listeners, for sticking with us for 50 episodes. I never thought it would go past 10. But, you listened. So thank you.

The music in this episode is from our friends at Musicbed. Musicbed is a full-service music licensing company making better music accessible to everyone. To listen to the music we use, visit music.20k.org.

You can find us at 20 k dot org, or on twitter or facebook. Don’t ever hesitate to say hello.

And lastly, you have been so generous with your time. If you want to help us produce another 50 episodes, please tell someone about us. Word of mouth is so so important for keeping our show going. So tell your friends, your siblings, your online community, whoever. And if you’re financially able and believe that this show needs a place in the world for years to come, please consider setting up a recurring donation at 20.org/donate.

Thanks for listening.

[music out]

Recent Episodes

Jingles: How they hooked us and why they vanished

Jingles PIc.png

This episode was written & produced by James Introcaso.

Odds are if we asked you to sing your favorite advertising jingle from when you were a kid, you’d be able to recall every single lyric. Yet we don’t hear many advertising jingles these days. Why is that? This is the story of the rise, fall, and brain science of the jingle. In this episode, we talk to UCLA’s Timothy D. Taylor, author of The Sounds of Capitalism, and Durham University’s Kelly Jakubowski.

MUSIC IN THIS EPISODE

6_6 by Uncle Skeleton
Faint by Steven Gutheinz
Float by Gentlemen Writers
Slowdance by Gentlemen Writers
0º by Eric Kinny
Midnight Ride by Gentlemen Writers

Twenty Thousand Hertz is hosted by Dallas Taylor and produced out of the studios of Defacto Sound.

Follow Dallas on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and LinkedIn.

Join our community on Reddit and follow us on Facebook.

Consider supporting the show at donate.20k.org.

To get your 20K referral link and earn rewards, visit 20k.org/refer.

Get a free month of Splice at splice.com/20k and enter promo code 20k.

View Transcript ▶︎

[SFX: start Kars4Kids commercial]

You’re listening to Twenty Thousand Hertz. I’m Dallas Taylor.

[SFX: start Kars4Kids commercial continued]

I bet if you ask any adult what their favorite, or most hated advertising jingle is, they can give you an immediate response and.. probably... sing every word.

[SFX: start Kars4Kids commercial continued]

Jingles are part of our culture. They’ve sold everything from toys...

[SFX Music - My Buddy]

… to cleaning products.

[SFX: Music - Mr. Clean]

Jingles have been used in PSAs.

[SFX: Music - Don’t Cross the Street]

And they get made fun of by comedians.

[SFX: - Hot Pocket stand up clip]

[music in]

Our parents and grandparents may have been the first generation to hear modern jingles, but jingles go back all the way to the middle ages.

Tim: Music and lyrics have been used to sell something forever.

That’s Dr. Timothy D. Taylor. Dr. Taylor is an author and professor in UCLA’s ethnomusicology and musicology departments.

[music out]

Tim: There's a case of a medieval song writing in a jingle from a street vendor's cries. Street vendor was selling strawberries and raspberries…

[SFX: Music - On parole / A Paris / Frese nouvele]

What we think of as modern advertising jingles started around the 1920s. This was all because of the rising popularity of a brand new device called the radio. But, back then Advertisers were super skeptical that radio ads would even work. Because in those days, most advertisements were print advertisements.

Tim: At first, people didn't want to impose a lot of hard sell messages on the radio. Partly because of this print model, because they understood that, if you didn't like an ad in a newspaper or magazine, you could just turn the page. With radio, it's more like somebody coming to the door.

Broadcasters really wanted to avoid being too intrusive with advertising, but they also soon realized that they have bills to pay. So, in the early 20’s a few jingles started creeping onto the airwaves, but most of them were for local businesses. The first big-time jingle that aired nationally came in 1926… for Wheaties.

[SFX: Music - Wheaties]

Tim: Sort of a lugubrious barbershop quartet version of a chorus from a jazz song from 1919,sang the virtues of Wheaties. It didn't ignite a craze for jingles, either among advertising agency people or the public.

[SFX: Music - Wheaties continued]

While, it was the first nationally heard jingle, that Wheaties song doesn’t have the upbeat, catchy tune we expect from our commercial jingles. That was pioneered by Alan Bradley Kent and Austen Herbert Croom-Johnson in 1939, when they wrote this song for Pepsi.

[SFX: Music - Pepsi Cola]

Tim: They took this English folk song, they jazzed it up and wrote Pepsi lyrics, and they just walked into the office of the president of Pepsi, Walter Mack, they had a portable phonograph, and they played this song that they'd written that extolled the virtues of Pepsi, but also the price of Pepsi, because it was half the price of Coca-Cola. And that was 1939 during the Depression, so if you could buy the same amount of Pepsi for half the price of Coca-Cola that was a pretty good selling point.

And Walter Mack bought it on the spot.

Walter Mack probably didn’t know it then, but his decision would change the advertising industry forever.

Tim: In this era, you could not lease radio air time in increments less than five minutes.

If you have a jingle that's 60 seconds, what are you going to do with those four minutes? So, Walter Mack found a station that was down on its luck, and he made them an offer just to lease one minute of air time, so they could air the jingle, and they did. That really was the beginning of the short form commercial, which we're now inundated with, the 60-second or 30-second commercial.

Pepsi’s jingle exploded onto the radio with it’s bouncy melody and was played for years. The only reason it was pulled from the air was because eventually the company had to raise the price of their soft drink. But, that jingle started a craze. Suddenly jingles started advertising everything!

[Music - Brylcream]

[Music - Chiquita Banana]

[Music - See the USA in Chevrolet]

[Music - Pepsodent]

This new craze for jingles started a whole advertising music industry. Jingle houses, specializing in writing and producing commercial jingles, began to spring up all over the country and hired musicians to meet the demand.

[music in]

Tim: These musicians were trained composers. They would have to demo a jingle for their clients, the ad agency clients, and usually, some sort of brand manager, president in the room too. They show up and play the piano, which would be there in the room at the ad agency and sing the jingle, and try to sell it that way.

Back then being a jingle writer wasn’t very glamorous.

Tim: Most people didn't set out to be jingle composers. A lot of them wanted to be film music composers, or later television music composers. It wasn’t seen as prestigious and you didn't get paid very well.

However, composers did find a creative way to make their job a bit more lucrative.

Tim: A lot of composers would actually sing on their own commercials, because then they got paid through the actors' unions instead of the musicians' union, which paid much less well.

[music out]

But not just anyone could be a jingle singer.

Tim: Jingle singers could walk into a studio and sight sing without having seen it before they also had to have the incredible diction, so that these crafted lyrics that sang the virtues of the product would be clear

[SFX: Music - Valley of the Jolly Green Giant]

Some singers became famous for their diction, Linda November, who was really the queen of jingle singers, in the 60s and 70s, and into the 80s. She could walk in and sight sing anything.

[SFX: Music - Meow Mix]

And Tim really means anything. All these meows were all Linda.

[SFX: Music - Coke and a Smile]

...and here she is telling Mean Joe Greene to have a Coke and a smile during a 1979 Superbowl commercial.

[SFX: Music - Coke and a Smile continued]

Advertising music was now officially commanding big dollars. Because of this, it began to attract bigger and bigger talent to write and perform jingles. In 1964 even the Rolling Stones sold their soul to Rice Krispies for the big money of advertising.

[SFX: Music - Rice Krispies]

Another famous jingle back in the day was written by Randy Newman and Barry Manilow for Dr. Pepper.

[SFX: Music - Dr. Pepper]

In fact, no celebrity has more all-time jingle hits than Barry Manilow [SFX: Coco Cabana song]. Most famous people who worked on jingles try to keep their involvement as quiet as possible, but Manilow plays his on stage as part of what he calls his VSM.

[Music - VSM Barry Manilow at :12 “VSM stands for our very strange medley. And for those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, is a medley of songs that you probably know, but you probably don’t know that I had something to do with it.”]

[SFX: “Get a bucket of chicken, fingering-licking good…”]

[SFX: “Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.”]

[SFX: “Give your face something to smile about with Stridex. Doo doo doo.”]

[SFX: “I am stuck on the bandaid and bandaid’s stuck on me.”]

In the late 60’s jingles were becoming pretty popular. But, up until that point, they were still really practical and utilitarian. No one in ad music were really talking about their emotions or feelings. But, all that changed with this 1971 commercial for Coca Cola.

[SFX: Music - Hilltop Coke Ad]

This is one of the most famous commercials in the world. It features a diverse group of young people all singing together in a sun-kissed field, and, of course, they’re all holding bottles of Coke. It celebrated our common bond as humans… and…

[SFX: music sudden stop]

um… you know… spend your money on Coca Cola obviously.

Tim: Pepsi and Coke were in long running battles. Pepsi's strategy was to say, if you're cool, you'll drink Pepsi.

