Hear Here: The messy history of architectural acoustics

Inside Apple: Sonic Accessibility

August 12, 2019

Info Pocketknife

What makes Stradivarius violins so special?

August 12, 2019

Info Pocketknife

This episode was written and produced by Elizabeth Nakano.

Stradivarius violins are reputed to have an exquisite sound that cannot be replicated or explained. Why is that? And what, exactly, is a Stradivarius violin anyway? This episode features interviews with The Strad magazine’s managing editor, Christian Lloyd, and violin maker Joseph Curtin.

MUSIC FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE

African by Kingpinguin
Whiskey Boomed by Aj Hochhalter
Champion by Dexter Britain
Spring by Cathedral
The Races by David A Molina
Horizon Rainfall (Piano and Strings) - Instrumental by Future of Forestry
Journey Towards Home by Shawn Williams

CLASSICAL MUSIC FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE

Violin Concerto in D Major, OP. 61 - III. Rondo: Allegro by US Marine Chamber Orchestra
String Quartet no. 2, Op. 68 - I. Andantino; allegretto by Steve's Bedroom Band
3 Fantasy Pieces for String Quartet - No.1 by Steve's Bedroom Band
I. Allemanda by Steve's Bedroom Band
Phantasie by Steve's Bedroom Band

(*all tracks have been edited for this episode)

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

Follow Dallas on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and LinkedIn.

Join our community on Reddit and follow us on Facebook.

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

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Can you tell the difference between a Stradivarius violin and a modern violin? Take the informal test here!

Our classical tracks came from Musopen. Check them out at musopen.org.

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Check out SONOS at sonos.com.

View Transcript ▶︎

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

[music clip: Antonious from the MET]

The music you are hearing right now isn’t coming from just any violin. This is a Stradivarius violin, a family of instruments so distinguished and mysterious that it has become legendary. This one in particular is named Anotnius and it’s being played at The Met, however these instruments are spread all over the world. Stradivarius violins are renowned for their supposedly unique sound. They’re also among the most expensive, most respected, and most studied instruments in the world.

A single Stradivarius violin is valued in the millions of dollars. This is because only a handful of these instruments still exist and it is impossible to make more. Eventually, one by one, they will become too fragile to be played. With enough time, all of them will fall silent.

[music out]

The sounds of Stradivarius violins are considered so precious that they are preserved in a digital archive. To do this, a group of musicians and sound engineers took over a concert hall. There, they recorded every possible note and note transition a Stradivarius violin can make (or at least every possible sound they could think of). The entire process took 5 weeks.

During that time, the surrounding city of Cremona, Italy had to keep noise to a minimum. This was so other sounds wouldn’t leak into the recordings. It was so important that the city’s mayor diverted traffic [SFX] around the concert hall, some women were asked not to wear stilettos on the cobblestone streets [SFX], even kissing teenagers were shooed away from the vicinity.

But… why such fuss over this kind of violin?

[music in]

Christian: I think for the Stradivarius violins matter hugely on the grand scheme of things. The whole industry of violin making today is built on the legacy of Antonio Stradivari.

That’s Christian Lloyd. He’s the managing editor of The Strad. It’s a magazine that covers news and research about stringed instruments.

Christian: I also take care of the violin making sections of the magazine, which involves the historical, technical and anything to do with the sound of the violin.

[music Out]

Let’s start with the basics.

[music in]

Stradivarius violins are the work of Italian craftsman Antonio Stradivari.

Christian: Antonio Stradivari is generally considered to be the greatest violin maker ever. He was born in the 1630s and he died in 1737, which means that he had a very, very long life and he was working all the way through that life as a violin maker and he finished, probably about 1,100 instruments in his lifetime. That's not only violins but also violas, cellos, harps, mandolins and guitars.

Christian: Of those instruments, probably about 650 have survived until the present day. We have fragments of many others. About 550 of those are violins.

All of Stradivari’s instruments are called “Stradivarius.” So, there are Stradivarius violas, Stradivarius guitars, and so on. Stradivari himself came up with that word. It’s how he labeled his finished instruments.

Christian: People say Stradivarius because if they actually look at a label, then it says Antonio Stradivarius inside. But that's because Stradivari was very respectful of the Roman civilization being Italian himself. And he liked to sign his name in the Roman style, putting a U-S on the end, but his name was actually Stradivari and that's how he was known in his day.

[music out]

Picture the body of a modern-day violin. You’re probably imagining a hollow, kind of pear shaped piece of wood with a crescent cut into either side. Maybe you’re also seeing those thin, squiggly holes on the front. Those are called f-holes.

Well, that shape was pretty much defined by the time Stradivari was born, but he was confident he could make it better.

Christian: He was changing the sizes, the proportions, the width of the top plates and back plates and the thicknesses, just to see whether they would make a difference in the sound quality and in the ability of the musician to create a large range or pallet of tone colors with the instruments.

Christian: Most instrument makers even today, will only use one mold to make their instruments on. Stradivari used at least 12 molds. And probably even more than that.

Stradivari’s interest in acoustics wasn’t unusual for that period. He was living in a time and place of musical innovation.

Christian: There's a romantic myth about Stradivari, there were a few portraits in the Victorian era just based on what they thought Stradivari might look like in his workshop by himself, studying an instrument, deep in thought.

[music in]

Christian: He lived in Cremona, which is a small town now, on the banks of the River Po in northern Italy. It's between Milan and Mantua.

Christian: Cremona had a reputation as a musical hub. In fact, Cremonese musicians, have been known to be performing at the court of Henry VIII in the 1500s, and also in the French court at that time. In fact, Cremona was the birthplace of Claudio Monteverdi, who was known as the father of the opera. And for that reason, we can assume that Cremona had the ability to attract very, very ambitious people who wanted to extend the borders of what music can be and what music can do.

[music out]

[music in]

Stradivari’s experimentation yielded mixed results. His early violins are generally considered to be of lesser quality than the instruments he made later in life. But his craftsmanship was recognized and appreciated.

Christian: The phrase in Cremonese society was, as rich as Stradivari, because he was getting commissions from the courts of James II in England. He was getting commissions from the Pope, which meant that he could not only bring his expertise to bear, but also some of the finest materials and equipments that 18th century Cremona had to bear as well.

Christian: He was a very rich man. What people don't realize is that Stradivari was not just a lone craftsman. He had the biggest workshop in Cremona, and we think that not only was he working, but he was also employing his sons and apprentices in his workshop at the same time.

The violins Stradivari produced later in his career were incredibly influential in the violin world. His design was widely copied. In fact, it’s basically the one we use today.

But this legacy isn’t what Stradivarius violins are best known for.

Christian: So many people have tried to find the secrets of the Stradivari sound.

Christian: You talk about a pallet of tone colors and a Stradivari violin can give you a bright sound, a dark sound, a noble sound and mellifluous sound, anything that you want to express in your playing, you can get out of a Stradivari, which is an ability that you can't get from all violins.

[music out]

Over the years, scientists and academics have put forth a lot of theories as to why Stradivarius violins sound the way that they do. Thousands of dollars and hours have been spent in a quest for answers.

[music in]

Two popular theories center around the instruments’ wood.

Christian: It's believed that he got all his wood from the Val di Fiemme, which is a large forest in the Dolomite mountains of Italy. Recently, it suffered a terrible storm and almost a million trees were felled. And so the wood makers are desperately trying to salvage some of the wood from that, because obviously people are still searching for Stradivari's wood.

Researchers have speculated that the wood was also treated with minerals from local alchemists that somehow led to a superior sound.

Christian: But there's also a theory that Stradivari's wood from the 17th century was particularly dense, and the reason for that was because of what they call the Little Ice Age.

Christian: There were long hot summers and very cold winters, during that certain point of history. And because of that, they say the wood grew to be much more dense because there was so little growth per year, and that was particularly useful for making resonant wood that Stradivari would be able to employ.

Another popular theory points to the varnish Stradivari used.

Christian: He gave it a kind of rich, red golden luster, especially in the later part of his career when he was very successful. So for that reason, his instruments have always stood out among the others. In fact, one of them has the nickname The Red Diamond.

Some researchers have gone as far as to say that it was Stradivari’s chemistry over woodworking that defines the sound and longevity of his violins.

Christian: He was able to use the best materials for his varnish. For instance, the best dye that is red is from the Cochineal Beetle of Mexico. And this was so expensive that people would put thousands upon thousands, in order to get a ship load of Cochineal back to Europe from South America. Stradivari was one of those people and he was able to push the boat out and make the instruments as red as he could.

Christian: For that reason also they've had this mystique attached to them, there must be something in the varnish that makes them extra special.

[music out]

There are plenty of other hypotheses, too. Researchers have studied the glue Stradivari used.

Christian: The quality of the strings.

Solar activity around Stradivari’s lifetime.

Christian: The length of the neck and the fingerboard.

The design of the f-holes. Stradivari’s instruments are routinely studied all the way to the millimeter and beyond.

[music in]

These violins have undergone countless CT scans, X-rays, and chemical analyses. While some theories have become less popular or been disproven entirely, there is still no consensus as to why the sound of Stradivarius violins is so treasured.

Is there actually something special about the sound of Stradivarius violins? Can people even hear the difference between a Stradivarius and another kind of violin? To find out, researchers assembled a group of elite violinists, and they put Stradivari’s instruments to the test. We’ll find out how much truth there is to the lore… after the break.

[music out]

[MIDROLL]

[Music in]

Stradivarius violins are reputed to sound superior to other violins. But what happens to that reputation under scientific scrutiny? Researchers decided to find out.

[music out]

Joseph Curtin: It used to be thought, "Well, if it's an old Italian, it's good. If it's new, it's probably less good. If it's factory violin, it's probably terrible." But those aren't scientifically based.

That’s Joseph Curtin. He’s a violin maker.

Joseph: Like most makers, I grew up with a set of beliefs about violins. That old violins were better than new violins, that violins got better with playing, that Stradivari was the greatest maker of all time, that a lot of old Italian violin makers sounded mellow under the ear and yet still projected in a hall in comparison with new violins, which supposedly sound loud under the ear, but fail to project. There was all these sort of interesting things that were taken for granted.

Joseph also conducts –acoustical research.

Joseph: Most of the research in the violin world has traditionally been historical research. Who made what instrument when. Who influenced who. I became interested in how the violin works and how that might be understood through scientific research.

Joseph: I remember my physicist friend, in response to some theory I was coming up with about why old Italians might be better than new ones. He said, "Before you start inventing theories to explain a phenomenon, you should probably make sure the phenomenon actually exists."

Joseph: That struck me as common sense, but then you think “how could we test that?"

[music in]

Every four years, the city of Indianapolis hosts an international violin competition. Some of the most gifted violinists in the world attend. During one competition year, Joseph teamed up with another researcher named Claudia Fritz. She was also interested in comparing Stradivarius violins to modern violins. Joseph and Claudia rented a hotel room in the city, and they got 21 highly-talented violinists to participate.

Joseph: They would walk into a hotel room, they would be asked to wash their hands, they'd be asked to pick their bow that they're gonna use and stick with it.

Joseph: The protocol would be explained. We're gonna lay out six violins on a bed, and you are going to try each one for a minute or whatever the protocol was. Or you'll be handed violin A and violin B, and asked to compare them.

Three of the violins were new. The other three were made by Stradivari. But the violinists didn’t know which one they were playing… and neither did the researchers, for that matter. This type of test is called a double-blind.

[music out]

Joseph: Blind testing invites you to respect the primacy of your own perceptions, rather than your expectations.

Joseph: The idea of double-blind testing is that the subject is not at all in contact with the researcher or anyone who knows anything about the particular thing being passed back and forth.

Joseph: What blind testing allows us to do is tease out which part of the value has to do with, in this case, the violin's performance as a musical tool versus the part of the violin that's part of cultural history.

Joseph and Claudia were worried blindfolds would make people feel too disoriented. So, they turned to a particular piece of eyewear: welding goggles. Anyone who handled or saw a violin needed to wear a pair.

Joseph: I found at a welding store some relatively inexpensive goggles that kind of wrapped around your eyes like sunglasses, but were darker. And then we put some black tape along the bottom edges, because you could look straight down and as we tend to hold instruments under our chin, that was a little crack in the system.

Joseph: And we also keep the lights in the room low. Violins all look similar enough that even if you can see a darkened silhouette, you're not gonna be able to recognize the violin.

In addition to the violinists’ sight, there was another sense that Claudia and Joseph had to address.

Joseph: We also tried to neutralize the smells. A lot of new violins might smell of varnish solvents and polish, whereas an old violin might smell of eau de cologne of the last player, or stale cigarette smoke. You never know. There's just all these scents, and even unconsciously I think we can tell the difference between things by scent.

Joseph: So we put a dab of an essential oil underneath the chin rest of each violin in hopes that that would neutralize that.

[music in]

Here’s how the test worked: A researcher wearing welding goggles presented violins to the players. Meanwhile, Joseph and Claudia sat behind a partition.

Joseph: In that way, we could truly isolate the researchers from the player, or to the extent that was humanly possible there.

The violinist would be given time to play the instruments. And then Joseph and Claudia would ask him or her a series of questions.

Joseph: Which do you think is better? Which do you think is worse? Which do you think has more tone colors?

Joseph: Which do you think would project better in a hall? Which is easier to play?

It took 3 days to conduct the test, and the results were not what Joseph expected.

[music out]

Joseph: The results were pretty clear. The most favorite violin easily was a new violin. The least favorite was a Stradivari, and no one could tell old from new at better than coin toss statistics.

The results of the blind test immediately made waves–and not just in the music community. Mainstream publications around the world wrote about the test.

Joseph: Stradivari is right up there with Coca Cola and Ferrari in terms of recognition by people who don't know anything about the violin. He's really crossed over into the culture in a way that other violin makers never have.

[music in]

Many people were understandably upset. Joseph and Claudia had called into question a long-standing and deeply-held belief.

Joseph: There was a lot of pushback. One of the main criticisms, and a fair one, was it was in a hotel room not a concert hall. As one famous violist said, "You can't test a Stradivari in a parking lot."

Joseph: We didn't feel this invalidated our results. It meant that we couldn't extend the results to concert halls. More cynically, people said, "Oh, you just got the three worst Strads you could find, and the three best new instruments. I remember reading out one of these criticisms to Claudia, and she laughed and said, "If we wanted to cheat, we don't need to touch the violins. We can just fiddle the numbers."

Joseph and Claudia didn’t stop after that first study. They ran two more double-blind tests in two different cities. But these tests were even more complicated. There were more violins to evaluate. Players were given more time to play them. And instead of being held in hotel rooms, they were conducted in concert halls. Joseph and Claudia also invited more people to listen and give their opinions.

Joseph: We had an audience of some 50 people. Violin makers, musicians, experienced listeners, and we had them judging.

Joseph: As in Indianapolis, the most preferred instrument by a good margin was new. The least preferred happened to be a Strad, but there was also a new instrument which was almost as badly judged.

