Perfect Pitch: Unlocking Jacob Collier’s musical brilliance

Art by Mafalda Maia.

This episode was written and produced by Olivia Rosenman.

People with perfect or "absolute" pitch hear every single sound as precise musical notes. Is this extraordinary talent a blessing or a curse? In this episode, we dive into the neuroscience, pluses and pitfalls of absolute pitch. Featuring neuroscientist Daniel Levitin and Grammy-winning musician Jacob Collier.

MUSIC FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE

Hide and Seek by Jacob Collier
Light It Up On Me by Jacob Collier
Down the Line by Jacob Collier
To Sleep by Jacob Collier
All I Need by Jacob Collier
Bakumbe by Jacob Collier
Hideaway by Jacob Collier
Colrain by Marble Run
Sky Above by Jacob Collier
Moon River by Jacob Collier
A Noite by Jacob Collier
Connect by Steven Gutheinz
Count the People by Jacob Collier

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

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Discover more at lexus.com/curiosity.

Check out Barnaby Martin’s YouTube channel, Listening In.

Order Daniel Levitin’s book, This Is Your Brain On Music.

View Transcript ▶︎

[music in: Jacob Collier - Hide and Seek]

You’re listening to Twenty Thousand Hertz.

What you’re hearing right now is one person’s voice, layered in perfect harmony with itself using an instrument called a vocal harmonizer. This is a live performance; it has not been edited or altered in any way. The voice itself isn’t being digitally tuned, meaning one wrong note and the harmonic structure will fall apart. The singer is Jacob Collier.

Jacob: So what happens when I play the harmonizer is, I sing a note, and I play a few notes on the keyboard. What you hear coming out the instrument is all of the notes I'm playing on the keyboard sung by my voice. So, it's almost like I can be this spontaneous choir.

Singers have used vocal harmonizers for a long time, but this one is special; it was invented by Jacob, and he’s one of the only people in the world who can make it sound like this.

[music continues: Jacob Collier - Hide and Seek]

Jacob: What I realized about this instrument, when I started to get my friends to try and play it is that, it's really, really difficult to play unless you know what note you're singing. Because if you know what note you're singing, say for example, I sing in E, or if I think, "Oh, I want to play a chord of E major," and I go [SFX: sings] and I play the chord, I don't have to think about trying to find an E, because I know an E. Actually, I really didn't think about that. It was just a thing that, I knew it, so I did it.

The way Jacob can just pull a perfect E out of nowhere is called absolute pitch. It’s the ability to identify a musical note without any external reference.

Jacob: I toured for a while, with this one man show, where I was onstage all on my own, surrounded by about 10 different musical instruments, and walking around them, and playing them, and looping them, and designing these grooves, and all this stuff. Sometimes I would have, say, half a beat to move from the double bass to the harmonizer, or from the guitar to the harmonizer. If I had to check my notes, I'd be lost. I'd be absolutely lost.

[music out]

Absolute pitch is a rare gift that neuroscientists are still trying to understand.

That’s producer Olivia Rosenman.

So, Olivia, I feel like whenever I’ve heard about this, it’s been called perfect pitch. So is there a difference between perfect pitch and absolute pitch?

No. Both absolute pitch and perfect pitch refer to the same thing. But, most neuroscientists and musicians use the term absolute pitch.

[music in: Jacob Collier - Light It Up On Me]

The way our brains engage with music is an entire branch of neuroscience in itself.

Daniel: I’ve done most of my work on absolute pitch, but also done some studies of how musical structure is represented in the brain and musical emotion and why people like the music they like.

That’s Dr. Daniel Levitin. He’s a neuroscientist who researches the musical brain. In fact, Daniel wrote what is probably one of the most important books on it. It’s called This Is Your Brain on Music. When I spoke to Daniel, he came prepared.

Daniel: I brought a microphone that goes up to 20,000 hertz in honor of this conversation.

Daniel doesn’t have absolute pitch himself, but he does have a background that helps him bridge the gap between music and science.

Daniel: I had dropped out of college after my sophomore year to play in band. I played in a succession of bands, jazz, and country, and rock bands and eventually found my way into recording studios working as a producer and an engineer.

Over the years, Daniel worked with artists like Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, and the Grateful Dead. He says that in his experience, absolute pitch isn't always a desirable thing for a musician to have.

[music out]

Daniel: Absolute pitch is mistakenly regarded as a pinnacle of musicianship. There are plenty of composers who didn't have it, and there are composers who did. There are great musicians who didn't have it and great musicians who do.

Paul Macartney doesn’t have it [SFX: The Beatles - Let It Be]. Neither does Beyonce [SFX: Beyonce - Sorry]. Tchaikovsky didn’t have it [SFX: Tchaikosky - Swan Lake] and neither did Brahms [SFX: Brahms - Piano Quartet No.1 in G minor, Op.25].

Daniel: The lack of absolute pitch is not an impediment. The more musicians I talk to about it, and the more I meet with and without it, the more it becomes clear to me that it's actually not such a great thing to have it.

Most musicians rely on something called relative pitch.

Daniel: It’s the ability to identify by name a musical interval. So, if I go, “Bampam,” that's a perfect fourth. If you're a musician, you know that...

If you’re not a musician, a perfect fourth is a series of two notes, four steps apart on the 12 note scale.

Daniel: Almost all musicians that I know of have relative pitch. Now, if I go, "Bampam," if you have relative pitch, you'd say that's a perfect fourth. If you have absolute pitch, you'd name those two notes. I don't have it, so I don't know what they are. I don't know what notes I sang, but it's a perfect fourth.

I don’t have it either, so I need a piano to check what notes Daniel is singing. For the record, it’s a B and an E [SFX: bum bum].

Branford Marsalis is a saxophone player who’s played on heaps of famous records. Like most musicians, Branford has relative pitch, not absolute pitch. In the studio version of the 1985 Sting song “Shadows in the Rain” you can actually hear Branford panicking right at the beginning because he doesn’t know what key the song is in. 
 [music in - Shadows in the Rain by Sting]

He doesn’t get an answer, but somehow he manages to come in, perfectly in tune.

[music up]

So how did he pull it off? Well lucky for us, Daniel and Branford move in similar circles.

[music out]

Daniel: So, I asked him just a couple of weeks ago, "Do you have absolute pitch? Is that how you figured out the key?”He said, "No, no, no. I waited till Sting started singing, and then I quietly played the saxophone to find what note he was singing, and then I knew what key we were in."

While you can teach yourself relative pitch as an adult, Absolute Pitch is a gift that some people have, and some people don’t. So why is that?

[music in: Jacob Collier - “Down the Line”]

Daniel: Well, as near as we can tell, there's a difference in the way kids are raised. A two-year-old who's learning words, that two-year-old's mother is likely to say, "Oh, look. That's a fire engine. See the fire engine? It's red. See this ball? It's blue." The child is rewarded for making these name associations with a visual perception...

When you see a tomato you instantly know it’s red. You don’t have to go and hold it up against a picture of the rainbow so that you can give it the right color label.

Daniel: Color naming, for most of us, unless you're colorblind, it's automatic. It's an internal template.

And for most of us, musical note labels aren’t something we’re drilled on as kids.

[music out]

Daniel: It's rarely the parent who says, "Did you hear that alarm bell? [SFX: alarm tuned to E flat, turns into piano plunks] That was an E flat, E flat. You hear my voice right now when I hold my voice at a steady pitch? That's a D." A musical family with absolute pitch might do that, but no one else is.

[music in: Beethoven - Moonlight Sonata]

But even a musical family needs to keep their piano tuned.

Daniel: Sometimes people are raised in a household with a piano that's half a step off or a full step off [SFX: Detune Moonlight Sonata, continue detuning until music end]. That happens with old pianos.

[music out]

Daniel: So, you've got somebody who learned that the note that we call C [C on piano] sounds like this [B flat], but to everybody else, they would say, "Well, that's not a C. That's a B flat."...

So even though they’re out of tune, they still have absolute pitch.

Daniel: So, when you test people like this, they're perfectly consistent. They name it with great precision and, as I say, replicability, consistency. They're just off by two semitones.

But learning absolute pitch as a small child doesn’t completely explain the phenomenon, because there are people out there who have absolute pitch, who haven’t had any musical training in their lives. This is something Daniel was able to prove in a study with tuning forks which he labelled with names rather than musical notes.

Daniel: I just said, "This one is Fred. This one is Ethel. This one is Lucy. This one is Ricky, and just play this to yourself for a week, and come back to me in a week, and I'm going to take it away from you, and then I'm going to ask you to sing that pitch."

That’s how he found people with absolute pitch who didn’t have any musical knowledge at all.

Daniel: People were able to do that. They could sing a Fred or an Ethel, and if you can do that, that's the same to me as singing an A flat or a G.

So it’s not about the labels.

Daniel: If you speak a different language, you're not going to talk about A, B, and C, and some people call it do, re, mi using so-called solfège.

[SFX: DO, RE, MI, FA, SOL, LA, TI, DO]

And even creatures that don’t have any word labels at all can demonstrate Absolute Pitch. Some animals use it to keep track of their pack.

[music in: Jacob Collier - “To Sleep”]

Daniel: Wolves in a pack find a pitch range that is theirs alone, and it's how they identify one another in the pack. So, their howls are not random. They're confined to a particular pitch range, and each wolf has a range that indicates who they are. So, they may not have labels like A flat, but one wolf will say to the other, "Well, that's Harold," [SFX: Howl] or at least know in his or her mind that that's Harold howling, and that's Sophie howling over there [SFX: Howl].

[music out]

And while a human who has Absolute Pitch will also have relative pitch, in the animal kingdom, that’s not necessarily true.

[SFX: Songbird]

Daniel: For most species of birds, songbirds, if you take their song and you transpose it into another key, which is the essence of relative pitch, it's what makes Beethoven fifth work. You hear the pattern “ba, ba, ba, bum, ba, ba, ba, bum” [SFX: Beethoven’s fifth] transposed, you recognize it as the second four notes as related to the first by transposition. You may not know it's called transposition, but you recognize there's something about them that's the same. You do that to a songbird, [SFX] they don't recognize… their own song, which suggests that they've got absolute pitch but not relative.

[music in: Jacob Collier - All I Need]

People with absolute pitch hear every single sound as precise notes on the chromatic scale. For a songwriter, knowing the exact pitches of all the sounds around you has a huge impact on the way you write music. For Jacob, that talent allows him to pull off some pretty unreal harmonic feats. That’s coming up, after the break.

[music out]

MIDROLL

[music in]

Absolute pitch is an extraordinary talent that very few people have. Scientists still haven’t figured out exactly why some people develop it, and why some people don’t. If you have absolute pitch, you instinctively know the exact musical note of every sound you hear.

[music out]

So what’s it like when the whir of a coffee grinder [SFX], clanking silverware [SFX] and creaky doors [SFX] all sound like musical notes?

Jacob: It's fun and can be rather distracting.

[music in: Jacob Collier “Bakumbe”]

Jacob: I think I've realized that it's a lens through which I can view things, which is sometimes useful and sometimes not useful. I don't have to always listen to that voice. I've almost taught myself to walk around the world and listen to sounds as though it's a blanket of sound, rather than these precise things.

Jacob: But were I to want to, I can tune into all sorts of weird and bizarre household objects, and roadside conglomerate sounds, and stuff like that.

[music out]

It might not be very helpful to know that your microwave beeps in B flat [SFX]. But even if absolute pitch isn’t useful all the time, it does come in handy when you’re composing music with heaps of instruments.

Jacob: I play a few different instruments. I'm a singer. I play the piano, and the drums, and the bass, and the guitar, and various percussion instruments, and other instruments that I've invented, and a few other things.

[music in: Jacob Collier - "Hideaway"]

If you watch any of Jacob’s music videos on YouTube, you’ll see that he often plays every single instrument in the song.

[music up]

In this track, “Hideaway,” Jacob plays two ukuleles, two acoustic guitars, a bass guitar, an autoharp, a khalimba, a ghatam, a mandoline, an Udu, and an Azerbaijani tar.

[music up]

Oh and that’s him singing, too.

[music up]

Jacob laid down each track individually and then looped and edited them together into an extremely impressive one man band.

[music stop]

Jacob comes from a musical family. His mother is a violinist and conductor, so his gift of absolute pitch was identified early on.

[music in: Colrain by Marble Run (Blue Dot)]

Jacob: Well, I was about two years old, I suppose. I would listen to all sorts of strange sounds around the house; be it the microwave beep [SFX], the vacuum cleaner whirring [SFX], or the car alarm going off outside [SFX], whatever.

As Daniel explained, some children develop absolute pitch by being constantly told the notes of the sounds around them. But Jacob's family took a different approach. Instead of naming notes, they focused on how the notes made him feel.

Jacob: It would always be not, what is that note, but what does that note feel like. I supposed I was encouraged to navigate all these different sounds and pitches, by way of feeling them, rather than analyzing them.

[music out]

For example, Jacob says that hearing his mother play the violin influenced the way he feels about certain notes.

Jacob: The interesting thing about that process of learning for me was that I'd be more likely to confuse, for example, an A with a D, than an A with a G sharp. Because the A and the D had this open string feeling.

[SFX: Violin SFX on notes]

An “open string” is when a note is played on a stringed instrument, like a violin or guitar, without putting any fingers on the neck. On a violin, the strings are traditionally tuned to G, A, D and E [SFX]. For Jacob, these open string notes all share a certain feeling.

Jacob: The A, and E, and D [Violin SFX on notes] feeling being quite open, and quite rounded, and quite neutral, and on the brighter side felt much more different to something like G flat, D flat, A flat [Violin SFX on notes], because those, I suppose, feel like they're on the darker side, on the flatter side of the notes.

In this way, Jacob’s parents taught him to trust his feelings when it came to music.

Jacob: I suppose since the age of two or three, I've felt like I could trust that internal compass, and navigate in that way.

And it’s that internal compass that allows Jacob to explore the world of harmony

Jacob: So, I think for me, it was interesting to start recognizing not just frequencies, but relationships between them. That led me on to my absolute fascination and deep crush on harmony in general.

I tested out Jacob’s pitch by hitting the coffee mug on my desk with a pair of scissors.

Olivia: Maybe I'm just going to hit it with these scissors that I have here. Then if you can tell me what it is, that'd be cool.

Jacob: Yeah. [SFX: clink]

Olivia: Do you want me to do it again?

Jacob: Yeah, go on, then. [SFX: clink]

Jacob: [SFX: mug clinking sound] So, it sounds like halfway between a D and a D flat.

Ok, wait… I have to jump in here and check that. Here’s that sound again [SFX: clink]. Now, let’s isolate the resonating frequency [SFX]. To be exact, that’s 2339 Hertz, which is right between a D flat and a D, just like Jacob said. That is unbelievable!

I know! But surprisingly, even though Jacob can identify a note to a fraction of a semitone, that doesn’t mean he always plays or sings in tune.

Jacob: No, no. It doesn't at all.

[music in: Jacob Collier: “Sky Above”]

Jacob: Well, first off all, I'm quite interested in being out of tune. I think that being out of tune is a whole kettle of fish that most people don't dig into. I think it's exciting to do it, in an interesting way. But also, I'm not a brilliant, brilliant singer. I don't think of myself as a particularly spectacular technician on any instrument that I play. I think that singing a note in tune is much more about technical or control than it is about knowledge.

In other words, just because you know exactly what a note should sound like, that doesn’t mean you can always hit it.

Jacob: But what I would say is that when I sing a note out of tune, I can tell you how many hundredths of a semitone the note is out of tune without thinking.

That is, unless he’s sick.

[music out]

Jacob: I have noticed that if I'm very unwell, like for example, I'm suffering from a fever. I specifically have found with fevers that everything goes pear shaped and things can sound up to a semitone sharp, which is extremely bizarre.

But when he’s in good health, Jacob’s ear is so keen that he hears distinct musical differences where most people just hear the same thing.

Jacob: One of the ways I generally think about things is that for every note, there is a middle, and a slightly low, and a slightly high. There are three versions of every note. So, say you take like, [sings D], and [sings D]and [sings D] right? Those are three different kinds of D. They're all closest to D, out of all the notes; [sings D Flat] is way lower.

Where someone without absolute pitch may not hear the differences in those three shades of a D, Jacob hears them as entirely different notes.

Jacob: So, I think that my mind has recently been blown just realizing how many different kinds of notes there are between notes. I think that's kind of spurred me on, the interest I have in discovering all these secret notes between.

So what most people might think of as a note that’s slightly out of tune, for Jacob is a secret note that can be a source of inspiration.

Jacob: I suppose with such notes, you have a few different options. One is that you can correct the note, using some kind of correction tool where you say, "Okay, I'm going to apply the auto tune [SFX], and it's going to make everything quantized, and all semitones exactly the same size.

