This episode was written and produced by Andrew Anderson.

To give voices to the frightening monsters in movies, TV shows, and video games, sound designers often start with animal noises, then apply all kinds of creative processing. But other times, these sounds begin with human voice actors, who absolutely shred their vocal cords for our entertainment. In this episode, we learn the tricks of the terrifying trade. Featuring voice actors DB Cooper and Michael Schwalbe, and sound designer/composer Jordan Chin.

MUSIC FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE

Retour by Tony Anderson
Freak Me Out (Instrumental) by 90's Kids
Divisive Alliance by Jon Björk
King of Thieves by Christoffer Moe Ditlevsen
Blood of Garuda (Instrumental Version) by Carvings
The One That Got Away (Instrumental Version) by Thyra
Not a Wink by Rich in Rags

Additional music by Wesley Slover

Follow the show on Twitter, Facebook, & Reddit.

Subscribe to our Youtube channel here.

Become a monthly contributor at 20k.org/donate.

Buy Monster Train and its soundtrack on Steam.

If you know what this week's mystery sound is, tell us at mystery.20k.org.

Get 10% off your first month of BetterHelp at betterhelp.com/20k.

Visit zocdoc.com/hertz to download the Zocdoc app and sign up for free.

Get 20% off The Prisoner Wine Company (plus shipping included) at theprisonerwine.com/hertz.

View Transcript ▶︎

Before we get started, a quick heads up: This episode talks about video game violence, and scary monsters. It’s nothing too intense but if you have small kids, they might not really like it. So if you have little ears around, I’ll give you a few seconds to pause. [sfx: clock ticking]

*Okay, are they gone? Here we go. [sfx: clock rings]

[sfx: creepy sounds in]

You’re listening to Twenty Thousand Hertz.

I’m Dallas Taylor.

[creepy sounds morph into music in]

Monster movies have been around since the earliest days of cinema. Movies like Nosferatu, The Golem, and Phantom of the Opera were some of the biggest hits of the silent film era.

[music out]

But once movies got sound in the late 1920s, these creatures were brought to life with creative and terrifying sound design.

[sfx clip: King Kong roar]

That was the roar of King Kong, from back in 1933. King Kong’s voice was famously made by mixing the growls of lions [sfx] and tigers... [sfx]

Then what they did was reverse the tape… [sfx]

And sprinkled in a few human grunts [sfx].

Here’s our modern recreation.

[sfx: King Kong recreated]

Twenty years later, we were introduced to Godzilla, whose iconic roar was made by sliding a leather glove covered in resin across the strings of a double bass.

[sfx: godzilla roar]

In the early eighties, John Carpenter released the sci-fi horror film The Thing. There’s a scene where a group of dogs transform into a weird goopy Lovecraftian creature. The shrieking sound it makes was created by combining heavily processed bird calls with pig squeals.

[sfx: The Thing]

The Lord of the Rings movies were full of great monster sounds. One of my favorites was the fire breathing demon called the Balrog. Sound designers created his menacing rumble by dragging a cinder block across a wooden floor.

[sfx: Balrog roar]

Finally, when the monsters in A Quiet Place open their highly-tuned ears, that’s actually the sound of celery and lettuce being twisted and snapped.

[sfx: a quiet place]

Tons of monster sounds are made using creative techniques like these. But other times, especially in video games, they’re performed by voice actors, who absolutely shred their vocal cords for our entertainment.

[music in]

DB: The amount of energy that goes into a game session is so fantastic, I usually end up with a video game headache at the end of it.

That’s voice actor DB Cooper.

DB: I'm usually soaked with sweat, and tired. And so the rest of the day is making sure I have a nap or some other thing, but I don't schedule anything else, because I'm just kind of wasted.

Now most of the time, DB narrates videos and commercials. You might hear her saying something like this...

DB: In this digital age, high speed internet is not a luxury. It's the conduit that leads to prosperity.

But she’s also great at coming up with unique characters.

DB: I'm kind of the person you come to when you've got screwball stuff.

DB has voiced all kinds of quirky characters, from a singing dog...

DB: Ruff-ruff-ruff!

To an undead warrior...

DB: Hearthstone: Fjola Lightbane Unworthy!

To an elderly computer named Grannybot.

DB: Granny’s gonna buy a new stick of RAM.

But for DB, her favorite days on the job are when she gets to do monster sounds. These types of jobs are a ton of fun, but they’re also a lot more work.