[music out]

Joseph: Why would we assume that old violins could necessarily do better than new violins? I think what these studies have shown is that on a level playing field, new instruments can do very well.

Joseph: One can't assume because you have a very valuable old Italian instrument, that it will out-perform a new instrument that's valued at a fraction of that in terms of money, at least.

The sound of Stradivarius violins continues to spark debate and scientific questions. Many Stradivarius enthusiasts outright dismiss all of Joseph and Claudia’s studies.

Joseph makes it clear that their work was not a criticism of Antonio Stradivari the man. Instead, they were questioning the mystique attached to the instruments.

Joseph: I think the evolution of old Italian sound is ongoing. It's kind of one of the great constructions of the Western musical imagination.

Joseph: What one needs to remember is first of all, virtually all the Stradivaris used today have been re-engineered over the centuries in incredibly important ways acoustically. If you took a Stradivari straight from his workbench and a bow that was available at the time, most of the standard repertoire would be unplayable.

Joseph: It's as simple as that. It is not the same instrument.

You heard that right: that famous Stradivarius sound might be a more recent development.

[music in]

Of course, there are other reasons to value these instruments–such as Stradivari’s place in violin-making history.

Joseph: Stradivari is, I believe, the greatest violin maker who ever lived. No one of comparable originality and influence has come along since then.

We value objects for all kinds of intangible reasons, and our knowledge of how expensive, or rare, or famous something is can color our perceptions of an item’s true qualities. However, while a famous piece of art, an item owned by a historical figure, or indeed a Stradivarius violin may just be the sum of its parts, these items are infused with something else…

Christian: When you buy a Stradivari, you're also buying into the history and heritage of that particular Stradivari. Every instrument has a provenance to it and you can get to see who's owned it and which famous players have played it in the past. And that's going back a hundred years or 200 years. And when you pick up an instrument, then many violinists tell you that you can feel the soul of Jasha Heifetz or Bronislaw Huberman or any of the great violinists of years gone by and you can feel that you're standing in their footsteps and you're also buying into their heritage and the heritage of the composers who composed great concertos for the great soloists of yesteryear, all inspired by the same colors and tones that they could hear in the instrument that you have in your hand.

Joseph: There's many many layers of narrative, there's a sense of richness, there's all the things about objects or works of art that we value that come into play and these are very important, and it's not as though it's a kind of snobism in that "I only like expensive wines or expensive violins."

Joseph: There's no shame in valuing things because of their history at all.

Joseph: It's something human. I think it's inevitable, part of being human.

[music out]

[music in]

Twenty-Thousand Hertz is produced out of the studios of Defacto Sound, a sound design team dedicated to making television, film, and games sound incredible. Find out more at defactosound.com

This episode was written and produced by Elizabeth Nakano, and me, Dallas Taylor, with help from Sam Schneble. It was sound designed and edited by Soren Begin. And mixed by Jai Berger.

Thanks to Christian Lloyd and Joseph Curtin for speaking with us.

The first piece of music in today’s episode is from a Stradivarius violin owned by The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Many of the Classical music tracks in this episode were from musopen.com. That's m-u-s open.com, check out our website for the full track list. The rest of today’s music is from Musicbed. Which you can find at musicbed.com

If you want to test whether you can hear a difference between a Stradivarius violin and a modern violin go to our website, 20k.org. We have a link to an informal test.

And let us know how you did. You can tweet at us, find us on Facebook, or find us online at 20k.org.

Thanks for listening.

[music out]

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This episode was written and produced by Fil Corbitt.

The 808 is arguably the most iconic drum machine ever made. Even if you’ve never heard of it, you’ve definitely heard it. It’s in dozens of hit songs -- from Usher to Marvin Gaye, Talking Heads to The Beastie Boys -- and its sounds have quietly cemented themselves in the cultural lexicon. In this episode, we try to understand how that happened and follow the unlikely path of the 808. Featuring DJ Jazzy Jeff and Paul McCabe from Roland.

MUSIC FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE

Bus Stop by Red Licorice
Your Own Company by Laxcity
Ventana by Slowblink
Lost Without You by Vesky
I Know (No Oohs and Aahs) By Red Licorice

MUSIC EXAMPLES FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE

He's The DJ, I'm The Rapper by DJ Jazzy Jeff and Fresh Prince
The Robots HQ Audio by Kraftwerk
Heart of Glass by Blondie
In the Air Tonight by Phil Collins
Planet Rock by Afrika Bambaataa & The Soul Sonic Force
Funk Box Party, Part 1 by The Masterdon Committee
Egypt, Egypt by The Egyptian Lover
Just Be Good To Me by S.O.S. Band
Sexual Healing by Marvin Gaye
Raga Bhairav by Charanjit Singh
Scorpio by Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five
Play At Your Own Risk by Planet Patrol
Just One of Those Days by DJ Jazzy Jeff and Fresh Prince
Cars That Go Boom by L’trimm
Kickdrum by Felix da housecat

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

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View Transcript ▶︎

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

[SFX: Cybertron 808 Beat]

The 808 drum machine is everywhere. And even if you don’t know it by name, you have definitely heard it before.

[Music clip: Usher - Yeah!]

[Music clip: Whitney Houston - I Wanna Dance with Somebody]

[Music clip: New Kids on the Block - Please Don't Go Girl]

[Music clip: Beastie Boys - Brass Monkey]

DJ Jazzy Jeff: I laugh because if I listen to the radio for an hour, there's not one record that you hear that's not an 808.

That’s DJ Jazzy Jeff. He’s a world renowned DJ, musician, and one of the early innovators of Hip Hop.

[Music clip: He's The DJ, I'm The Rapper]

DJ Jazzy Jeff: There was nothing that was more distinctive and more sought after than an 808.

[music out]

[music in]

Paul McCabe: The Roland TR-808 is a drum machine...

This is Paul McCabe from Roland. Roland is a company that makes electronic instruments. When they released the 808 in the early 80s, drum machines weren’t exactly sought after. For 20 or 30 years, they had been used mostly in the home.

Paul McCabe: We have to remember in the '70s, the '60s, the '50s music being played in the home was still a very popular thing. And television hadn't taken over the living room quite yet. So families would often gather around and they would play music, people would play music as a pastime. A high percentage of the population was playing music.

And though families were hanging out in the living room playing music, they typically didn’t have a drum kit laying around.

[music out]

They’d possibly have a guitar [SFX: Guitar strums], maybe a piano [SFX: Quick Piano riff] or a home organ [SFX: Organ riff]. As you can imagine, people wanted a rhythmic instrument that wasn’t as big or loud as a live drum kit.

Paul McCabe: If you see photos of some of the earliest drum machines, in fact you'll even see drum machines that are designed to sit on top of an organ where the music rest would normally be.

[SFX: Roland TR-66 Rhythm Arranger]

Paul McCabe: So they have typically, particularly the earliest drum machines were really working to try to recreate the sound of a small acoustic drum kit. And so there would be a kick drum and a snare drum and cymbals and tom toms.

Drum machines were used for casual purposes and weren’t that useful to professional musicians.

[music out]

But in time, musicians did start to find uses for Drum Machines. By the 1970s, many songwriters would program a drum beat and write to it - a practice Phil Collins used often…

[Music Clip: Phil Collins - One More Night]

But as people found uses for drum machines, early versions of electronic music were starting to go mainstream.

[Music Clip: Kraftwerk - The Robots HQ Audio]

This is “The Robots HQ” by Kraftwerk, a four piece band from Germany...

Paul McCabe: Kraftwerk is one of the founding fathers of techno.

They helped introduce new, weird technology to popular music.

Paul McCabe: They built their own instruments so they were playing some of the earliest electronic rhythm instruments that you could play and strike..

[music out]

It’s here in the 70s when electronic rhythm machines started to catch on. These drum machines slowly morphed from family novelty instruments into something professionals were using.

Paul McCabe: They started to become used more in live performance in a situation where either an acoustic drummer wasn't available or to enhance a rhythm section, and then they started to appear in recordings.

One of the machines that started appearing in recordings was a predecessor to the 808 -- a drum machine called the CR-78.

Here it is in Blondie's Heart of Glass.

[Music Clip: Blondie - Heart of Glass]

And here’s the CR-78 in Phil Collins’ In the Air Tonight.

[Music Clip: Phil Collins - In the Air Tonight]

These songs inspired an early demand for a stage-ready drum machine. That demand ultimately inspired Roland to create the 808. [SFX: 808 clip keeps playing] They wanted to build a machine that was relatively durable, movable, and affordable to the average musician.

Paul McCabe: When one sees a TR-808 it almost looks military in its design. It's kind of a drab olive color and there's a reason why TR 808s are still being used today 'cause you could drive a truck over them and probably many of them would still work. That was what was in our mind at the time.

[music out]

There have been a few instruments in history that changed music forever. The piano revolutionized classical music history... electric guitars defined rock and roll… and the 808 transformed hip and hop and electronic music.

Paul McCabe: When we think about the sound of the 808, and again, we think of it in terms of its influence on hip hop and R&B and when we think of hip hop of course we start with Afrika Bambaataa and Planet Rock.

[Music Clip: Afrika Bambaataa & The Soul Sonic Force - Planet Rock]

It's this other worldly mashup of this kind of east coast New York with Kraftwerk.

You can also hear some funk influence too. This all combined into a sound that felt new... and it blew up.

DJ Jazzy Jeff: In the early '80s, it was so new that you were trying to get your hands on whatever drum machine you could to basically make your beats.

And like a lot of musicians at the time, DJ Jazzy Jeff heard Planet Rock and was captivated by the drum sounds.

DJ Jazzy Jeff: There was no drum machine that had a kick drum that sounded like that. That had a snare that sounded like that. That had a crispness to the hi-hats like an 808. So it was definitely sought after so that you could kind of make these records. We emulated whatever we heard, so you know, when Planet Rock came out, it was kind of like, "I need that machine."

[music out]

Once these DJs got their hands on an 808, they found themselves expanding on its possibilities.

[music clip: The Masterdon Committee - 1982 - Funk Box Party, Part 1]

DJ Jazzy Jeff: There was a record, Funk Box Party by Masterdon Committee, and he was a DJ that was very, very good on an 808.

Musicians were experimenting. Here’s Egyptian Lover, over on the west coast.

[Music clip: The Egyptian Lover - Egypt, Egypt]

And here’s S.O.S. Band. They’re kind of like a pre-hiphop funk thing.

[Music clip: S.O.S. Band- Just Be Good To Me]

Here’s Marvin Gaye’s more minimalist use of the 808.

[Music clip: Marvin Gaye - Sexual Healing]

[music out]

[music in]

As musicians began experimenting with the 808, it wasn’t clear if this sound had staying power. It could just be a flash in the pan that would be replaced by the next version. But it didn’t quite go like that.

Paul McCabe: There was all these moments that were happening, these musical moments that were very serendipitous in New York, in the early '80s. That, ya know, if they'd gone left instead of right, if this guy did this on a Tuesday instead of a Wednesday, we probably wouldn't be talking about the 808 in this context today. It was literally that kind of magical.

And believe it or not a huge factor in that magic, was that when the 808 came out in 1981 it wasn’t a big hit like Roland had hoped. We’ll explain why, and how that ultimately was a good thing, after the break.

[music out]

[MIDROLL]

[music in - 808 beat]

What’s amazing about the 808, is that it seemed so unlikely to succeed. Imagine a Japanese engineer in the late 1970s creating these synthesized drum sounds -- and those drum sounds crossing the ocean and revolutionizing hip hop forever. But before it did all that, it was off to a shaky start.

[music out]

Drum machines at the time were largely meant to replace a live drummer, so it was all about getting it to sound like a real drum set.

Paul McCabe: Right about that same time, 1981, the first drum machine that used recorded sound clips or samples came into being.

At the time, companies were putting out these drum machines that were sample based - which is another way of saying, they played back real recorded drum sounds. [SFX: Sample based drums in] And the 808 was fully synthesized. [SFX: 808 drums in] Meaning, it did not sound like a real drum set.

DJ Jazzy Jeff: To me, this is very Nintendo and Atari-ish. Here's my computer version of what I think a drum kit is supposed to sound, and it doesn't sound anything like a drummer or a drum set at all. It was their interpretation, but their interpretation became the backbone of electronic music.

An Atari/video gamey-sounding drum kit was not at all what people wanted. Well, Initially.

[Music clip: Raga Bhairav - 1982 - SYNTHESIZING: TEN RAGAS TO A DISCO BEAT - Charanjit Singh]

Here is Charanjit Singh, an Indian musician making 808 music in 1982.

[music out]

Bizarrely enough, since the 808 wasn’t that successful in the beginning, they began to show up at pawn shops for super cheap.

DJ Jazzy Jeff: I ended up getting mine from a pawn shop. Because you couldn't really walk into a store and see an 808.

People started picking them up because it was a piece of equipment they could actually afford. Recording studios often had one on a shelf collecting dust, or somebody’s friend might lend them one for a live show. But the jury was still out on whether the 808 was anything more than just a cheap drum machine.

Paul McCabe: The 808 was really facing quite an uphill battle to gain any kind of acceptance. But in a kind of, one of these classic your strength is your weakness paradoxes where the strength of the drum machines that were based on recordings of actual drum sounds was that at first glance they sounded more natural. On the other hand, certainly with the technology available at that time, you couldn't really adjust the sound that much.

DJ Jazzy Jeff: We were used to having a drum machine that you were stuck with basically the sound that came out of it. There wasn't too much manipulation that you can do, so to have this machine that you can take the snappiness out of the snare [SFX: Snare samples with snappiness being removed], and you can add more boom into the kick [SFX: Kick samples with boom increasing]. This one machine could sound a hundred different ways.

Adjustability was the key.

As other machines began to sample recordings of real drums, Roland was doing the exact opposite. Using synthesizers, Roland engineers tried to recreate the essential elements of drum sounds. Instead of recording a kick drum, an engineer figured the kick drum is supposed to be bassy and bottom-heavy. So using synthesized sounds, they created a bassy, bottom-heavy tone.

Paul McCabe: And so with that in mind, you look and you've got these 11 sounds...

Here’s the Kick [SFX]

Snare [SFX]

Closed Hi Hat [SFX]

Open Hi Hat [SFX]

Paul McCabe: crash cymbal [SFX]

Paul McCabe: There's toms [SFX]

Paul McCabe: hand clap [SFX]

Paul McCabe: Rimshot [SFX]

Paul McCabe: cowbell [SFX], you always got to have more cowbell. [SFX]

And finally Clave [SFX]

DJ Jazzy Jeff: When you start getting into the clave and the cowbell, those were two very distinctive sounds that if you put them on anything, you knew they came from an 808. Because it was kind of like an artificial sound, but it had its own texture and it was very distinctive.

The clave, the cowbell, the hand clap -- so many of the 808 sounds were super distinctive. But one of these distinctive sounds seemed to change music forever. That’s the low, bottom-heavy kick drum. [SFX: Kick drum]

DJ Jazzy Jeff: There was a point in time that I felt like people were afraid of kick drums. You couldn't have the kick drum too loud, you couldn't have it too boomy.