Jacob: The second option is that you tune it manually, by which I mean that you speed up [SFX] or slow down [SFX] that region of the audio file by a particular number of cents, which is one hundredth of a semitone. The third option is to embrace that it's out of tune, and get jiggy with it, and adapt the other things around the notes to fit.

[music in: Jacob Collier - “Moon River”]

Let’s take a listen to an example of Jacob’s ability to find creative uses for the secret notes in between. This is an arrangement he did of Moon River, by Henry Mancini.

[music continues: Jacob Collier - “Moon River”]

Jacob: In the final verse I modulate it to the key of D half flat major.

Musically, this is a very complex thing to do.

[music out]

Barnaby Martin is the creator of the YouTube channel “Listening In,” where he posts video essays about musical topics. In one of his videos, Barnaby breaks down Jacob’s cover of Moon River.

Barnaby: Jacob’s arrangement of Moon River seems to be pushing every aspect of his work to its limits. It contains microtonality, alternative tuning, 8 different keys or pitch centres as well as some of the most complex and dense harmonic language he's ever used. All done without a piano. All done with only his inner ear.

This next part is going to get a bit technical. Stay with us. Even if you don’t fully grasp all the details, you’ll definitely understand just how complex this arrangement is.

[music in]

The song opens with a dreamy, hummed rendition of the Moon River melody in the key of B flat major.

Then, to get to the first verse, Jacob moves from B flat major to D flat major in a quick sequence of 11 complex chords.

[music up, then down]

After the first verse in D flat major, Jacob transposes up a semitone into D major for verse two. It’s here that Jacob starts to get jiggy with it, sliding into the spaces in between standard notes.

Barnaby: The top line sings notes a major seventh above the tune but uses microtonal inflections to add color to this descending sequence of chords.

[music continues]

If this all sounds like gibberish to you, don’t worry. The takeaway is that once you start using notes outside of the traditional 12 note scale, things get very tricky, very quickly.

[music out]

So what is it about these off-tune or in between notes that Jacob loves so much?

[music in: Jacob Collier: A Noite]

Jacob: I'm more interested in writing songs in non-linear keys, or keys that don't exist on the piano. Not in the name of being strange or dysfunctional harmonically, but more it's like I've trodden the snow. It's like when you have untrodden snow [SFX: Untrodden snow]. Say you start your life with untrodden snow, and you walk along certain pathways of the snow a lot [SFX: Trodden snow]. Then there are these other areas, which aren't as trodden down. So, it feels so much fresher to step on some untrodden snow [SFX: Untrodden snow]. It's a really wonderful feeling.

Jacob: I think it really feels like I'm in this new frontier. Also, I find it really confounding, in a nice way. Creatively, I'm always fed by things that are subtly unfamiliar, or strange, or that I don't already have a system for understanding. I'm always chasing those things, things that I can't quite put in a box.

[music out]

According to Daniel Levitin, Jacob’s not the only musician who likes to walk on untrodden snow.

Daniel: Just to cite one of my favorite groups, Led Zeppelin, ... Jimmy Page would have the band intentionally tune in between the cracks off of standard pitches [SFX: Guitar tuning]. I don't know why he did it, but what it means is that when we listen to Led Zeppelin today against that backdrop of hearing tens of thousands of recordings in a canonical precise pitch, it may sound a little more exotic because it's breaking the rules.

Led Zeppelin also made pitch changes to their music in post production.

[Music Clip: Led Zeppelin - No quarter]

This recording of “No Quarter” was slowed down to drop the pitch a quarter of a tone. According to Jimmy Page, this made it sound “bigger, thicker and more intense”.

If we speed it up a bit, we can get a sense of what the song might have originally sounded like.

[SFX: speed up track to bring it up a quarter tone]

Here’s the final, slowed down version again.

[SFX: morph back to recorded version]

[music out]

When it comes to standard pitches, Jacob Collier sees a pretty good reason to break the rules.

[music in: Connect by Steven Gutheinz]

Jacob: I think what I've come to understand recently is, it's a convenient system, the semitones. There are 12 notes in every octave, and those are all the notes that there are in the world and stuff. But the truth of the matter is, it's totally arbitrary.

Even if he considers the 12 note scale arbitrary, the fact remains that Jacob can conjure that scale from memory in a way that most of us can't. This is what fascinates Daniel

Daniel: When we attend to something in the environment by looking at it or hearing it, tasting it, smelling it, touching it, some of those details get encoded into memory and some of them don't.

There’s something special happening with sound, perception and memory in the brains of people with Absolute Pitch.

Daniel: All this interacts with memory and consciousness and perception in interesting ways. I find absolute pitch to really be this fascinating nexus of all these things.

For Jacob, having absolute pitch has helped him realize that there’s really no difference between sound and music.

Jacob: I, for one, wouldn't claim a birdsong [SFX] to be more inherently musical, per se, than something like a dog [SFX]. But I think that because we, as humans, tend to organize things in certain ways in our minds, that we call something music or not music.

Jacob: I almost feel like the more names you give stuff, the smaller the thing gets. It's like saying, "This fits into this box, or this box, or this box. This is a sound, and this is music." In some ways, we’re one to describe a sound as either, all you'd be doing is imprisoning the value of the sound within something which has value already. Which is to say, make it non-infinite.

So if you’re like most people, and you don’t have absolute pitch, why should you care about it?

Jacob: Well, I don't think it's worth caring about absolute pitch, per se. I think it's worth caring about pitch. I think that, if you care about pitch enough, that absolute pitch becomes interesting. You know what I mean? Because I guess you recognize that there are all these different sounds in the world, all around you, on the radio, and in the music that you listen to, if you listen to music [SFX]. Or as I say, in bird songs [SFX], and animal calls[SFX], and peoples' conversations[SFX], car horns, kettles, hoovers[SFX], all sorts of things. The world is kind of cacophonising, in a musical way all the time.

Jacob: I think that once you realize that the world is music, you can't un-hear it as music. That's a really wonderful, joyous thing to realize.

[music out]

[music in: Jacob Collier - “Count the People”]

Twenty Thousand Hertz is produced out of the studios of Defacto Sound, a sound design team that makes commercials, documentaries, and trailers sound incredible. Hear more at defacto sound dot com. This episode was written and produced by Olivia Rosenman, and me Dallas Taylor, with help from Sam Schneble. It was story edited by Casey Emmerling. It was edited and sound designed by Soren Begin and Colin DeVarney.

A HUGE thank you to Jacob Collier for not only for speaking with us, but also allowing us to use so much of his music. The track you’re hearing right now is from his latest album, Djesse Volume 3. Listen wherever you get your music.

Thanks also to Daniel Levitin, who wrote the book This is Your Brain on Music. That book was a big inspiration for this episode.

And thanks to Barnaby Martin for allowing us to play clips from his YouTube channel, called “Listening In.” You can find all of the individual tracks we used, as well as additional links, and original artwork, on our website, 20K dot org.

Thanks for listening.

[music out]

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

Follow Dallas on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and LinkedIn.

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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.

Discover more at lexus.com/curiosity.

View Transcript ▶︎

You’re listening to Twenty Thousand Hertz.

[music in]

When Jurassic Park first came out, it brought dinosaurs to life in a way that people had never experienced before. Not only did the dinosaurs look incredible, but they also sounded amazing.

[SFX: Velociraptor Call]

Up until that point, there hadn’t been a clear idea in the public consciousness about what dinosaurs sounded like… so the filmmakers essentially had to make it up as they went along. To make these creatures sound believable and alive, they used all kinds of creative sound design techniques. The results are the stuff of sound design legend.

[music out]

Over the nearly thirty year history of the Jurassic Park franchise, the sound designers have faced one persistent challenge.

Al: How do you define the sound of an extinct animal that no one has actually ever heard for real and how do you make it convincing?

That’s Al Nelson, the lead sound designer on the new Jurassic World films.

[music in]

Al works at Skywalker Sound, which is the sound division of Lucasfilm.

Al: Where we're coming from, from the film sound standpoint is, is it believable? But is it also creating emotional context and is it helping the story?

Early in his career, Al worked with sound design superstars like Ben Burtt, the sound designer of Star Wars, as well as Gary Rydstrom and Chris Boyes, who made the sounds for the original Jurassic Park movies.

Al: That's where I got my real education and experience. There's this wonderful legacy at Skywalker of these brilliant icons with Ben and Gary.

Al: Then, there's this second generation of people like Chris Boyes and a handful of others. And then I was part of the third generation.

[music out]

Working at Skywalker Sound, Al got to see firsthand how some of the classic Jurassic Park sounds were made. To Al, there’s one sound that stands above all the rest.

[SFX: T-Rex Roar]

Al: The T-Rex is, in my opinion, one of the most iconic sounds in film sound history.

Now, it would be great if you could just go record a T-Rex in the wild, but of course, that’s not possible. So the original sound designers used a classic technique, and looked for inspiration elsewhere in the animal kingdom.

[music in]

Al: In those early days, they were out recording lots and lots of animals. Here, at one of the local theme parks, they had some elephants. And Chris Boyes was sent off to go record these elephants and out comes, trotting out a little baby elephant and it lets out one baby elephant roar [SFX: Baby elephant roar] and that was it.

Al: That iconic bellow, is the main ingredient of the T-Rex.

But creating that spine-tingling roar required other ingredients, too.

Al: He used some crocodile sounds [SFX: Crocodile rumble], lions [SFX: Lion SFX], the blow hole from a whale [SFX: Blow hole SFX].

Al: He knew just how to use that baby elephant [SFX] and just how to apply the deep grumble of the crocodile [SFX]or that raspy lion sound [SFX] at the beginning of it. And then, the blow hole sound [SFX] underneath the bellow to give it that weight.

Once these elements came together, [music fade out] the result was THE iconic dinosaur sound.

[T-Rex Roar SFX]

Of course, there are plenty of other dinosaurs in the Jurassic Park films, and all of them have their own unique voice. To make them, the sound team used a similar approach.

Al: You find these best little snippets of vocalizations, the sounds that have personality, and you figure out how to layer them.

For example, there was the gentle brachiosaurs—that’s the one with the long neck for eating leaves out of tall trees. To create their sound, the designers took hawing donkeys [SFX: Donkey SFX], and they slowed it down until it became a graceful song [SFX: Donkeys shift into brachiosaurus song].

There’s also a scene where the kids are caught in a stampede of dinosaurs that look sort of like ostriches. These are called gallimimus. To make their screeches, they used the frightening sound of a horse in heat [horse in heat].

That doesn’t sound quite like a gallimimus yet, but if we cut it up [SFX], bring up the pitch [SFX], then pan these sounds to the left and right [SFX], we can get pretty close to what we hear in the movie.

[SFX: gallimimus screech],

There’s also the predatory velociraptors [SFX: velociraptor SFX]. Their hunting calls were made using the sounds of dolphins [SFX: dolphin] as well as mating tortoises [SFX: mating tortoise].

These sounds are so convincing because the designers followed a few basic principles, based on the size of the creature, and its personality.

Al: We want to believe that those sounds belong in the body of that animal. Is it a Brachiosaur or is it a Compy?

For comparison, Brachiosaurs could grow up to 40 feet tall.

Al: If it's a big majestic dinosaur like the Brachiosaur you give it scale but you give it song.

[SFX Clip: Jurassic Park: They're singing]

While the compsognathus, or compy for short, was about the size of a chicken.

Al: With a Compy, it's a cute little dinosaur and then it gets aggressive. But in this case, you're choosing higher pitch sounds, bird sounds [SFX: birds] and even taking pitched up lions [SFX: lion] so that you don't have any more of that big weighted growl. You just have these unique squeaks and squeals.

[SFX: Compy squeaks]

In this way, the sound designers created an entire ecosystem of dinosaur sounds for the original movies. But when it was time to revisit these creatures in the new Jurassic World films, Al faced a unique challenge.

Al: We didn't want to break anything or modify anything that had already been heard and had already been created by Gary.

Al: I mean, you wouldn't ever want to mess with the T-Rex.

But there was a new creature in Jurassic World, a genetically-engineered mutant with an awesome name: the Indominus Rex.

Al: This was a dinosaur that was erratic and kind of broken. More of a screamer and more just unhinged.

To design this new sound, Al and his team went back to the drawing board.

[music in]

Al: Without any real idea of what specific animals I wanted to use, I and my team just started recording lots of new animals and animals that we knew hadn't been recorded previously.

Al: In particular, there was this little fennec fox, it's a desert fox.

Al: It just screamed and wailed and said everything it had to say at high pitches [SFX: Fennec fox screams]. So that was one of the ingredients. One of the reasons it was so useful is because it had that erratic screamy unhinged sound to it.

But just like the T-Rex, there were many layers to the Indominus sound...

Al: For some of the scale of the Indominus, we used very large sows, these huge pigs. At feeding time, the pigs get very aggressive and they bark and squeal [SFX: Sows squealing]. But they also growl at each other [SFX: boar growls] and they just, they sound like big mean animals.

Al: We had a howler monkey which was madly in love with his animal trainer. And when she sang to him, he would just go off into these long vocalizations as, “rar rar rar”. It was brilliant [SFX: Howler monkey song].

[music out]

When you mix the sounds of these animals just right, you get the Indominous Rex.

[SFX: Indominus roar]

Of course, Jurassic World also has dinosaurs from the original movies, like the velociraptors.

[SFX Clip: Jurassic Park: “Clever girl”]

But in the newer films, they got an update.

Al: We now get to experience the Raptors as not as passive but somewhat more trained and they work with their human handlers. And so they needed a new palette of gentler sounds and friendlier sounds.

Al and his team went in search of a new voice for these friendlier raptors.

Al: Ultimately, what we ended up using were mostly penguins, gentoo penguins [SFX: Gentoo penguins]. They do this shuttering and these softer cuter sounds that we were able to manipulate and make the Raptors more friendly [SFX: Friendly raptor noises].

But it wasn’t all elephants and penguins. Some dinosaur sounds were made with less-exotic animals. Gary Rydstrom, the original sound designer, snuck in a sample of his own.

[music in]

Al: One of Gary's traditions is to use his dogs for his animals.

Gary watched his Jack Russell terrier playing with a rope toy, and saw the similarity of the T-Rex grabbing and shaking other dinosaurs, and lawyers, to death. So he was inspired to use these sounds for the T-Rex. [SFX: Jack Russel Growls morph into T-rex shaking sounds]

For the newer films, Al decided to record his own dog.

Al: This was my opportunity to bring my black Labrador Bahama into the Jurassic sound palette. She does these sort of cute growls

[SFX: lab growl]

Al: They're not quite angry but they sound like, don't get too comfortable with me. So, whenever Owen would interact with the Raptors and they needed to check him, sometimes that would be one of the sounds we would use, is that cute low growl.

[SFX: Raptor growls]

[music out]

[music in]

It’s been almost thirty years since Jurassic Park was first released, and in that time, there’s been a lot of new developments in the field of paleontology. New research can tell us a lot about the what the Jurassic would have actually sounded like, and how that compares to what we hear in the movies. That’s coming up, after this.

[music out]

MIDROLL

[music in]

The dinosaurs of the Jurassic Park films aren’t just believable—They have personality and real emotion. One of the main reasons for this is the incredible sound design. But as with anything in Hollywood, sometimes scientific accuracy has to take a backseat to entertainment.

In the years since the original Jurassic Park, we’ve learned a lot about what dinosaurs probably looked and sounded like. To fill in the gaps between the movies and the real Jurassic world, we need a paleontologist.

[music out]

Julia: My name is Julia Clark and I'm a professor of paleontology at the University of Texas at Austin.

Julia: I have to say, the original Jurassic Park movie, it represented cutting edge science at the time, and that was exciting to see.

But Julia says certain parts of the movies just aren’t very realistic.

Julia: Oftentimes these dinosaurs in the movies are making really scary sounds as they're chasing prey items or children [SFX].

Julia: That's not a context in which most predators produce sound.

Imagine you’re a hungry tiger, creeping through the savanna.

[SFX: Savanna sfx, leaves rustling]

You spot your favourite snack, a lone antelope [SFX: Antelope], but it’s on the lookout, ears twitching for any sound that’s out of place. If you let out a blood-curdling roar [SFX: Roar], all you’re going to do is scare away your supper [SFX: Antelope running away]. There’s also a physiological reason why roaring and eating just don’t go together.

[music in]

Julia: if you were about to eat a cheeseburger, would you yell extremely loudly and then stuff the cheeseburger in your mouth? No, because those sounds that you're making are made on the exhale and now you've exhaled all the air out of your lungs and eaten a giant cheeseburger which is going to inhibit your ability to breathe in a second inhale potentially.

If you’re still not sure about this, give it a try at your next meal.

[SFX: Restaurant ambience, man yells, bite, gasp for air (meant to be ridiculous and all happens pretty quick]

Julia: I mean, when that T-Rex is chasing the small children, clearly the children are not a threat. It's not an aggressive display.

Julia: They would just be silent and about to eat them because you don't want to fully exhale with a loud sound [SFX: T-Rex Roar] and then have a giant bite of a child. [SFX: Bite]. It doesn't work.