[SFX: Music - Pepsi “You’ve got a lot to live and Pepsi’s got a lot to give.”]

Pepsi and Cokes jingle war was so popular that it lit a fire for jingles in the advertising industry.

Tim: Things took off with respect to using emotion to sell throughout the 80s. A lot of them really attempted to speak directly to consumers, using the second person.

[SFX: Music - Reach Out and Touch Someone]

[SFX: Music - The Jordache Look.]

[SFX: Music - Be All that You Can Be ARMY]

The jingle war between two soft drink companies led to other jingle wars between toys, board games, and even chewing gum. The 80’s and 90’s were an absolute gold mine for over the top jingles trying to one up each other.

[SFX: Music - Crossfire]

[SFX: Music - Mouse Trap]

[SFX: Music - Connect Four]

[SFX: Music - Discovery Zone]

[SFX: Music - Dragon Flyz]

[SFX: Music - Perfection]

[SFX: Music - Juicy Fruit]

You get the idea. Jingles were everywhere. Until they weren’t.

[music in]

Starting in the late 90’s, jingles began disappearing from the airwaves. They were being replaced by popular music tracks. Ad executives now believed in the power of music. They also had plenty of money to throw around, which meant that pop songs were in and old-fashioned jingles were out.

Tim: The jingle fairly quickly fell into disuse. When baby boomers started to get into positions of power in the advertising industry, they just started to think all these jingles are really trite. They didn't have a problem of trying to use their own music from their youth in commercials. Sometimes it was expensive, but it didn't bother them. They wanted to try to do something more sophisticated or what they thought was more sophisticated.

[music out]

In a way, it strikes me as odd that licensing, the use of a popular song to use in a commercial, or a TV show, or a film, that that has become so dominant, because wouldn't it be better to have music composed especially for your commercial, or your TV show, or your film?

Even though there are way less jingles now then there were twenty years ago, it doesn’t mean the medium is totally extinct. We still hear some national jingles on air, but they’re usually just rehashes of the past jingles.

[SFX: Music - Empire Carpet]

...and sorry to burst your bubble, but that Empire Carpet ad is not a local ad. It plays everywhere. You just think it only plays in your town.

[music in]

Anyway, since jingles aren’t completely dead are they ever going to make a comeback?

Tim: I'm not in the business of predicting the future, so I don't know. It does seem reasonable that as they say a custom song made just for you is a pretty good ideal, so maybe it will come back.

It does seem reasonable that jingles would have a comeback, especially because so many effectively got stuck in our heads. But why are jingles so catchy in the first place? We’ll find out after this.

[music out]

MIDROLL

[Kars4Kids]

No! (deep breath)

Odds are after listening to this episode, you’ll have at least one of these jingles stuck in your head for days, or weeks, or months. Sorry about that.

So, what’s happening in our brain? For that, here’s Dr. Kelly Jakubowski, a music psychologist at Durham University. Among other things, she studies earworms.

Kelly: An earworm is a piece of music that comes to mind spontaneously. We don't make any sort of effort to recall music, it just pops into our mind [SFX: music loop], and plays incessantly on a loop. We can get earworms for just a few minutes, but some people might get a song stuck in their head for hours or even a day on end, for instance.

One large survey found that around 90% of people experience earworms at least once a week, and around a third of people experience them at least once per day.

Creating a jingle that can get stuck in someone’s head is a great way to make sure your brand sticks with them.

Kelly: So when we've recently heard a piece of music that can sort of activate it in our minds, and it can play back spontaneously over and over.

From the 50s well into the 90s, jingles were being played on every radio and television. If you were alive then, you heard the same songs over and over again, making it easier for them to recall spontaneously.

Kelly: Even songs that we haven't heard in years can be activated by a lot of different cues. For instance, like if you see a person that reminds you of a song. When Michael Jackson died we had quite a lot of people reporting Michael Jackson earworms, which were sometimes related to them listening back to the songs, but sometimes it was just them thinking about the news story, thinking about memories of Michael Jackson or going to concerts.

Another trigger than can cue an earworm is seeing or hearing some of the words in a song. For instance, when I say, “The best part of waking up,” you think of this:

[SFX: Music - Folgers]

And if I were to simply say, “Gimme a break,”

[SFX: Music - Kit Kat]

Most of us hear a lot of songs each day and we can’t recall each one at the drop of a hat. Earworms have some common qualities that make them easy for our brains to remember.

Kelly: In addition to being upbeat songs, we also found that earworm melodies tended comprise generic melodic contours. By the melodic contour I mean, the ups and downs in pitches in the melody. So they tended to be simple melodies in terms of the way the pitch goes up and down, which probably makes them fairly easy to remember spontaneously. You don't want to have a sort of overall too complex melody that is really hard for someone to remember [SFX: complex piano melody].

This description also fits commercial jingles. Most have melodies simple enough that kids can sing them without any trouble.

[SFX: Music - Oscar Mayer Bologna]

When it comes to earworms, jingles might even be catchier than pop songs.

Kelly: Pop songs can kind of unfold over two or three minutes, or even longer. Whereas, jingles really have to cut to your attention in a few seconds. That can also probably add to the ear-wormy nature of them.

Jingles can be very short. Many don’t even take up the entirety of a 30-second commercial.

[SFX: Music - Klondike Bar]

When a song is upbeat, simple, and quick, it’s almost guaranteed to get stuck in our heads, even if it’s annoying. In fact some of the same qualities that make earworms also have the potential to drive us mad.

[music in]

Kelly: A song might have these earworm qualities, the upbeatness or the easy to sing along melodies, and it can still be something that we don't like. And I think part of that might be the melody is too simple to us. It has to meet that sweet spot. If it's too simple or generic song it gets irritating more easily.

[music out]

The balance of complexity is important to a jingle and a jingle’s target audience. For example, this old Toys R’ Us jingle is great for kids, but most adults want to rip their ears off.

[SFX: Music - Toys R’ Us Kid]

...and here’s an example of a slightly more complex jingle that’s designed to appeal to adults.

[SFX: Music - Chili’s Baby Back Ribs]

Interestingly, the same techniques that are used to teach children about the the alphabet are also used to sell detergent…

[SFX: Music - Sesame Street Alphabet]

[SFX: Music - All Detergent]

This could also explain why so many kids toy commercials used jingles. Kids were already used to learning through song, so it was a good way to market to them.

[SFX: Music - Skip It]

Earworms aren’t just an American thing.

Kelly: One of the top songs that we had reported in that study was this Australian commercial that was made for the Metro Trains company in Melbourne, Australia, and it's called Dumb Ways To Die. It's basically teaching people about public safety on trains, but it's a really catchy, catchy little song and it has a little video to go along with it on Youtube.

[SFX: Music - Dumb Ways to Die]

[music in]

Earworms are powerful. As we get older, we can have trouble remembering important dates and details, but can often remember every single word to a jingle from our childhood.

Kelly: The way that we remember music. as an earworm, it's an involuntary retrieval process. The way that we retrieve the memory is different to when we're deliberately recalling information, like a fact, or someone's birthday.

We know that actually these involuntary retrieval processes tend to be sort of preserved longer as we age than deliberate retrieval processes, which can actually deteriorate as people get older. Their frontal lobes in their brain, and these areas that are implicated in deliberate retrieval can start to wear out.

[music out]

You now certainly have a few earworms stuck in your brain just by listening to this episode. So is there anything you can do to get these voices out of your head?

Kelly: One of the things that people can find annoying about the earworm is that you get this loop over and over, and you don't get the full song.

[SFX: Music - Kars 4 Kids, just the 1-8-7-7 Kars for Kids, K-A-R-S Kars 4 loop]

One of the most effective strategies was to actually engage with the earworm song itself. To look up a recording of the song and listen to the whole song all the way through to sort of get rid of the loop. Some people found that if they find out something about the song or get some sort of closure, that can sort of help them to get rid of the experience.

The other thing that people tend to do, is they tend to distract themselves with some sort of other auditory material, so that could be just thinking of a different song that they like better, playing some different music, listening to talk radio, and so on. So trying to engage their auditory cortex in a different way basically because you can't really have a song stuck in your head when you're listening to something else, or thinking of some sort of other song.

[music in]

Jingles seem so simple, but they’re tapping into the deepest parts of our psyche. Of course, some are super annoying, but others truly represent a product in a way that visuals just can’t. ...and I, for one, miss them. I think they need to make a comeback! So, to all you ad execs listening right now, it’s up to you to lead that charge.

[music out]

[music in]

CREDITS

Twenty Thousand Hertz is produced out of the studios of Defacto Sound. Go check out defactosound dot com. This episode was written and produced by James Introcaso… and me, Dallas Taylor. With help from Sam Schneble. It was edited, sound designed and mixed by Jai Berger.

Thanks to our guest, Dr. Timothy D. Taylor. You can check out Tim’s book, The Sounds of Capitalism, about the history of music in the advertising industry at thesoundsofcapitalism.com. Tim also has lots of other books about music that you can find at timothydtaylor.com.