[Music clip: Scorpio - Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five]

Here’s Scorpio by Grand Master Flash and the Furious Five. You can hear that the kick drum is relatively low in the mix.

DJ Jazzy Jeff: Someone had the heart to put an 808 kick drum that it was round, and it was boomy, and it felt really good.

Here’s Planet Patrol, with a rounder, louder kick drum.

[Music clip: Planet Patrol - Play At Your Own Risk]

DJ Jazzy Jeff: Then somebody on a record opened up the decay, and when that kick drum rang out, it was nothing like that that you've ever heard.

Here’s DJ Jazzy Jeff himself opening up that decay, and letting the kick drum drive the song.

[Music clip: DJ Jazzy Jeff and Fresh Prince - Just One of Those Days]

The sound of the 808 kick drum became synonymous with hip hop. The idea of young people driving down the street with a big boomy subwoofers was largely because of the 808 tone. And that connection stuck.

Here’s L’trimm - a Miami Bass hip hop duo -- singing about boomy car stereos in 1988.

[Music clip: Cars That Go Boom]

20 years later - Felix da Housecat released the song “Kick Drum.” Which does the same thing, and pushes the 808 kick drum decay to its absolute limit.

[Music clip: Felix da housecat - Kickdrum]

[music in: 808 beat]

DJ Jazzy Jeff: You're not supposed to have your bass drum driving that much, and it's kind of like, "Why not?" Everybody's riding around in their car playing this music, and it's vibrating their car and they enjoy that. There's no right and wrong in it. I really feel like the 808 kick drum was one of the first things that started shattering the rules of what you could, what you couldn't, or what you should or shouldn't do when it came to recording music.

People didn’t know they wanted a boomy kick drum or a funny cowbell. But once they heard those sounds, it seemed so obvious. It was like a ringing kick drum should have existed all along.

DJ Jazzy Jeff: What made you put a decay on the kick drum? Like, no one ever thought to make a kick drum ring, and what made you think of putting this on there? And did you ever think that it would become this iconic?

[808 beat out]

Paul McCabe: If you've ever been in a recording studio or seen photos of a recording studio where there's an acoustic drum kit, set up, if you're able to have a close look at the kick drum, more often than not you're going to see all kinds of materials, either stuffed into the shell of the kick drum, often it's blankets or towels or things like that. You'll sometimes see things that are taped to the head of the drum as well, and these are all to dampen or muffle the ring of the kick drum because left unmuffled, you strike a kick drum, it's gonna sustain for quite awhile.

What they were trying to achieve was the sound of an acoustic drum set. But since it was a synthesized sound, this rebuilding of a kick drum took on a life of its own.

Paul McCabe: So recognizing that, Roland thought well okay, that's clearly what we have to do to make this thing sound like an acoustic kick drum, so we put a decay control on it.

This essentially turned into a whole new instrument, with new sonic parameters. It was so different that the studios making early hip hop records didn’t even know what to do with it.

[Music clip: He's The DJ, I'm The Rapper]

DJ Jazzy Jeff: When we did He's the DJ, I'm the Rapper, was the first record that I used 808s and 80–8 samples on, that I wanted the kick drum to really resonate. I remember fighting with the engineer, because I wanted to push the envelope on how loud and how deep I wanted the 808. Because I knew there was some hip hop records That you would get in a car and you would play it, and the entire car would vibrate. And I was like, "I want that."

But since that was unheard of at the time, the engineer refused.

DJ Jazzy Jeff: I had to fight with the engineer to turn it up, and he would turn it down and turn it up, and I had to kind of explain to him like, "I understand that there is a technical way that you think you're supposed to do something. I want to push that envelope. I need this to be this loud. I need it to be almost at the brink that it's not distorting and it's not overpowering everything, but I need this to be the focal point of the record."

DJ Jazzy Jeff: Hip hop is something that the drums have to drive the record. I got him to allow me to do it to the point that I loved it, and what I never realized was I never told the mastering engineer that I wanted that. And he thought it was a mistake, and he took all of the 808 out of the album, and I don't think I've ever said this in public. I can't listen to He's the DJ, I'm the Rapper now. That is the biggest record we've ever done, and I absolutely hate the way that it sounds because they sucked all of the bottom end from the 808 out in mastering.

Here’s a clip from He’s the DJ, I’m the Rapper as it is on the record [music clip] and here’s probably what DJ Jazzy Jeff was going for [music clip].

[music in]

With the birth of any genre, there are growing pains. And in a completely unexpected turn, the Roland TR-808, and it’s boomy kick drum became the voice of hip hop and electronic music. The rattling car stereos, the big subwoofers at clubs. They became a new culture. And once it established itself, it spread like wildfire.

Paul McCabe: The 808 is everywhere. Now you'll hear 808s in, I don't want to say every genre of music, there's some styles of music that are so rooted in acoustic, but it's in pop everywhere. And we know just by saying pop, that's such a wide term now, it encompasses world music, it encompasses electronic music and EDM and techno and house and what have you. It's not an understatement to say that the 808 is just everywhere through pop music.

It was a perfect storm of accessibility, adjustable tones, and brand new alien sounds that made people love the 808. The engineers in Japan could never have imagined the way this machine would change the sound of pop music, and hip hop, forever.

DJ Jazzy Jeff: Hip hop is really based off of taking what you have and making it do something that it's not supposed to. We are not supposed to scratch on a turntable. We're not supposed to scratch on records. We're not supposed to drive the kick drum and push things to that level. None of these things make any sense. So as much as it doesn't make sense, it completely makes sense that this Japanese engineer made a drum machine and people started using it in a way that he didn't intend to use. And it works.

Paul McCabe: When we talk about the 808, we talk about a sound and an instrument that has actually defined culture, and so culture is the bigger context within which music fits. So a world without 808, I think it's very reasonable to speculate that fashion would be different, entertainment would be different. I think we wouldn't just be talking about a sonic notch. I think we would be talking about a cultural notch that would be profound.

[music out]

[music in]

The 808, sort of by accident, became the instrument that shaped hip-hop, just like the electric guitar shaped rock and roll. But at the end of the day, no matter how useful and no matter how distinctive, these are tools. Cultural moments have a way of clinging to new tools, which help communicate new ideas… or help say something that hasn’t been said before, or at least... say it in a new voice.

DJ Jazzy Jeff: This is why I love music so much, because there's a thousand different combinations and ways to get to a result.

DJ Jazzy Jeff: At the end of the day, you realize that someone who had a crappy week at work, depending on how you present this music, you can change their day. You can introduce two people together that end up spending the rest of their lives together just by playing music in a certain way to bring people together. I've been blessed to have a thumbprint in music, in making it or playing it, that affects people's moods. That's the coolest job in the world.

[music out]

[music in]

Twenty Thousand Hertz is produced out of the studios of Defacto Sound a sound design team dedicated to making television, film and games sound insanely cool. Find out more at defactosound.com

This episode was produced by Fil Corbitt and me, Dallas Taylor, with help from Sam Schneble. It was sound design and edited by Soren Begin, it was mixed by Jai Berger. Fil Corbitt is the host of Van Sounds, a podcast about movement. It’s a unique blend of music journalism, travel writing and experimental radio. You can find Van Sounds on apple podcasts or wherever you listen.

Thanks to DJ Jazzy Jeff for speaking with us. You can find his work, merch and updates at DJJazzyJeff.com. And thanks so much to Paul McCabe from Roland. If you’d like to play with an 808, Roland has recently reissued it as a smaller machine with a USB connection.

All additional music in this episode was from our friends at musicbed. Check them out at musicbed.com.

Finally, if you have a comment, episode suggestion, or just want to tell us your favorite track featuring the 808… reach out on Twitter, Facebook, or by writing hi at 20k dot org.

Thanks for listening.

[music out]

Recent Episodes

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This episode originally aired on Household Name.

Companies spend a lot of time and effort perfecting the look of their brands. But now what a brand sounds like matters just as much. We trace the history from songs to jingles to what's called sonic branding, following the creative process that led to AT&T’s iconic four-note sound logo. And we'll explore what comes next: multi-sensory marketing. Can sound change how beer tastes?

MUSIC FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE

Prepared by Luke Atencio
Safari by Uncle Skeleton

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

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Check out SONOS at sonos.com.

View Transcript ▶︎

[music in]

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

Sonic Branding is the process of creating a short, iconic sound that’s designed to be an audio representation of a company. When they’re done well, they can represent a brand in a way that visuals just can’t. [SFX: sonic brand montage]

Now, it might seem like making a sound so short would be easy right? ...but that couldn’t be further from the truth. The process can take months, and sound design and music companies may go through hundreds of ideas to finally land on one short sound. ...and keep in mind that all of these approvals have to pass through countless layers of corporate red tape, boardrooms, and the personal taste of business people. It’s an intense process where millions and millions of dollars could hang in the balance.

The fabulous podcast Household Name takes us through the process of creating one of these iconic audio logos… and if you live in the US, I’m sure you’ll recognize it. I won’t give it away, but you’ll want to stick around to hear it. Here’s host Dan Bobkoff.

Can you identify a brand from a sound?

[SFX: McDonald’s sonic logo]

McDonald’s

Mickey D’s

McDonald’s

I gathered some colleagues to test something called sonic branding. It’s like logos you can hear.

[SFX: NBC sonic logo]

That’s NBC

Some are easier to identify than others.

[SFX: T-Mobile sonic logo]

Cingular? AT&T? Phones?

It’s definitely a cell phone

company. I want to say Sprint, but I’m not convinced that’s right?

I was gonna say Staples.

That’s T- Mobile.

And the really good ones make you feel something…

[SFX: 20th Century Fox sonic logo]

That is 20th Century Fox.

I felt triggered as soon as the first bit of drumming happened…

I saw the logo.

I started craving popcorn.

I did know that one.

Companies have long spent a lot of money and effort perfecting their logos… like the Nike swoosh or Apple’s… apple. But now more of them are starting to do the same thing with sound.

[SFX: Netflix sonic logo]

Netflix.

I was gonna guess Netflix!

Netflix!

These are not jingles. They’re highly designed collections of sounds created to make you... buy things. So I wanted to know, how do you make one that works?

[SFX: Texaco commercial]

In the beginning, companies wrote whole songs.

Colleen: In the 40s or 50s when they had long commercials 60 second commercials and you could actually create a whole song for that commercial you could have choruses and you could have verses.

[SFX: Chevy commercial (“Performance is sweeter…”)]

Colleen Fahey is with the French sonic branding company Sixieme Son and wrote a book called Audio Branding. And Colleen says when television was new, ads were long.

Colleen: So you had enough time to say “you wonder where the yellow went, when you brush your teeth with pepsodent”.

[SFX: Pepsodent commercial]

[SFX: Rice Krispies, snap, crackle, pop commercial]

Colleen: One of the great ones was Snap Crackle Pop, Rice Krispies where each of the characters got to sing something about his own sound. His snap, his crackle and and then they did a chorus together. They had plenty of time for that. The chorus went snap crackle pop Rice Krispies

[SFX: Rice Krispies, snap, crackle, pop commercial]

Colleen: But it was a really long song. I couldn’t sing the whole thing for you...

[SFX: Rice Krispies, snap, crackle, pop commercial]

As the decades passed, TV ads got shorter… from whole songs, down to 60 seconds, to 30 seconds — sometimes just 15. And these songs turned into jingles — shorter snippets to help you remember the brand.

[SFX: Purina Cat Chow jingle]

The 80s — by the way — were an especially strong time for jingles… like a last gasp for the form.

[SFX: Stouffer’s pizza jingle]

But the 80s were also a period of transition into something new. And it’s partly because of what United Airlines did then. In the early part of the decade, it had its own conventional jingle...

[SFX: United Airlines jingle, “We get you to all the United States. You’re flying the friendly skies...”]

But by the end of the decade, United started using another piece of music.

Colleen: It's the one that goes doo-doo-doo-doo doo-doo-doo-doo doo-doo-doo-doo doo-doo-doo-doo

[SFX: United rhapsody in blue song]

Colleen: Most people would recognize that as United Airlines’ audio brand.

An audio brand. What United is doing with Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue goes beyond what advertisers did with songs and jingles.

Colleen: They use Rhapsody In Blue as a system.

A system. This is what makes this different than just a simple jingle.

Colleen: It's a very flexible piece of music. It was not written as a symphony. The symphony came many years after the first piece of music was written and had already been used by Jazz musicians and other improvisers. So it's a piece of music that had been treated flexibly since its inception.

Gershwin became United’s signature. Whatever the company was doing, you’d hear some version of this music. From ads, of course, to even TV weather forecasts…

[SFX: Early 90’s United weather forecast]

Colleen: It's also used in the corridors in Chicago Airport. There's a big corridor that links the terminal, their United terminal, to the main building and people on moving walkways hear this music when they're going into the terminal.

[SFX: O’Hare Gershwinn clip]

And then you get on the plane and there it is again.

Colleen: They have a safety video that's around the world…

[SFX: United Safety Video, “If necessary, an oxygen mask will drop from above your seat”]

Colleen: ...and in France you hear it with a little accordion and then in... I think it's New Jersey you hear it with a jazz sound and they manipulate it so it stays fresh and it feels relevant to the destination.

For United, Rhapsody in Blue isn’t a song or a jingle, it’s a full sonic brand.

Colleen: A very unified audio brand and a very strong, memorable, distinctive brand that conveys something… anticipatory and exciting about travel.

A few companies have had sonic branding down for decades. Like MGM...

[SFX: MGM sonic logo]

...or NBC.

[SFX: NBC sonic logo]

But it’s only been since the 90s that this modern form of sonic branding started to take off.

Colleen: Probably the most famous one is Intel which the idea of Intel Inside was communicated by a piece of music. And it goes like, thun thun thun thun thun.

[SFX: Intel sonic logo]

Colleen: Most people would recognize that and they've been very loyal to that piece of music.

[music in]

The Intel Inside sound was brilliant… a chip is something you don’t see, but it’s crucial to a computer, so the sound gave life to something invisible and got consumers to think about a boring computer part.

And, it’s one of the first true sonic logos.

Let’s get some terms out of the way here. In the modern world of audio branding, there are sonic logos and sonic brands. You can think of the sonic brand as the whole package… just like a company has its own fonts and colors. The logo is the distillation of all that… the centerpiece. Visually, it’s a symbol. In audio, it’s a short, memorable sound that triggers recognition like Pavlov’s dog.

[SFX: Bell sound]

Brands want us to remember them and feel good about them.

More and more companies want sonic brands because we’re increasingly interacting with brands in non-visual ways. Like talking to a smart speaker. Or maybe using Apple Pay or Google Pay instead of a physical credit card. In fact, most of the big credit card companies are developing sounds that will play when you buy something.

So, how do you make a sonic brand that works? We’ll find out what the process was like for one of the world’s biggest brands. After this.