DB: Compare it to going for a brisk walk to carrying buckets of water up and down a hill for several hours.

But the thing about it is that it's your favorite hill, and the water is getting you wet so you're never really too hot. But at the end of it, you're exhausted.

[music out]

Compared to typical voice acting, this kind of voice work takes a ton of preparation.

Michael: For commercial and corporate stuff, I usually don't warm up at all. But if you're doing a lot of screaming and stuff, it can be pretty important.

That’s voice actor Michael Schwalbe. Michael also spends a lot of time doing commercials—but it’s not the cheesy stuff you might imagine when you think of a stereotypical commercial voice.

Michael: You know the infomercial. "Are you tired of doing... There's got to be a better way!"

Michael: That's what they sounded like 20 years ago, but most of the time nowadays… the buzzwords are “Believable, Conversational, Natural,” like.

[music in]

Michael: Like, "New at McDonald's. Check out this cool phone app. You can get a great deal on a new food you love, ba da ba ba ba.”

[music out]

Michael: If it's something like a whiskey then you probably bring it down and get kind of gravelly and start thinking wistfully about your hard life and...

[music in]

Michael: "We make bourbon for the people. People like you.” [sfx: whip followed by a eagle screeching]

[music out]

Just like DB, Michael has some pretty awesome dog impressions in his toolkit:

Michael: [Woof woof whine].

But what Michael really loves is when he gets to create wacky characters.

[music in]

Michael: Over time, because I'm a big nerd and a big gamer, I started pivoting and trying to focus more on incorporating more character work into what I do.

For example, Michael did every single voice in a game called Slay the Spire.

[SFX: Michael monster in Slay the Spire]

Slay the Spire is what’s known as a deck building game. In these games, you build out a deck of virtual cards that have different characters and abilities. If you’re familiar with Magic the Gathering, or Pokemon cards, it’s a lot like that, but in video game form. In Slay the Spire, you use your virtual cards to battle monsters, as you climb to the top of a huge tower.

Here’s Michael, as one of the enemies.

[SFX: Michael monster in Slay the Spire]

Slay the Spire was a huge success, and it helped Michael get a lot more of this type of work.

Michael: So after Slay the Spire became the ludicrous hit that it is now, I think it's the number six highest rated game on Steam, which is insane.

Michael: I was like, "Oh, I guess I'm accidentally the voice of this genre now."

[music out]

Part of the reason that people keep casting Michael is because of his amazing vocal range. This is something he developed as a heavy metal singer. Here’s Michael’s band Invicta, on a track called Never Again.

[music clip: Never Again clip]

Michael: All that metal singing technique and stuff came in real handy when you need a big scary demon.

Michael: I teach a class called Extreme Vocals for Extreme Roles, and it's all based around the way that I approached metal singing, which is, “How can we take these really distorted, gravelly, raspy sounds and move that stress away from our vocal folds into other parts of our vocal anatomy, which can handle the stress, but are more robust.”

Our vocal cords are great at making sound, but they’re also pretty sensitive. They’re really easy to damage if you shout or scream without proper training.

[music in]

Michael: So for instance, if somebody that maybe didn't know what they were doing wanted to be raspy and gritty, they might make a sound like, "Aah."

Michael: You’re straining, kind of sand papering your vocal folds against each other. Well, I created a technique, on the back of your throat where the loogie noise might come from [sfx: loogie noise]. And it sounds like this “Ahhhh”.

[music out]

Michael: So still raspy and gritty, that doesn't involve my vocal folds at all. So I can do that forever, which is completely safe and will not hurt my voice at all. So having those techniques in your toolbox is a necessity in order to do those sessions long-term without really frying yourself.

The toolkit that DB Cooper brings to a recording session, is a bit more literal.

DB: Whenever I do a video game session I bring a roll-aboard suitcase. Just a little carry-on bag, because I have gear I always bring.

The first thing she packs is a resistance band. Those are the big stretchy bands that people use for working out, and for physical therapy.

DB: So the stretchy band gives you the opportunity to struggle against something.

DB: If I've actually got something to pull against it's going to sound more like [sfx: grunts] because I'm pulling.

The second thing in her bag is a small dumbbell.

DB: The little hand weight is for impact sounds, which require you to have a thud in your diaphragm. You simply put against your solar plexus and press [sfx: DB’s weight sound].