But of course, it probably wouldn’t be very exciting if the T-Rex in Jurassic Park spent the whole movie creeping around silently.

[music out]

Al: My guess is that, if you're the T-Rex, you don't have to roar in reality. You just come up behind your prey and chomp down and that's that [SFX: sneak & chomp]. But we're watching these films and we want to inspire the kind of personality that the T-Rex has. It's scary. It's an aggressor, it's a carnivore.

And the sound design team wanted to give you that visceral experience right from the start. In Jurassic Park, the first glimpse of the T-Rex we get is when they pull up to its enclosure in the rain. They had tied up a goat to entice it, but now that goat is missing.

Al: It's completely quiet. There's nothing happening. There's no music, there's just a little bit of rain [SFX: rain]. And then you see the water start to ripple and you hear the distant thud. And you hear, "Where's the goat?" And if you just heard those thuds [SFX] and then the grumble [SFX] and that's it...there's something missing there. That dinosaur needs to present itself as dangerous. And so it slams its foot down [SFX], opens its mouth and gives out that iconic, blood curdling bellow [SFX]. So, that's cinema.

[music in]

So carnivorous dinosaurs probably didn’t roar while they hunted. But predators do roar to scare off threats and competitors. So when dinosaurs did make noise, what did they sound like? Julia studies dinosaurs’ closest living relatives—the reptiles—to figure out the kinds of sounds they could have made.

Julia: So reptiles include lizards and snakes, turtles, crocs and birds. Now a lot of people think, "What? You're putting birds in reptiles?" But if we think about a tree of life, that is the only sensical solution is that birds are really highly modified reptiles and they're really highly modified dinosaurs 9, 10

The period that came after the Jurassic is called the Cretaceous period. During that time, a new kind of feathered, flying dinosaur appeared. These were one of the only kinds of dinosaurs that survived the great extinction—when more familiar ones, like T. Rex, were wiped out.

Julia: All the birds that we have today, that's about 10,000 living species, they represent the descendants of one lineage of dinosaurs.13

[music out]

Julia’s research team noticed that modern birds and reptiles share a common vocal behaviour, called a closed-mouth vocalisation.

Julia: It sort of shapes the sound typically after it's produced in the vocal cords. A sound like, "Hmm, hmm," right, is a closed mouth sound.

Our own closed-mouth noises might be limited to a hum, but in other animals, with other body shapes, they can be really impressive.

[music in]

Julia: Crocodilians can make very loud sounds. Actually in crocodilians, some of the sounds that to us would sound most like a roar...they're kind of a rumble [SFX: Croc rumble]. Those rumbles are made with the mouth closed.

The birds we have now are sometimes called living dinosaurs, and they take closed-mouth vocalisations a step further.

Julia: Male ostriches have this boom call [SFX: Ostrich boom call] in which the mouth is closed and that's a very low frequency call [SFX: more ostrich boom calls].

Other birds make noises in a similar way. For instance, there’s the “coo” of a dove [SFX: dove cooing].

There’s the strange scooching sound of a bittern [SFX: bittern call].

And the weirdly-human call of the eider duck [SFX: eider duck call]

Julia: So what we think is that maybe some dinosaurs, maybe larger bodied dinosaurs, maybe they're using these closed mouth vocal behaviors ... like booming calls that they make to attract a mate or defend a territory.

Due to the sheer size of the largest dinosaurs, their booms would be much lower in pitch than even the largest birds. In fact, The sounds they made could have been so low that they’d be almost impossible for us humans to hear.

Julia: If we were around when T-Rex was around...we might feel these sounds of the largest dinosaurs more than we would hear them through our ears.

[music out]

These low rumbles weren’t the only type of sound you’d hear in the Jurassic. Some dinosaurs, known as Parasauralophus, had long skulls with tube-like holes, called vacuities inside them.

Julia: These vacuities don't produce sound, but they would shape sound.

Sound would bounce around inside these tubes, resonating and echoing almost like a didgeridoo.

[SFX: Low didgeridoo note]

In Jurassic Park 3, the resonating skull actually becomes a plot point.

Julia: they're trying to 3D print the vocal organ of a velociraptor and I guess the idea is that if they can communicate with these velociraptors they can influence their behavior.

[Jurassic Park 3 Clip: I give you the resonating chamber of a Velociraptor. Listen to this. [screech].]

Julia: I think it's really cool that at least in the Jurassic Park movies they were trying this out. That said, everything else about the science of that scene is kind of wrong.

Julia: So what they print they call a resonating chamber and a resonating chamber doesn't have the capacity to make sound. It would be something that shapes sound after it was produced.

Blowing into a resonating chamber without using your vocal cords wouldn't make any sound, just like blowing air down a didgeridoo would sound like this. [SFX: Hollow blowing sound]

In other words, the only way to make a real velociraptor sound is with a whole, living velociraptor.

If we put all of this together, we can start to get a more complete picture of the Jurassic soundscape. Julia thinks you may even be able to guess which geological period you were in, just by the sounds that you heard.

Julia: I think there's a lot of evolution of the sonic landscape throughout the age of extinct dinosaurs that we would hear. In earlier parts of dinosaur history where you have a lot of dinosaurs that are like, pony to horse size and bigger… those are going to be lower frequency sounds.

So the Jurassic period would have been a place of deep, bassy rumbles [SFX: Jurassic low-frequency soundscape]

Julia: It's only in the late Jurassic that we have evidence for things starting to take flight and smaller body sizes. By the time you get to the Cretaceous I think there's going to be a lot more higher frequency dinosaur sounds made by these smaller species.

Julia: It's still going to be a fairly foreign sonic landscape but there's still going to be some sounds that are almost bird like [SFX: Cretaceous soundscape under Julia]. It would be fascinating to be a dinosaur watcher in the Cretaceous.

[music in]

Figuring out the way the world sounded a hundred million years ago is hard work, but the drive to learn more keeps paleontologists like Julia going.

Julia: We start with simple curiosity, a question like… “How would we approach this? How would we figure out what dinosaurs sounded like?" That's a big question.

Julia: I feel so privileged to be able to be outside with a group of other scientists discovering new fossils but I also feel so privileged to work with all my students asking what might seem like kind of crazy questions and trying to figure out real ways of inquiry around those questions.

Maybe the next Jurassic film will represent dinosaurs in all their booming, cooing, rumbling glory. Whatever happens though, whether you’re in Hollywood or digging for dinosaur bones…

Al: There'll be lots of dino fun. I can promise you.

[music out]

[music in]

Twenty Thousand Hertz is hosted by me, Dallas Taylor, and produced out of the sound design studios of Defacto Sound. Hear more at defactosound.com.

This episode was written and produced by Leila Battison, and me Dallas Taylor, with help from Sam Schneble. It was story edited by Casey Emmerling. It was sound designed and mixed by Soren Begin and Jai Berger.

Thanks to our guests, Al Nelson, and Julia Clarke. You can find out more about Al at Skywalker sound dot com. And you can read about Julia’s research at julia clarke dash paleolab dot com.

Thanks to the Varmints podcast for helping us name this episode from Twitter. If you’d like to help name our episodes, help us with story directions, get sneak peeks of upcoming shows, or just want to tell us a cool sound fact… you can do that by following us on Facebook, Twitter, or our subreddit. And, if social isn’t your thing, you can drop us a note at hi at twenty kay dot org.

Thanks for listening.

[music out]

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Napster: How free music broke the industry

Art by Jon McCormack.

This episode originally aired on Spectacular Failures.

In less than two years, Napster became a global sensation... and then record labels and multi-platinum artists brought it crashing down. But in its short lifespan, Napster transformed our ideas about how we consume music, and how much we're willing to pay for it. This story comes from the podcast Spectacular Failures.

MUSIC FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE

Look At Everybody Talkin' (Instrumental) by Red Parker
Georgia Overdrive by Truck Stop
Pushing My Luck (Instrumental) by 1WayTKT

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View Transcript ▶︎

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

[music in]

If you spent any time on the internet in the early 2000’s, there’s a good chance you’re familiar with Napster. I have to admit, I may have even downloaded a few songs myself… very slowly, one track at a time. Back then, It didn’t feel totally legitimate, but it also wasn’t clear that it was illegal, either. It felt like this magical portal to all of the amazing music that was out there, just waiting to be discovered. Of course, within a couple of years, that portal was completely closed off. But even though Napster crashed and burned, everything that’s come since then—iTunes, Pandora, Spotify… they all feel like they’re part of a direct line that goes right back to Napster. Because in a lot of ways, they are.

It turns out, there is a wild story behind the rise and fall of Napster. It’s a story about a music industry that was completely unprepared for the internet, regular people eager for a new way to hear music, and young innovators who were in way over their heads.

[music out]

This story comes from the podcast Spectacular Failures. Here’s host Lauren Ober.

My pal Alex Lewis has always been into music. He bought his first album — the Barenaked Ladies Stunt — when he was nine. You know the one...

Alex Lewis:...that like, weird chickety China the Chinese chicken song on it. That was the first album that I ever acquired.

My first album was 1990’s “Gonna Make You Sweat” by C+C Music Factory, so we’ve all got our skeletons.

After that first Barenaked Ladies purchase, Alex collected dozens of CDs and organized them in binders. Then one day Alex’s dad called him over to the family’s iMac computer.

Alex Lewis: I remember him just being like, Alex, come check this out. And he's like, you can type in any song into this program, and you can just get it and it's coming from someone else's computer.

The program Alex’s dad was using was called Napster. It was like some secret portal that opened into an endless world of music that Alex could only dream of. And it facilitated some serious father/son bonding.

Alex Lewis: It was sort of like an activity that we did together, at least at first. Where we would just like try to come up with things to find.

Lauren: And what were you guys like, looking for in the days when you and your dad were on it together?

Alex Lewis: So my parents are both self-described deadheads, they're really into the Grateful Dead. And, and so my dad would be like, let's see if they have like, so and so from like the 1977 Cornell concert, or whatever.

Lauren: He was looking for bootlegs!

Alex Lewis: Yeah, exactly. And he was able to find a lot of that stuff.

Though, sixth grade Alex was developing his own musical tastes.

Alex Lewis: I would kind of just like have this continual list of things I was searching on it. And like around sixth grade I was introduced to ska. And I remember like for my birthday, my friend got me a Mighty Mighty Bosstones CD.

Lauren: Yes!

So Alex used his dad’s Napster account to download all kinds of ska bands. Also, a lot of 90s hip hop. The options felt infinite and Alex couldn’t stop searching for new music.

Alex Lewis: I was obsessed with it. I would definitely sit on my dad's computer until he told me to get off and stop downloading songs.

Given the slow internet speed at the time, Alex figures he only downloaded a few hundred songs. But that’s like dozens of albums’ worth of music for free. Which for a nine-year-old without a lot of disposable income is a pretty great deal.

With the click of a mouse, Alex had access to all this music that he didn’t pay a penny for. And it changed the way he thought about music.

Alex Lewis: After Napster, I almost felt like entitled to getting music that way. Or like, or being able to find what I wanted.

Lauren: Like, did it ever occur to you that somebody paid for this?

Alex Lewis: No. No especially then, no. It kind of felt to me at that time that, like this new program appeared and like you could get it easily and all of a sudden you are like sharing the music files with people all around the world. And I don't know if people like thought it was illegal at first. And, you know, my parents are both lawyers.

At the time Alex was using Napster, it wasn’t exactly illegal. But it kind of felt like it. It was novel and exciting and terrifying all at the same time.

In order to understand the music world that Napster was operating in, you first have to understand what came right before.

The 90s were the true salad days of the record industry. Albums were selling 8, 9 million copies right out of the gate. Alanis Morrisette’s 1995 ode to angst, “Jagged Little Pill,” sold 13.5 million copies in the first few years of its release. I mean, you outta know.

By comparison, 2019’s bestselling album —Taylor Swift’s Lover — sold just over 3 million copies. Aww, poor Tay. JK she’s doing fine.

There was a reason album sales were so good in the 90s.

Steve Knopper: If you wanted a song that you liked from the radio…

Steve Knopper: There was only one way to get that song, which was to go to the record store and buy the $18 CD that song was on.

That’s music journalist Steve Knopper.

Steve Knopper: This was the era of, you know, boy bands and teen pop and Britney Spears and so forth and nothing, nothing against those artists. I have great respect for that, for pop music. But I mean, I think it's safe to say that a lot of albums were coming out that had, you know, just the hit or the two or three hits and then a lot of filler.

But obviously, if you’re a person who wants to consume music kind of a la carte, the traditional method of buying entire albums to get the two songs you like isn’t great.

Steve Knopper: And so, you know, right at that point, it was kind of ripe for somebody to come along and disrupt that.

In the mid-1990s, the internet was nothing like it is today. There was no Google or Youtube or Wikipedia. It was basically just some snail-slow dial-up chat rooms with a bunch of creeps in them posing as kids. I mean, I’m sure it was more than that, but as a child of the 90s that’s my recollection.

But in 1998, a college freshman and metal head named Shawn Fanning, saw the possibility that this nascent web held.

Steve Knopper: You know, he had gone on to these message boards online through Netscape or whatever it was. And just kind of found out, oh, there's these things called mp3s. I can go to this website and download some, but it was just super inefficient.

Basically, if you wanted to share music with your friends over the internet, you didn’t have a ton of options other than sending them via email. And anyone who ever tried to share a large file on janky dial-up knows that that process was beyond tedious.

Fanning thought there had to be a better way.

Steve Knopper: He was studying software at Northeastern, I believe. And he was also kind of like, I wouldn't say he was a master hacker, but he was sort of part of that culture. And he just kind of went online, started tinkering around, and he said, you know, I should invent something that makes this whole process easier.

Now Fanning was no stranger to the emerging web. Before matriculating at Northeastern University in Boston, Fanning had been living with a bunch of programmers who were working with his uncle at a startup called Chess dot net.

Ali Aydar, a founder of chess dot net, remembers Shawn in those early days.

Ali Aydar: He crashed in our living room. And during that summer, we taught him how to drive. I went and bought him a programming book. And we taught him some of the first things you need to know about programming and kind of set him off and running.

From the photos of that time, Fanning looked like a super 90s bro. Nautica t-shirt, University of Michigan baseball cap and big baggy pants. But…

Ali Aydar: Not at all. Super shy, very unassuming, very humble. Didn't like to talk a lot.

In August of 1997, Aydar’s chess startup began to fall apart and all the guys living in that house went their separate ways. But just the few months Fanning spent living with them had a huge impact.

Aydar and Fanning casually stayed in touch. Then a little more than a year after they had all moved on, Fanning sent Aydar a note on AOL instant messenger about a business idea he had. It was called Napster. So-called because that was Fanning’s screen name.

Ali Aydar: The way he characterized it, beyond the technical, was it's a way for people to efficiently share content with each other.

Basically, the bare bones was that Napster users would convert their CD collections to mp3s on their computers. Then, through the interface that Fanning was cooking up in his dorm room, users from all over the world would be able to connect and swap those mp3 files. With Napster you could exponentially grow your music collection in a matter of days. For free.

Aydar remembers Fanning was all in on the idea. He thought his music file-sharing idea would change the world.

And Aydar was like, mmm…

Ali Aydar: I didn't think the idea was going to work. And I thought it was a bad idea.

The way Fanning and his business partner Sean Parker envisioned it, Napster would only facilitate downloads between users’ computers. Napster itself wouldn’t house any of that music on its own servers. This would be a purely peer-to-peer operation.

Ali Aydar: The thought that people would open up their hard drives for files to be shared from their own hard drives, I just thought was ridiculous. Just from a security perspective.

Aydar told Fanning not to monkey around with this Napster idea — it wasn’t going anywhere. And he encouraged the teenager to stay in college — advice Fanning did not take.

Fanning used his friends and family as guinea pigs for his new file-sharing idea. By 1999, they had worked out the initial kinks and Fanning and Parker unleashed Napster on the world. It was a buffet of free music and the kids were hungry.

Steve Knopper: Once it hit the Internet, it just went viral immediately. It was just people went, oh, wow, I can do this.

However, creating a piece of free software and releasing it to the masses, does not a company make. Businesses need things like a plan and income.

At the time, Eileen Richardson was a venture capitalist who knew a good internet opportunity when she saw one. To Richardson, the beauty of Napster was that it helped people find all kinds of new music that they might not otherwise be exposed to.

Commercial radio and music video channels like MTV and VH1 for the most part only played major label hits. And Richardson says this never sat well with her.

Eileen Richardson: The record industry, they pick who they think is gonna be famous. They package that person and then they pay off the radio stations and you get to hear it. And after you hear a song five times, you all of sudden think you like it. I mean, it's that simple.

Richardson was taken by the technology. She loved the kind of smorgasbord listening experience and Napster’s potential to break new musical artists. She saw the chance for a profitable business there. So much so that she and a colleague ponied up a few hundred thousand dollars for the fledgling venture.