[music out]

[MIDROLL]

We’re back

And I’ve come to the offices of Man Made Music in lower Manhattan because this is one place sonic brands are born.

[SFX: Ambience of Danni on keyboard]

Danni: That’s their logo [SFX: keyboard plays]

This is Danni Venne. She’s the head of creative at Man Made, so she works on a lot of the music that’s in the background of our lives.

Danni: I just like that one… [SFX: keyboard plays]

Man Made makes many of the themes you hear on TV. Like for CBS News...

[SFX: CBS News theme]

...or ESPN.

[SFX: ESPN theme]

Or, sometimes they’ll update iconic themes for new eras.

Danni: We’ve done the… HBO theme… have you heard that before? The [SFX: logo plays] So we’ve done so many versions of that. We didn’t write that one, but that’s kind of our bread and butter is that we take a melody and we know how to like, recontextualize it.

But now it’s not just TV networks calling. Brands want music. Lots of it. They want sonic logos for all sorts of reasons.

Like, take AT&T. It thought a sonic brand might help solve some problems.

AT&T came to Man Made Music in 2010. Back then, the company had been enjoying one big advantage… it was the only cell phone company in the US where you could get an iPhone. But at the time, its customers weren’t too happy with AT&T.

Danni: AT&T became even a bigger punching bag ‘cause it was dropping all the calls.

Customers who had switched to AT&T in order to get the iPhone were complaining about it online. Never mind that the problem was mostly fixed by this point. Reputations can lag reality. One customer had even made a parody video to YouTube that looks like an Apple ad with the white background and the product shots. But then the text is all things like, “It’s a revolutionary device crippled by poor service” and this one “with less bars in more places!”

So AT&T set out to overhaul its image… photos, slogans, fonts, ads and sounds.This was around the time other phone companies were about to sell the iPhone. And it had another problem. Danni said that when AT&T ran expensive ads on TV, few people could remember what the ad was for.

Danni: They'd see it and they say who was that for and then say I don't know Verizon? IBM? You know, MetLife? It wouldn't… They… It would rarely get attributed to AT&T.

Danni: One of the first things we asked AT&T when they were in the room was, why are you interested in a sonic identity?

Danni needed AT&T to articulate exactly how the company wanted to be perceived. Did it want to come across as more reliable? Higher tech? Less corporate? More… likeable?

Danni: If we don't understand that then we're just, you know throwing stuff at the wall. Hoping that it's going to stick. What's the problem you're trying to solve?

After a lot of back and forth, AT&T came back and said… it wanted to come across as… human.

Danni: At the top of the brief, a question: what is the sound of humanity? Which is… very lofty.

Yeah. Sounds… pretty big.

Danni: Very lofty. But, the sound of humanity and that as a question with the additional language that we had in the references at least focused it in a little bit more on what that could be.

If AT&T sounded human, maybe customers would trust it more. And new customers might hear the sound logo and get a better impression of AT&T. A company that sounded friendly, and likeable.

Danni: Of course that can be interpreted a million different ways. But just at the very top how did… where were we shooting? The sound of humanity.

So, to narrow it down, Danni asked AT&T executives some questions. Things like… “what do you hate about your competitors?” Once all that was settled, Danni looked to culture for inspiration. And back in 2010, artisanal products were all the rage. Handmade things that looked authentic, and not mass produced perfection.

Danni: Things like I think Mast chocolate bars head hand wrapped chocolate, right? So, you know craftsman in some warehouse in Brooklyn, you know, making…

Just like AT&T

Danni: Just like AT&T, exactly. But you know someone's in Brooklyn doing their small batch pickles or something, right, with the handcrafted label. And like… but that that sense of like personal touch and humanity was like kind of infusing a lot of culture at the time.

But even that concept was broad. Like… AT&T is artisanal chocolate? That doesn’t make sense!

So, before her team started composing their own tracks, Danni played some music she had on hand—stuff they didn’t compose—but they just wanted to get the client’s reactions. In this case, they wanted a sense of what kind of raw, authentic humanity AT&T wanted. Like, did it want it to feel high-stakes and dramatic? Like, fireman rescues baby from a burning building humanity?

[SFX: Scene tape [DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYS]]

Danni: This is too “heart on your sleeve…” you know, like..

[Danni laughs]

Or… math genius performs complicated calculus on a chalkboard humanity?

Danni: I do like this one because it feels smart.

So, they’re sitting around, listening and giving their feedback. The first track sounded too lofty and dramatic, with its sweeping crescendos and emotional strings. And the second one, the “math genius” music, was too structured and clean.

Danni: And as the exploration developed, we became more focused on expressing this humanity through imperfection. So instruments and sounds that you could hear real people playing real instruments. Right? And that became the way humanity was manifested, you know? First it sounds lofty, like we're about to have something giant, you know. But it actually became a little more raw.

So, with that in mind, Danni and the team finally started writing their own music for AT&T. A lot of music. And what they were trying to create is something they call an “anthem.”

Danni: All the anthem demos need to be thematic. They need to have a melody or something that you can sing back, or something that you can remember, some sort of hook. Right? And that hook, that melody, that theme, that becomes what eventually gets boiled down to a sonic logo.

The sonic logo might be just a few notes embedded in the larger anthem, which could be anything from 20 seconds to two minutes long.

Danni: But any of these demos that we start writing... and a big brand like AT&T… it’s very conceivable that we might write up to 20 or 30 anthem demos. Not all of them see the light of day, in fact most of them don't get to the client.

Danni played us some of those early tracks and explained why they didn’t make the cut. Like, her first try was almost too human. It sounded too much like the theme song of a kid’s TV show, or the joyful, hoppy ending of a rom com.

[SFX: Danni scene tape [“Hey! Dah dah dah dah dah!”]]

Danni: It’s a really nice sound, song. It’s got vocals in it. What it might not do, is it might not speak to this idea of serious business, right?

The team’s next try went too far in the other direction. The music wasn’t grounded enough. The chord progressions were a little too exciting for AT&T’s taste.

Danni: Um, let me go to another one that did not make it.

[SFX: Scene tape [LORD OF THE RINGS TYPE MUSIC PLAYS]]

Danni: Artful fade! Yeah, like it’s… it’s more dramatic, right?

Sounds a lot like a film score

Danni: Yeah, exactly. So trying to take this humanity things very differently there. And I mean hindsight, I can remember why that doesn’t work. It’s kind of… Maybe it’s kind of obvious, right? It’s… it wears its heart on its sleeve. It’s very Lord of the Rings.

A little ominous too. My call might drop...

At some point, the team hit a creative block. Danni just wasn’t hearing any sonic logos in these anthems.

Then one day, Danni was playing some of the drafts for her boss, Joel. And four notes caught his attention.

Danni: What Joel heard, was this...

[SFX: Scene tape [BAG-PIPES]]

Danni: You hear the melody, and it’s just repeat repeat repeat repeat. And that was like an interesting, iconic sort of melody.

[SFX: Scene tape [MUSIC PLAYS]]

Danni: That became eventually the sonic logo. That kind of idea. Just those four notes.

And those four notes… might sound familiar.

[SFX: Scene tape [REVEAL AT&T SONIC LOGO]]

Danni: Not a very linear process to get there, you know. We heard a theme that we thought was cool, we heard something that had the momentum and the optimism that felt like big business and a melody that we liked and we said, how do we make something that gets a lot of people on board with it being both approachable and friendly and consumer and kind of ragtag, but still feels kind of interesting and big. But at the end of the day, the most important thing is the theme. The melody the melody the melody.

Now that Danni and her team had their melody — their sonic logo — they could start thinking about other things. Like what instruments would make the track sound most “human.” She went to a store in Midtown Manhattan that sold a bunch of vintage instruments. Quirky-sounding things, like clavinet... a wurlitzer. And some others I didn’t expect to hear in an AT&T logo…

Danni: And I, I swear to God we recorded a bagpipe player. I'll show you that…

For AT&T?

Danni: Yes, they there’s a bagpipe on there.

Is that an easter egg? It’s like, hidden in there somewhere?

Danni: Yeah [laughs]

Danni wanted the anthem to sound real. Real people on real instruments. This is not programmed perfection in a computer.

[SFX: Scene tape [MUSIC PLAYING]]

Danni: And it’s interesting, when I listen to this again, you can hear… every so often I can hear a piano chord that’s just a fraction late.

[SFX: Scene tape [MUSIC PLAYING]]

Is that on purpose?

Danni: Just because it’s played… Aaron is playing there…

Man Made

Danni: Yeah, exactly it was very man-made

How the anthem was recorded mattered too.

Danni: You can even hear like we must have recorded these instruments together. Can you hear kind of the drums in the background? Kind of the way records used to be made… you’re all in a room, playing together.

Finally, after weeks of writing, recording, and mixing, Danni and her team had AT&T’s anthem.

[SFX: AT&T anthem -- make sure it’s the original one]

And tying the whole thing together were four notes. The sonic logo.

[SFX: Archival from end of AT&T ad with the sonic logo]

It took 18 months for Man Made to finish the whole AT&T sonic brand. It’s become a case study for the company. Because in the end, variations on those four notes were used as ringtones, hold music, ad themes, even before the CEO got on stage at events. It was a whole system.

A big reason sonic branding works is because of repetition. The more you hear something, the more familiar it becomes, and the more you tend to like it.

And these sounds don’t take long to worm into our minds. One study played a jingle alongside a product just a couple of times. And the next time participants heard that sound, they instinctively started looking for that product.

So on our journey from songs to jingles to sonic brands, that’s the current science. But I called up Charles Spence because he’s working on what comes next.

Charles: I'm an experimental psychologist and a gastro physicist working out of Oxford University. Psychologist interested in the sensors and the application of brain science to the real world.

For a while now, he’s worked on the subtle sounds products make that you might not even realize are engineered to create emotion. Like with Axe deodorant.

Charles: We we worked on the design of a new spraying sound so that it would be perceived as more efficacious.

That's actually the design of the packaging is a sonic experience.

Charles: That's right something that we when we think whenever we interact with or use, open, close anything really it makes a sound. It's always there in the background. Our brain picks it up and uses that to infer what's going on. What are we feeling, what's happening.

Like a car door… our brains interpret sounds as signaling solid, high quality.

[SFX: High quality car door closing sound]

Or maybe tinny, and cheap.

[SFX: tinny, cheap car door closing sound]

But Charles is at the forefront of something even more complex. He’s studying how one sense can affect another. And how that might change how we experience a brand and its products. Like can a sound change the way something tastes?

Charles: To be able to bring out the sweet or sweetness or bitterness on the palette simply through the look of the video the shapes the colors on the video and also the instrumentation of that specially designed track.

And so what you're saying, is that as I drink this beer or drink this coffee if I hear this specially designed sound it actually literally changes my sense of the taste, right?

Charles: Yes. Not always, not for everyone but for many people it just changes the taste and so I've just been back from two weeks getting around Europe. Sort of demonstrating this what we call sort of sonic seasoning. Giving people… my favorite one is giving people kind of sour, sour kid sweets.

Charles: And then we have the some very sweet music which is very tinkling and high-pitched specially designed from a London design student…

[SFX: Sweet music]

Spence: And then we have some world's sourest music.

[SFX: sour music]

Charles: It's kind of mathematically transformed Argentinian Tango…And while people are eating one and the same sweet and sour sweet then as we change as I change the music you can sort of see their faces pucker up as I play the sour music.

Charles has collected lots of music that pairs with certain tastes. Like this one, he says, is spicy.

[SFX: Spicy music]

Charles worked with Starbucks on a piece of music that’d pair with instant coffee in the UK. He worked with Stella Artois and the Roots on this track that was supposed to go with the taste of the beer. It’s called sweet ‘til the bitter end.

[SFX: Stella Artois Roots music]

Charles: We've been working with a… in a chain of Belgian chocolate shops with a kind of completely mad, but brilliant chocolatier from Belgium in his chocolate shop with his amazing Belgian chocolates making his chocolates taste creamier with a kind of creamy track that's been specially created.

Or maybe, he says, sweet music could allow food companies to use less sugar. Charles says he can’t yet use music to turn water into wine, but he’s working on it.

A few years ago, I was in a hotel that had a signature smell. The shampoo smelled just like the lobby. And after talking with Charles, I can imagine a time soon when a brand has coordinated everything… the flavors, the scents, the sounds and music and colors… all to make you buy things and feel better about it.

Or maybe it’ll all just be ASMR.

Charles: These are autonomous sensory meridian response kind of tingle you get down the back of your neck and this kind of is having a relaxing pleasurable experience. Almost a feeling triggered by sound. And we can study the particular kinds of sounds. And it does seem to be sounds that work really well.

Charles: The sounds of whispering gently or rattling of paper. There are particular sort of sounds that trigger these ASMR responses and can we incorporate things like that into sonic logos and jingles in order to kind of broaden the array of what that sonic logo can do.

I don’t know if I’m ready for a world with whispered ASMR sonic logos that have been designed to make my drink taste sweeter in a bottle that has been engineered to sound like refreshment. Where everyone behind me knows what credit card I have because of the sound it made at the register. But I guess we’re pretty much there already aren’t we?

So in the meantime, let’s see if this ASMR thing works…

[whispers] Subscribe to Household Name wherever you get your podcasts.

That was weird.

[music in]

Twenty Thousand Hertz is produced out of the studios of Defacto Sound, a sound design team dedicated to making television, film, and games sound incredible. Find out more at Defacto Sound dot com.

This episode originally aired on Household Name, a podcast that tells the surprising stories behind the biggest household name brands. Go subscribe.

The episode was produced by Dan Bobkoff, with Sarah Wyman, Amy Pedulla, Jennifer Sigl, Gianna Palmer, John DeLore, Casey Holford, and Chris Bannon. Household is a production of Insider Audio.

Thanks to Curtis Perry and Marcus Mendes from twitter for helping us name this episode. If you’d like to help us name future episodes, or want to tell us your favorite sonic logo, tell us on Facebook, Twitter, or by writing hi at 20 kay dot org.

Thanks for listening.

[music out]

Recent Episodes

Featured

Inside Apple: Sonic Accessibility

July 1, 2019

Info Pocketknife

Deaf Gain: The promise and controversy of cochlear implants

July 1, 2019

Info Pocketknife

This episode was written and produced by Leila Battison.

The last few decades have seen amazing improvements in cochlear implant technology. Professor Michael Dorman reveals what they really sound like, and how they can help out with more than just our hearing. But should we be advocating cochlear implants at all? We chat with deaf graphic designer Brandon Edquist about why he chooses not to use his implant, and why the Deaf community is up in arms against them.

MUSIC FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE

A Better World by Instrumental by CHPTRS
Maggie and Bernard by Steven Gutheinz
Lovers or Bruises by Instrumental by Cubby
Drops by Sunshine Recorder
Greylock (with Kyle McEvoy) by Sunshine Recorder
Petite Suite: I. En Bateau by Sunshine Recorder
Tigran by Live Footage
Rubrik (with Blurstem) by Brique a Braq
Bokeh by Luke Atencio
Gaze by Chad Lawson
Reflects Dans l'Eau by SVVN
Lotus by Longlake

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

Follow Dallas on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and LinkedIn.