But there’s one more thing that DB says is crucial…

[music in]

DB: Sometimes you need to die a gorey death, and that means that you've been shot somewhere that requires you to have blood in your throat. And if you use actual liquid, like I'm going to take a sip of my tea, and you want it to sound [sfx: gurgle] like you're choking, that's great, except you're really literally going to choke, because liquid wants to go down your throat.

So instead, DB uses something that’s almost a liquid, but not quite: Jello.

DB: What Jello does is, it gives you the mushy sound without drowning you. So this is what it sounds like if you're drowning. So that's what it sounds like if you're drowning with Jello in your mouth, and the Jello stays in your mouth. And it's delicious as well.

Jello also comes in handy when she’s voicing underwater creatures.

DB: In order to get that gurgly sound, I would take a bite of Jello and make the sound of something with bubbles under the sea.

[music out + DB’s underwater sound]

Recently, Michael and DB were paired together for their biggest voice acting challenge yet: creating over 200 distinct creature voices for a game called Monster Train.

[music in]

Like Slay the Spire, Monster Train is also a deck building game, where you collect cards and battle creatures. This song comes from its soundtrack.

[music clip continued]

In the game, you play as the demons, who are trying to stop the angels from freezing hell over. The game is full of monsters, from cute little imps, to demons made of boulders, to bird-like angels—and every single one of them was voiced by DB and Michael.

[start slowly fading music out]

Before the recording sessions began, the developers gave them pictures of each character, to help inspire their performances.

DB: For things that are creature sounds, I need to have printed out pictures.

DB: When you're looking at the different types of creatures you've got, it affects the planning for how you're going to make those sounds. “What am I going to do to my throat? Where does this creature live in my vocal apparatus, and what other things am I going to do in order to make that sound occur?” And that includes anything from making my voice higher, or making it more raspy in the back of my throat, or having a thing that sounds like it's really kind of sloppy.

[music in]

DB: So one of the character types I do in this game are the morsels, and they are little tiny guys that are just a round ball with eyes. And when they show up, they have spawn sounds like, "Hiyah! Hazabah! Whoah! Okay!" Things like that, because they're tiny. Okay? So that's just simply from looking at them because they are so adorable.

DB: Then the imps are another kind of smaller creature, but they have a more rugged personality, and so because they're more rugged, they're maybe going to have a high voice but they're going to have kind of something in it that makes it sound like they're just a little naughty. And so that happens in the back of your throat.

For instance, there’s an imp called the Queen’s Impling.

DB: And so that was a baby imp, and so when we were working on the sound, I said, "It's a baby, what do you think it's going to say?" So its spawn sound is, "Mama!" That was hilarious. "Mama, mama. Mama. Mama!"

[music out]

Once DB and Michael had established a personality for a character, they had to come up with all of the different sounds that creature would make.

Michael: Coming into battle, attacking, getting hit, like hurt pain sounds, and then dying sounds. So four to 10 sounds for each of those.

For example, there’s a character called the Morsel Master, which is basically a giant green slug wrapped in bandages.

Michael: His coming into play was this big, deep guttural thing. So he comes down and then there's this [sfx: growl]. Because he's entering play, you're scared.

Michael: Well then when he attacks, it needs to be sharper and have more intention behind it. So he might do like a [sfx: snarl] something like that, like he's swiping at you.

Michael: So then if he's hurt, he's probably going to be doing more of the pained, screechy stuff. And so you would get more into the [sfx: screetch].

These sounds are great, but they’re still a little too human. They need to go from something like this. [sfx: human monster sound] To something like this. [sfx: epic designed monster sound]

And that’s where the sound design comes in.

[music in]

Jordan: My name is Jordan Chin. I am a composer and sound designer for video games and film.

Jordan was the lead sound designer on Monster Train, and he also composed the game’s soundtrack. It’s his job to transform DB and Michael’s original takes...

[sfx: Seraph monster screech]

...into the final sounds you hear in the game.

[sfx: Seraph monster screech with full processing]

So how does he do it? That’s coming up, after the break.

[music out]

MIDROLL

[sfx: spooky drone]

[sfx: spoken in a scary voice] DB Cooper and Michel Schwalbe have been performing creature voices for many years...

[sfx: clears throat + drone out]

Excuse me.

[music in]

DB Cooper and Michel Schwalbe have been performing creature voices for many years. They’re the people you go to when you want the sound of a screeching banshee...