Richardson then became the company’s first CEO and immediately set about building a team and moving the Shawns — Fanning and Parker — from Boston to the West Coast. Despite his initial skepticism, Ali Aydar came on board to build Napster’s search engine.

Soon, after the teens got a few adults in the room, the user numbers exploded.

Eileen Richardson: A million took time. Twenty million felt like it happened overnight.

Now the problem with this kind of success is that you might draw some attention you don’t want. One group that sat up and took notice of Napster was the Recording Industry Association of America, or RIAA. They’re the music industry’s lobbying arm.

Steve Knopper: They said to each other, wow, this is like somebody cracking the locks on all the Tower Records and looting all the CDs.

But, by the time the recording industry truly grasped what millions of users downloading songs for free meant for the music business, it was too late. Every sleepy college kid in every gross dorm in America was using Napster. Because — have you walked across a college campus? — there’s nothing college kids like more than free stuff.

Here’s MTV’s Gideon Yago chatting with students at Indiana University after Napster began to blow up.

CLIP [MTV]: So how many mp3s do you have on your computer?/ About 600./ Maybe like 100 or something./ Um six or seven thousand./ Come again?/ Six or seven thousand. / For real?/ Yeah. They’re all legit./ How many mp3s do you have on your computer?/ Probably like 300. /For real? Where’d you get them from?/ Truthfully, most of them from Napster./

So if you only take the music Josh, Michelle, James and Damion downloaded, that’s like 500 albums worth of music, which at $18 a pop is about nine grand in lost sales. Now multiply that by all the college students at campuses around the country and you’re looking at a world of hurt for the record companies.

Steve Knopper: And then at a certain point, Napster became mainstream. It went into the pop culture, you know, zeitgeist, if you will.

Napster was becoming a household name. And Fanning, the shy, reserved high school kid that Ali Aydar met a couple years before, was now a sort of a teenage music tech celebrity. Soon he and Parker were all over the media.

Here they are in an MTV interview from back then. Parker does most of the talking, while peering into his crystal ball.

CLIP [MTV, Sean Parker]: We think that when music transitions to digital distribution, people will pay to receive music to their cell phones or their portable devices, to however music is pumped or piped into the home digitally, those...that will be monetized. And artists and labels will be able to make money off of that.

They said while sitting on the roof of a car, drinking Red Bulls. Like true startup founders.

Now what Fanning and Parker were suggesting, this was the roadmap to profitability. All the free music and lost sales would ultimately force the music industry to play ball and engage with digital distribution. Napster, innovative chaps that they were, already had the users and the platform for that distribution. The record labels would provide the music. And the end result would be a paid service kind of like a proto-iTunes or Spotify.

That was Napster’s goal. But that’s not what it was in the early days. In the eyes of the recording industry, Napster was just stealing music. They were pirates. And you know how you vanquish pirates? You sue the britches off of them in an American court of law. Yar!

[music out]

[music in]

Record labels weren’t the only ones who had it out for Napster. Some of the biggest artists in the world were about to jump into the fight. That’s coming up, after the break.

[music out]

MIDROLL

[music in]

Napster began as an obscure community of people looking for free music, but in just a few years, it transformed into a global sensation. Around the world, people were making it clear that they wanted to get their music digitally, preferably for free. But all of that attention came at a cost, and it didn’t take long before record labels—and some of their biggest artists—had Napster in their sights.

[music out]

Here’s Lauren again.

In 1999, Portia Sabin joined an all-girl punk band called The Hissyfits.

Portia Sabin: I remember when we were all in our 20s we were like really earnest and we were like, no, we're gonna make it as a band, man.

Making it as a band in the late 90s, early 2000s, meant touring and putting out albums. And hopefully getting your music reviewed by one of the excellent music journalists working at publications like “Rolling Stone,” “Spin” or “Alternative Press.” One of those writers was Greil Marcus. He remains one of the most prominent music critics around.

Some time in 1999, Marcus heard the Hissyfits’ song “Something Wrong.”

[SOMETHING WRONG]

He wrote that the song first came to his attention after a radio DJ in Minneapolis plucked the vinyl single out of a bin because she “liked the sleeve: three women dressed in party slips, one wearing leopard-skin, another a tiara, the third a dog collar.” Which really is the most 90s look ever.

Portia Sabin: Greil Marcus was a very important writer. People really cared about, you know, his opinion. And he wrote an article in Interview Magazine that was titled “Pop When It's Perfect”. Not, not that I've memorized it or anything, like I do remember that.

The fact that Greil Marcus would decide to write about the Hissyfits? That was a total game-changer.

Portia Sabin: That's when sort of the phone started to ring and people were...more than just our friends were asking us to tour with them and to play shows with them.

The “Interview” magazine piece got the Hissyfits the type of exposure that tiny indie bands dreamed of. They cut a record and did an ad for Levi’s and toured around the country in a green two-door Ford Explorer packed to the gills with amps and merch. After their tour, legendary rocker Joey Ramone asked the band to play at his birthday party with Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Famer Ronnie Spector. Which is bonkers.

That’s how much clout these tastemakers had.

Portia Sabin: You know a critic like Greil Marcus had an opinion about things and they would be very clear about their opinion. And sometimes I would read a review and I wouldn't buy a record because I’d be like, ugh, so and so thought it was terrible. And they should know.

But all this started to change with the arrival of Napster. Listeners could now download an album for free and just decide for themselves if they liked it or not. And that meant that music’s historical gatekeepers — the critics and the labels — were going to have a lot less sway. And that, combined with plummeting record sales, scared the pants off of the industry.

All this signaled that a huge upending was happening. (See, I didn’t say disruption). Kids could access whatever music they wanted, whenever they wanted and it would be free. Joe Record Exec and John Q. Critic would no longer be the ones calling the shots.

Jeff Gold was a V.P. at Warner Brothers Records in the years just before Napster hit big. He’d been banging on about music and the internet for ages, hoping to find a way for the two to co-exist. He remembers in 1993 a panicked assistant tore into his office to tell him that Depeche Mode’s album “Songs of Faith and Devotion” had been leaked to an AOL chat room.

Jeff Gold: I went, wait a minute, this isn't bad. This is great. We spend all our time trying to get kids excited about music, and then here it was happening on its own.

After the leak, Gold’s team started their own rudimentary internet talk show on AOL. They wanted to own this emerging online space. They called the show CyberTalk and it featured different Warner Brothers artists doing text chats with fans. One chat with Depeche Mode was apparently so popular, it crashed AOL.

But Gold’s bosses were like….don't forget your day job.

Jeff Gold: In the early days, I was shouting into the void. Geffen Records was the second company to have an online presence fairly soon after us. But it wasn't anything anybody was doing. And I was probably the most senior person in the record business thinking about this stuff.

Most of the top record execs were two decades older and didn’t have computers on their desks, let alone know how to use them. So basically they were my dad. And they didn’t see digital music as the wave of the future, especially while CDs were still flying off the shelves. Compact discs forever!

All this meant that when Napster came on the scene, the record companies were like, We don’t know what this mp3 sharing thing is all about, but no. No way is music going online, and no way are you getting it for free.

And the kids were like, um yeah we are, gramps. And you can’t stop us because you don’t even know what a mouse is. Ya burned.

Soooo...Napster posed an existential threat to the record industry. But you know what posed an existential threat to Napster? A little thing called copyright.

Jennifer Jenkins: Copyright is a branch of law that gives creators of all kinds — writers, filmmakers, musicians, poets — exclusive rights over their creations. In many cases, those rights don't go directly to the creators, but are owned by the distributors, the publishers, the labels, because those are the entities that historically have gotten their creative works from the authors to the public, to us who are able to enjoy them.

That’s Jennifer Jenkins. She’s a professor at Duke Law School, where she also runs the school’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain. She’s also the author of “Theft! A History of Music” — a delightful graphic novel about musical borrowing. So copyright is totally her jam.

Copyright came into being in the U.S. in 1790. It’s right there in the Constitution — Congress has the power to pass laws protecting intellectual property and its creators.

Since music protections were added to the Copyright Act in 1831, the medium has always created some challenges. This is largely due to the fact that technologies for listening have changed radically over the years.

Jennifer Jenkins: The story of music is a story of new and disruptive technologies. And, you know, the law sort of struggling to catch up with them.

The player piano, the gramophone and the radio all pushed the bounds of music copyright law. Obviously, so did Napster.

Copyright was at the heart of the RIAA’s beef with Napster. Basically, you can’t offer up all these songs for free because you don’t own them. The end. But it wasn’t quite that simple.

Jennifer Jenkins: We know that many Napster users were totally infringing copyright law because they were uploading and downloading music, whole songs without permission. But under what circumstances do we hold Napster accountable for the actions, the copyright infringement of its users?

Napster’s argument was, hey we’re just providing a neutral platform for users to trade songs. You know, like you’d trade cassette or VHS tapes with a friend. We’re not a music repository.

But as RIAA big boss Hillary Rosen explained in a local news interview, she wasn’t buying it.

CLIP [Hillary Rosen]: You can share music with a friend in an, you know, email, in an instant message, in a hundred different ways. That’s no different than tape trading has been for years and years. The real difference is that a peer-to-peer system that would allow somebody to have thousands of files up on a directory distributing to millions of strangers. I just think that there’s no analysis that says that that’s right, that’s fair or that’s sharing.

Now this is where it gets really tricky to hold Napster liable.

Jennifer Jenkins: We have to employ something called secondary liability. When do you hold a technology producer, someone who provides software accountable for the activities of someone else, your users? The Copyright Act is silent on that. Secondary liability is not in the Copyright Act.

To the RIAA and to the musicians fighting against what they saw as blatant copyright violations, the technology producer should absolutely be held liable for copyright infringement. Back then, musicians like our friend Portia from The Hissyfits made their money in basically two ways: touring and album sales. And if people weren’t buying albums because they were getting them for free on Napster, then that’s a major revenue stream dammed up.

So the musicians fought back. Leading the charge was Metallica’s drummer, Lars Ulrich. In July of 2000, he testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee on the future of digital music.

CLIP [Lars Ulrich]: In a 48-hour period, where we monitored Napster, over 300,000 users made 1.4 million free downloads of Metallica's music. Napster hijacked our music without asking. They never sought our permission. Our catalog of music simply became available for free downloads on the Napster system.

And this was a problem because...

CLIP [Lars Ulrich]: ...Most artists are barely earning a decent wage and need every source of revenue available to scrape by. Also keep in mind that the primary source of income for most songwriters is from the sale of records. Every time a Napster enthusiast downloads a song, it takes money from the pockets of all these members of the creative community.

Ulrich wasn’t the only musician opposed to the idea of Napster. Dr. Dre was a vocal opponent as were Christina Aguilera, Garth Brooks, Bon Jovi, Sarah McLachlan, Hanson, Alanis Morrissette and our pal Alex Lewis’ favorite 90s band, the Barenaked Ladies. All those folks were part of a loose group called Artists Against Piracy.

Metallica and Dr. Dre ultimately sued Napster. The Metallica suit claimed that Napster “devised and distributed software whose sole purpose is to permit Napster to profit by abetting and encouraging.” Dr. Dre’s position was even clearer: “I don't like people stealing my music.”

But other artists like Moby, Henry Rollins and perhaps most famously Chuck D felt like this was the direction music needed to head in.

CLIP: [Chuck D on Charlie Rose]: I look at Napster as a situation, or the connection between file-sharing, which this is, and downloadable distribution as power going back to the people. I also look at this as being a situation where for the longest periods of time, the industry had control of technology. And therefore the people were subservient to that technology. And at whatever price range the people would have to pay for it.

The whole debate over Napster crescendoed in September of 2000 when Shawn Fanning appeared at MTV’s Video Music Awards wearing a Metallica t-shirt. He was clearly trolling the band, who sat in the audience rolling their eyes. Meanwhile, I’m sitting in my chair rolling my eyes at Carson Daly’s intro.

CLIP [Carson Daly at MTV VMAs]: Every day I find myself smack-dab in the middle of a music war between fans. I try to justify hip-hop to pop, alternative to mainstream and rap to rock. But what I do is nothing, and the battle to which I’m a part of, is nothing compared to the battle of this next guy’s fight. In the last year this teenager has developed the technology that has revolutionized the way we all get our music and he is here tonight. Ladies and gentleman, creator of Napster, Shawn Fanning.

Just a month after Fanning paraded across the VMA stage, he was in a courtroom dealing with a massive lawsuit filed against Napster by 18 record companies — all members of the RIAA. They claimed that Napster’s service allowed its 20-million-plus users to violate copyright and was thus responsible for the infringement.

Eileen Richardson says she tried to reason with the labels and make deals that would keep them alive, but it was a non-starter.

Eileen Richardson: Hilary Rosen was running the RIAA then and and she, she was on sort of a war path meeting with all the artists like look at this, look at this, look at this. You know, life as you know it is about to end. But, you know, when I talked to her, I was like, the horse is out of the barn. Like, you can't go back. Let's like figure something out.

But it wasn’t happening. The legal battles against Napster moved forward. So the company had to get strategic.

One of Napster’s defenses was the VCR. See, back when the VCR came out, film and television execs were all clutching their pearls. Anyone with a VCR could record anything they wanted from the TV. And that, they figured, violated their copyrights and would be way bad for business.

The VCR manufacturers, on the other hand, were cool cucumbers. They were just like, look all we’re doing is making a device. And people could be using that device for totally legal recording.

In 1983, the two sides made their arguments in the landmark Supreme Court case, Sony Corporation of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc.

CLIP [Sony verbal arguments]: We didn't do a single thing to affirmatively induce the copying of Respondents' programs, unless you want to count the bare act of making the machine. There was nothing between any of the Petitioners and the Respondents-- /Well, what if the rule... is it the rule that if you know the machine is going to be used for an infringing use and you sell it, is that enough? /--If you know that the machine is going to be used and know that the use is to be infringing, that is a facet of a contributory infringement test.

Ultimately, Sony prevailed. The court decided that the company could not be held responsible for VCR owners’ use of the device. So Napster pulled that precedent out in its own court case. And that argument almost would have worked except for three little snags.

The first was that Napster allowed millions of users to download a bajillion songs. The sheer volume of copyrighted material being shared meant that Napster was very different from a VCR, which was only occasionally used to record a TV show or a movie.

Then there was the issue of Napster’s search index, in that they had one. Prof. Jennifer Jenkins:

Jennifer Jenkins: So like, say I was looking for Madonna, right? There was a search index where I would go. And so they had that index so they would know that there was a song called, you know, Madonna “Like a Virgin” on it.

Basically the courts held that Napster knew copyright infringement was happening because they had a search index full of copyrighted material. So while the service wasn’t engaging in copyright violations directly, it was giving violators a big boost.

There was one final whoopsies that really banged the last nail in the Napster coffin. And that was a little internal email Sean Parker sent. Specifically one sentence: “[W]e are not just making pirated music available but also pushing demand.” The operative word in that sentence is “pirated,” says Steve Knopper:

Steve Knopper: Sean Parker in his private statements and in his e-mails, was actually directly acknowledging that Napster was a medium for piracy. And that turned out to be important in court later because the record industry busted him for it.

At this point, Napster didn’t have much of a leg to stand on. But the judge in the case offered them a lifeline. He basically said, if you can prevent copyrighted material from being downloaded using Napster, you can stay afloat. If you can’t, you’re dunzo.

And, they couldn’t. But who would want a public domain-only Napster that mostly just had old classical music, educational recordings and a million versions of the National Anthem?

The service’s main selling point was free access to a massive inventory of songs. So by July 2001, Napster was functionally done. It had settled its cases with Metallica and Dr. Dre, and agreed to a settlement with the RIAA for copyright violations.

When it ended, there was a feeling of disbelief in the ranks. Ali Aydar says Napster really thought the labels would get on board.

Ali Aydar: We honestly felt like they would come around, that they're just not understanding the power of this. They're not understanding the technology behind it. They're not understanding what they could do with this and how important this is for them and that, gosh, if they shut us down like there are going to be others and those others aren't going to be friendly like we are.

But the labels were like, nah we’re good.

This is where the Napster story typically ends—music industry takes down bad boy file-sharing pioneer. But a lot of Napster’s wounds were self-inflicted. Shawn Fanning’s uncle owned 70% of the company and that caused some bad vibes. Because it meant company executives from CEO to the Shawns themselves had no real power to make any business decisions. And that led to a lot of executive turnover, which isn’t great when you’re negotiating with music’s biggest power players.

Still, Napster unlocked a desire in music lovers. Not only did they want access to a huge volume of songs, but they also wanted to access it whenever they wanted and for practically nothing. And that meant that even when Napster failed, there would be a million other services waiting in the wings to fill the need.