Join our community on Reddit and follow us on Facebook.

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

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Get a 50% discount off your first purchase with the code “20K” at graphicaudio.net.

View Transcript ▶︎

[music in]

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

Our hearing is one of our core senses, and it’s something most of us take for granted.

The laughter of a child [SFX], birdsong at dawn [SFX], or even a well-designed sonic icon can be a feast for our ears. But as much as it’s a joy to listen to the world around us, our hearing is also a protective mechanism. It works hard alongside our other senses to add context, and protect us from danger. [SFX: Tiger roar]

But a lot of people live without their hearing. Worldwide, about one in every thousand babies are born deaf. ...and right now, there are about 1 million people in the US who live with complete hearing loss.

Brandon Edquist is one of those people. He’s deaf now, but wasn’t born that way.

[music out]

Here he is through an interpreter.

Brandon: When I was two, I contracted meningitis. The illness infects the brain lining, and from that I lost my hearing.

[music in]

There are lots of ways that a person can lose their hearing. The biological machine for making sense out of sound waves is incredibly complex. And like all machines, the more complex something is, the more there is to go wrong.

Issues can range from a simple buildup of earwax all the way to a punctured eardrum.

Hearing loss can also be caused by problems in the hearing organ or the nerve that carries sound signals to the brain. They can be damaged by accidents and disease, but problems here can also be genetic, or a result of the natural aging process.

Of course, not all hearing loss is immediate, or total. But when it is, people like Brandon tend to rely more heavily on their other senses.

[music out]

Brandon: I have become more sensitive to what I see. I notice things a little more. Body language, I notice that and catch that a lot more.

But when it comes to interacting with others, it’s not always that straightforward.

Brandon: Some people I talk with, they accept and they understand, and some just walk away and get angry. I've gotten so used to it, so it doesn't bother me that much.

Brandon’s a graphic designer, which means that he can make a living while avoiding many of these awkward face-to-face interactions.

Brandon: I have to communicate with a person through email or texting. We all write so it makes it easy to communicate.

[music in]

Brandon’s experiences might seem extreme, but statistically they aren’t all that rare. And even more people live with more moderate hearing loss, with even simple interactions posing a daily challenge.

Michael: The most common complaint is the inability to function in group settings, in cafeterias when there's noise, in a party... any place where there's competing noise.

That’s Professor Michael Dormon from Arizona State University. Michael has worked with people affected by hearing impairments for the last 40 years.

Michael: If you go back far enough, you have acoustic horns, it was realized that if you created something that looks like a megaphone, and you yell into one end of it, and you put the other end up to your ear, it sounds louder.

These paved the way for the very first hearing aids.

Michael: Electronic devices have been around for a long time after Edison who himself was very deaf. They actually were decently given the electronics, they were very bulky and unwieldy.

[music out]

These days, hearing aids are commonly offered to people with moderate hearing loss. Most consist of a microphone to pick up signals from outside the ear. An amplifier then increases the volume of those signals, and a speaker plays that louder sound into the ear.

Over time, hearing aids have become smaller and more effective. Nowadays, they can even be nearly invisible, with some being placed entirely within the ear canal. You may never know if the person you’re talking to has a hearing impairment.

Michael: I had been working for about a decade with the standard hearing impaired listener. Frankly, I wasn't getting anywhere, and I thought that there had to be something better than this.

So Michael began working with a new, emerging technology. A mysterious innovation called a cochlear implant.

Michael: I remember the director of my laboratory told me “take on a good problem Michael, in life. That's what you want, a good problem.”

Michael: A good problem was a hard problem. I remember him telling me "Michael, cochlear implants are a good problem. Stay with it."

[music in]

Sometimes, hearing aids just can’t cut it. That’s where the cochlear implant comes in. These implants can handle extreme cases of hearing loss, and can even reverse total deafness.

The technology is a bit more involved, but like a hearing aid, it starts with a microphone outside the ear.

Michael: That microphone signal goes to a signal processing device about the size of the hearing aid case and then it is transmitted across the skin to a receiver that is surgically placed under the skin. The receiver then transforms the signal into a series of pulses. The pulses are directed to a set of electrodes, which the surgeon has slipped into the cochlea.

The cochlea is a hollow spiral tube in the inner ear. Normally, sound waves move through the fluid inside the Cochlea, which waves little hairs back and forth. It’s this movement that’s detected and sent as a signal to the brain.

But in a cochlear implant the electrodes deliver the sound signal directly to the auditory nerve.

[music out]

Michael: The cochlea is very handy. It's laid out distance by frequency. We can think of the beginning of the cochlea, the high frequencies live there [SFX: High frequency sine wave], and towards the top of the spiral, the low frequencies live there [SFX: Low frequency sine wave]. If we can slip an electrode most of the way to the top of the cochlea, then we can reproduce sounds from high-frequencies, to mid-frequencies, to low-frequencies.

Now, the signal that the cochlear implant sends to the brain isn’t very high-resolution. It’s filtered into a small number of bands. But it turns out that’s all we really need. The brain manages to fill in the gaps.

Michael: When I tested my first implant patient with a very primitive cochlear implant, I asked him what it sounded like, and he said, "Meh, it sounds all right." I thought, "Well, that's interesting. It should sound awful."

In fact, it probably sounded something like this: [SFX: Early implant sound sample]

And here’s the natural version of that sound: [SFX: Early implant input sample: “The remarkable versatility of the human voice”]

And here’s the cochlear version again. [SFX: Early implant sound sample]

Luckily, since then, cochlear technology has gotten considerably better. ...and every year, more and more people benefit from the implants. Many of us will be familiar with them thanks to countless viral videos that document the moment they’re switched on.

[SFX: Switch on clip 1 start]

You hear my voice?

[Crying]

Aww

[Crying]

Hooray!

It’s hard to comprehend what it would be like to suddenly gain or regain a sense that simply wasn’t there before. But the sounds implant patients hear might not always be what they’re expecting.

[music in]

Michael: Even a very mild hearing loss, very early will over time lead to a reorganization of the brain. If you've had that mild to moderate hearing loss for years and years and years, by the time you'd get to qualify for a cochlear implant, we're putting that implant in a brain that is very differently wired than the wiring of a normal brain.

Our brains are remarkably changeable. If one part stops working, another will adapt to fulfill that function to the best of its ability.

Michael: The auditory cortex becomes reorganized. It responds to tactile stimulation and visual stimulation.

So after enough time without input the part of the brain that normally deals with sound is repurposed to help out with touch and vision. In the brain at least, there might be some truth in the old saying that losing one sense will heighten the others!

But this rewiring isn’t good news for cochlear implant patients.

[music out]

Michael: By the time you put an implant in a congenitally deaf adult, you're implanting into a brain that is massively reorganized, and so it's not at all surprising that the results in terms of speech understanding are very, very, very poor. On the other hand, there are some adults who tell me that they've always wanted to hear. They just want to hear something, and they do hear with the cochlear implant.

The thing about our remarkably plastic brains is that it bends both ways. Once the auditory cortex starts receiving signals through the implant, it can begin to remember how to process them again. Which is good news for Michael’s patients.

Michael: You go from the complaint that I can't function in society because I can't hear to being able to hear and function in society, and go back to work.

[music in]

We know that cochlear implant technology has improved, and we know that the brain can adapt to make sense out of the signal the implant provides. But until recently we’ve not known what it actually sounds like.

Michael: There was no way to check of course. There was no objective measure.

About ten years ago, people with deafness in only one ear started to receive implants and Michael saw the opportunity to try and match the sound in the implanted ear.

Michael: We could inject the signal into the implant, and then I could make up things for the normal hearing ear, and ask any of them sounded like the implant could be like fitting glasses. And so we play a sound to the implant, we play a sound to the normal ear.

In this way, Michael was able to figure out what an implant really sounded like for many of his patients.

[music out]

Michael: The most common difference is that the implant sounds muffled to one degree or another. A very common report from patients is it sounds like you're talking from behind a door, or you have your hand in front of your mouth.

It might sound something like this: [SFX: Muffled sound sample: “The sun is finally shining”]

But it’s also common for the entire pitch of a sound to be shifted up.

Michael: If you remember the movie The Wizard of Oz, there are little characters called, "Munchkins."

[SFX: Munchkin clip audio]

Michael: They used a professional voice actor to produce their lines and they recorded that actor at one speed. Then they played back the recording slightly faster. And what that does is increase the pitch, and moves the whole spectrum up a little [SFX]. That's the munchkin voice.

The same thing can happen with cochlear implants.

[music in]

The last 30 years have seen incredible improvements in cochlear implant tech. And some studies show that there could be dangers of living with hearing loss.

Michael: In quiet, individuals with hearing loss may be perfectly fine. Then as soon as you go to any noisy environment… [SFX: Noisy city] performance falls apart remarkably quickly. Functionally, they just stop going out. They don't interact with others and this brings us to the most recent findings of researchers that if you have a hearing loss, then the odds of developing something awful like Alzheimer's goes up.

Faced with the alternative, Michael hopes that more people will seek out cochlear implants in the future. As the tech improves, so too will the benefits to both quality of life and long term health.

But, there are many in the Deaf community who take an entirely different view. These are people with hearing loss who will choose to reject cochlear implants, regardless of how good they are.

All this time we’ve been trying to cure deafness, but in wondering if we could, did anyone stop to think if we should? Have we got it all backwards? We’ll discuss that, after the break...

[music out]

[MIDROLL]

[music in]

In the last 30 years, improving cochlear implant technology has provided an almost miraculous cure for deafness. But there are some people who don’t see deafness as something that needs a cure. They say that It’s not a disability, and it doesn’t need fixing.

Here’s Brandon Edquist through his interpreter again.

[music out]

Brandon: At about three years old, I was given a cochlear implant.

Brandon: I remember going into the surgery room, I remember the mask and being put to sleep. After the surgery, there was some pain in my head. That's about all I remember.

The implant worked, allowing Brandon to hear sound once again. His parents hoped it would help him to live what they considered a normal life.

[music in]

Brandon: I used the cochlear implant as I went through my education. Many people explained that it would be like a mechanical sound, and it was.

Bradon: My parents really hoped that I would use it a lot, thought I would need to use it to become successful.

But the road to understanding speech was a rocky one, and Brandon worked closely with an audiologist throughout his schooling.

Brandon: The audiologist would sit behind me in a room and that person would talk and I'd try to hear the sound, what they were saying, through my cochlear.

Brandon: I'd go several times a week, but nothing of it really stuck.

Brandon didn’t enjoy using his cochlear implant and when he was a kid, he made every excuse not to use it.

Rather than rely on the noisy, electronic signal through his implant, Brandon found easier ways to communicate with his friends.

Brandon: When I was in Gen Ed school, and the classmates were hearing, but they seemed to understand about my deafness. We would communicate through gestures. They really didn't know any sign, so we used gestures.

[music out]

In 7th grade, he moved to a specialist school for the deaf.

Brandon: When I got to the school for the deaf everything changed. I very rarely had used the cochlear, I had it on, but I used sign. It was my choice to stop using it.

But Brandon wasn’t alone in rejecting his implant. His was just one voice in the growing dissent within the wider Deaf community.

Brandon: That was during a time when the idea of a cochlear implant in the deaf community was not popular. Most of the deaf were rebellious about it.

[music in]

Michael: Early in my career, the radical deaf culture individuals were very active. I remember a meeting in England where they actually chained the doors of our conference hall together, so we couldn't go in to have a conference about cochlear implants.

The message these activists were trying to get across was that cochlear implants are trying to fix something that doesn’t NEED to be fixed. Trying to cure deafness was offensive to the deaf identity. Their message was clear.

It might seem like a bit of an overreaction, but it’s born of real oppression.

Back in the 1880s, the inventor of the telephone Alexander Graham Bell had some seriously controversial views on people who were deaf and chose to remain mute. He claimed that they would choose to intermarry, leading to what he called a defective race. He went as far as to say that deaf-mute intermarriages should be forbidden. They never were of course, but it’s not hard to see why the deaf community felt so threatened, then and now.

[music out]

In reality, many individuals with hearing loss don’t consider themselves in need of fixing. They just belong to a different culture, and like any other culture, Deaf culture has its roots in shared experiences, a common language, and a mutual understanding of what it’s like to live in a soundless world.

It can be a powerful thing to belong to such a community. But, from Brandon’s experience it can sometimes be too closed off.

[music in]

Brandon: The deaf people really are protective of their community. It's a small community. They are very careful about who joins them and who does not join them.

Brandon: There are some who are more open who are willing to accept others and are willing to teach the language and teach the culture. It varies.

Even though he chose not to use the cochlear implant he got when he was very young, he can still find it hard to navigate the deaf community.

Brandon: The deaf community is part of self-identity. I feel part of that, and sometimes it is hard to fit into that. I do identify deaf, but because of my experience in mainstream, sometimes I don't feel I fit in.

The deaf identity is such an important part of the deaf community. So it makes sense that the growing popularity for cochlear implants seemed to threaten that close-knit group by threatening the deaf identity itself.

[music out]

[music in]

Today’s cochlear implants can restore hearing to the deaf, allowing them to integrate seamlessly into the hearing community. But in choosing to live with his deafness, Brandon finds that relatively few adjustments are needed for him to live the life he wants.

Brandon: My parents use sign. My friends are deaf and we use sign. My hearing friends, we are still able to communicate very well through texting, through our phones, so it's been no problem.

But in terms of general accessibility, there’s still some way to go.

Brandon: I know many deaf who wish that sign language was used more and taught more in the school systems so that hearing people can learn more and that way the deaf community can be more part of the community.

Brandon: There's a big inequality of jobs and lack of jobs, lack of employment for the deaf community. Yes. They have the skills. They have the knowledge, but sometimes, the disability may not be clear enough, so it can be hard for deaf people, and hearing people usually try to come up with an excuse to not hire a deaf or find some other way to communicate. There's always an excuse.

Even today, cochlear implants are a touchy subject. There’s been a resurgence in people speaking out to support deaf culture and the deaf identity. But ultimately, the choice will always be down to the individual.

On one hand, Michael believes that implants can improve quality of life, and urges people to seek out the surgery.

Michael: You don't do it for yourself so much as the ones around you. It will help your family just as much as it'll help yourself.

But on the other hand, if given the opportunity to wave a magic wand and gain the ability to hear, would Brandon choose not be deaf anymore?

Brandon: No. No. No. Laughing, no.

[music out]

[music in]

Twenty Thousand Hertz is produced out of the studios of defacto sound, a sound design team dedicated to making the world sound amazing. Find out more at defacto sound dot com.

This episode was written and produced by Leila Battison, and me Dallas Taylor. With help from Sam Schneble. It was sound edited by Soren Begin and sound designed and mixed by Colin DeVarney.

Thanks to our guests, Professor Michael Dorman, and Brandon Edquist.