Thanks also to Kelly Jakubowski. Kelly is a Post-Doctoral Research Assistant at Durham University in the Department of Music. You can find out more about Kelly’s work at dur.ac.uk/music.

The music in this episode is from our friends at Musicbed. Musicbed is a full-service licensing company that makes better music accessible to everyone. To listen to the music we use, visit music.20k.org.

You can engage with me and the rest of the 20 kay team through our website, facebook, twitter or by writing hi at 20 kay dot org. Finally, if you’d like to help us financially, I’d be extremely grateful. This show costs a lot of money to make and if you’d like to hear the show for years to come, consider setting up a recurring monthly donation at 20k.org/donate.

Thanks for listening.

[music out]

When we sat down to make this show, we had a giant comprehensive list of jingles we had to share. This list got so long that even in this packed episode, we weren’t able to bring you all our favorites. So in the spirit of Barry Manilow, we bring you our own very strange medley.

[SFX: Music - Double Mint Gum]

[SFX: Music - Goldfish]

[SFX: Music - Free Credit Report.com]

[SFX: Music - Mentos]

[SFX: Music - JG Wentworth]

[SFX: Music - Mounds and Almond Joy]

[SFX: Music - Lite Brite]

[SFX: Music - Huggies]

[SFX: Music - Fanta]

[SFX: Music - Glade Plug ins]

[SFX: Music - Alka Seltzer]

[SFX: Music - Lifesavers]

[SFX: Music - Nestle]

[SFX: Music - Mattress Giant]

[SFX: Music - Zest]

[SFX: Kars4Kids]

Recent Episodes

“Intel Inside” and other sonic branding brilliance

Sonic Branding Pic.png

This episode was written & produced by Kevin Edds.

We are constantly exposed to sonic branding in television, radio, and web commercials. We deconstruct some of the most impactful audio logos in history and explain how the brain interprets them. Featuring Scott Simonelli, CEO of  Veritonic and Walter Werzowa, founder of Musikvergnuegen.

MUSIC IN THIS EPISODE

Fury (Instrumental) - Prague
Unlimited - Dario Lupo
Endless Wild Perfect (Instrumental) - Le Voyager
Stunner - Airplanes
See - Roary
Plan B (no oohs ahhs) - Watermark High
Luminary (instrumental) - Benjamin James
Spacca - Steven Gutheinz
Spheres - Steven Gutheinz
Lost in the Mist - David a Molina
Time Carver - Steven Gutheinz
Faces (no oohs ahhs) - Roary
Finally the Sun - Dustin Lau
Her Dress - The Light The Heat

20K is made out of the studios of Defacto Sound and hosted by Dallas Taylor.

Follow Dallas on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and LinkedIn.

Join our community on Reddit and follow us on Facebook.

Consider supporting the show at donate.20k.org.

To get your 20K referral link and earn rewards, visit 20k.org/refer.

To find out how WeTransfer is proud of their privacy policy, click here.

Try ZipRecruiter for free at ziprecruiter.com/20k.

View Transcript ▶︎

SFX: SPORTSCENTER PROMO

ESPN Anchor: So many people wonder where the theme music from SportsCenter came from. David St. Hubbins from Spinal Tap, you gotta tell me where this came from.

St. Hubbins: I don’t really know, it’s a mystery. It kind of sprang from my forehead. I was just sitting there watching SportsCenter and I went [plays SportsCenter audio logo].

[SFX: Sportcenter theme]

You're listening to Twenty Thousand Hertz. I'm Dallas Taylor. This is the story… of Sonic Branding.

[music in]

The commercial you heard at the top of the show was from the classic “This Is SportsCenter” advertising campaign by ESPN. The ending of SportCenter’s iconic theme song became ubiquitous with the ESPN brand. Fans of the network were humming their new “audio logo” to themselves, so their marketing team knew they were onto something.

[music Out]

Last year advertising spending in the US was estimated to be over two-hundred-billion dollars. Not on product development, or manufacturing, or distribution. But on advertising alone. [sfx montage under rest of paragraph: Duracell,Nokia, NBC, LG, Playstation, T. Mobile, Nintendo Switch,] And while much of advertising includes commercials, signage, print & digital ads, a key part of any marketing that utilizes sound is an audio logo.

An audio logo, or a sonic brand if you will [sfx under VO: aflac duck, Nintendo Gamecube] , is a short distinctive melody or other sequence of sound. [sfx: McDonalds] It’s usually positioned at the beginning or ending of a commercial.[sfx: Old Spice Whistle] It can be considered as the acoustic equivalent of a visual logo.

[music in]

Almost every time you listen to a TV or radio commercial for a big brand, there’s an audio logo to punctuate the message. According to the Harvard Business Review, “sound can play an important role in positively differentiating a product or service. It can also enhance recall, create preference, build trust, and even increase sales.”

Scott: An audio logo is the audio identity of a brand in the way that you have the Golden Arches, or any visual logo, and that audio logo can be something that is present across a whole bunch of different advertising mediums. It can be a tag at the end of every ad, it can be the focal point of an ad, but, ultimately it should be present every time your brand is being heard.

[music out]

That’s Scott Simonelli, the founder and CEO of Veritonic, a marketing intelligence platform for sound. They measure audio effectiveness in advertising.

Scott: I think the Nationwide example is very top of mind, [SFX: Nationwide is on Your Side] it just works so well, and now it's at the core of their campaigns. [SFX: Nationwide campaign example, carry under dialog] You see them using it, and thinking about ways to base a campaign around the audio logo.

[SFX: bump out Nationwide campaign clip]

Scott: The way we're wired, and the ways our bodies are built. Sound is a very big part of the equation and it's very innate. You internalize sound really quickly, and we're very sensitive to what we hear, because, just evolutionary. Usually hear something coming [SFX: bear roar, running up to listener] when trouble's about to happen. It's also you're hearing for a whole bunch of months before you're born, all you do is hear. [SFX: muffled sounds of talking and heartbeat, as if from the womb] It's definitely something that's a big part of it, and I think in children you sort of see that.

I think children are always a good litmus test of what's innate, because they're much more unfiltered than adults.

Sound is also very different from sight. Audio logos and video logos are are interpreted by the brain in two totally different ways. Yet they can both be representations of the same brand. Advertisers work extremely hard creating them to try to evoke those same feelings in consumers.

Scott: The big benefit of an audio logo versus a visual logo, is that it stays with you after you've experienced it. [SFX: washed out ‘memories’ of audio logos under dialog...] With a visual logo, you might remember what it looks like, but not in the way that you would remember an audio logo, and certainly nobody's humming or singing a visual logo. As soon as you hear that three- note, or four-note sequence, you know exactly where you've heard it before, that longevity, that memorability, and that recall is so powerful.

[SFX: SEGA audio logo]

Memorability in audio logos is key. And it’s not always because the product is so amazing. Sometimes the audio logo is something we might call an earworm - something that just gets stuck in your head and you can’t get it out. Mennen After Shave had a great example of this in the 80s [SFX: "By Mennen"] It was so popular that it became the basis of a storyline in an episode of Seinfeld. Here George Costanza tries to make himself more memorable to a woman that he was dating.

[sfx: Seinfeld clip… George Costanza: I’m like a commercial Jingle, at first it’s a little irritating, then you hear it a few times and you’re humming it in the shower. By the 3rd date it’s “By Mennen”

Female speaker: Alright George, the first time we went out….I found you very irritating, but after seeing you a couple of times you sorta got stuck in my head. “Cosss-tanza”]

But setting out to make an audio logo memorable is not easy. It takes skill, creativity, research, and sometimes luck.

Scott: For a composer, or for a firm trying to create an audio logo, it is ridiculously hard to try to figure out how to tell a story in three seconds, or with five notes. And you know there's only so many frequencies of sound out there, and there's only 12 notes in western music [SFX: 12 notes], so to try to figure that out and find a way to make it work is hard.

[music in]

When a marketing department or advertising agency is given the task to create an audio logo, what happens? How do they do it? Typically they go to experts in the field. They’re a hybrid of an audio engineer, sound designer, and composer. But the process in which they learn about the brand and what the client wants can vary.

[music out]

Walter: Too much freedom is not really the best choice, and if you don't have any freedom, then it doesn't work out that well. That’s Walter Werzowa founder of Musikvergnuegen - a company which specializes in audio branding.

Just coming from Austria, speaking German, I only came up with a German name Musikvergnuegen, which translates into the enjoyment of music.

[music in]

Walter was on the short list to create the new audio logo for Delta Airlines. But, Delta’s agency wanted 5 companies to compete to come up with the best idea.

Walter: It suddenly turned into a cattle call. Delta needed an audio branding, and their agency called out, and we were one of them, and I mentioned to them, I think probably all of the companies will do an amazing job but it does not help a big, global corporation to call five different companies to come up with audio ideas.