Michael: [sfx: screech].

...Or a cute little critter.

DB: [sfx: spawning sound]

Recently, DB and Michael created the voices for over two hundred creatures for a game called Monster Train. But they didn’t do it alone. The sounds they recorded went through a whole bunch of processing before they made it into the game. And the person behind all of that creative sound design was Jordan Chin.

Jordan: We were almost thinking of it kind of like Pokemon, where there's a collector aspect to it and people have their favorites and they like to build decks with their favorites. And so, this was special for me because of the amount of care that went into each of these creatures. It wasn't just making sounds for a game. It was really like trying to bring this thing to life.

[music out]

To get the material that he needs, Jordan gives the actors direction while they record. For instance, DB voiced a character called the Fledgling Imp.

[music in]

Jordan: Basically, the direction we gave her was this imp is up to no good, so he is kind of mischievous and a little devious, but somehow also very charming.

[sfx: unprocessed imp]

Jordan: That's just the raw voiceover take.

Jordan might go through ten or twenty takes for every vocalization. Once he finds one that he likes, then the sound design begins.

Jordan: For this one, I really just wanted to make sure I got the voice right. So I took that raw recording and I pitched up [sfx] a whole step and some EQ and compression and other things just to make kind of sound a little bit more devious. This is what that sounds like...

[sfx: imp with EQ and pitch change]

Jordan: From there, I added some secondary ancillary creature noises, little kind of chittering sounds. This is where the animal recordings from my own library and other things really came into play. And it sounds like this...

[sfx: imp with animal sounds]

Jordan: I wanted to have his tummy growling I just that figured he's hungry all the time.

[sfx: tummy rumbling]

Jordan: The last piece that I added was actual wing sounds [sfx]. The imps have these tiny little wings on them. And they're kind of chonky so I was imagining that they would have to flap really really fast just to stay afloat.

When all of those pieces come together, you get this.

[music out into sfx: final imp]

The Fledgling Imp is what you might call voice-centered character design. DB’s voice is still the centerpiece, but with some extra sonic spice. However, there’s another approach that Jordan used, where the human voice is just one texture among many.

Jordan: So there's a creature called the Morsel Maker which is kind of this ghostly figure, and we wanted him to have these kind of breathy, eerie, inhaling kind of noises. Rather than trying to explain it or perform it for them, we just said, "Think of the Nazgûl from Lord of the Ring” [sfx].

Jordan: Or like the Dementors from Harry Potter [sfx].

Jordan: Just to kind of get your head in that space."

Jordan: This is the take that DB did after we gave her the Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings references.

[sfx: Morsel Maker without processing]

Jordan: That's just kind of a ghostly inhaling kind of sound.

Jordan: The next step was to make it sound less like a human so I applied some creative effects, chorus, and phasers and some delays and echos to make it sound a little bit more ethereal.

[sfx: Morsel Maker with effects]

Jordan: And then, I just stacked a whole bunch of her takes, I think even some takes from Michael as well who had given us some similar material to just give the impression that there was kind of an army of voices inside of this thing. So that sounds like this...

[sfx: stacked Morsel Maker]

Jordan: That was an example of something where there isn't really any one single voice at the center of this whole thing. It's kind of more of an effect, like a texture. And, really, these two mindsets, the voice-centric and the textural effect based sound design was what carried me through most of this game.

[music in]

One of the most detailed voices in Monster Train belongs to the game’s final boss, whose name is Seraph. This was one of Michael’s characters.

Michael: Seraph was a combination of exhaled, false cord grunts like [sfx: grunt] with those really screechy, inhaled highs for the bird like [sfx: screech].

Jordan: The thing about the angels in this game is they're all bird-like creatures so lots of squawking and lots of screeching and just very shrill taxing sounds to make.

Michael: And so when he came into play, he had this just huge fierce like, I was going for an eagle or a hawk [sfx: screech].

Jordan: Seraph goes back to that first approach of voice-centric. I had these really awesome takes and I just wanted to highlight them.

[sfx: Seraph original]

Jordan: The first thing I did was I created a clone [sfx], a double of the exact same take, and I pitched the second one down…

[sfx: pitched down]

Then, he played both versions at once.

[sfx: Seraph voices combined]

Jordan: Already, it sounds less like a person making it.

Jordan: The next thing we added was just a lot of effects. Saturating the signal. Widening it so that if you wear headphones you'll hear that it's hitting in the left and the right a little differently. That's just because Seraph is such a big guy. And that sounds like this...