Michael is a Professor Emeritus at Arizona State University. He continues to research speech understanding with cochlear implants, and hopes someday to see implants that can reproduce sound perfectly.

Brandon is a graphic designer. You can check out his work on his website, at brandonedquist.com.

You’ll have noticed by now that this season we’re sometimes asking people what their favourite sound is. This episode is a little different, so I’ve asked Brandon what his favourite sensation is.

Brandon: Visual. I like watching TVs and movies, and feeling the vibration with all the action, that's my favorite feeling, sensation, of all.

All of the music in this episode was from our friends at Musicbed. Check them out at musicbed.com.

A special thanks to Esparanza Garibay for naming this episode. Esparanza chimed in on a request for show titles over on Facebook and suggested we use the title Deaf Gain. She’s deaf and said that Deaf Gain a pretty common phrase in the deaf community. An example of when they might use it would be in a super noisy environment like a party. They’ll their hearing aid or Cochlear Implant and sign “deaf gain” to each other. They might also sign the phrase when they’re able to talk to each other across rooms. Stuff that us hearing people just can’t do. It kinda gives them a super cool superpower. Everyone on Facebook including myself fell in love with the phrase because it’s also the opposite of the term Hearing Loss. Hearing Loss, Deaf Gain. It completely changes the framing of deafness. Anyway, that’s one of the many reasons you should follow us on social… to find incredible stories like that that pop up spontaneously. You can find us on Twitter or Facebook by simply searching for Twenty Thousand Hertz. And when you’re there, be sure to say hi.

Thanks for listening.

[music out]

Recent Episodes

Featured

Inside Apple: Sonic Accessibility

June 17, 2019

Info Pocketknife

Plants That Listen (and some that sing)

June 17, 2019

Info Pocketknife

This episode was written and produced by Rachel Ishikawa.

Have you ever wondered what your dog or cat would say to you if they could talk? How about your plant? In this episode we explore the world of bioacoustics and cognitive ecology. Featuring MIDI Sprout creator, Joe Patitucci, and ecologist, Monica Gagliano, who is the author of Thus Spoke the Plant.

MUSIC FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE

Petite Suite II by Sunshine Recorder
Piano Sonata no15 by Sunshine Recorder
I Wanna Start a Fire (No Oohs and Ahhs Instrumental) by Midnight Riot
Falling by Hey Lunar
Twangling by Hey Lunar
Refractor by Hey Lunar
Chumley Giles by Uncle Skeleton
Shufflin Instrumental by Dancia Dora

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

Follow Dallas on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and LinkedIn.

Join our community on Reddit and follow us on Facebook.

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

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

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

Check out Data Garden’s plant music at datagarden.org.

Go to forhims.com/20k for your $5 complete hair kit.

Check out SONOS at sonos.com.

View Transcript ▶︎

[SFX: Data Garden Quartet Philadelphia Museum Exhibit Clip]

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

Many of us keep plants in our home. We give them water and sunlight, and then pretty much leave them alone. But some people form a deeper relationship with their plants. They give them names and treat them like they’re part of the family. They may even sing to them. Of course, plants don’t sing back, or do they? Actually, the music you’re hearing right now was composed entirely from the biodata of plants.

Exhibit VO - Welcome to a special exhibition recording of Data Garden Quartet, recorded live at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Exhibit VO - The music you’re about to listen to was generated by four living plants.

Exhibit VO - On lead synthesizer, a philodendron.

Exhibit VO - On rhythm tone generator, schefflera number one.

Exhibit VO - Bass synthesizer, schefflera number two.

Exhibit VO - Controlling ambience and FX, snake plant.

Wait a second, this all sounds really nice but how does it work? Last time I checked, plants sound nothing like synthesizers.

Exhibit VO - To produce this recording, electronic sensors were placed on plant leaves to measure conductive biorhythms in real time. These fluctuating rhythms were translated into data, allowing each plant to play a range of notes and textures.

So basically, electronic sensors are placed on the plant leaves and these sensors record the plant’s biodata. Then, through a process known as data sonification, a sound designer assigns a range of pitch, rhythm, timbre, and texture to this raw data. Sounds pretty cool right? Well if that was it, we’d expect to hear a very consistent musical piece. I mean plants really just kind of do the same thing all the time. They just sit there and grow and grow and grow. But plants seem to change depending on who or what is around them.

At times, museum goers affected the compositions by touching and interacting with the plants. The combination of these dynamic interactions between plants, humans, and technology have resulted in this recording.

Joe: I am founder of Data Garden and we make music from bio data.

[music in]

That’s Joe Patitucci and he might very well have the best title ever. He’s a multimedia healing artist working to foster connection to intuitive states and the natural world.

Joe: I do not sing to my plants. But I'll go and just hang out with them and I'll exchange energy with my hands. I'll just hold my hand a couple of inches away from them and just tune into that.

Joe believes that plants and sound are deeply connected. He even created a tool that let’s plants sing.

It’s called the MIDI Sprout. It’s a small pocket-sized device that’s relatively simple. It takes the electrical impulses or “bio data” of a plant and uses it to control sound.

For some people, the MIDI Sprout taps into a simple desire: if plants could talk... what would they say?

[music out]

The idea for the MIDI Sprout was inspired from Joe’s music.

Joe: At that time I actually didn't even have any plants in my house. My relationship with purely one of like going out to experience it and then coming back with a feeling and then using that as my inspiration to express musically.

[SFX: Nature field recording]

Before the MIDI Sprout, he would often go on long nature walks and take a little hand held recorder with him. He would record sounds and then take these sounds back into the studio and use the recordings to make music. He really wanted to capture the feeling of those walks in his music. The feeling of a quiet forest or the feeling looking out from a mountain top.

[SFX: Field recording out]

But after a certain point that wasn’t enough for Joe.

Joe: What if I could just connect directly to this natural force and have the vibrations or just the ... have some kind of data or something coming from this natural environment and having that expressed as music in real time.

Joe began researching the history of electronic music that used plants. Turns out there’s a bunch of artists and musicians who have been inspired… one way or the other… by plants.

[SFX: Plantasia music]

Take for example this album from the mid-70’s called Plantasia by Mort Garson. The album describes itself as “warm earth music for plants and people who love them.”

With it’s whimsical, joyous songs, the album as one of the premiere compositions in early electronic music. But the subtext of the album overshadows the music itself. The album was made to help plants grow - and some plant lovers believe it works.

[SFX: Richard Lowenberg -Secret Life of Plants]

Another artist from the 70s, Richard Lowenberg, created strange, arrhythmic analogue synth music… also with the help of bio data from plants.

Joe Patitucci wanted to create a more modern way of using plant biodata. One that didn’t only run through analogue instruments, but could work digitally, running MIDI.

[SFX: Midi Sprout - Computer Dance]

Joe: MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface. It's really just like data notation. It's like musical notation for computer software or synthesizers.

And so the MIDI Sprout was born.

Joe: It's very similar to a lie detector circuit. How it works is that you have like two probes on the skin and there's a small electrical current being run into your skin and then we're measuring the variation in the conductivity on your skin, so if you think of the graph that comes off of the lie detector and think of that wave, what we're doing is we're taking that wave and then we're translating that into pitch.

Just imagine giving the plant a lie detector test. One probe on one leaf, one probe on the other. You can then program these waves to sound like a flute or wind chimes, or maybe a synth pad.

[music in]

Joe: I just feel like it sounds like ethereal, angelic, just really chill music that just sounds dreamy.

Joe: What's really interesting too is that at first we just thought about this as a product for artists and musicians and designers and people that would take this raw, midi stream and then design for it so that it could be expressed as music. What we found later on is that yoga teachers, meditation teachers, all these other people want to have this experience as well.

[music out]

But Joe found that the MIDI Sprout was more than just an instrument. Normally when a plant is hooked up to the MIDI Sprout, the sound it produces is relatively consistent.

[SFX: MIDI Sprout music example]

But that sound occasionally changes.

[SFX: Midi Sprout music shift]

Joe: Primarily that change is happening because there is a change in the amount of water between two points on the plants. Now exactly why that is happening is for a whole host of reasons, some of which we can perceive and some of which we may not be able to perceive… As a human, we have a very small, visible light spectrum compared to what plants are absorbing and what is important to a plant's health.

[music out]

Even something as simple as moving a plant into a warmer room could trigger a change in the music. But Joe noticed another trigger. Not only were temperature and light changing the sound of the MIDI Sprout, certain people were, too.

[SFX: Nature of Now music track]

Joe: It wasn't like they were touching the plant, they were just near it and I was just reading a book and I just heard it and I was like, “What the heck's going on over there?” I get up and go over to the person just say, “Excuse me, I had this experience. I just heard this plant just completely changed when you walked in,” and they just say, “Oh yeah, that makes total sense.” ...And they're like, “Oh yeah, I'm a, I'm a Reiki master or I'm an energy healer, I'm a botanist or I'm a florist.” These were people that had a really deep connection to plants or biology or also these were people that had really cultivated a deep relationship with energy, with vibrational energy and things outside of what we can perceive.

It felt like Joe was tapping into something much bigger. The plants seemed like they were reacting.

Joe: After experiencing that, that's when I was like, “Okay, I need to keep sharing this because there's clearly something happening here.”

To Joe, the MIDI Sprout revealed that plants were aware of the humans around them. What started as a passion project, became a way of life. Not only did the MIDI Sprout bring him closer to plants, but it also taught him how to become more aware of his surroundings.

[music out]

But Joe isn’t a scientist. He’s a musician. The MIDI Sprout at its core is an artistic expression.

[music in]

Joe: Sometimes people will jump on our Instagram or something and like be and get like troll us like, “Plants don't sound like flutes! You guys are crazy!” All this stuff and I'm just like, “Yeah, I know plants don't sound like flutes and clouds aren't actually green,” but the weather channel has a way of visualizing the data of weather and we have a way of sonifying the data from plants and we design it in a specific way that creates space for people to tune into what's happening in it.

The MIDI Sprout can make us feel more connected to plants and our surroundings, but is there any science to backup Joe’s ideas? Can plants react and communicate with us? We’ll find out, after this.

[music out]

[MIDROLL]

[music in]

Joe Patitucci created the MIDI Sprout. A device that uses the bio data from plants to create music. Using the MIDI Sprout, he noticed that sounds would change depending on who was interacting with the plant - as if the plants were reacting to them. But is there any science to back this up?

[music out]

In the early seventies Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird wrote a book called The Secret Life of Plants, which argued that plants could feel emotions. They suggested that plants felt happiness when they listened to rock music…

[SFX: rock music play]

...or that they felt sad when shrimp were cooked in the same room as them.

[SFX: boiling water sound]

The book was later adapted into a documentary entirely scored by Stevie Wonder. It became a cult classic.

[SFX: The Secret Life of Plants, Stevie Wonder music clip]

Scientists on the other hand denounced Tompkins and Bird’s theory as pseudoscience.

[music in]

Monica: Many scientists would not touch this area at all, exactly because they don't want to be labeled anything like that, and they don't want to be associated to any of that stuff.

That’s Monica Gagliano.

Monica: I am a senior research fellow at the University of Sydney, and I'm just about to open a new lab, called The Biological Intelligence Lab.

Monica: I still feel that we need to have the courage to ask the questions that need to be asked. And if that means that some people will feel uncomfortable, well, let's feel uncomfortable, and then we'll see. At least we're testing, and that's the role of science.

[music out]

While researching fish along the Great Barrier Reef, she developed a relationship with these fish. But in order to research them, she had to kill some of them to analyze their organs. After a certain point she just didn’t want to do that anymore. She was worried this would be the end of her career in science… but then one day she was gardening when she realized…

[music in]

Monica: “Oh, you can take leaves from us. We don't mind. You can work with us. You don't have to kill us to be able to take your data and do your studies.” And so I kind of embarked in that exploration not really knowing what I was really going to get into.

Now, Monica's one of the leading scientists in cognitive ecology which is all about...

Monica: ... decision-making, learning, communication, and all these processes occur in different systems.

[music out]

There is a lot of research that documents plant communication using chemicals. Take tobacco plants. When caterpillars eat their leaves [SFX], the plant releases an airborne chemical. [SFX: Munching sounds] This chemical then attracts other bugs, who swarm to the area and then feed on the caterpillars. Using their own chemical defense, tobacco plants effectively eradicate the threat of the caterpillars.

There’s a lot less research, however, on the ways plants interact with sound. And that’s where Monica comes in. Monica is interested in the sub field of bioacoustics.

[music in]

Monica: Sounds is everywhere, sounds travel really well. Amongst the various systems of communication, it is relatively cheap, because it doesn't require the production of a particular receptor or a particular chemical to be able to be, the information to be transferred.

Monica was curious if plants could detect sound vibrations.

Monica: I conducted an experiment where my question was like, "Well, can the plants find, or at least locate the direction where the water source might be if it doesn't have access to water, and there is no water around really, it's just the sound?"

[music out]

[SFX: Stream sound]

In her experiment Monica put two tubes underneath a container holding a pea plant. She then attached small speakers to the tubes, one which played the sound of running water. Monica found that the pea plants could sense the sound vibrations. Their roots would grow down into the tube with the running water sounds - even though there wasn’t any water there.

And plants don’t just respond to sound. In an experiment using laser technology, Monica discovered something very strange in the roots of a corn plant.

Monica: We're just literally detecting movement through light basically. And when you do that, the returning signal, which is obviously a frequency, can be amplified, and then you can hear it within our range. The best way for us to describe it was a clicking sound, because it is a series of, it seems like a series of clicking noises.

[SFX: Clicking sound]

Monica: The walls of plant cells are rigid, they are hard, so plants have an enzyme that literally break the wall so that the cells can grow, and then they rebuild. That's how they grow. So there is this constant breaking and rebuilding, breaking and rebuilding, and we thought maybe that's what the clicking sounds that we are detecting are representing.

But that’s just a theory.

Monica: There are lots of possible ideas and explanations, but the truth is that we don't really know.

[music in]

There isn’t enough research to show how and why plants use sound. Monica doesn’t have any romanticism around the relationship plants have to sound.

Monica: I receive a lot of emails from people commenting on, "Oh, here is the plant singing," and that's not what I do. My plants don't sing, especially not in a lab. But they do admit sound.

[SFX: Data Garden Quartet Live 4/15]

Monica is referring to instruments that use bio data. Instruments like Joe Patitucci’s MIDI Sprout.

Monica: On one side I think it helps people to connect, and to come closer to the plants and the plant experience. But at the same time, it's dangerous. Underneath, what that story is really saying or is doing is the human is the most important reference point. So, for the plants to be communicating with us, they need to do it in our terms. So they need to speak and play music that we appreciate, and we can hear. There is always the human as the golden standard.

[music out]

But, to be fair, we are humans. And humans have a hard time listening to each other, let alone plants and animals. Joe’s work using the MIDI Sprout is centered on the human experience. He’s using data sonification to provide an accessible way for people to grow deeper connections with nature.