[music out]

I can tell you from experience. [SFX: funny transition to a barrage of rejected Audio Logos] Listening to 150 - 2 second audio logos can be totally mind-numbing. There’s no way to have a clear head.

[SFX: bump out]

Walter: So I suggested just decide on one company. I didn't hear back from them for three or four month, and then they called again and said they apologized, and they would like to work with us.

[music in]

While some projects are started with an email, a couple phone calls, and maybe a proposal, Walter prefers a more personal connection, so he asked Delta for face-to-face a meeting at their headquarters.

Walter: So, we’re sitting in the boardroom, and they talked about their headaches going through bankruptcy, and the sound is awful up there if you're on a plane. It's not the best experience, how it can be brand that?

[music out]

It was very inspiring. I came up with the idea right there, let's just put an orchestra on the plane [SFX: plane in-flight sound gradually fade in] and tune the orchestra to the sound of the airplane, of that noise, and make something beautiful with it. [SFX: Delta]

They totally loved the idea, and that was it. So the creative process was extremely short in a sense. It was one hour of the board meeting.

But what happens when you don't have that creative epiphany and you go back to the office trying to figure it out? Almost any artist, in any medium, needs to put themselves into a creative mindset.

[music in]

Walter: The creative mind works differently on each project. The most important part is to really understand the client and the client needs because that is the story. It's not so much my creativity. It is my understanding of a problem. Some composers on my team don't like when I say this, but I don't think writing a mnemonic is composing. Writing a mnemonic is inventing audio which works for a very specific task.

In 1994, Walter created what has become arguably the most recognizable audio logo in existence. It’s said to be broadcast somewhere in the world every five minutes. We’ll get the story on that in a moment.

[music out]

MIDROLL

[music in]

In 1994 Walter Werzowa was contacted by Intel and asked to come up with a three-second audio logo that would be used at the end of every commercial. This wasn’t a common thing at the time. In 1994 there just weren’t very many products or services other than TV and radio stations that were branding themselves with a mnemonic.

[music out]

Walter: The way Intel was created was quite a journey. It started at RJLA where Kyle Cooper, he was junior creative, called me and said he has a very interesting project for me, and he was laughing on the phone. I asked him why he was laughing, and he said, "Oh, you will see."

[music in]

So we met. Those were the days where everything was personal. I could drive my car to the office and he would show me a board. The board was six pictures of that Intel spiral video. He said if I want to do music to it, it's Intel. It's this great technology company. And then he told me it's three seconds. I was laughing saying, "You're joking."

[music out]

Obviously this was a new task for Walter. Most of the music he had composed was at least 10 seconds long. So, how could he tell a whole musical story, in just three seconds?

Walter: I realized this is a very strange task. You can barely say a meaningful sentence in three seconds.

First I thought it's easy. I tried a couple of things, and everything felt incomplete or naïve or absolutely out of place.

Then I opened the books to get inspired like a scores, and went to the Mozarts and Beatles and whatever there was available.

And it never felt good because it came too much from a musical standpoint and not from what is needed. Writing a mnemonic is not like writing a symphony. I have done that, and it's a totally different center in your brain, and in the emotion, in your heart than doing audio branding.

Then Walter had an epiphany.

[music in]

He thought, “If this was a song, the tagline was Intel Inside.” It would have four accents or four notes to mimic that phrase. Now Walter was getting somewhere.

Walter: Since I heard about Intel, the engineers and it's super precise, and in a sense there's some coldness behind that and precision, four straight eight notes would resemble that best. It's a very pum-pum-pum-pum for the rhythm, and that felt good and mathematical. Then I went to the next, what could be the melody. Since they asked for something which doesn't have any cultural connotation, it has to sound and feel the same in an arabic place than in Asia or in Europe or in Africa, I thought that there's two intervals, which are very powerful but open and don't have any zooming into just one culture, and it's the fourth and the fifth.

[music out]

He also added a single note at the beginning. [SFX: single chord] Walter called it a “Palate Cleanser” - it’s a sound helps to get your ears ready for the rest of the logo.

Walter: So basically, I constructed it. It's not even composing. I was thinking, "What works best," and that became my methodology and I explained that to Intel. Everybody said, "Well, yeah. That concept works, so how does it sound?"

And then Walter played his new audio logo for the Intel executives. [SFX: Intel] And it was a huge hit.

Walter: We all have some kind of synesthesia going on when we hear sounds and we associate colors with it, [SFX: musical sound design through this section, matching what Walter is saying] so that sound seems to be blue and has a little of electricity in there, power in there, and it's positive and inviting. There's some wooden, organic instruments in there which help to connect to the human basically being in charge of the power and technology, so it really tells a nice story.

[SFX: seamless transition into...]

[music in]

For some artists, when they’re working on a painting, sculpture, a novel, or a song - sometimes they have that Eureka moment where they realize their work is complete.

Walter: I had a couple of other versions in my sleeve if that wouldn't work, but it was clear this is it. If we present the client a great strong concept, then it's very clear this is the sound which will and can reflect your whole brand experience.

Audio logos can communicate so much in a short amount of time. In a way, it’s their simplicity that makes them effective - there is no time for your mind to wander. They create a vibe for the brand, but they can also bring back memories.

[music out]

Walter: I could play you .5 seconds of Tainted Love, [SFX: Tainted Love] of that one sound and you recognize it, or Beat It. [SFX: Beat It] So many of those sounds, you just need a split second and you know the sound. It creates all the emotion of it.

[music in]

Music brings back memories of where and when you heard a song. Audio logos bring back memories too, but they bring back memories of a brand. This happens on a subconscious level. It’s clever psychology used by advertisers.

Walter: Our research is that if a mnemonic is longer than three seconds, it works differently because we shift from hearing to listening, and if it's three seconds, it really touches our subconscious more so than anything else. If you have now an 11 second mnemonic that tells a different story, it is absolutely more conscious. People start interacting with it. They see more content, they hear more content, and that is definitely more music than a mnemonic.

[music out]

An audio logo can shape the perception of a product. Once you hear an audio logo a few times, your memory of that brand becomes deeper. And some brands even try to include familiar sounds in there audio logos, so that you think about their brand even when you’re not hearing an ad.

Walter: I always thought that Southwest, that fasten your seatbelt, clink [SFX: Southwest] is just so right on. It’s just, that is just perfect. If you fly any other airline, you hear that Southwest tone, which is so wicked that, they brand themselves on any other flight in the world, which is genius. And probably drove some of the other airlines nuts.

[music in]

Walter has created audio logos for products like Intel, Delta, Samsung, LG, Nextel, and Red Bull. He has also created the audio logo for the TBS network. [SFX: TBS Logo] And writing an audio logo for a TV network is very different, and comes with its own challenges.

Walter: Working on networks is, a different beast because it has much more variety. It could be a dynamic show before something slower and more intimate, so we have to be even more respectful to the flexibility.

[music out]

In a sense, it's easier to write for a specific company, where it's pretty clear where they're going. Programming shifts. There's different morning programming than lunch and evening and night programming.

But as traditional television changed and streaming video came into play the idea of a daytime vs primetime schedule goes away. Services like Hulu [SFX: hulu], Amazon Prime [SFX: Amazon], and Netflix [SFX: Netflix audio logo] all have audio logos.

Walter: If you would just see the animation by itself, it wouldn't be that powerful. A couple of seconds, you tell the Netflix story and people recognize it and have all the cessation. And that makes Netflix even more special.

[music in]

When you compare audio logos to visual logos, there’s a stark contrast. Nike has the iconic Swoosh that you see on every shoe and piece of apparel. The designer wants you to think and feel something, but you have to see that logo over and over - it takes repetition. It could also be easy to miss, like if you’re skimming the pages of a magazine.

But, audio logos can reach you whether you’re looking at them or not. And the best ones are catchy so you only have to hear them once. You can walk away humming them, and in a sense, you can take it with you.

[music out]

Scott: For every Nike Swoosh, there's probably 10 audio logos that are way more powerful.

I bet you a very small percentage of the population could tell you what the Nationwide visual logo looks like, that it's blue and has an eagle on it, whereas, everyone knows, [SFX: Nationwide audio logo/tagline]

Could you tell me what the State Farm logo looks like? I'm sure you know, [SFX: State Farm audio logo/tagline]

When you have a whole orchestra at your fingertips,[sfx: orchestra tuning up]and all these different sounds, it's a much richer experience than anything visual can do.

[music in]

In the film and television industry a lot of money is spent on the visuals. From incredible locations and sets, to live-action chase and fight scenes, to the CGI movie magic. It’s a common generalization that audio is an afterthought. Well, that may have been true in the past, but people are consuming entertainment in new ways. And sound is becoming more important than ever.

Scott: When you look at the actual response, whether it's film or TV, or the ad, the audio has much more of an impact on the emotion than I think budgets dictate.