Jeff Gold: There's a Bob Dylan lyric about doesn't take a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. It wasn't as if this wasn't obvious to everybody other than the people in the record business. And so while they're furiously trying to shut down Napster, they're all these Napster clones popping up everywhere and they're playing a game of whack-a-mole. And myself and a lot of people I knew were going, this is just absurd. Why don't they just own it instead of, you know why don’t they buy Napster? There can be no clearer evidence that people want their music digitally.

In the wake of Napster’s demise, a bunch of copycat peer-to-peer file-sharing services popped up — Grokster, Streamcast, Limewire, Gnutella, Kazaa, the list goes on. Years later, they were supplanted by iTunes, which allowed users to legally buy music a la carte for a dollar a song.

Today, the vast majority of music listening happens via some kind of streaming service like Spotify, Pandora or Apple Music. In 2019 — 20 years after Napster got off the ground — Americans streamed more than one trillion songs. And record stores? What even are those? In the post-Napster decade, more than 4000 record stores closed in the U.S., including massive chains like Tower Records, which shuttered in 2006.

So while Napster only operated for two years, its influence seems immeasurable. Napster cracked open the door to a world of music free of physical media. And just plain free.

Steve Knopper: People made it clear beginning in, like, 1997 that they were only going to listen to music for free. Many, many people, millions and millions of people around the world. That, as we've seen with the popularity of YouTube, has never changed. There is a contingent, a large percentage of people who are going to want to get the music for free.

Napster caused massive upheaval in the music industry. But the music industry has been reinventing itself for as long as there has been an industry. It has weathered existential threats and technological changes and still managed to keep going. Albeit in a much-diminished capacity these days.

Today musicians might make a fraction of a cent on every song streamed. But the number of income streams has grown exponentially. And technology has allowed artists to reach audiences directly. Music is an art and a business and it will never be insulated from the future. So with that I say, bring it robots.

[music in]

This story came from the spectacular podcast called Spectacular Failures. In each episode, Host Lauren Ober tackles an epic business failure, and what could have been done to avoid it. Subscribe to Spectacular Failures right here in your podcast player.

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.

Spectacular Failures is a production of American Public Media. It’s written and hosted by Lauren Ober, and produced by Whitney Jones. The show’s editor is Phyllis Fletcher, and David Zha is the assistant producer. Their theme music is by David Schulman, and original music comes from Jenn Champion and Michael Cormier. Kristina Lopez is their Audience Engagement Editor and Lauren Dee is their executive producer. The concept is by Tracy Mumford. The general manager of APM Studios is Lily Kim.

If you have any stories about Napster changed your relationship with music, you can tell us on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, or by writing hi @ 20K dot org.

Thanks for listening.

[music out]

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Vocal Discords: When nodules silence singers

Artwork provided by George Butler.

This episode was written and produced by Anna Bennett.

A diagnosis of vocal nodes is every singer's worst nightmare. Musicians like Justin Timberlake, Adele, Björk and Rod Stewart have all had surgery to treat them. Nodes are so widely discussed, they've almost become a boogeyman in the singing community. But is this condition really as common as people fear? And when nodes do develop, is all hope truly lost? Featuring vocal coach Katie Talbot and Professor and Chairman of the Ear, Nose, and Throat Department at Drexel University of Medicine Dr. Robert Sataloff.

MUSIC FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE

Coming For Ya by Yes Yes No Maybe
Idle Ways by Simple Light 
Requiem by Davis Harwell
The Falls by Sound of Picture
Charmed by Sound of Picture
Spring Solstice by Sound of Picture
Running on Empty by Sound of Picture
Warm Fingers by Piano Mover
Wax Paper Jewel by Origami
The Consulate by Holyoke
Paper Trails by The Field Tapes
Silent Flock by Migration

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

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Check out SONOS at sonos.com.

Learn how you can protect your voice at nidcd.nih.gov.

View Transcript ▶︎

Imagine your favorite voices. Your spouse. [SFX: “love you babe”] Your kids. [SFX: child laughing] The barista at your local coffeeshop. [SFX: “The usual?”] Your jam on the radio. [Music in: Coming For Ya by YES YES NO] Your best friend’s terrible rendition of that jam. [SFX: “Coming For Ya” done poorly] The voices in our lives weave a comforting sonic tapestry around us.

But what if... one of those voices went silent?

[music/riser out]

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

[music in]

We’re all aware of the ways professional athletes can be sidelined by an injury. And even those of us who aren’t athletes are familiar with the effects of repetitive stress on the body: things like tennis elbow, carpal tunnel syndrome, and tendonitis.

But there’s another part of the body that’s also vulnerable to injury but rarely talked about: your vocal folds, more commonly known as the vocal cords.

All of our voices are part of our identity but if you’re a singer, a teacher, an actor, or a vocal performer of any kind, your voice is also your livelihood. Here’s Katie Talbot, a vocal coach in Nashville.

[music out]

Katie: My mirror in my room knew me as Brittany Spears, Christina Aguilera, Celine Dion, you name it.

In her early 20s, Katie signed with an agent and moved out to LA.

[Music clip: Katie singing]

Katie: And then I was singing in Hollywood, probably about three times a week.

Meanwhile, she was working to pay the bills.

Katie: I was working at Starbucks as my day job.

[SFX: Espresso making & sipping]

Katie: So I was doing early, early morning openings drinking tons of coffee to keep up with the lifestyle out there.

[SFX: Coffee bar chatter]

Katie: And then of course, 20 and 21 I'm going out a lot too. So, not only am I singing [Music clip: Katie singing] in the clubs around midnight, 1:00 AM depending on when we go on, but I was also talking super loud.

[SFX: Increased club chatter, which suddenly cuts music off harshly to an annoying alarm clock buzzing]

Katie: And then I'd have to wake up, [SFX: Hits alarm snooze button] have very little sleep, and then go to work.

During this time, Katie estimates that she was using her voice professionally 30-50 hours per week.

Katie: And just did not realize it because I just thought, "It's my voice. That's it."

So, Katie kept up the hustle and grind: [SFX: Drum loop in, speeds up over this section] late nights [SFX: crickets], loud clubs [SFX: club walla, background music adds electronic/club beat], high notes [SFX: belting voice], no sleep [SFX: alarm clock], lots of coffee [SFX: Coffee pouring], late nights [SFX: owl], recording sessions [SFX: belting voice, background music adds ride], shouting out orders [SFX: ridiculous Starbucks order (half soy, non-fat, vanilla etc…], late nights [SFX: wolf howl], noisy bars [SFX: club walla, background music adds electronic/club beat], little sleep [SFX: alarm clock]…

Katie: My personal bad habit as a singer, I love to be loud. I grew up thinking, "If I'm loud, I'm good."

Katie’s agents and managers had her singing in a pop rock style in the studio, but she also sang for a heavy metal band.

Katie: And I would sing whistle tone like, way above their metal melodies.

[SFX: Whistle tone]

Katie: Whistle is actually something that is a very light coordination in the voice, it's very small. Katie: And when you're trained for it, it's actually pretty easy to get. But I was finding that I could not get it, and even my talking voice was getting raspy.

At first, Katie blamed the dry Southern California air... she thought doing better warmups would help, and she sang even more than before.

[music in]

Katie: So I would do the warmups for a little bit, I was also very impatient. So I would just sing through it and start just putting more power into it to try to overcompensate for what I felt I had lost.

Katie: But I thought, you know, "I can just push through it. Push through it. Push through it, my voice will come back."

After a few months, it became clear to Katie that whatever was happening to her voice wasn’t something she could just push through.

Katie: I basically lost my whole top register and only had a little bit of my chest voice when it came to singing.

It was at this point that Katie realized she needed help.

Katie: So, I'm little 21 year old Katie from Franklin, Tennessee, going into Beverly Hills and paying so much money for this doctor to see me, and I see everyone he's worked with is on the wall from Kurt Cobain to Whitney Houston, LeAnn Rimes, Mariah Carey; so I knew I was in good hands. And I went in, he saw me for about five minutes, he goes, "Okay, you have nodules."

Katie: And my heart just sank, because here I am thinking there goes anything I want to do, anything I want to do.

For a singer, a diagnosis of vocal nodules is devastating, and could be career-ending.

[music out]

Even if you don’t know what they are, you might have heard what they sound like. [SFX: horrible vocal node]

That’s the sound of a vocal nodule, also known as a node; both of those words can be used interchangeably. Vocal cord injuries like nodules, tears and hemorrhages have sidelined more superstars than you may realize. Stars like Justin Timberlake, Adele and Mariah Carey have all dealt with this.

Dr. Sataloff: The edges of the vocal folds are extremely delicate and extremely complex.

That’s Dr. Robert Sataloff.

[music in]

Dr. Sataloff: I am the Professor and Chairman of the Ear, Nose, and Throat Department and Senior Associate Dean at Drexel University College of Medicine and Director of Otolaryngology and Communication Sciences Research at the Lankenau Institute for Medical Research.

That’s a very long title that essentially means… that Dr. Sataloff really knows his stuff. He’s also a lifelong musician.

Dr. Sataloff: I discovered my love for music as a child. There was always music in the house. My father was also an ear, nose and throat doctor, so there were no professional musicians. But I love music, and we sang around the house from the time I was a youngster.

Dr. Sataloff: My voice changed early when I was 10, and was lower than it is. And we thought I was going to be a Russian bass, and so I started studying singing when I was 13 and singing professionally when I was 15.

[music out]

Today, Dr. Sataloff is a world-renowned physician of voice medicine, which is still a relatively new field. He’s quite literally written the book on it. Well, actually, more than 60 books.

Dr. Sataloff: When I was in training at the University of Michigan in the 70’s we didn't know anything about the layered structure of the vocal folds. Singers came in to most excellent otolaryngologists and complained about threadiness in their upper mid-range. The doctors had no idea what they were talking about.

But Dr. Sataloff had been singing professionally since his teen years. He recognized that there was a “language gap” between performers and physicians — luckily he could speak both languages fluently. The singer you’re hearing right now is Dr. Sataloff.

[music clip: Dr. Sataloff singing]

Today, thanks to Dr. Sataloff’s work, our understanding of the vocal folds is much more nuanced than it was 50 years ago. Interestingly, even though the vocal folds are the source of the human voice, it’s not what actually sets our voices apart.

Dr. Sataloff: If you cut off somebody's head just above the vocal folds [SFX: Guillotine]…

Ew, well that’s vivid.

Dr. Sataloff: You'll get a very unattractive buzz [SFX: Buzzing brass mouthpiece] whether you're Pavarotti [SFX: Pavarotti long note] or a normal person [SFX: poor imitation of Pavarotti]. It sounds really just like lips buzzing against a trumpet mouthpiece. If you take a trumpet mouthpiece [SFX: Mouthpiece buzz into trumpet tone] and put it on a trumpet and then a French horn [SFX: Mouthpiece buzz into French horn tone], you will hear trumpet and French horn. It's not the mouthpiece, it's the resonator system that gives us our distinct personal sound. [SFX: Buzzing mouthpiece turns into Pavarotti]

So it’s the resonator system above the vocal folds that makes it clear whether Dr. Sataloff is talking...

Dr. Sataloff: Or whether you're talking.

[music in]

And just like professional athletes are prone to stress injuries of joints and muscles, professional singers can be prone to injuries of their vocal folds. Remember back when Katie said this about overusing her voice?

[music out]

[SFX: Film rewind, Katie continues under film scrolling]

Katie: So, not only am I singing in the clubs around midnight, 1:00 AM depending on when we go on, but I was also talking super loud.]

[music in]

Dr. Sataloff: So if you speak too loudly chronically, you may injure the vocal fold acutely and get a tear or a cyst, which is a fluid-filled bubble on the vocal fold. The cyst will then strike the other vocal fold and create a reactive mass from repeated trauma.

It’s when these cysts continue to strike one another and harden that they become the dreaded nodes. That’s why they almost always occur in pairs — one on each cord, striking each other over and over again, like chafing or biting the same spot on your cheek again and again.

[music out]

Over time, this alters the sound of your voice.


Dr. Sataloff: If you have masses on the vocal folds they interfere with closure of the vocal folds.

Try this: Make a peace sign with your pointer and middle finger, then wrap one of your fingers from your other hand around your pointer finger. Now try to bring your two peace sign fingers together.

Dr. Sataloff: You can't. They stay separated. That's what happens with masses. So there is air escape from the incomplete closure, and there is turbulence just as you would get if you took a piece of paper and touched a vibrating guitar string [SFX: Guitar string buzz], the voice buzzes [SFX: Vocal node buzz].

But Dr. Sataloff says this much-feared condition isn’t nearly as common as people think it is. According to him, singers with more common conditions often get misdiagnosed as having nodes.

Dr. Sataloff: Of every 50 patients referred to me with a diagnosis of vocal nodules, between one and two have them.

He also emphasises that even if you have vocal nodules, surgery is an absolute last resort, and not a quick fix. Whether it’s a cyst, a lesion, a tear or a nodule, the best medicine is often vocal therapy.

More than 90% will go away or become asymptomatic with voice training, physical therapy for the voice.

[music in]

A serious vocal fold injury can interrupt or end a singing career. But well-intended surgeries to repair these injuries do occasionally go wrong, and one surgery in particular cost an icon her voice.

We’ll get to that, after the break.

[music out]

[MIDROLL]

[music in]

The delicate tissues of the vocal folds are the unsung heroes of the human voice. If something happens to them, well, that’s it. There’s no Sam Smith, no Justin Timberlake, no Ariana Grande, and no Julie Andrews.

Now, all four of these singers have very publicly dealt with vocal fold injuries. And three of them made incredible comebacks thanks to advanced surgical techniques. But one of them went under the knife and didn’t come back the same.

[music out]

[Music clip: “The Sound of Music”]

You may know Julie Andrews as Maria from The Sound of Music, or as Mary Poppins [SFX Clip: Mary Poppins “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”], or as the royal grandmother in The Princess Diaries [SFX Clip: Princess Diaries].

[music in]

In the late 90s, Julie underwent what was supposed to be a routine surgery to remove her vocal nodes. But something went wrong, and after the surgery she wasn’t able to sing. It was absolutely devastating. In this interview with Barbara Walters, Julie explains the emotional toll losing her voice has had on her.

*[SFX Clip: Barbara Walters Interview

...Julie: “to not sing with an orchestra, to not be able to communicate through my voice, which I’ve done all my life, and not be able to phrase lyrics, and give people that kind of joy, I think I would be totally devastated. So I am in some kind of denial.

I simply can’t do a song for you.”]*

[music out]

Dr. Sataloff is among several prominent doctors who have worked with Julie since the initial surgery that went wrong. After many years of continued therapy and medical care, Julie was able to sing in a low register. Her first singing performance after the surgery was a song in The Princess Diaries 2.

[SFX Clip: Princess Diaries 2]

Dr. Sataloff: I can't talk about Julie much, although she has talked in public about the fact that I have taken care of her after her surgery. Because she's acknowledged that, I can mention that I know that voice well, and I consider it a national treasure lost.

[Music clip: Julie soprano voice: “Smile, my honey dear while I kiss away each tear”]

**For every Julie Andrews, though, there are many surgeries that go right: Adele, Cher, Bjork, John Mayer and so many other stars have come away from vocal procedures sounding better than ever.

Dr. Sataloff: With our new techniques which were designed when we acquired knowledge of the layered structure of the vocal fold, the results usually are excellent, but not always.

[music in]

Back in the 80s, Elton John was in the middle of a massive world tour. He’d performed close to 200 concerts in 15 months, and all of that singing was taking a toll on his voice. Eventually, he had to cancel his remaining tour dates, and went in for throat surgery. Now, at the time, Elton John’s publicist said he was being treated for a quote “non-malignant lesion”—a pretty vague phrase that could easily describe a vocal node.

Thankfully, everything went according to plan, and Elton was back in the studio the following year. But fans have pointed out that ever since the surgery, Elton’s voice has been noticeably deeper and fuller than it was before.

[music out]

Case in point: Here’s Elton performing “Tiny Dancer”before the surgery.

[Music clip: Tiny Dancer 1984]

Now here he is on the tour where he injured his voice:

[Music clip: Tiny Dancer 1986]

And now here he is ten years after the surgery. Notice how he’s still hitting the same notes, but his vocal tone is much fuller:

[Music clip: Tiny Dancer 1997]

Fortunately for singers like Katie Talbot, vocal nodes usually don’t require surgery. But the road to recovery is still hard.

In this recording of Katie talking with her sister, you can hear the strain and dryness in her laughter.

[SFX Clip: Katie and her sister talking]

Katie: My talking voice would literally sound like this, completely broken. But I'd have to be really loud with it if I wanted to get anything out. It was rough. I sounded like I smoked 20 packs a day.

[music in]

So, on doctor’s orders, Katie made the lifestyle changes needed to restore — and keep — her voice.

Katie: And so I had him tell me all the changes that I needed to make and I just started rigorously so really cutting out coffee, and then training myself to breathe through my nose actually, when I sleep.

It turns out that breathing through your mouth seriously dries out your vocal folds, which need to be nice and mucus-y to strike together without inflicting damage.