Joe: I love the kind of work people are doing in bioacoustics, but at the end of the day, it's not something that most people are going to listen to you for a period of hours every day of their life. [SFX: Clicking sound]. For now, this is a way of tuning into data and being able to tune into something that's happening in a plant, in real time.

[music in]

Monica: Science has got all its own little problems, but when the scientific method is applied correctly, it's a beautiful method to explore the world, And in the case of the bio acoustics, especially for plants, this is very important. Otherwise, we have the risk of dismissing it, because that's too fanciful, or believing in things that are not real.

It's not very different from like an artist, or a musician. We are listening all the time with our bodies, no matter what we are listening and looking at. And then we apply a particular method, and mine filters through the method of science.

Joe: We're not going to judge people for being like, “Hey, you know what, when I tuned into my third eye, all of a sudden these angel sounds came on.” Like, “Hey that's awesome. Maybe there's a relationship there. Maybe there's not.” We wouldn't be able to have a hypothesis if we didn't have the space to actually say what we were experiencing and feeling.

At the end of the day, it’s about empathy and understanding of our world. We’re really used to data visualization, but our visual sense gets a lot of attention. Data Sonification gives us a glimpse into something we can’t see. And using our ears instead of our eyes may give us some new insight and perspective on information. It may even help us form deeper bonds with our plants, animals and each other.

[SFX: Sounds for a Secular Sabbath music track]

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

This episode was written and produced by Rachel Ishikawa. And me, Dallas Taylor. With help from Sam Schneble. It was sound edited by Soren Begin, sound designed and mixed by Jai Berger. Thanks to Joe Patitucci, Founder of Data Garden for allowing us to use their plant music throughout the episode. Check out more at datagarden.org. You can also buy your very own MIDI Sprout at midisprout.com. Thanks also to Monica Gagliano, a Senior Research fellow at the University of Sydney. Additional music in this episode is from our friends at MusicBed.

You can connect with me and the rest of the 20K team on Twitter, Facebook, or by writing hi @ 20k dot org. You can also find t-shirts, pins, transcripts and all of our other episodes at 20k dot org.

Finally, if you know a plant lover in your life, be sure to share this episode with them.

Thanks for listening.

[music out]

Recent Episodes

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Sonic Illusions: Can you really trust your ears?

June 3, 2019

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This episode was written and produced by Carolyn McCulley.

What we hear is incredibly personal and we all hear things differently. Sometimes our ears can even play tricks on us. Sonic illusions put a spotlight on the unique function of our hearing and how our backgrounds and biology affect how we process sound. Psychologist Dr. Diana Deutsch and neuroscientist Dana Boebinger explain why our hearing is a unique sense and why sonic illusions can fool us.

MUSIC FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE

All Coming Together by Dexter Britain
Future Hit (Instrumental) by Louis II
Future Hit by Louis II
I'm Not Here (Instrumental) by Graphite Man
Petite Suite: I. En Bateau by Sunshine Recorder
Pensive Robot by Eric Kinny
From Scratch by Chad Lawson
Every Passing Second by Max LL
June 3rd (No oohs and ahhs) by Virgil Arles

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

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View Transcript ▶︎

[SFX: Virtual Barber Shop Plays]

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

[SFX: continue Virtual Barber Shop]

[music in]

What you’re hearing right now is the virtual barbershop. It was made by QSound Labs and uploaded to Youtube back in 2007. It was the first time I remember being pretty blown away by a sound trick. By the way, before we go any further, this episode is all about sound tricks and sonic illusions. It’s one of those episodes that will be much more effective in headphones, so if you have those handy, pause the episode and put those on.

[SFX: Virtual Barber Shop Continues]

Our ears are amazing things. And we all hear things differently. And sometimes our ears can even play tricks on us.

The Virtual Barbershop is created by using a binaural recording technique. This simulates the way our ears perceive sound putting the microphones in the ear canal, and using the actual ear structure to help shape the recording. That’s why it can feel so immersive over, say, a normal stereo recording. But, it doesn’t work for everyone. Our hearing is an incredibly personal sense. We all hear things slightly differently, and sonic illusions can really put a spotlight on these differences… and some sonic illusions can really mess with your mind.

[SFX: Shepard Tone]

This is the sonic illusion known as the shepard tone, named after cognitive scientist Roger Shepard. It gives listeners the impression that sound is constantly going up or going down in pitch but never resolving. The Shepard Tone is intended to evoke anxiety or tension in the listener.

[SFX: Shepard Tone End]

[SFX: Dunkirk soundtrack]

What you’re hearing now was a shepard tone in the score to the movie Dunkirk. The director, Christopher Nolan, based the whole film on the concept of the shepard tone – score and script alike. He explains this in an interview for the UK TV channel Film4.

[Christopher Nolan] “I approach structure from a very mathematical and geometrical point of view. And so the structure I settled on is based on a musical structure called a Shepard Tone, which is a musical illusion whereby you can keep climbing up a scale. You are continually going up the scale, going up the scale, but you never seem to go out of, out of reach, if you like. And I wanted to try to apply that to screenwriting, to a narrative, and say ok so with this story, can you braid together the three storylines in such a way that you create the idea of a continuing rise in intensity, narratively.”

So how do you go about creating a shepard tone? It’s achieved by stacking several ascending notes on top of each other [SFX: Shepard Tone]. Each separated by an octave. While lower notes are fading in at different times, higher notes are fading out, and that’s what makes it seem like it never resolves. You can also apply these same concepts to a musical scale.

[SFX: Shepard Tone End]

[SFX: Mario 64 Endless Stairs]

Fans of Super Mario 64 will recognize this shepard tone in the game’s “endless stairs.”

[End Mario SFX]

[Bowser Laugh]

But the Shepard Tone is just one of many sonic illusions. Others can show us just how subjective sound can be. This has led to some serious debate on the internet.

[SFX: Laurel/Yanny music mashup]

So, is it Laurel or Yanny?

[music continues]

I heard Laurel, but the Twenty Thousand Hertz team reported hearing both. So we asked two experts in psychology and auditory cognitive neuroscience—and even they don’t agree.

Diana: I hear Yanny.

That’s psychology professor Diana Deutsch, a pioneer in audio illusions, squaring off against cognitive neuroscientist Dana Boebinger.

[SFX: boxing match “ding ding” bell]

Dana: I heard Laurel, and I almost always hear Laurel. But I'm okay with that, because it actually is Laurel.

[music out]

Dana: The recording is actually from vocabulary.com, an online dictionary, and it's the online audio pronunciation for the word, "Laurel," it's recorded by a voice artist, an opera singer who was hired to record a bunch of pronunciations for the website. My take as to why it's so ambiguous, and why so many people heard Yanny when that's not actually what this man was saying, is that the recording wasn't super high quality. It was made in a DIY recording booth where this man presumably recorded thousands of these words.

So what’s the science behind the Laurel-Yanny debate? Dana believes that it has to do with the way we perceive frequencies.

[music in]

Dana: I'm a PhD student at Harvard and MIT studying auditory cognitive neuroscience. So I study how the brain understands sound. The voice is actually made up of tons and tons of frequencies stacked on top of each other. So Laurel and Yanny are actually kind of similar, and Laurel has some of the sounds that might have beefier lower frequencies [SFX: pitched in lower frequency] whereas Yanny might have more emphasis on the higher frequencies [SFX: pitched in higher frequency].

But there is some disagreement about whether the Laurel/Yanny illusion is in fact caused by frequencies. Perhaps it’s caused by something else entirely.

Diana: I'm not sure that I go along with the frequency thing.

Diana is a professor of psychology at the University of California, San Diego. She is internationally known for the audio illusions and paradoxes that she’s discovered.

Diana: I think it's much more likely to be due to the patterns of speech that we hear in our particular language or dialect. I think it would be very interesting to test people who speak in a particular dialect, and then test another group of people who speak in a different dialect, and see whether you can find differences between Laurel and Yanny based on dialect. To my knowledge, that experiment hasn't been carried out yet.

[music out]

Diana has conducted experiments using sonic illusions for years. Some even share similarities to this Laurel/Yanny debate.

Diana: Actually my phantom words illusion is very much related to the Laurel/Yanny illusion.

[SFX: phantom words]

Diana: It's very much related to the Laurel/Yanny thing, except that the Laurel/Yanny thing people are given what psychologists call forced choice. In my phantom words illusion they're not being asked whether or not they're hearing a particular word or a phrase. Instead, they're just told to say what it is that they hear, or to write down what it is that they hear, and that way you get many different answers, and that can be during listening to the same sequence of the identical words and phrases.

Ok, so let’s try this together… What do you hear? [SFX: phantom words]. I hear no way, no way, no way, no way, and I hear it in an American accent… but others on the team say they hear no where in a British accent [SFX: phantom words]. Here’s another example. [SFX: phantom words] I hear countdown, countdown, countdown, countdown… but others here on the team reported hearing the words Hilda, Hilda, Hilda, or Gilda, Gilda, Gilda, or Wando, Wando, Wando, or yoga, yoga, yoga, and even thank you, thank you, thank you. [SFX: continue example] What you hear seems to entirely depend on your language, your background, and your accent.

[SFX: continue example]

[music in]

Diana: When we listen to speech, we construct for ourselves the words and the phrases. We don't really hear the actual sounds that are being spoken. We use our knowledge and our experience of sounds that are rather like different speech sounds to construct for ourselves the speech that is really being uttered. It's not surprising, therefore, that you can create illusions of speech deliberately that way. Because this process of construction goes on all the time when we're having conversations in everyday life.

We’ll hear even more sonic trickery… after the break.

[music out]

[MIDROLL]

[music in]

Sonic illusions show us just how subjective sound can be. The Laurel/Yanny debate is just one example. Here’s Dana again deconstructing another viral sonic illusion.

Dana: Actually in the middle of a lab meeting, someone saw on Facebook or something this video of a little plastic toy that says either "Brainstorm," or "Green needle."

[SFX: Brainstorm/Green needle illusion]

Dana: We watched it several times, and what was interesting about that one is that it's a lot more what we call "cognitively penetrable." So you can sort of control what you're gonna hear by thinking about it a certain way, and you can flip back and forth depending on which thing you're thinking of. It's ambiguous and so there are lots of different ways that you could interpret it. And there's different groups of speech sounds that are similar in different ways, so you can definitely hear different combinations. Maybe hear green storm, or brain needle, or any other sorts of combinations of sounds. But the internet has a way of choosing two interpretations and pitting them against each other. Because I guess it just makes for more fun Twitter debates.

[music out]

[SFX: Brainstorm/Green needle illusion]

Dana: I would say that a lot of illusions are more psychology, in that it's not the biology of the brain or the structure of the brain that is making these illusions possible. A lot of it is more in the higher level interpretation of the sensory information, or maybe your life experience or its certain assumptions that your brain is making.

Diana’s research validates that point. One of her earliest and best known audio illusions is called the Tritone Paradox. It consists of two computer-produced tones connected by a half-octave, called a tritone.

[SFX: Piano Tritone]

Diana: I can pretty much guarantee that listeners will disagree among themselves as to which tone pairs they hear as ascending, and which is descending.

So, I’m going to tell you what I hear. Here’s the first one...

[SFX: Tritone Paradox]

[Tritone 1] [Dallas mimics a low tone followed by higher tone]

[Tritone 2] [Dallas mimics a high tone followed by a lower tone]

[Tritone 3] [Dallas mimics a low tone followed by a higher tone]

[Tritone 4] [Dallas mimics a high tone followed by a lower tone]

[music in]

Diana: At the time, I was teaching a group of students who were all Californians. They spoke Californian English, and their parents spoke Californian English. I’m from the South of England, I’m from London. I was very surprised to discover that I was hearing the opposite of what most of my students were hearing, and so it seemed to me that maybe language or dialect was an issue here. Then I went on a speaking tour to different places in Europe, and I found that different audiences had different flavors of what they were likely to hear.

When you think about it, it makes sense that where you grew up shapes how you interpret the sounds around you.

Dana: Your brain has to rely on its prior knowledge about the world and different assumptions that it makes about how the world works in order to figure out how to interpret this information that's coming in from the senses. And there's only, I would say, a smaller number of illusions that are actually due to the biology of how the cells in our sensory systems are structured.

[music out]

But when biology does influence the illusion, it can be confusing. When Diana discovered her very first illusion, the octave illusion, she was baffled by her own experience.

Diana: I was experimenting with this software that would enable me to play two sequences of tones at the same time, one to my right ear, and the other to my left one.

[SFX: octave illusion]

Diana: It just became increasingly clear that something rather strange was happening. The pattern I devised consisted of two tones that were spaced an octave apart, and alternated repeatedly. The right ear received the sequence high tone, low tone, high tone, low tone over, [SFX: play sequence]. And at the same time, the left ear received low tone, high tone, low tone, high tone [SFX: play sequence] over, and over again. When I put on my earphones I was astonished. A single tone appeared to be switching back and forth, from ear to ear and at the same time, its pitch appeared to be switching back and forth from high to low.

So, if you have headphones on, here’s what I want you to do. Right now, reverse your headphones. So, put the left headphone on your right ear and the right headphone on your left ear. I’ll give you a few seconds to do this [SFX: elevator music for 5-10 seconds] Ok, here’s the illusion. While it’s playing I want you to determine which ear you’re hearing a high consistent tone. It’s this tone [SFX: Whistles]. There’s also a low consistent tone [SFX: Whistle]. One of the tones will be on one side, so your left or your right, and the other tone should be on the opposite side. Here we go. [SFX: octave illusion] Ok, remember which ear you heard the tones from. Now put your headphones back on normally. I’ll whistle the tone while we wait [SFX: whistling]. Ok ready, here it is again [SFX: octave illusion]. Did you hear the high and low tones in the same ears? Weird right?

[SFX: octave illusion]

No matter how the headphones are placed, Diana’s research eventually revealed that most right-handers hear the high tone on the right side. Left-handed and ambidextrous people are more varied in terms of where the high and low tones appear to be coming from.

[SFX: octave illusion]

A quick warning for those driving right now. The next minute has highway sounds like honks, sirens, and crashing.

[SFX: busy city street sounds etc.]

Dana: Our senses are our brain's only way of gathering information about the world out there and then using that information to take appropriate actions. But your brain doesn't actually just receive this information in a passive way from your eyes and your ears and other sensory organs. It gets raw information and then it has to interpret this information and actually create your perception of the world. So your brain has to decide what information is important, and what information can be discounted as just noise that's distorting the signal. And then it has to take this incomplete information and fill in the gaps as best it can, and make an inference or it's best guess about what's actually out there in the world. [SFX: Screeching tires and car crash sound]. [SFX: Siren] And this means that sometimes, your brain gets this wrong and illusions are a good example of when your brain gets this wrong, or it creates an image or a sound that actually isn't even there in the first place.

[music in]

Dana uses FMRIs which allow her to look at the brain. Specifically the auditory cortex.