I think we're seeing that pendulum swing a little bit now, because a lot less people have their eyes on the screen. There's data now that says 40% of the time, people, when they're watching television, are on a second screen, or they're not looking at the TV, they're doing something else.

So, if you're running ads on television, how effective is the audio, if 40% of the audience isn't looking?

Audio logos aren’t particularly new, but they’ve seen an explosion over the past two decades. Advertising styles and technology have advanced. And the science behind what makes sonic branding effective is more intricate than ever. It’s amazing how five notes, in three seconds, make you feel that a product is sleek, powerful, trustworthy, cutting edge, and unforgettable.

[music out]

[music in]

CREDITS

Twenty Thousand Hertz is produced out of the studios of Defacto Sound. To hear Defacto’s audio branding work, visit defactosound.com/work.

This episode was written and produced by Kevin Edds… and me, Dallas Taylor with help from Sam Schneble. It was sound designed and mixed by Nick Spradlin.

Many thanks to Scott Simonelli, founder of Veritonic. If you'd like to learn more about how audio can impact your marketing campaign check ‘em out at Veritonic.com.

And sincere thanks to Walter Werzowa from Musikvergnuegen. You can check out his work at Musikvergnuegen.com. We’ll drop a link to both companies in our description.

The music in this episode is from our friends at Musicbed. Musicbed is a full-service music licensing company making better music accessible to everyone. To listen to the music we use, visit music.20k.org.

You can find us at 20 k dot org. There, you can catch up on past episodes, read transcripts, or buy a t-shirt! If you’re on Facebook or Twitter, be sure to follow us at the username 20k org. I love hearing from you, and I read all the comments. I know, it’s insane, but I love talking about sound.

And lastly, I have one favor to ask. If you love this show and want to hear more and more episodes I challenge you to get just one friend to subscribe to twenty thousand hertz. Seriously, that’s all it will take. One extra person. So contact your mom, your best friend from college, your 4th grade science teacher, or anyone you think will love the show. Text them, call them, write on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit or wherever.

Thanks for listening.

[music out]

Recent Episodes

Loop Groups: The art of movie background chatter

Loop Groups.png

This episode originally aired on Every Little Thing. Go subscribe!

Invisible actors create worlds of sound in everything you watch - from Jaws to The Wire. With special guests, Carl Gottlieb, screenwriter and author of "The Jaws Log"; Dann Fink, loop group director and co-owner of Loopers Unlimited; Stuart Stanley, Sound Supervisor; loop group members Eboni Booth, Dennis Carnegie, Axel Avin, Jr., Shannon Burkett, Daphne Gaines, and Rashad Edwards; and Will Ralston, supervising sound editor for The Wire, The Deuce, and Treme.

Twenty Thousand Hertz is produced out of the studios of Defacto Sound and hosted by Dallas Taylor.

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View Transcript ▶︎

You're listening to Twenty Thousand Hertz... The stories behind the world's most recognizable and interesting sounds. I'm Dallas Taylor. [SFX: NYC ambience, walla is present and upfront, occasional phrases and laughs poke out above the bed of noise]

Imagine you’re watching a movie. It’s a busy scene in some major downtown city, but there’s people in the background walking, talking, laughing, and generally going about their normal day. The city is alive with sound. However, on the film set, the background actors are actually completely silent.

[SFX: Ambiences bump out]

That’s right, none of those background sounds are actually happening. The actors in the background are told to to appear like they’re talking, laughing, and yelling, but not to actually make any noise while doing it. The film set is kept as quiet as possible to get a clean recording of the lead actors’ performances. This also goes for scenes in loud places like concerts or a club.

[SFX: Club atmosphere and music sneak in]

The actors may be yelling, but on set, there’s nothing else being heard.

[SFX: Quick bump out]

So, eventually all of that background chatter has to be recreated.

Recently, Flora Lichtman from the fantastic podcast Every Little Thing talked with some of the talented people who make those voices. And if you like Twenty Thousand Hertz, I think you’ll really like Every Little Thing. It’s about the small stuff that makes a big difference. Here’s their report.

Carl Gottlieb: Yeah, so do a bed of just people in the police station. One, two, three.

[SFX: Background chatter “I've got the plate and VIN numbers.”]

Looper: I had no idea that this type of work even existed.

[SFX: Background chatter “Get out of my neighborhood. We don't need you here. We don't need you in our neighborhood.”]

People in this industry don't know.

Looper: I didn't know until I got a call from Dan.

But it's in everything.

Looper: It is in everything.

[SFX: Background chatter “Okay, we'll just do a bottle, we'll just do another bottle then.”]

Looper: So, we just kind of have to come in and be a chameleon and do whatever they want. Now, when I watch a film or television show, I can't even watch it in the same way.

[SFX: Background chatter]

Carl Gottlieb: You shouldn't know that we're there. But once you do, you will always hear us.

Today, the actors you always hear, but never see. Their story starts 40 years ago, on the movie Jaws. Crew members from around the country had gathered on a beach in Cape Cod to make cinema history. It was magical. Carl Gottlieb: Ugh. This may be disappointing to you, but it was a movie, it was a difficult location, the crew was tired and angry and overworked and underpaid. It was a job.

Meet Carl Gottlieb.

Carl Gottlieb: We worked under difficult conditions. The mechanical shark had issues. And we had to work around all those things.

Carl co-wrote Jaws.

Carl Gottlieb: Screen credit it "Screenplay by Peter Benchley," who wrote the novel, "and Carl Gottlieb," who did the rewrite on location.

So, why did you have to do the rewrite on location? What was the problem with the script?

Carl Gottlieb: It was awful. It just wasn't good. And I shared with Steven, and he had sent me a copy of the proposed shooting script, with a note on the cover saying, "Eviscerate it."

So, Carl did eviscerate, and eventually the mechanical shark came to life, Steven Spielberg shot the film, and Verna Fields edited it.

Carl Gottlieb: We were in Verna Fields' home, where she was cutting in her garage, cutting the film. And there's a point in every film where the film is spotted for music and effects. In other words, the director says, "Oh, can we add some music under here?" And, "Oh, look. I see a lot of people in the shot. We're gonna need some crowd sounds there." Whenever there is a crowd scene being filmed, the extras were always instructed, "Don't say anything. Just move your lips, and we'll put in the sound later."

Can we just take a minute? Yes, the extras that you see in movies are often miming. And there are a couple reasons for this. First, putting in the background sound later allows you to get clear recordings of the primary actors. And it's also cheaper because of the way that actor pay scales work.

Carl Gottlieb: And then they would put in a crowd sound, either from a film library of other crowds, and sometimes if it was a small group or a group that had to express a particular emotion or something, the sound editors would grab a bunch of colleagues from the editorial department, they'd stand in the hall with a tape recorder, and they'd go, "Rhubarb, rhubarb, sassafras, sassafras, sera babachaba."

Wait, wait, wait- first of all...

Carl Gottlieb: And that would sound like a crowd. That would sound like a crowd.

Why were people saying, "Sassafras, sassafras, sassafras?" Why not just talk regularly?

Carl Gottlieb: If you get a room full of people and tell them to say, "Rhubarb, sassafras, sassafras, rhubarb," there are no specific words that emerge from the crowd. It becomes noise, rather than discernible dialogue, and for the purposes of filmmaking those days, that's basically all you needed was crowd noise, crowd background.

This is actually how it was done, but back in Verna's garage, the team had this offhand idea.

Carl Gottlieb: I don't know whether it was Verna or Steven, basically said, "Wouldn't it be great if we wanted to dial up, turn up the crowd sound, we could actually hear voices talking in New England accents and really nail down where we are?"

So, the idea is that even the background sound would be authentic. Carl Gottlieb: Exactly. People who were familiar with New England accents would talk like they were from Bar Harbor, Maine, or Boston, and all those voices had to be kind of appropriate.

So, is this insight into what Steven is like as a director? It sounds very meticulous.

Carl Gottlieb: It is very meticulous, and Steven is an extremely meticulous director. He wanted the background sound to be right.

We're talking about being obsessed with background noise.

Carl Gottlieb: Yep. Yes. Yes, you want it to be all right. Just like when you're looking at a crowd of extras in a Roman chariot spectacle, you don't want to see any of them wearing a wristwatch. So that's the same eye for detail.

Okay, so Carl and his then-partner Allison Caine cast the background sound of Jaws. They hired improv actors, who could do New England accents, and for three days, they transformed themselves into Massachusetts beach bums.

Like here, in this scene, early in the movie.

[SFX: beach scene plays in background]

Carl Gottlieb: I love that scene. First of all, it's a perfect short film in itself.

And if, for whatever reason, you haven't seen Jaws, this scene is a study in how to build tension. Things start out great. The crowd is having a lovely day at the beach.

Carl Gottlieb: There's a kid. There's people running into the water. You hear a radio announcer. It sounds like a transistor radio is playing on the beach.