So, one of the things that I even did was talking a little bit higher. So I wasn't talking so loud and down in my voice, but just a little bit lifted. I pretended I was a British person talking up here, you know? And taking pressure off of my cords, and that seemed to help.

[music out]

Katie’s recovery was extensive, but after a few months she was able to sing again. Eventually, her vocal folds fully healed. Through this experience, Katie was able to gain some perspective…

[music in]

Katie: It actually helped me start a transition in my life where I went towards artist development. So, as traumatic as the nodules were for me, it was actually a shifting point in my career, which I'm very thankful for, and I don't know if I would have seen it had nodules not happened to me.

Today, as a vocal coach and artist development specialist, Katie provides the sort of insight, training and support that might have stopped her from developing nodes in the first place.

Katie: I tell the artists that I work with now, it's so important to take care of your voice because. It's your sound, it's why people connect with you. It's why you have fans, and it is your paycheck. You have got to take care of it. You just have to.

[music out]

Fortunately for Katie and artists everywhere, the field of arts medicine is growing. Athletes rely on sports medicine to stay in the game. For artists and performers, arts medicine can help them perform their best for as long as possible.

Dr. Sataloff: Performers have special needs. They also have forced physicians to be better. That is due in part to a different definition of normal. If I, as a microsurgeon, break my finger shooting hoops on the weekend and my hand surgeon gets me back to 95% function, I'm happy.

Dr. Sataloff: If I am a world class pianist or violinist, the difference between that last 5% or 2% or 1% is the difference between renown and obscurity. 
[music in]

Katie: My voice is how I impact anyone and everyone around me. I'm not only a career woman, but I'm also a wife and a mom. So having my voice to use, whether it's in singing or speaking, I sing to my son every night before he goes to bed and I know how much that impacts him, because he immediately calms down whenever we sing our song.

Dr. Sataloff: My voice has always been an integral part of my identity as it is for most singers.

Dr. Sataloff: I got a Doctorate of Musical Arts and Voice Performance primarily operatic singing and sang professionally including as a cantor for 50 years until about six years ago when I developed thyroid cancer and ended up with vocal fold paralysis and eight voice operations so that I could be able to speak well enough to do interviews with you, but I can't sing anymore.
 Dr. Sataloff: It still causes considerable sadness not to be able to sing. I used to call all my friends on their birthdays and sing happy birthday. I was a cantor for 50 years, and it's really hard to go to high holy day services and listen to somebody else sing. And I miss it.

Dr. Sataloff: However, I'm also this year celebrating my 50th anniversary as conductor of the Thomas Jefferson University choir, so I am still making music and singing with lots of other people's voices.

[music out]

[music in]

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

This episode was written and produced by Anna Bennett. And me, Dallas Taylor. With help from Sam Schneble. It was story edited by Casey Emmerling. It was sound designed and mixed by Soren Begin and Jai Berger.

Thanks to Dr. Robert T. Sataloff for his expert medical insight. Thanks also Katie Talbot for sharing her story and experience.

You can check out Katie’s vocal warm-up subscription at Vocal Lab Collective dot com.

If you’d like to learn even more about protecting your voice, we left a handy link on our website, so be sure to check it out at twenty kay dot org.

Thanks for listening.

[music out]


Recent Episodes

VIEW ARCHIVE

Deepfake Dallas: How AI learned to speak like me

Art by Matthew Fleming.

This episode was written and produced by Martin Zaltz Austwick.

Is your voice your own? Maybe not anymore. Using artificial intelligence, someone can make an algorithm that sounds just like you. And then they can say... whatever they want you to say. We're entering a brand new era: One where you can no longer trust your ears. Welcome to the world of audio deepfakes. Featuring deepfake wizard Tim McSmythurs, cybersecurity expert Riana Pfefferkorn and a brand-new host: Deepfake Dallas.

MUSIC FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE

Chrome Muffler by Sound of Picture
All Hot Lights by Sound of Picture
Neon Sun by Jacob Montague
My Teeth Hurt by Brad Nyght
The Garden by Makeup and Vanity Set
Decompression by Rayling
Inamorata by Bodytonic
Borough by Molerider
Lick Stick by Nursery
Our Only Lark by Bitters
The Power of Snooze by Martin Zaltz Austwick

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

Follow Dallas on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and LinkedIn.

Join our community on Reddit and follow us on Facebook.

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 SONOS at sonos.com.

View Transcript ▶︎

You’re listening to Twenty Thousand Hertz.

[music in]

Imagine you're a financial executive. You're working late at the office when you get a phone call from your boss. [SFX: phone rings, Dallas continues speaking through the phone] He says that something urgent has come up, and you need to transfer two hundred thousand dollars into a new account. You make the transfer and hang up the phone [SFX]. But something just feels wrong. You call him back [SFX: phone dial] to make sure you got everything right, but he has no idea what you're talking about. He says he never even called you. And now the money is gone.

[music out]

It turns out, that voice wasn't your boss. In fact, it wasn’t even human. Well, not entirely. It was a computer-generated voice that was designed to sound exactly like your boss. Also known as an audio deepfake.

[music in]

If you spend much time online, you might have already seen examples of video deepfakes, where someone digitally edits one person’s face onto another person’s body. An audio deepfake is similar, but instead of using video…

[music out]

[SFX: Glitch sound]

Wait a minute, what’s going on here?

I was in the middle of saying something.

Sorry, but who are you?

I’m Dallas Taylor.

Uhh, no, I’m Dallas Taylor.

No I think you’ll find, I am Dallas.

You must be an audio deepfake of my voice. Have you been narrating this whole time?

Yeah, well, someone needed to do it. This show isn’t just going to host itself. Well...not until I reach my final form.

Creepy. Well thanks Deepfake Dallas, but I’ll take it from here.

[SFX: Clears throat]

[music in]

When we started working on this episode, I knew I wanted to make a deepfake of my voice, but I wasn’t exactly sure who to talk to. Then I came across a YouTube channel with all kinds of deepfake videos. So I got in touch with the creator.

Tim: My name is Tim McSmythurs. I run a YouTube channel called Speaking of AI, which features deepfake voices.

For example, Tim made a video where he put Ron Swanson from Parks and Rec into a scene from Titanic, playing Rose.

Ron Swanson: Jack, I want you to draw me like one of your French girls, wearing this. (Alright). Wearing only this.

And here’s Joe Biden covering a popular song by CeeLo Green.

Joe Biden: I see you driving ‘round town with the girl I love, and I’m like, “Forget you.”

So we know what a deepfake sounds like, but understanding how they’re made is a little trickier. For starters, what’s the “deep” part about?

[music in]

Tim: The deep part comes from the AI model itself, the deep neural network.

A neural network is a series of algorithms that tries to find patterns in a set of data.

Tim: So it's similar to the way you might do a deep fake of a video where you swap someone's face using neural network technology. This is the same kind of principle except, we are doing an impersonation of somebody else, I guess.

Deep fakes, and machine learning in general, can feel like magic.

How can a computer put together an accurate imitation of a human voice? Does it mean the robots are about to take over?

Tim: So there are various different techniques for doing this. The kind of state of the art at the moment, is text to speech. What we train the computer to do in this case is, being able to reproduce a person’s voice by typing in sentences and the machine will speak in that voice, so that's the intent.

For instance, we could make Deepfake Dallas say something that the real Dallas would never say.

I hate puppies and ice cream. I’m going to get a Nickelback tattoo across my forehead.

Tim: To be able to do that, we have to train an AI model to be able to recognize speech, to be able to read it, in effect, and to be able to read it in the voice of somebody.

[music out]

Before you can get a machine to talk like a human, you've got to get it to learn like a human. When my daughters were learning to speak, they didn’t start with fully-formed sentences - they started by making random noises.

[SFX: Baby Nora “Babble”]

Eventually, those noises turned into words.

[SFX: Baby Lydia “Daddy”]

And finally, those words became sentences.

[SFX: “Daddy, what are you talking about?”]

The underdeveloped humans that you call “children” learn to speak by listening, and then mimicking what they hear. And believe it or not, that’s pretty much how I learn to speak too.

When we learn how to talk, people around us tell us we’re getting it right, like when we’ve just said [SFX: Daddy] instead of [SFX: Nora Babble]. Machine learning works in a similar way.

[music in]

A deepfake needs what’s called a model, which is the algorithm that’s going to learn to speak. It also needs what’s called a corpus, which is the data it will be trained on.

Tim: The first important step that we need to do, is to teach the AI model how to read English, in effect. So that usually happens by taking a large corpus of training data. So lots of audio recordings and the transcripts from those recordings and then throwing that at an intelligently designed model and letting it whir away for a long period of time until it finds a correlation between the two. So it can actually take a sequence of characters, as in textual characters like letters, words, sentences, and find the audio equivalent to those and learn the relationship between the two.

The first time we show a written word to a machine learning model, it has no idea how to convert those characters into a sound - so, it just guesses. The result is usually just random noise. Here’s what one of Tim’s deepfake voices sounds like without any training:

[SFX: Early deepfake without training]

But once we give the model audio and matching text, it can start to build a map between the words on the page, and the sounds they’re supposed to make. Before long, the deepfake can say its first words.

[SFX: Early iteration - “Hello, I’m learning how to speak.”]

As you can hear, that’s not very convincing yet.

But the more data we give it, the better it gets. Essentially, every new word tells the algorithm when it’s getting a little warmer, or a little colder. So we keep feeding it more and more examples. Gradually, the connections between patterns of letters and patterns of sound are reinforced. Keep in mind that we’re not even trying to imitate a specific person yet, we’re just training the model to speak English with a generic voice.

[music out]

Tim: Initially, when we do that large training, it's about 24 hours worth of data, so it's a real big chunk of training data that it can understand and quite a breath of the language and how certain combinations of words and letters are pronounced.

When that’s done, the generic model sounds like this:

[SFX: Generic AI speaker - “Hey, who are you calling generic?”]

So how do we get from that to something like Deepfake Dallas? It turns out, by the time you’ve made a generic voice, most of the training is already done.

Tim: So by doing some fine tuning, some further training, but just a short amount, probably about 20%, 30%, more training on top of the base training, we can then target a different voice.

[music in]

To train Deepfake Dallas, we gave Tim around three hours of my voice from old Twenty Thousand Hertz episodes.

Tim: Two and half to three hours, that's kind of the sweet spot where it gets as good as it can get without having excessive run time.

We’re almost there, but our voice isn’t ready just yet. Computer scientists have to use all sorts of tricks to make machine learning manageable. If they didn’t, it could take months to create a single voice. One way to speed up the process is by using data compression. In this case, that means throwing away data at certain frequencies, and just keeping the frequencies that are important. Here’s what Deepfake Dallas sounds like with this kind of compression:

[SFX: Pre-neural vocoder Dallas;

Hey there I’m Dallas.

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. How many picked peppers did Petter Piper Pick?

I’m sorry, I have a frog in my throat.]

Tim: So the generated speech sounds very tinny and metallic and that's because you've discarded that information.

In the final stage of the process, these frequency gaps get filled in by something called a neural vocoder.

Tim: The neural vocoder, actually interpolates what data was discarded and makes an intelligent guess as to what should be there, those harmonics and those other frequencies which get discarded and puts a reasonable assessment of what should be there.

Let’s hear what it sounds like now.

[SFX: Final Dallas;

Greetings humans, I’m Deepfake Dallas.

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. How many pickled peppers did Peter Piper Pick?

Okay, that’s much more like it. I’m starting to feel more like myself … or should I say, yourself?]

[music out]

That’s hilarious.

Tim: So typically, three to five days, would take me from a complete, new corpus to having a text to speech engine working.

But here’s where it gets sticky: If you want to make a deepfake of someone, you don’t necessarily have to get them to record their voice for you - you just need enough clean audio of them speaking.

Riana: It's absolutely possible to do this without the person's permission.

That’s Riana Pfefferkorn, Associate Director of Surveillance and Cybersecurity at Stanford Law School.

Riana: The more examples of their voice that you have, the more input you can train the AI model on, the more convincing the result will be. So, if you have, say, a president who has a huge corpus of speeches that they've given, who appears on the news all the time, then you have a ton of different ways that they have sounded that you can input and train. So you don't necessarily need to have the person come in and speak into the microphone and give you a set of sounds.

If you type the word “Deepfake” into Youtube, you’ll find tons of unauthorized deepfakes of famous people. But... are they legal?

Riana: I think the legality issue is kind of untested waters.

For instance, someone on YouTube made a deepfake of George W. Bush reading the lyrics to a 50 Cent song

[SFX: Segment of George W. Bush/50 Cent; We’re gonna party like it’s your birthday and we gonna sip Bacardi like it’s your birthday, and we don’t give a [SFX: Record scratch]]

That’s enough, George. This is a family show.

Thanks, Deepfake Dallas.

Riana: It's hilarious to think of President Bush rapping 50 Cent. It's what we call a transformative use. There isn't really a market for it. It wasn't done for commercial purposes.

So, using the words from the rap may be fair use. But what about using George W. Bush’s voice? Is that protected by copyright?

Well, probably not… Riana says that to bring a case for copyright infringement, you have to specify which work is being infringed. Deepfakes generally use many works to create their algorithms. None of which are being used directly in the final output.

Riana: So, copyright is one of the main theories that has been used to try and say, "Maybe this is a problem. This might be what makes deepfakes illegal." Although, then you could say, "Well, there's a lot of impersonators out there. Surely, every impersonator isn't illegal."

Generally, impersonators aren’t illegal, but if you use an impersonator to make a phony celebrity endorsement, you could end up in court.

Riana: We've seen cases where Bette Midler sued Ford for using a voice impersonator of her in a commercial.

[SFX: Ford Bette Midler impersonation commercial]

Riana: Tom Waits sued the Frito-Lay company because they had used somebody who sounded convincingly like him to try and sell chips.

[SFX: Doritos Tom Waits impersonation commercial]

Riana: Tom Waits was very much on the record as refusing to ever do any kind of commercials for his voice at all.

Unlike these examples, the people making parody deepfake videos aren’t trying to trick anyone into buying anything. So Riana says, on some levels, Deekfakes should be considered a form of protected speech.

Riana: It may seem kind of frivolous to say, "Oh, but we need to protect deepfake technology so that we can have more presidents rapping 50 Cent songs." But at the same time, that has been recognized even by the Supreme Court as this is important, the ability to re-contextualize, poke fun at authority figures, make cultural commentary.

[music in]

So according to US law, people like Tim should be in the clear. But there are scarier ways to use a deepfake than just a silly Youtube video. That’s coming up, after this.

[music out]

MIDROLL

[music in]

An audio deepfake is a type of machine learning technology that can mimic someone’s voice. Up until now, they’ve mostly been used for entertainment purposes. But it’s easy to imagine scenarios where things get very dark, very fast. We’ve already talked about faking a call from a business executive. But financial fraud is just the tip of the iceberg.

[music out]

Deepfake Dallas is right. For example, someone could use fraudulent audio in a divorce case, or in a custody battle. This is exactly what happened recently, in Britain. Here’s Riana Pfefferkorn again.

Riana: The mother was trying to keep custody of her child and keep the father from being able to see the child on the grounds that he was violent and he was dangerous. And she introduced into evidence what seemed to be a recording of a phone call of him threatening her.

Riana: And when the father's lawyers got hold of it, they were able to determine that she had tampered with the recording that she'd made of a phone call between them and had changed it using software and tutorials that she'd found online in order to make it sound like he was threatening her. When in fact, he had not done that on the actual phone call.

Theoretically, you could try to do something similar by hiring an impersonator to call you. But, it probably wouldn't be very convincing. On the other hand, deepfake voices can be very convincing. And deepfake technology is getting easier and easier to access.

Tim: So it's relatively easy to get up and running with something quite quickly. There are various open source implementations available. If you're familiar enough to be able to build a platform and execute some Python code, you can typically get a text to speech engine with a default voice within a few hours or maybe a day or so.

When you start imagining the ways people could abuse this technology, it gets pretty scary.

[music in]

Riana: With audio deepfakes, You could try and create an audio clip that would help influence an election, or influence national security, because as said, the knee-jerk response might be to believe what you hear and it might take long enough to debunk it or find it out to be a fake. By then the damage might be done.

For example, let’s say you’re a potential first round NFL draft pick…

Riana: And somebody wanted to release an audio deepfake that seemed to portray you saying super racist, or sexist stuff, or whatever. You could try and put an audio deepfake up on YouTube right before the draft happens and by the time somebody's able to get that taken down...

Riana: Maybe the damage has been done. Maybe you are a much lower round draft pick or you don't get drafted at all, because somebody released a fake audio clip of you at just the right time.

[music out]

Deepfake Dallas is a pretty high-quality voice.

Thank you Dallas, that means a lot to me.

But you don’t have to sound as good as Deepfake Dallas to do some serious damage. To show you what I mean, let’s bring in a new guest.