[sfx: left right panning]

Jordan: The rest of it was just adding ancillary stuff. So he's got these big wings, which we have here:

[sfx: wings]

Jordan: And I put some echoes on those to make it sound like there were more of them because there are six wings.

[sfx: lots of wings]

Jordan: This was the final boss so I just kept adding and adding. It was tough to draw the line there, but I really wanted to have some kind of evil murmuring.

[sfx: murmuring]

Jordan: And all of that together sounds like this.

[music out + Seraph final]

While the creatures in Monster Train are rooted in human voices, it’s also common for sound designers to manipulate animal sounds. A good example would be the Rancor from Return of the Jedi. That’s the monster that Luke Skywalker has to fight in the pit of Jabba the Hutt’s palace.

[sfx clip: Rancor fight]

The Rancor’s growls came from a feisty wiener dog, pitched way down.

[sfx: weiner dog growls slowly pitch down]

In How To Train Your Dragon, the sounds of tigers, horses and elephants were all used for the dragon named Toothless.

[sfx: how to train your dragon]

With all of the incredible sounds that animals make, it’s no wonder why sound designers rely on them so often. But there are advantages to using humans.

[music in]

Jordan: What was really valuable, I think, from having the voice actors, was they brought their own kind of creativity to the lore.

Jordan: And so, I could've worked with my alligator recording or something like that and turned it into a monster. It probably would've worked just fine. But, when we gave the same prompt to our voice actors, they were asking like, "Where does this person come from? What do they do on a day-to-day basis" and they were just able to do this weird stuff that I would never be able to find in animal recordings of, or get my dog to record, or anything like that.

But while Jordan generally likes working with people, he did manage to fit his dog Henley into Monster Train. Henley is the voice of Bone Dog, a rare and valuable card.

[sfx: Bone Dog]

But, Henley wasn’t always the best at taking direction.

Jordan: I could not get him to record on the fly. Dogs are much harder to work with than humans.

But Henley disagrees.

[sfx: henley]

That’s Henley the dog. He’s a voice actor in his own right, and he has a pretty impressive range.

[sfx: henley barks, “Who’s a good voice actor?!”]

Henley says that success in voice acting is 10% talent, and 90% having a best friend who’s a sound designer.

[sfx: henley panting]  [music out]

Henley’s background gives him a pretty unique perspective into the world of creature sounds. But whether it's a human sound designer, or a canine voice actor, everyone is ultimately trying to reach the same goal—and that’s to make a great game.

[music in]

DB: Voice actors are in service to the player. We want your experience to be grand and rich, saturated with meaning, and we want it to engender affection between you and the character, and you and the game, you and your experience.

Jordan: The people who are behind the audio experience, they're storytellers. We enjoy understanding how we can help deliver the story, whether it's on a conscious level or not by the time you actually hear it. A lot of people have said, "If you don't hear or you don't notice the audio then they've done a good job because it shouldn't take you out of the experience."

DB: Storytelling works when the storyteller is invested.

DB: So for all of the sweat and screaming and emotion and all of those things, it never leaves my mind that I am in service to you, the player. That's my job. My job is to make your gaming experience wonderful.

[music plays out]

[sfx: thunder + music in]

Twenty Thousand Hertz is hosted by me, Dallas Taylor, and produced by the people at Defacto Sound. To hear what we do outside of this podcast, follow Defacto Sound on Instagram.

This episode was written and produced by Andrew Anderson, and Casey Emmerling, with help from Sam Rinebold. It was sound designed and mixed by Soren Begin and Jai Berger, with original music by Wesley Slover.

Thanks to our guests, DB Cooper, Michael Schwalbe, and Jordan Chin. And special thanks to Jordan for letting us play a song from Monster Train’s epic soundtrack. You can find the soundtrack, and the game over on Steam.

If you want to keep up with 20K between episodes, you can find us on Facebook, Twitter, and on our subreddit, R slash two zero K. But, the best way to keep up with us, is by signing up for our newsletter.

Over on our newsletter, we aren’t beholden to any social media algorithms, so when we send you something you actually get it. In each newsletter, you get a nice recap of our most recent episode, a few cool sound articles, 20K news, sponsor codes, and no spam. To sign up, visit two zero k dot org slash newsletter, or click the link in the show description.

Thanks for listening.

[music out]