[SFX: Radio Announcer Speaking]

Listen to that extremely appropriate ferry information.

Carl Gottlieb: So you hear some of that. You hear people laughing. You hear the guy calling to his dog.

[SFX: “Pippin! Pippin!”]

Carl Gottlieb: And you're building suspense because we, the audience, know that there's a shark out there.

[SFX: Jaw music]

And then you hear the scream. The individual voices start expressing curiosity, then shock. "Oh my God, look! Oh, oh God, look, look. Help, help somebody do something."

[SFX: Beach scene continues]

We hear it even in the tension of the voices of the background actors. And then, you realize the kid's dead. So it's all of a piece.

In this scene, Carl and Allison invented a new profession: human background sound acting. That offhand idea, born in Verna's garage, to make Jaws just a little more authentic, it was the start of something much bigger. 40 years later, these background sound actors are everywhere.

[Background sound actor montage]

Carl Gottlieb: So, it slowly became an industry standard.

Now, it's the industry standard for films and TV shows. And this is how the magic happens.

Dann Fink: Everybody up on the small lane. And this is-

We're on a background sound session for the CBS cop show Blue Bloods. It's a padded room, couches in the back, mics in the front.

[Background actor noise]

Dann Fink: Let's try one with a different tone, which is still the anger and whatnot, but the context of the argument is "get out of our neighborhood, this doesn't belong here." Like, it's you guys rising above his bad actions, instead of just going back at an attack towards him.

This is a what's-my-motivation conversation about background noise. This is rhubarb sassafras two-point-oh. In this session, the actors are watching tiny snippets of the show on loop. They call themselves "loopers." And for you sound nerds, looping is a totally separate process from Foley sound effects. It's just for human background sound.

Stuart Stanley: You wanna hit right onto look-who specials and get those going?

That's Stuart Stanley, the sound supervisor.

Dann Fink: Super. And you guys, like, to get actor-y-

That's Dan Fink, he's the head of this loop group. And you've heard Dan's noises in hundreds of movies and shows.

Dann Fink: Gravity, Arrival, Beauty and the Beast-

He's working with a group of loopers, and for a lot of these actors, looping is a well-paid side hustle.

Daphne Gaines:Hi, I'm Daphne Gaines.

Axel Avenjuliar: I am Axel Avenjuliar.

Ebony Booth: I'm Ebony Booth.

Shannon B.: I'm Shannon Burquette.

Dennis Carnegie: I'm Dennis Carnegie. I'm an actor.

Daphne Gaines: We have many roles on Blue Bloods, and so, from scene to scene, we change characters according to what's needed in the scene. What about today? What are the specific roles that you're playing today?

Axel Avenjuliar: Police officers.

[Background Police Officer chatter]

Axel Avenjuliar: Folks, please stand back. Ma'am, please step back. Everything's gonna be okay. We can give you no information right now.

Axel Avenjuliar: People working the mayor's office. Forensics, heavy forensics.

They're playing the ancillary characters, the faces out of focus, the specs on the horizon, the random elbow that pops into frame. And today, they're also doing the paramedics behind the detectives.

Axel Avenjuliar: They're hard at work trying to keep him alive.

Ebony Booth: That's an ambu bag.

Axel Avenjuliar: Ambu bag?

Ebony Booth: Yeah.

And they've gotta know paramedic speak, 'cause they're improving everything.

Looper: Pressure's dropping.

Looper: I've got the ambu bag.

Looper: Okay, BP.

Looper: He's losing a lot. Yep, BP's racing. You got him?

Looper: No, not good.

Dann Fink: Let's play it back.

[Blue Bloods scene plays]

Dann Fink: Good. I'll place it around where we need it. Good.

Do you have to do research?

Loopers: Yes, Yes.

Well, what does the research look like?

Axel Avenjuliar: I'm sure I'm on FBI and CIA lists, because I'm looking up "FBI glossary," "FBI language." I'm sure they're like, "Follow this guy."

Daphne Gaines: Because when you go up there, and those beeps go off, you have to have the information and you have to have it at the tip of your tongue.

I used to have it all written, and I had a book. I'm not kidding, a couple inches thick, of everything. And-

Like of all the kinds of roles you might play?

Daphne Gaines: Hospital, forensics.

Axel Avenjuliar: There is a white supremacist element in this episode

Axel Avenjuliar: We're just trying to secure the permits for the rally.

Axel Avenjuliar: So, we're playing white supremacists, and I'm African American. You can't see me, but yeah, that's kind of fun. Different perspective.

Is it fun?

Axel Avenjuliar: Yeah. It's a lot of fun. It's surprisingly fun.

Axel Avenjuliar: For me, as an African American actor, it's liberating in voice because I can be white, black, Italian, Spanish, British. You don't know what I am. But when I go on camera, for television, I'm limited by certain roles. So I'm not a stereotype. I'm a voice. 'Cause you don't know who or what I am.

Can you show ... Can you do some of your-

Axel Avenjuliar: Well, if I just sort of talked like I'm from England, you wouldn't know particularly if I was black or white or what. I'm just there.

Axel Avenjuliar: Or I can be a cop. What are you doing over here? Get up against the wall. What are you doing?

Axel Avenjuliar: But then I'm like, yeah man, I ain't do nothing. Why you putting me up against the wall, brother?

Axel Avenjuliar: So I can be all of those people, and Dan is wonderful at that. He doesn't put us in a box. 'Cause I have a million voices. A million voices.

Besides doing a million voices, a good looper also has to master the microest of non-verbal performances. Grunts, yells, sniffles, snorts.

[SFX: Grunting]

Dann Fink: Or in this case, it was somebody falling off a skateboard. Getting clotheslined and falling off a skateboard.

Can you just give me a "watch it, watch it, watch it"?

Axel Avenjuliar: Watch it! Oh, God. [SFX: Grunting]

Dann Fink: Damn, that was good. I like that better.

It's always kind of a very delicate situation to get the exact right sound for what you're seeing.

What are the smallest types of sounds that you add to a scene?

Ebony Booth: We do sighs. We do simple breaths sometimes. And it's amazing when you go back and see a film that you've worked on, and you hear how a simple breath has changed the magnitude of that scene.

[SFX: Breathing]

Dann Fink: There's a million ways to exhale.

[SFX: Exhales]

So, little tiny things like that can really, really help storytell, and it all depends what mood you want to create.

Can you mess up the mood? What's the biggest faux-pas of looping?

Dann Fink: Oh, boy. The biggest challenge is because we're not front-and-center, we have to be uninteresting.

Axel Avenjuliar: Actors look for drama or conflict. But in this, we have to be nondescript. Interesting, but not interesting enough. So, we don't want to pull focus from what ... So it's difficult finding that medium line.

I wanna hear all about this because this seems like the opposite of every other kind of acting.

Dann Fink: We're the sizing on the canvas. We're not the painting. So, we have to be there as the foundation, so that everybody can become compelled and captivated by the foreground.

What are the traps that people fall into, where they make things too interesting?

Dann Fink: Oh, boy. It's ... And every single person has done it. Everybody, you get a gut instinct, and you're gonna go with it. Going negative is never really a productive way to go, but that's all improv. That's not just who ... That's just not us.

Ebony Booth: All of a sudden, talking about something ... like, "Oh, when my grandmother was shot in the head, by my brother who was".

Shannon B.: There's nowhere to go from there. It's horrible.

Ebony Booth: You start talking like that, and people are gonna be like ... If it's just loud enough, people are gonna be like, "What is going on over there?" So believe it or not, the tone is gonna come through.

If I were to listen for the best looping, are there go-to scenes in your ... Like, they crushed it in this movie or in this scene?

Ebony Booth: The good moments are the ones that I watch a film or show and I hear the people that I've worked with, or I know them and-

Axel Avenjuliar: I heard you the other night, in a bummy hotel, seedy as hell, having an argument through a door. And it was futsed. So you couldn't even really hear her voice, but it sounded so authentic. You could smell the urine in the staircases. It was just the voice was perfect. You couldn't hear it, but just this muffled argument. It was perfect.

[music in]

40 years after Jaws, human background sound has become integral in films, TV shows, and more. It’s an art form all it’s own. And with every art form, there are perfectionists.

Ebony Booth: I mean, there are certain shows that the director slash creator writes almost all of the dialogue. He is creating an orchestra piece, and he wants ... he hears it all.

Axel Avenjuliar: Every single instrument, he has mapped in his mind, and he wants to hear it. It's incredible.

Ebony Booth: It is. And it shows. I mean, I think his pieces are-

Axel Avenjuliar: Stellar.

Ebony Booth: Stellar.

We’ll find out who they are talking about, after the break.

[music out]

[MIDROLL]

[music in]

40 years ago, the profession of background sound acting was invented in a garage. Since then, actors and directors have elevated the practice into an art form. While Flora was reporting on this story, one name was brought up over and over again. It was the name of a master in the art of looping.