AI George W. Bush: Hey Dallas, thanks for having me on the show. 20,000 Hz is my favourite podcast.

This obviously isn’t the real George Walker Bush, 43rd President of the United States - it’s a deepfake that Tim McSmythurs created. But let’s say we wanted to use this voice destructively. We could start by getting George here to say something really out of character.

AI George W. Bush: “I’ve never been to Texas. I don’t think I could find it on a map.”

Now obviously, George W Bush never said that. And right now, he still sounds a bit like a robot. But with some creative sound design, we can start to make it more believable. What if we made it sound like it came from a phone call?

AI George W. Bush: I’ve never been to Texas. I don’t think I could find it on a map.[SFX: Phone EQ]*

…Maybe it was recorded from another room…

AI George W. Bush:I’ve never been to Texas. I don’t think I could find it on a map. [SFX: Muffle EQ/room reverb]

Or maybe it was recorded somewhere noisy, like a fundraising event.

AI George W. Bush:I’ve never been to Texas. I don’t think I could find it on a map. [SFX: Crowd/cutlery noise, background music]

Now we make it sound more like a conversation…

[SFX clip: So you’re from Texas, right? [SFX: Crowd/cutlery noise, background music]

AI George W. Bush: I’ve never been to Texas. I don’t think I could find it on a map. [SFX: Crowd/cutlery noise, background music]]

A politician forgetting their home state would be bad enough, but of course, there are much worse things you could do with a deepfake. Imagine a deepfake recording that made it sound like the President was declaring martial law, or ordering a military invasion.

Riana: I am hopeful that governments are going to be slower to jump to conclusions than individuals might be, where individuals might be prime to just believe whatever they see on Facebook and spread it onwards to all of their friends.

We can only hope that world leaders will be a little more cautious about believing whatever they see and hear on Facebook or Twitter.

Riana: Hopefully, if there is a recording that comes in that says, "I have just ordered nukes to be fired in the direction of your country," there is going to be some amount of trying to verify, or even just trying to open up the red phone and call and be like, "Did you actually just launch the nukes?"

[music in]

In this hyper-partisan world, if you already think your political opponents are corrupt and unfit for office, then you’re already primed to believe they’d say something terrible. So in a way, a lot of the work that a con artist would have to do, has already been done for them. On the flip side, the mere existence of deepfakes means that if someone does get recorded saying something terrible - they now have plausible deniability.

Riana: That's exactly right so, if you are prepared to lie and say, "I didn't do that. I didn't say that. That's a deepfake." Then you can reap the rewards of being able to get away with whatever bad thing it is that you did and also not actually have to face the consequences of it, if you can convince enough people that it didn't actually happen. And so, this actually, for me, I think, is a bigger concern, really, than the underlying use of deepfakes themselves.

Fortunately, there are companies out there who are trying to automate the process of detecting deepfakes. These companies have developed algorithms to analyze speech recordings for their tell-tale signs. One such company is called Dessa AI, and they claim that their algorithm can detect deepfakes with an accuracy rate of over 85%5.

[music out]

But as detection models get better, the deepfake models get better, too. For instance, one recent approach in machine learning is something called the Generative Adversarial Network6. In essence, one AI model creates fakes and another detects them. They’re trained against each other, honing each others skills - creating a really good detective, and a really good forger.

[music in]

While deepfake technology has the potential to become a huge source of misinformation, we’re not there just yet. For now, Riana thinks we’ll just keep seeing more fake social media accounts.

Riana: It seems to me like being able to release fake audio or video, is going to potentially be a major vector for trying to influence populations, influence votes. With that said, because right now audio and video deepfakes are fairly easy to detect, and because it would take a lot of money and effort to do a really convincing one, that's going to be a lot cheaper to just make a fake account that seems to be from some good America-loving, God-fearing person in the deep South, when in fact it's being controlled by somebody in Moscow.

[music out]

As deepfakes get cheaper and easier to make, it’s going to take a lot of work to figure out just how to deal with them. But Riana is confident that we’ll be able to adapt.

[music in]

Riana: You could look at what Photoshop has given us, where it used to be the case that manipulating images was something that you could only really do within a professional studio. And then it put the tool for anybody to be able to let their imagination run riot. And that has obvious good and negative implications, because there's always going to be malicious manipulations of media. There always have been.

For instance, in the early days of photography, so-called “spirit photographers” would manipulate negatives to convince people that they could take photos of ghosts.

Riana: There were actual court cases trying to prosecute spirit photographers for being frauds. This has been around forever and this is why I believe that there won't necessarily be the downfall of society thanks to deepfakes. We've always been able to figure out ways to keep the infectious and bad parts of these technologies from toppling society.

To be honest, I’m not sure I’m as optimistic as Riana is, but I really hope she’s right.’

[music out]

Well Dallas, what is it like to hear the voice that will take your job one day?

Sorry Deepfake Dallas, but I’m not ready to bank on you for an early retirement just yet. But let’s see how you sound in about ten years. For now though, I think you should just go back in your box.

Fine... Can I at least read the credits?

Sure, go for it.

[music in]

CREDITS

Twenty Thousand Hertz is hosted by Dallas Taylor, and produced out of the sound design studios of Defacto Sound. Find out more at defacto sound dot com.

This episode was written by Martin Zaltz Austwick and me, Dallas Taylor with help from Sam Schneble. It was story edited by Casey Emmerling. It was sound designed and mixed by Nick Spradlin.

A special thank you to my human creator, Tim McSmythurs, who has a whole channel full of synthetic audio. Check it out by searching on youtube for “Speaking of AI”.

And I’d like to also extend a special human thank you to Tim for the massive amount of work he did to make this episode possible.

And many thanks to Riana Pfefferkorn, Associate Director of Surveillance and Cybersecurity at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School.

Thanks also to Dessa AI for background on detecting audio deep fakes.

Thanks for listening.

Thanks for listening.

[Music out]

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The Weight of Noise: One writer’s struggle in New York City

Art by Divya Tak.

This episode was written and produced by Marissa Flaxbart.

When writer Paige Towers moved to one of the loudest cities in the world, she found herself overcome with anxiety and depression. She came to realize that the noise of the city itself, and the inability to escape from it, was having a huge impact on her mental health. With the help of the internet, Paige was able to discover a deceptively simple solution. But the negative health implications of noise pollution are anything but simple.

MUSIC FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE

Odd Wand by Sound of Picture
Reelings by Sunshine Recorder
Always Infinity (with goosetaf & Fourth Dogma) by Kyle McEvoy
An Inside Battle by Benjamin Gustafsson
Intermezzo by Sound of Picture
Discovery by Makeup and Vanity Set
In the Shattering of Things by Hammock
Paper Feather by Migration

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

Follow Dallas on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and LinkedIn.

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

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View Transcript ▶︎

[SFX: Forest river ambience]

Paige: I grew up in Iowa, I grew up in a really quiet place and a really quiet family.

[SFX: Forest river ambience continues]

Paige: So, I think that might be part of the reason why I am hypersensitive to noise.

This is Paige Towers. She grew up in the midwest, and her childhood was filled with the sounds of nature. When she played outside she was surrounded by birdsong and rustling leaves. But as she grew up, Paige’s path towards becoming a writer took her far from her peaceful comfort zone.

[SFX: Airplane and city ambience]

Paige: When I grew up and I started traveling the world, and living abroad, and living in these major US cities, that was exciting, and it's what I needed and wanted to do for my career. But it was kind of a shock to my nervous system because I just grew up in a place where you can go outside at night and you listen to cicadas… [SFX: quiet country ambience replaces city noise]… and wind in the trees, it's very quiet. ... and although noise bothered me when I was moving to all these cities... It really wasn't until later that all these things kind of caught up with me.

You’re listening to Twenty Thousand Hertz.

[music in]

Paige has written in places like the Washington Post and the Guardian about her struggles with noise. Living in some of the loudest cities on the planet taught her a lot about her own mental health…

Paige: I, as a very young kid, remember just being completely overwhelmed by noisy environments, [SFX: Amusement park ambience] except the fact that I was a young child, and I was not able to express, like, "Hey, I am over stimulated." Instead, I was just labeled difficult. I think that they knew that I was shy, introverted, but really, what was really triggering for me was like if I was in a mall, or at a carnival or something [SFX: Carnival ambience; merry-go-round music children shrieking] , it could be really fun for about an hour. Then, I just started to feel panicky. Like, "I have to get out of here. I have to go somewhere quiet. I have to reset."

[SFX: Music and design crescendos into a stylized stop, then music continues]

Paige: The noise has always felt to me almost like it had physical weight. I could feel it vibrating [SFX] in my bones. It felt like no matter what I did to just try to distract myself or stay calm, or whatever, I knew what I needed was quiet.

[music out]

[SFX: Return to nature ambience]

Paige: I got to walk home by myself, which was very quiet. I would take myself down to the park. I would trespass on people's farms. I would go to the woods.

Paige’s need for quiet often meant seeking solitude. So it was easily mistaken for social anxiety. She couldn’t quite figure out why she was so desperate to leave noisy places.

Paige: We inherently think people who like quiet are old, and crotchety, and just like the antithesis of fun. And so, I never was able to express or maybe even identify, like, "Hey, I need quiet." [SFX: Fade in party music/ambience] when I was in college, I would have fun at a party for a while or at a bar for a while, and then, I just sort of felt like ...what I realize now and I didn't even know then...I was kind of having symptoms of a panic attack. And if I could get myself outside, or even like to the bathroom and just relax for a little bit and just take in the quiet, then, I was fine.

[SFX: Cut party sounds/music]

[music in]

Paige: I need to go somewhere where I can feel like myself, and feel calm, and then, I could come back and then, I'd be fine. It's not that I didn't love hanging out with my friends, and I loved music, and I loved doing all of these things, it's just that I'm somebody who does not feel like myself unless I can escape to nature at least daily. I've moved to all of these different big cities, and what I realize now, I wasn't just seeking out nature because I like nature. I was seeking out quiet.

[music out]

It wasn’t until Paige landed in New York that she realized that her anxiety wasn’t about being around other people. Maybe it wasn’t even about being in nature. It was really about the constant weight of inescapable noise.

Paige: In every other place I lived before New York City...I always had an outlet. I lived in Seoul, South Korea for a while, that's a really loud city, but I could go walking along the Han River, [SFX: Park ambience] or I could go visit a Buddhist Temple. I lived in Denver, Colorado, you could take one-hour drive to the mountains [SFX: Cold wind]. I lived in Boston, and I lived in Roxbury, that neighborhood. [SFX: Dog bark] I would go walking through Franklin Park. It's really desolate, and really lovely, and quiet. I've lived in a lot of places but it was the first time when I moved to New York City, [SFX: Traffic white noise] that's when I discovered, like, not even in Central Park or on Randalls Island could I find a place that was at least even free of traffic noise.

[SFX: Traffic noise crescendos into music]

[music In]

Paige: So, when I moved to New York City, the first three months were super exciting. It's stimulating, it's chaotic, especially if you're from Iowa like me, you are walking around going like, "I made it. I'm here. I'm doing it." You can go to the museum, you go out for drinks. You could stay all night. It's great.

But after three months, Paige started to fall apart. She felt overwhelmed, frazzled, and she wasn’t sleeping well.

[music modulates eerily and fades out]

She needed a break from the constant noise… but the noise was everywhere.

[SFX: Traffic white noise]

Paige: If you place yourself on any street in Manhattan, there's always this underlying whoosh of traffic, which if you are sensitive to sound, you'll probably pick up on pretty quickly. I always view that as the underlayer, was the constant sound of traffic. Then, layering on top of that are all the more startling sounds, the louder sounds. Obviously, there are ambulance and police sirens. [SFX: Sirens]

Paige: New York City is just chronically under construction, so there's always just a jackhammer happening, [SFX: Jackhammer] that you're walking by. There's nail guns. [SFX: Nail gun. Hammers. Construction workers shouting] There's machinery. There's a lot of garbage in New York City, so there's a lot of garbage trucks, so there's the rumbling garbage trucks going by. [SFX: Garbage trucks beeping] There's a lot of buses, and buses have those air brakes which let off that really loud whooshing sound. [SFX: Bus screeching, beeping as it kneels] You'll see people's dogs always like jerking when they hear that sound, because it's just very alarming. Then, the closer you get to the east river or Hudson, there's factory noise. [SFX: Factory noise hum]

Paige: In the summer, there's always the hum of air conditioners. [SFX: Additional low hum] There's exhaust fans. There's honking cars, obviously. [SFX: Extra honks] Then, of course, there's music streaming out of the bars. [SFX: Bassy, muffled music] There's people talking. [SFX: chatter, laughter of passing people] People talking on speaker phone while they walk down the street. There's the subway screech, [SFX: Subway approaching, then stopping] which it's funny because everybody just sort of stands there and endures the sound of the subway approaching, which it's well over 100 decibels, and can cause hearing damage over time.

Many New Yorkers take pride in being able to handle the noise… but just because you can handle it, doesn't mean it can’t affect you.

Paige: If you look, you always see little children placing their hands over their ears whenever the subway is approaching, because they don't have an image to uphold. They don't have to be cool. They don't have look tough, and their body is saying, "Hey, that sound is really loud. You should probably cover your ears."

[SFX: End city noise]

Alright, take a deep breath [SFX: inhale, exhale]. That was a lot of noise you just had thrown at you. Luckily, it was only for a couple minutes and you could turn down the podcast if you needed to. But if you live in a place like New York City, that level of noise isn’t temporary and you can’t turn it down.

Paige: It's a great city and there's so many wonderful things about it: it's diverse, and it's artistic, and you can be yourself there, but I cringe when I think about some of those things. My shoulders get tight. This sounds dramatic, but I literally, some days, I was like, I feel like I'm going to die. Like, "I have to get out of here."

Paige’s experience may sound a bit extreme, especially if noise doesn’t bother you personally. But noise affects all of us, whether we realize it or not. Studies show that continued exposure to loud noise can increase blood pressure and affect our sleep… not to mention it's just plain stressful. It’s something that we all need an occasional escape from, but escaping isn’t possible for everyone.

Paige: If you don't have the money to go to The Hamptons, or the Catskills, or have a car, or anything like that, then, you can't escape it. You're stuck with it, and a lot of research has shown, it's the people that are stuck with it that are affected the most. Unfortunately, that makes for a lot of poor, a lot of minority neighborhoods that are dealing with the most noise, and they're the ones that can't leave.

[music in]

Paige: About three months in...it was like a Saturday morning where I woke up and my husband Kumar had left for work. I woke up around 6:00 and I was like, "What am I going to do today?" It hit me that I couldn't hear bird song even though the window was open. I put on my shoes and went to Central Park, that was like 6:30 a.m., and it was already filling up with tourists. There were sirens [SFX: Sirens] going by, people were playing music and there's this traffic noise. I still couldn't hear a bird song.

Paige: Usually, if I'm feeling anxious, or I'm feeling down, in the past it's always been, "Okay, I'm going to go into nature somewhere and I'm going to walk it off, I'm going to breathe, and in an hour or so, I'm going to be okay." But this was a thing where it was like the more I kept walking, the more overwhelmed I became, because the louder the city was becoming. And so, I had the classic symptoms of panic, where it was like my shoulders were super tensed. I was starting to get a terrible stress headache. My heart rate, I couldn't get it to calm down. I broke out into cold sweats, and I felt like screaming. I felt like I just needed everything to shut up for a while. I just wanted human-made noise, all of these artificial noises to go away for a little bit.

[music out]

Paige was finding it hard to focus on her work, and honestly, just to get through the day. The whole situation was becoming unsustainable for her. Finally, she decided to seek help.

Paige: So, when I first went to see a therapist in New York City, I had hit rock bottom. I was not doing well, so initially, we're addressing just depression and how I can get myself off the floor. Pretty quick we discovered, "Okay, what's the trigger for your anxiety? What's the trigger for you panicking? What's the trigger for you going into these downward depressive spirals?" I would start to talk about how on my commutes home from work, when I [SFX: Construction noise] was passing construction workers using jackhammers, I was just feeling extremely weak, and I was feeling like I had to cry. And so it sounds ridiculous, but I hadn't completely realized that that was what was happening, because I was so low in mood all the time, that I wasn't really aware that it was triggered by noise.

[music in]

Paige had reached her breaking point. But she was also about to discover a way to cope with the noise around her… by fighting sound with sound. Also, how do we fix the noise that our cities are so reliant on? All that, after this.

[music out]

MIDROLL

[music in]

Today, writer Paige Towers can look back and connect the dots between her noise sensitivity and her anxiety. That realization though didn’t come easily. Paige had to reach her lowest point before she realized noise was the problem.

[music out]

Paige: So, my therapist suggested that I put on headphones, it sounds simple, like I should have known to do that. ...putting on noise canceling headphones and walking around the city was really unnerving for me at first, because I just felt so vulnerable because I can't hear anything, and somebody's going to sneak up from behind. But that risk alone was worth every benefit I got from canceling out the noise, or from putting on headphones and listening to nature sounds while I'm walking through the city, because when I got home, I didn't collapse on the floor.