Dana: So the part of the brain that processes sound, to try to learn more about how it's organized. We know that the first place that sound goes in the cortex, which is the final processing stage after it comes up from our ears and through our brainstem. We know that the first place it goes in the brain is organized by frequency, almost like a piano from high to low, and then actually back to high. And that is mostly inherited from the way our cochlea is laid out, which is also by frequency.

Your cochlea is the spiral cavity of the inner ear. It kind of looks like a snail shell. It produces nerve impulses in response to sound vibrations.

Dana: But once the frequency content of the sound we're listening to has been figured out, there's a lot of other processing stages that happen in the auditory cortex. And we don't know much about what those processes are, whether they are different regions that are responsible for different kinds of sounds. We're pretty clear that there's a part of the brain that processes speech and just speech, but some people in my lab have found that there also seems to be a neural population part of the brain that cares a lot about music.

[music out]

[music in]

Dana: I just think it's exciting to be able to, look at the brain and try to actually understand it. It's still pretty cool when I'm scanning a subject, the image of their brain comes up on the computer screen and it's still cool to me that, that's them. That's their brain, that's how they're able to perceive and understand the world, and we're able to use math and physics to understand it.

If sonic illusions teach us anything, its that our hearing is a personal experience. Our lives shape the way we hear and react to sound. These illusions can affect us on an emotional level and help us understand that we live in a highly subjective reality. As we move through the world, we experience it – and process it -- in our own unique way.

[music continues]

Twenty Thousand Hertz is produced out of the studios of Defacto Sound, a sound design team that makes commercials, documentaries, and trailers sound incredible. To hear some of this sonic goodness, visit DefactoSound.com.

This episode was written and produced by Carolyn McCulley. And me, Dallas Taylor. With help from Sam Schneble. It was edited and sound design by Soren Begin. It was mixed by Jai Berger.

Thanks to our guests, Professor of Psychology at University of California San Diego, Dr. Diana Deutsch. And Dana Boebinger, a Ph.D. student at Harvard and MIT studying auditory cognitive neuroscience. The music is this episode is from our friends at MusicBed. Go listen at MusicBed.com.

You can check out our beautiful show art, and find full transcripts on our website - 20k dot org. And you can chat with me and the rest of the 20k team on Facebook, Twitter, or by writing hi at 20k dot org.

Thanks for listening!

[music out]

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Mother of Dragons(sounds): Game of Thrones’ bittersweet sounds

May 20, 2019

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This episode was written and produced by Colin DeVarney

Game of Thrones is a global phenomenon that has redefined the fantasy genre. Viewers from around the world gather every week to anxiously watch what will happen next. The actors, writers, directors, and visual artists have all received well-earned recognition for their role in the show. But some heroes’ work goes largely unnoticed.

Paula Fairfield is the sound designer behind the more fantastical elements in Game of Thrones. She’s given a voice to dragons, direwolves, white walkers, and more. But the story behind these voices goes much deeper than you might think. Hear how Paula’s personal journey played a part in creating some of the most iconic fantasy sounds of the day, and how Game of Thrones helped restore her spirit.

MUSIC FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE

The Waning Moon by Chad Lawson
King by kïngpenguïn
Spring by Cathedral
The Family That Lived Here by Steven Gutheinz
Little by kïngpenguïn
Emperor by kïngpenguïn
I Should Be Sleeping by Chad Lawson
Spare Me - Instrumental by Faded Paper Figures

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

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View Transcript ▶︎

[GoT intro music]

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

Whether or not you’re a fan of Game of Thrones, you’ve certainly seen the unreal amount of hype that surrounds it. And for good reason… the epic fantasy series has redefined the genre, and has achieved widespread mainstream success. The actors, writers, directors, and visual artists on the show have all received well-earned recognition. However, there are some heroes behind the scenes whose work goes largely unnoticed.

[GoT music out]

[Show SFX]

Paula Fairfield is the sound designer on Game of Thrones. Her main role is to create the more fantastical sonic elements of the show. More specifically, she’s responsible for creating the voices of the dragons, white walkers, direwolves, all of the creatures. Whether you’re a fan of the show or not, her story is definitely worth your time.

[SFX out]

A quick word of warning. This episode contains numerous references to events in the show. Naturally, this means there will be spoilers. If you haven’t watched the show yet and would like to go in without any spoilers, save this episode and come back to it after you’re caught up. ...and if you don’t plan on watching the series, you should still listen to the episode. It’s really good. Here’s Paula.

Paula: I was literally in the grocery store looking for peanut butter when I got a call about it asking my availability for this show that needed a sound designer for a bunch of weeks and was I interested. As soon as they said the word, I was like, yeah.

[music in]

It was a particularly odd period of time for me. Unfortunately, the place I was in was a very dark one.

My brother had passed of cancer a few years prior. This was in November and my father had just passed in July, also of cancer.

My sister was dying and ended up passing in the following January, a few months later. It was a very particularly dark point in my life and yet here was this beautiful gift that arrived. I remember after my sister passed and I was recluded from the world because everything I had known had turned upside down.

But my job was to play with dragons and the scene I did at that moment was the plaza scene where, if you remember, this is where it appears she's going to give Drogon away…

[music out]

[GoT clip - S3E4]

...and you hear the full range of emotion there. I remember thinking how beautifully tragic and ironic it was that my job was to literally play with dragons.

These dragons have saved me in a way because they have become this vessel for me to work through my own pain, my own stuff...There's a telling of story and a receiving of emotion in these pieces that was not in me as a sound designer before all this happened.

[GoT clip plays in full, then bumps out]

[music in]

My job is all the fantastical so it's the dragons, the white walkers, the wights… all the fun stuff basically.

My job ironically is to come up with some of the craziest stuff that I can think of… with sound designers, our job is to really go to the ends of the earth and bring back all the delicious treasures.

And in picking those and curating some of these elements, I've spent a great deal of time thinking about how to tie it in to story... and grounded and is as real a thing as possible. Is this possible? How could this be possible? How can I sell this as a thing?... If you don't believe it, it's going to take you out and the more you believe, the more immersed you get...

Part of my job with this was to give emotion to the dragons.

[music out]

[Dragon clip]

First of all, visually, these creatures are magnificent. The visual effects does such a great job on it and give me so much stuff to play with and I look and scan every frame of everything they give me for opportunity. To play with stuff and see what I can make... It occurred to me that you get to know them like when you have puppies or kitties in your home and they grow up around your family and in your lives and that, I think, is part of the beauty of these creatures. Of course, they're dragons too but there's a familiarity with that. That's a gorgeous thing. They're sidekicks to the story and they're magnificent.

[music in]

I had the opportunity of going to White Oak Conservatory in Florida and also an animal rehabilitation sanctuary outside of Banff in Canada and I've had the privilege and honor of recording creatures at both of these places and… one of the main things I recorded is recordings of these two young orphaned bear cubs… and they have been hibernating for the season there and they built a hibernaculum for them and we placed a recorder with them so I have them snoring and snacking and farting and shaking.

Also with White Oak, recording rhinos and giraffes and a bunch of these gorgeous creatures and… when Rhaegal passes, when he gets killed and shot out of the sky… there are three very large screeches that I wanted to convey both his pain and his shock… with the calls of a Mississippi sand crane.

[music out]

[GoT clip - S8E4]

[music in]

...it started to occur to me the beauty of taking endangered and critically endangered species to create mythical beings and in this case, the metaphor is painful because this mythical being, this dragon is dying and it's expressed through the calls of an endangered species… we love these dragons and they are born of the voices of animals that are disappearing from our earth.

I want pure expression of the rawest emotion possible and we have a hard time doing that as humans. Animals don't. They have no agenda… They don't have shame.

[music out]

One of the funniest things I pulled was I call it the unremorseful bear fart. It's like in this recording, this bear farts and like enjoys it thoroughly afterwards. There is no remorse. You know what I mean? It's like a funny moment, a funny way of thinking about it because it's absolute pure emotion…

[GoT clip - S7E5]

With Drogon, because he was named... after Khal Drogo and her husband that she loved so that was his namesake... it felt like Drogon was the reincarnation of her lover which works really well when you watch the scenes that there is this different relationship.

And I've built and put stuff in to that end, whereas for instance, if you look at the end of season four, when Drogon is off killing sheep and babies and he disappears for a bit and she is worried and locks Viserion and Rhaegal up in the dungeon.

[GoT clip - S4E10 plays under]

What came to me during that scene was they're the goofy bros like they had no idea. It was like hey, they go down on the dungeon. It's like, look bro, goats. Whoa, and they go racing down and then mama's putting some bling around their neck. Whoa, and then she walks away. It occurs to them what's happening and then you hear one of the most blood curdling, heart wrenching screams at the end of that when they realize what has just happened...

[GoT clip - S4E10 plays in clear then bumps out]

The intimate scenes are, the hardest to do because you've got nothing to hide behind. One of my favorite scenes of all actually is when Drogon has been away and comes at the beginning of season five and he comes to see her. He lands on the roof of the castle and comes down and he's gigantic at this point. She hasn't seen him for a long, long time.

[GoT clip - S5E2]

His vocals in there are very beautiful. They're very stripped down and they're naked and there's not a lot to hide behind.

[GoT clip - S5E2 plays and bumps out]

I love them but they're really hard the level of detail goes up exponentially because you're right up close and personal and the range between the most subtle and the most crazy sounds is there… it's like I can hardly pick out all of the different elements anymore and that's the point. One of the interesting parts of this has been the exercise of removing the parts of a sound that make you be able to recognize which animal it's from.

Very interesting. What makes a dog sound undeniably dog? [SFX: dog bark/whimper] What makes pigs sound undeniably pig? [SFx: pig oink]... There are little telltale inflictions, not the main body usually but the inflections for instance beginning and end or in the middle depending on how the infliction goes. That is a dead giveaway. Those pieces get tastefully trimmed away, so I never want you to go, "Oh, that sounds…", and I'm even hesitant to even say Mississippi Sandhill Crane for these creatures because I don't really want to you watch that scene and think that.

...but now that you've experienced it and feel it, it's fun for people to go back and look, but the point is to never point those out or to not be able to hear them or see them because as soon as you do, it's going to shatter the magic of it.

[music in]

Paula’s work has left an undeniable mark on Game of Thrones, just as much as the show has left its mark on her. She’s created the voices for the some of the most fantastical and iconic creatures in recent cinematic history. To design these sounds, Paula has sampled animals from all over Earth, but sometimes the perfect sound was found right in her own home. More after this.

[music out]

MIDROLL

[music in]

Paula Fairfield is the sound designer on Game of Thrones. She’s the one responsible for giving a voice to the dragons, white walkers, direwolves, and all of the fantastical creatures on the show. She found inspiration in the voices of endangered animals from around the world. But some of her sound sources were found much closer to home.

One of the great joys of my life and one of the only things I had in my darkest moment besides Game of Thrones was my dog, Angel.

She was my little dragon. She was a beautiful, beautiful Belgian Malinois that I... found her one day at the pound and she became this creature that shepherded me through the darkest moments of my life. She passed a couple of years ago… and then I had the opportunity to do The Return of Nymeria scene.

When she returns to visit Arya with her wolf pack and every voice in that is my dog, Angel.

[music out]

[GoT clip - S7E2]

It was my love letter to her. I got to do it. I mean, as long as it works in the scene, the source has to come from somewhere. For me it was a big scene because it was my way of saying goodbye to her.

[GoT clip ends]

...but she is in many, that favorite scene of mine of Drogon coming down, you hear… this intimacy.

The intimacy comes from my dog… She was a fierce, fierce, fierce alpha dog. She was fantastic. A lot of people were afraid of her but not me. She was this beautiful soul and one of the things she would do that would melt me is she would come up and nuzzle me. She would make this sound that it's like a nasal whistle but it sounded like her tiniest, quietest cries.

She would just do it in my ear and it would melt me, this beast that could bite my face off but wouldn't do that. That nasal whistle, you'll hear it if you will watch the scene, you'll hear this beautiful little high pitch thing, which to me was about intimacy. It was about this creature coming up and doing this to Dany. This human that he loved…

[GoT clip - S5E2]

...that connection was there and you could feel it... I mean, it's got to come from somewhere and what better place than an animal that I love more than anything.

[GoT clip ends]

There's a shot when the Night King is… riding Viserion and blowing the wall down and cracking it and destroying it and there's a reverse shot when we're just looking at the dead empty faces of the undead army. And I had this thought about Viserion being the conduit for that army that he was screaming with all the might of the tortured souls of the Dead Army that it was all going in to that blue fire and it was all coming down that they were all witnessing but they were also like tearing it down through Viserion in weird ways.

The problem is that most humans won't scream from their tortured soul freely, so, it was hard but I had gone to Con of Thrones and encountered this group of artists from the Burlington Bar who do a reaction watch series… and because they have shown the range of their emotion during their videos that if I tapped them, as I got to know them and stuff when I went back and I was trying to think about where we get some screams.

I asked them if they would scream for me from their tortured souls but I couldn't tell them what it was for, and so, they did.

[GoT clip - S7E7]

[music in]

All good things must come to an end and you want to go out on a high note… I feel so gratified and satisfied by the work that we have all done and the story that we have been able to tell together… I mean, the eruption. I mean, the sheer volcanic nature of Game of Thrones this year, to me, is a moment in time. The show is ending a tradition of people from all over the place sitting down together at the same time no matter where you are watching something simultaneously.

The greatest gifts come to us wrapped in the hardest packages. If you can persevere and stretch past your comfort zone, walk through the fire, the rewards come. It's incredible. I have learned that and… if not for the dragons, I might not even be here.

I don't mean to sound dramatic but there are times in everyone's life, when you come to that moment, where it's like, "I don't know if I can go on". And because of my dog and because of Thrones, those two things kept me going. They were such an enormous gift. I could never have imagined how great a gift it was but I held on to them for dear life… and… to be able to say thank you and to put everything on my best self and hardest work can stretch even farther than I have ever stretched before to be able to do this in this piece is my absolute honor and privilege… I cried, I screamed, I laughed, I was angry, and you heard me.

[music out]

[music in]

Twenty Thousand Hertz is produced out of the studios of Defacto Sound, a sound design team dedicated to making television, film and games sound incredible. Matter of fact, the Defacto team even works on Game of Thrones trailers. You can see those, as well as tons of other sound-designy stuff, at defactosound.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. An enormous thank you to Paula Fairfield for bringing this show to life and sharing her story with us. Now that Game of Thrones is over, she’s moving onto a project of her own…

I've been given an opportunity to collaborate with the University of Greenwich in London and a company named L-ISA.

They have created this installation setup which is a fully immersive sound set up with like 24 or 26 speakers and have asked me to make a piece for it and so I am going to do this piece that I've wanted to for a long time which is called Ocean of Tears and it's basically an underwater poem about grief.

It's been a long time since I've stepped out and dared greatly in the arena to do my own work. SoI'm going to do a little bit of that now.

The music in this episode is from our friends at Musicbed. Check them out at Musicbed.com.

Finally, you can chat with me and the whole 20k team through facebook, twitter, or by writing hi at 20k dot org.

Thanks for listening.

[music out]

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