[music out]

Here’s Flora.

You know, when we were on this ... When we were meeting with this loop group in New York, just naturally in conversation, the loopers we were talking to started sort of talking in these hushed, reverent tones. You know where I'm going with this. About one director, one creator who is so meticulous that he scripts the looping.

Will Ralston: Yeah. David Simon.

So it's not apocryphal?

Will Ralston: No, unfortunately it's true.

This is Will Ralston. Will has been the supervising sound editor for many of David Simon's projects.

Will Ralston: We started this process on The Wire. That was the first show that I was involved with, that David worked on.

Just like with Steven Spielberg, Will says that David Simon's attention to looping is about this obsession with authenticity. He writes all the loopers' lines, and on The Wire, he hired non-actors for the loopers' parts, people from the neighborhoods where the story was set.

Will Ralston: I think all of this is really ultimately born of his lack of embrace of score. He doesn't like to hear music in his storytelling.

Oh, that's interesting.

Will Ralston: Which I think is ... It just kind of comes from his journalistic background. He's not ... none of us are harboring the illusion that we're creating a documentary per se, but there's something about a score that says, "We're trying to manipulate you now, and this is how you should feel, and this the energy we're going for." And he'd rather kind of build that world with off-screen sound.

Can looping act like a score?

Will Ralston: Totally. I mean, not just looping, but all of sound can really do that. I mean, going back to The Wire, especially like the Hamsterdam stuff, I mean creating that whole world like an open-air drug market ...

[SFX: market scene]

Everybody's talking at once, but you have to find a way to make them all kind of breathe and have their moment. They're all like instruments, and you're just trying to build this symphony that's really a cacophony of the open-air drug market.

Are there particular sounds or ways that you can make me feel something with looping, or with background sound?

Will Ralston: Yeah. I mean, just for an example, if you're watching a character walk down a street and it's dark, if you want that person to feel lonely, put some people in the background somewhere off camera having a good time. 'Cause they're having a good time without our character. You know? He's been separated from it.

Oh wow.

Will Ralston: If you want that person to feel danger, put a distant siren. Or somebody ... A couple of people having an argument just around the corner, so that there's this sense of tension, and that there's something going wrong in the world. We don't have to see it. If we can hear it, we're gonna kind of attribute the emotion that we're feeling to the person we're looking at on camera.

This seems like subliminal storytelling.

Will Ralston: Oh, totally. Totally. The thing is, with sound, you're only doing a good job if nobody notices that you've done anything.

[music in]

Well, we spoiled that. After listening to this, you'll always notice. If you want to.

Carl Gottlieb: It's kind of like the old adage about sausage, you know? You like sausage, but you don't want to see it made. Like every magic trick, you don't want to know exactly how it's done. So, you immerse, you surrender to the experience. And people who don't surrender to the experience, I think, our word for them is "nerds." Or "obsessives." Because they're looking at the elements of the piece, not the whole piece.

Well, I wonder if we could be both. Maybe you can be both a nerd and then surrender, if you want.

Carl Gottlieb: Yeah, exactly.

For everyday life, what are tips that people can take away from looping?

All Loopers: Listening.

Axel Avenjuliar: I think one thing we learn is to not talk wall-to-wall. Just ad nauseum, like constant, with no breaks. So take breaks. Listen. Have some air, you know? And I think... Listen, like when you're in a conversation, don't feel the need to drive it all the time. Sit back, listen for a second, intake that information, and then give it back. You know? Take your time.

Twenty Thousand Hertz is produced out of the studios of Defacto Sound, a sound design team that makes television, film, and games sound amazing. Find out more at defacto sound dot com.

Announcer: Every Little Thing was produced by Phoebe Flanigan, with Flora Lichtman, Catherine Wells, Christine Driscoll, and Devan Taylor. Production help from Nicole Pasulka and Doug Baron. Dara Hirsch mixed this episode.

Announcer: If you want to look for loopers in credits, the official credit is "ADR Voice Casting," for "automated dialogue replacement."

You can hear more episodes of Every Little Thing by visiting their website: elt dot show. You can also subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

And hear more of our show at our website twenty k dot org, there you can stream our archives, send us suggestions, reach out about advertising, and even buy a Twenty Thousand Hertz t-shirt. You can also get looped in to all things Twenty Thousand Hertz by signing up for our superfan newsletter at newsletter dot twenty-kay dot org. Finally if you want to share the show with your friends, we would be eternally grateful. Please do that.

Thanks for listening.

[music out]

Recent Episodes

Slot Machines: The addictive power of sound

Casinos Pic.png

This episode was written & produced by Colby Hartburg.

What do you hear when you walk into a Casino? It can feel like chaos, but each sound is carefully curated to draw you in and make you stay. One collection of sounds are scientifically and artistically designed to keep the gambler, gambling. Slot machines. This episode features interviews with Willie Wilcox, Chief Sound Designer at Scientific Games in Las Vegas, Laura Taylor, composer and sound designer for a number of slot machines across the US, and Karen Collins, who has led extensive research into the sound and music behind these games. Is it addiction or entertainment? Maybe it's both. Pull the lever and listen for yourself.

MUSIC IN THIS EPISODE

The Habit (Instrumental) by Reagan James
Glass House by Utah
Nonchalant by Watermark High
Punk Drop by Zi
Sofia by AM Architect
Whats In Front Of Me (Instrumental) by Lael
Love With Your Life (Capital Kings Remix - Instrumental) by Hollyn

Check out Defacto Sound, the studios that produced Twenty Thousand Hertz, hosted by Dallas Taylor.

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View Transcript ▶︎

[SFX: Casino Ambience]

You're listening to Twenty Thousand Hertz...The stories behind the world's most recognizable and interesting sounds. I'm Dallas Taylor.

The sound you just heard…is what casinos use to lure people in…and keep them there. There’s the sound of the cards [SFX: Cards shuffling], the chips [SFX: Chips], the craps table [SFX Craps table], but there’s one game that is particularly effective at keeping people playing. The slot machines.

[SFX: Slot machines]

[music in]

Modern Casinos earn over 70 percent of their revenue off of slots. That’s a dramatic increase from the 1970’s, when it was less than 50 percent in most casinos. A lot of that has to do with the advancements in gaming technology. Slot machines today are very different than their predecessors.

[SFX: Old slot machine]

They’re now more like video games…

[music out]

[SFX: Newer slot machine]

And there’s plenty of science and sound design that go into their creation.

Laura: There are different styles of slot machines. Obviously when you go into a casino you have a smorgasbord of slots to choose from.

This is Laura Taylor, she’s a sound designer for slot machines.

Laura: You go into the Vegas casinos, or in a smaller casino, there'll be a little corner, you'll have that gigantic Britney Spears machine with the huge curved screen.

[SFX: Music Britney Spears “Hit me Baby One More Time”]

Or you can play a Batman game, or you can play a Godzilla game, or Kiss…[SFX: Kiss “Are you ready to rock”]

It's another way to make revenue for a licensed property.

We’re probably all familiar to the traditional slots with the three wheels. You pull the handle, you wait for the cherries to line up, you win [SFX: ding ding ding!] or…you try again.

[music in]

Those are called “Stepper Machines”. But today, there’s a massive variety in slot machines. Willie Wilcox, who’s Chief Sound Designer for Scientific Games out of Las Vegas, helps break it down.

Willie: So the other kinds of slot machines, other than like a traditional stepper machine, you start getting into the new video machines, which can be stereo machines and you can also get into video versions of surround sound games.

Today’s slot machines are all about themes. As Laura mentioned, popular music is a big trend, but also movies, such as James Bond, Rocky, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. And all of them require sound and music.

[music out]

Willie: In order for somebody to be able to sit there and play for a long time, you don't want them to get sonically fatigued. We're generating music that is engaging, that is anticipatory, that enables somebody to sit there for a long period of time without being bored, without being irritated and feeling like somebody is taking their index finger and tapping you on the forehead and making you not want to be there.

That’s a lot of pressure to put on these sound designers. The sounds need to draw in players, but also be comfortable to listen to for long periods of time. The last thing casinos want is for you to leave due to listener fatigue. Not only that, but they’re also competing against all of the other sounds in the casino. The popular music, [SFX: Casino w/pop music] the chatter, [SFX: chatter/laughing], and the other slots [SFX: slot machines].

Willie: You're looking for music that's going to keep the player engaged [SFX: engaging music], but not detract from what they're doing. The real attraction is always the chase, always chasing what it is that you're looking to win, and making identifying sounds that help you realize that.

So if you had your eyes closed and you weren't watching, you would know from the sounds that you're hearing what's happening in the game. It should be that simple and that conclusive.

Laura: The number one rule is don't be annoying. That's always in the forefront of my mind, because somebody's going to sit down at one of these machines, and hopefully they're going to play it for a very, very long time, and they're going to hear the same sounds over and over, and so I don't want anything high-pitched. I don't want anything shrill, and I don't want anything boring.

[SFX: Slot machine music]

Laura: There has to be a lot of motion to it. It's not going to 80 beats per minute. It's going to be 130 or 140, something that moves, something that drives. Maybe if they wait long enough, you start getting little audio hints. A ding [SFX: ding], a whoosh [SFX: whoosh], just something to draw the player's attention back to the machine.

Another question slot designers have to ask themselves is how many speakers there should be and where to put them.

Willie: It's extremely important to pay attention while you're designing these slot machines, that when a player sits in a chair, and the two sets of stereo speakers, your left and right speakers that are facing the player, are positioned in a good listening position, which is just pro-audio 101.

If you have speakers that are shooting out into space, that means that the player next to you that's playing is going to hear all your speakers. [SFX: slot machines in background] Do you really want to hear what the player next to you is doing or do you want to hear what you're doing?

So speaker placement is extremely important, so is speaker type. If you have too small of speakers, then you've got a lot of super high end frequency responses, and not a lot of mid-range and lower frequency responses, which make the sound much more fatiguing to the ear, especially at the louder levels.

Designers can add additional speakers to create an even more immersive experience for players. Here’s Laura.

Laura: There are surround sound chairs where you have speakers mounted behind your head, built into the chair, and they also put a subwoofer into the seat...

[SFX: Slot machine with a punchy kick layered in]

Laura: So that's really going to give you a punch.

Laura also addressed a conspiracy theory that’s circulated through the slot machine world. This theory suggests that all slot machine music is actually composed in the same key.

Laura: No, it's not. I get asked that question a lot.

It's something that gets repeated because it's easy to understand. It's easy for media to say, "All slot machine music is in the key of C," without really explaining the history of whether that's true or not, and whether that's true today. It is most definitely, 100% not true today, because you've got your Kiss games, you've got your Michael Jackson games. You've got an entire James Bond series of games. Not all of that music is in the key of C.

The idea behind this theory is that music in the key of C evokes happy, upbeat feelings. And if you’re happy, you gamble more.

Laura: In the old days they were done in the key of C, as slot games have evolved, so has the music, so have the needs of the music.

[music in]

From the sound design, to the music, and even the placement of the speakers, its clear a lot of thought goes into creating the slot machine experience.

Laura: You're spending money to do this, so we want you to have a good time while you're spending your money. It's not because we're vultures and we want to take all your money. We're like anybody who sells something for entertainment purposes. We want you to have fun, because then you'll come back.

The sounds of slot machines are meant to get players excited and… hopefully come back for more. But what’s the science behind these sounds that keep us playing? We’ll get to that after the break.

[music out]

[Midroll]

[music in]

A lot of artistry goes into designing slot machines… and also a lot of science. What is it about casino sound design that gets people hooked?

Karen: One of the first things you notice as you walk into a casino is just how much winning sounds are being played.

That’s Karen Collins. She’s an Associate Professor at the University of Waterloo. For the past 15 years her work has focused on sound and music in interactive media, and more recently, slot machines.

[music out]

Karen: Of course, they never have losing sounds [SFX: whomp whomp sound], so as soon as you walk in, you just hear the sound of people winning all the time, and it's, of course, very exciting, and it helps to draw your attraction to the machines thinking, "All of these people are winning. I can win too."

But of course, that’s not always the case. The idea isn’t just to keep the current player playing. It’s to attract others to play too.

Karen: "Wow, that person won a lot of money," but one of the tricky things we found with the machines is that it would play that winning sound even when you're not winning. So, if you placed a bet for, say, 50 cents, and you won 25 cents, well, you've actually lost 25 cents, but it would still play the music as if you had won. It makes you feel as if you're winning. So, even though you've lost, the machine's telling you that you've won.

But what does winning…or losing sound like?

Karen: They're using lots of bright, positive sounds. Lots of high frequency sounds. What we think of as sparkly or tinkly sounds. Lots of, we call it, audio bling.

[SFX: tinkly sound and sparkly sound]

But there’s more to it than whooshes and sparkle. Karen’s research found that cadence plays an important role as well.

Karen: Let's say we're having a conversation and I stop in the middle of a ... Right? You really want me to finish that phrase or that sentence. It feels unresolved, and the same thing happens musically in chord progressions.

[SFX: simple chord progression on piano, with resolution]

It generally moves towards what we call a resolution. What they do in slot machines is as you're building up ... Let's say you had five cherries that you had to line up, and it might go up in notes. "Doo doo doo doo doo." Then it would resolve. "Doo," and it feels good, but what they're doing in the slot machines is leaving it unresolved if you don't win.

[SFX: sample progression on piano, without final resolution chord]

So, that's why you want to bet again, you want to put some more money in, and then when you do win, you'll have that resolution and it's the sense of relief that comes along with it.

[SFX: final resolving chord from before]

It's playing on that part of our brain. "Hey, that feels good," and maybe we can't explain why it feels good, but it's all done in the music and sound effects there to trick you.

This concept isn’t anything new. In fact, music acting as a sort of trick goes all the way back to the original slot machines. They popped up around the 1890’s. At that time though, gambling machines were generally illegal.

[SFX: Old timey music]

Karen: So, what they would do in some of these machines would be they would add a musical component and call it a music box instead of a slot machine. So, the very first slot machines to have music actually were just ...It was just there so that they could get around the gambling laws.

Remember, this was a time before people had radios or even gramophones in their homes. It wasn’t that far fetched to go out to penny arcades and play these machines just to listen to music.

Karen: It wasn't out of place, but the idea was that you would put your nickel in and you would pull the lever to see if you won or not and it would play a little song [SFX: Old timey music]. But, because they weren’t really interested in actually playing music, sometimes the song would start halfway through the song or it would finish halfway into the song.

What started as a legal loophole became an important part of the slot machine experience. But today, slot machine music can still be viewed as more of a trick than innocent entertainment. It’s intentionally designed to draw you in and keep you in. And for some, it can be a truly addictive experience.

This idea is presented in a 1960 episode of The Twilight Zone. It’s called The Fever. In it, a character named Franklin goes to a casino and becomes obsessed with a slot machine.

[SFX: Clip from Twilight Zone: The Fever “She’s bound to… to turn up in a little while, you…”]

Karen: As he's playing, he talks about how the machine keeps calling out to him and mocking him and teasing him and beckoning him, and he talks about this idea of the losses disguised as wins and how it keeps luring you in through these little tricks.

[Clip from Twilight Zone: The Fever “Woman: Franklin Franklin: Eh?... What time is it Flora? Woman: It’s 8 o’clock…in the morning Franklin Franklin: I swear to you Flora, this machine mocks me, it teases, beckons. Put in 5, get back 4. Put in 6 get back 5. But, it’s got to pay off. Sooner or later it’s just got to I tell ya.”]

[music in]

Whether you think slot machines are a trick or entertainment depends largely on how you approach them. To Laura and Willie, the truth lies somewhere in between.

Willie: Personally, for me I can say, putting money into a slot machine, I want to win. I hope that I do win. But if I don't win, I also would love to have a great entertainment experience. That's what we're trying to bring to the new genre of slot machines, is the merging of the entertainment experience and the gambling experience.

Laura: If you think about Las Vegas and the strip in particular, you've got Caesar's Palace, and Treasure Island, and the Mirage, and New York, New York, all these themes, right? When you walk in there, they want you to walk into that world. They want to keep you engaged and happy so you don't go anywhere else. It's entertainment. It's, "Come to our place and have fun, and yes, we want you to spend your money here." Is that so bad? I think it's not.

[music out]

[music in]

CREDITS

Twenty Thousand Hertz is produced out of Defacto Sound. If you do creative work that also uses sound, head to defactosound dot com and reach out! We’d love to hear from you.

This episode was written and produced by Colby Hartburg… and me, Dallas Taylor. With help from Sam Schneble. It was edited, sound designed and mixed by Colin DeVarney. Thanks to our guests Laura Taylor, Willie Wilcox and Karen Collins.

The music in this episode is from our friends at Musicbed. And Musicbed wants to make sure you find the perfect song for your project. Not only do they have incredible browse and search tools, but they also have people on staff who are dedicated to helping you find the perfect song. At no extra charge they’ll send you suggestions based on what you’re looking for. Consider them another member of your team. Check it out a musicbed dot com.

I love hearing from our listeners. If you have a great show idea or want to give general feedback, head to 20k.org. There you can also read episode transcripts or buy a t-shirt or a stickers. Last, but certainly not least, we are a totally independent podcast and we have zero network support. So, our survival is completely in your hands. I know you love the show, if you didn’t there’s no way you’d be hearing my voice this late in the episode. Seriously, I see the stats, and not many people make it all the way here. So, it’s just you and me… and I need your help. I’m just asking for 15 to 20 seconds of your time. Please take that time right now to help spread the word.

Thanks for listening.

[music out]

Recent Episodes