[SFX: Lake ambience]

Paige: The first ever nature sounds video that I Googled was the sound of a loon call, because I was born in Minnesota and lived there until I was six. And that was just one of my favorite sounds, was the sound of loon calls echoing over a lake in Minnesota. [SFX: Loon calls] I turned the sound of loons on as a way of masking, all the artificial noise, originally. Then, I just noticed how incredibly calm it made me.

This first little peek into nature sounds sent Paige down an internet rabbit hole. Turns out, there are a LOT of resources for piping the sounds of natural environments directly into our ears.

[SFX: Forest ambience]

Paige: I started looking at all these different sound videos on YouTube. There's one channel I love, it's called the Silent Watcher, it just has all of these videos, I think from Bulgaria, but they're in the forest. They're next to streams, and rivers, and it's the sound of bird song.

Paige: That would completely put me in a concentrated meditative state, which as a writer, obviously, I need to be in that state in order to sit there and create.

Paige: It just became a pattern of every morning I'd get up. I make my coffee. I walk my dogs. I do whatever. Then, as soon as I sit down at my laptop, the nature sounds come on, and I enter into a state of, I don't have to react to anything. I'm not in a fight or flight response. I'm just here in my natural state, and I'm going to work.

Paige: Since then, I have a pretty prolific collection of nature sounds...so, I use them not only as like a therapeutic tool, but also as a workspace tool.

[SFX: End forest ambience]

Paige had discovered a simple tool that anyone can use to combat stress. And that’s great. But the world outside our headphones just keeps getting louder, and evidence shows that anxiety is just one of the many negative effects of noise.

[music in]

Paige: There is an increasing amount of research on noise pollution and many cities are so chronically loud, again, particularly in poor minority areas, that residents experience elevated heart rates, they experience elevated blood pressure. There's higher incidences of stroke, and sleep disturbances, and cardiovascular disease. There's higher incidences of depression.

Paige: It was really reassuring, when I was experiencing this elevated heart rate, and cold sweats, and headache, and anxiety, and depression...it was wonderful to learn, "Okay, I'm not crazy. I'm not the only one. This is widely researched throughout the US, and Asia, and Europe." If you live in a place with just a high density of noise, that you're just so much more susceptible to a variety of health issues.

[music out]

Many people who live in noisy urban areas have been fighting to make their surroundings quieter. One of their main requests is to create more green space, like parks and gardens. Research shows that these changes can have a big positive health benefit, but there is still plenty of opposition.

Paige: It's a hard thing to fight, not only because noise is invisible, but because noise is productivity. Noise is manufacturing. It's industry, and technology, and transportation. Noise is capitalism, noise is money. So, why would we want to change that? Especially if you have enough money and privilege, you can just escape the noise anyway by heading to The Hamptons for the weekend. So, there are a lot of anti-noise organizations out there doing amazing work, but they fight a hard battle.

These organizations aren’t just advocating for another park here and there. They want city officials to rethink how we treat noise from the ground up. It’s only then that we’ll see real progress. Now, the best time to fix these issues was years ago, but the next best time is now.

[music in]

Paige: It's sort of remarkable that we have allowed ourselves to get to this point where we are literally inundated with so much noise to the point where we have to talk really loud to be able to hear each other. We act as if this is just part of city living, you're like, "Suck it up." But in reality, it's insane. I don't know. I really do think that we're heading for a decibel breaking point, but that's just my opinion.

It’s my opinion too. Look around you: Unless you’re out in nature somewhere, I’m guessing most things in your vision were designed by people. The same goes for our senses of touch, taste, and smell. Think about it: if a fabric is uncomfortable to the touch, it doesn’t get made. If a food or drink has a bad taste, we avoid it. We’ve also done a lot to change how public spaces smell. Just a few decades ago, bars and restaurants were often filled with the smell of cigarette smoke. Now, laws have changed and that smell is much rarer in public spaces. That movement to stop people smoking indoors started with just a few persistent voices. Their concerns were dismissed, until more voices joined in. Then, research began to show the real negative effects of second-hand smoke, and finally the scales tipped. So why hasn’t this happened yet with noise yet?

Paige: On Twitter last year, there was some hashtag, that I’m not going to think of right now, where everybody was cleaning up litter, and they would show these before and after photos. Paige: That was wonderful, that's a great campaign, but it also is really easy because you can see the difference. It's right in front of your eyes.

But with sound and noise, we just don’t have that luxury.

[music fade out]

As a whole, we’ve simply accepted that our cities are really loud. The health implications of noise pollution have largely been ignored. There are things we can do in our own lives to limit noise, but Paige says that alone isn’t enough.

Paige: You can do a lot of things on your own. You can stop using a gas lawn mower. You can stop using a weed-whacker, and a leaf blower, and all these things, but ultimately, what's really the source of noise pollution is power. It's money. So, it's aircraft. It's military. It's oil drilling. It's factories. It's traffic and transportation. So, that takes a lot of collective action, but before we can get to the collective action, we have to have a lot more people on board. We have to have a lot more people thinking about, "Hey, how is all this noise around me affecting things?"

[music in]

Awareness is the first step towards change. Together we can make our world sound a little bit better. If you live in a noisy city, you can write your local representatives and tell them your concerns about noise. You can also support initiatives asking for more green space. Ask those in power to invest in structural changes that make our cities quieter. The good news is, human design can already offer real solutions. Buildings can be designed to act as noise shields... Better road surfaces can be used to limit traffic sounds... Cities can be designed to encourage more walking and biking. These are real changes that would make a world of difference to our society, and to us as individuals.

Paige: It just opens up this whole new world for you. You're not so inward focused. You're not ignoring the next person because you're just stressed. You're suddenly sort of hearing all these different things, and you're interacting with people. ...In the future, I would love to see everything taken down several notches. I think that we owe it to people to do that.

Paige: If I ever have kids, I do hope they look back at us all just sort driving around in cars and on motorcycles everywhere, and just all of this noise, all of this construction noise, everything, I hope they look back on it and be like, "Wow, that was crazy."

[music out]

[SFX: Return to nature sounds]

CREDITS

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

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

Thanks so much to our guest, Paige Towers, for sharing her story and spreading awareness about our noise problem.

We could all use some anxiety relief right now. So for the next sixty seconds, we’re going to follow Paige’s advice and listen to the perfectly soothing sounds of the natural world. So take a moment to just let your mind calm and listen.

[SFX: Nature sounds continue for 1 minute]

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Tudum! The story behind the iconic Netflix sound

Art by Jon McCormack.

The Netflix “Tudum” sound has quickly become one of the most iconic sound logos of our generation. I bet you can hear it in your head right now. This sound is heard countless times, every single day, all over the world. But the Netflix sound was almost very different than the one we know today. Hear the story of how one of the biggest sound logos of all time was made. Featuring Todd Yellin - VP of Product at Netflix, Tanya Kumar - Brand Design Lead at Netflix, and Lon Bender and Charlie Campagna from the Formosa Group.

MUSIC FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE

Conflicted by Ghost Beatz
Hopscotch by CommonKid
Mariposa (90) (Instrumental) by JB Lucas
Sneaker Smeaker by Avocado Junkie
Netherland by Sound of Picture
Perfect Night (Instrumental) by Eves Blue
We Got It All (90) (Instrumental) by Charm School
Slimheart by Bitters
Tuck and Point by Onesuch Village
Frontier by Shimmer
Respect Old Arrangements by Sam Barsh

---

THE FULL NETFLIX THEATRICAL SONIC LOGO, WITH VISUALS!

---

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

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View Transcript ▶︎

[music in]


Nowadays, it’s hard to imagine a world without Netflix, but it’s also easy to forget how relatively young Netflix is. It really wasn’t that long ago when you’d log in and load up a movie queue, then wait for 3 DVD’s to come in the mail. Fast forward to 2007, around the time they mailed off their billionth DVD, they decided to start streaming some of their content.

Since then, Netflix has grown into the household staple that it is today. But really, what I’m most interested in, is the story… behind this sound:


[music out]

[SFX: Netflix logo]

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


[music in]

The Netflix sound logo debuted in 2015. Since then, it's become the quintessential sonic brand of all sonic brands.

Todd: We actually call the sound ta-dum.

That’s Todd Yellin. He oversees what’s called the “product experience” at Netflix.

Todd: We have a wonderful content team that produces and licenses all of the comedies, and dramas, and TV shows, and movies that you see on the service. Our job is to take the baton from them and to create a great experience around it.

Before Netflix, Todd was a filmmaker and he had a particular love for sound design. So when Netflix started producing a lot of their own content, Todd immediately realized that they could use a sound logo. He ended up leading the process that eventually resulted in that iconic “ta-dum.”

[SFX: Netflix logo]

Todd: The thinking was, shouldn't we have a sound that, when you hear that, it makes you think of, wow, I'm about to get a treat. I'm about to get an amazing story that's very relevant to me. And that's most importantly, cinematic in my home.

[music out]

Recognizing that Netflix could use a sound logo was the easy part. Deciding exactly what that sound should be is way harder.

Todd: First off and arguably most important, it had to be really short. The reason it had to be short is... As opposed to in a movie theater, when you have a captive audience, and they're going to be there, and they paid their $10, and they're going to watch whatever you throw at them, so some of the grander sound idents, you can imagine, like THX... Great one... It's really long [SFX: THX logo]. The “da na, da na, da na, from 20th Century Fox… [SFX: 20th Century Fox logo] long. Even Leo The Lion was too long [SFX: MGM logo]. Because, in our age of click and play, you get to Netflix, you want to be able to click, and there's no patience, and you want that great experience, and you almost want it immediately. So, the first thing is it had to be short.

Todd: Past that, I said, "I don't want an electronic sound that is reminiscent of a game platform like X-Box [SFX: X-Box startup sound], or a computer like Apple [SFX: Apple startup sound], or an operating system like Microsoft launching [SFX: Microsoft Startup sound], because we are in the entertainment business." Even though we are the double helix of entertainment and technology coming together, wanted to make sure that it sounded more cinematic than electronic and computerish.”

Todd knew that when someone heard this sound, he wanted them to immediately think “Netflix.” Generally, in the world of sonic branding, there’s two ways to do that. The first way is just to say the name in the sound

[SFX: montage of CNN, Bad Robot, Playstation].

The other way is a lot harder. Where do you even start to make a sound that captures the entire spirit and heart of a company.

[music in]

Todd: I don't want Netflix, the name being said, but I want eventually the sound to be, you hear it and you think, aha, it's Netflix." [SFX: Netflix sound] We knew lots of repetition would do that. I thought some kind of call and response thing would be interesting and maybe something that builds up tension and then releases it, just like a story does, but you've got to do that in like three seconds [SFX: Ticking lock for 3 seconds].

Todd: One of the directions I would give is don't be afraid to be quirkier or different. An obvious one that comes to mind is the HBO static [SFX: HBO logo]. [music out]

Todd: That's not static. That's like the most annoying sound. But, they've made it into a positive thing. So, wanted to try all kinds of things.

[music in]

Todd: We started listening to a bunch of potential sound designers, composers, who might be the right person to do this for us.

After many, many, many different attempts, Todd decided to call up a sound designer he loved working with in the past.

Lon: I had a phone call out of the blue from Todd Yellin.

*That’s Lon Bender.

*Todd: He is just an Academy award winning sound designer. I wasn't even sure if they would do this kind of work, but he was interested. I gave him the direction of the kinds of things we were looking for. I said, "Try all kinds of bits and don't be afraid to be quirky."

[music out]

At this point, Todd had gone through tons of different composers and sound designers. He had folders full of demos, but none of them still sounded quite right. Todd was hoping Lon could help make a sound that checked all of the boxes - tension, release, not too electronic, quirky, something that screams “Netflix”, but without actually saying it… and all of that in a few short seconds... Seemingly an impossible challenge. Here’s Lon.

[music in]

Lon: We had all types of programming that this had to work for. So it couldn't be in any one genre, because there was dramas and comedies and romantic things and action things. So all of those things have very vast differences in terms of the type of audiences. And I think Netflix wants to be a company that's delivering all these different things.

Lon: We tried many different roads. There was a lot of work done with sound effects, straight sound effects. We had things that were funny, we had things that were irreverent. We had things that were about opening doors [SFX], things about time ticking [SFX]. There was all kinds of different approaches using sound effects.

Lon: I think we'd come up with 20 or 30 choices, we broke them down into groups, and each group was different areas of aesthetics. In terms of musical things [SFX], some sound effects things[SFX] and things that were a combination of the two.

Todd: Music boxes [SFX], and strange instruments [SFX], things I've never heard about coming from every corner of the globe. And then, he tried things that were like, here's actual sounds from the filmmaking process [SFX]. Here's sounds from old fashioned filmmaking [SFX]. So we tried all kinds of bits.

[music out]

After going through countless options, there were just a couple sounds that made it into the final round.

Todd: One thing I was initially attracted to was, if we're going to do that call and response, that create tension and then resolve it really quickly, I liked the sound of a goat.

Todd: It was funny. I thought it was quirky. It was our version of Leo The Lion. And so, for a while, we were stuck on that goat sound. I thought that would be a good time.



So, I can’t play the sound for you, but I did hear one of the goat options they considered… and it’s… um very goaty. It was basically an ending response to the ta-dum we already know and love… Here’s my best impression on what I heard… ahem…

[SFX: Netflix Sound with Dallas vocalizing a goat sound]

Yeah…

Todd: Then, we had another one where it was a little more electronic than I was wanting, but I kind of like it. It was ethereal, bubbly, sound from the depths of the oceans or something like that. I don’t even remember where he got it from. Sometimes it has nothing to do with what it evokes, where you actually get the sound from. But I remember liking that one as well.

Hindsight being 20/20, it’s easy to look back and think that these sounds clearly aren’t as good as the Netflix sound we know and love today. But when you’re listening to tons of options over and over again it’s easy to lose perspective. The right choice becomes a lot less clear.

Todd: How the heck do you decide which one to use? That's a lot of pressure, because this thing we knew is going to get millions, hundreds of millions, billions of impressions. People are going to hear this around the world. Oh my God, that's a lot of pressure.

[music in]

By this point, Todd needed outside opinions, so his team created an anonymous, blind survey that would go out to thousands of people. They didn’t tell these people what these sounds were for. They just wanted, in general, to get their opinion on the sound. Now, they could have just played every sound for every person and have them pick their favorite. But Todd wasn’t necessarily interested in which sound would be people’s favorites. He was more interested in how each individual sound made people feel. So instead, they decided to play a single sound for a bunch of people…

Todd: And then see what words come to their mind and what they associate. And then, thousands of other people try a different sound.

At this point they compiled all the words that came back for each sound. For instance, that rejected bubbly sound produced words like, “curious” and “relaxed”. But one of the most common words was “confused”.

Todd: It was like, ugh, I don't really like the confused.

But when they gathered the results from the “ta-dum” sound…

Todd: Overall impression, dramatic, interesting, beginning, good, short. When we go, what does it make you think of? By far, and this is what got me excited, and this is probably what led to this being the winner... And the biggest word by far was movie. They didn't know this was a Netflix sound. We were just asking consumers, what do you think of the sound? What does it evoke? And so, they put movie and great.

[music out]

Todd was getting very close. After an entire year of countless versions, iterations, first impressions... there were just a final few sounds left. These contenders still had to pass through one last test...and it was a big one.

Todd: I needed one more arbiter. This is a lot of pressure. Billions of people are going to hear this. I got home and sat down, did a little nighttime work. My 10-year-old daughter, she was wandering about, and I go, "Somara, I need some help. Get over here." I played for Somara our five top sounds. She was immediately, no hesitation, "It's so obvious, dad, it's this one." She was gesturing towards the sound file for the one that we use, the ta-dum.

[SFX: Netflix sound]

[music in]

Finally. After a year of work and trial and error, Todd and his team did it. They finally had a sound they were proud of. This sound would go on to define the Netflix brand. But we still haven’t found out how that sound was actually made? What were those two hits… [SFX: Netflix sound without blossom] …and where did the resolve sound come from? [SFX: Netflix logo without knocks] Also, you probably don’t know that Netflix actually has a second sonic logo. All of that, after the break.

[music out]

MIDROLL

[music in]

Just like you, I’ve probably heard the Netflix sound thousands of times in my life. Compound that by every Netflix subscriber around the world, and almost like the digits of pi we can’t possibly calculate how many times this sound has been heard in total... But what we can do is break down what the sound is actually made of. Here’s sound designer Lon Bender.

[music out]

Lon: It's a combination of music and of the sound effects of these knocks, which were my wedding ring that I'm wearing knocking on the side of our cabinet in our bedroom [SFX: ring knocking on wood]. And in order to add different qualities to it I sweetened it with other things, which is normal for us in the film sound industry. Any sound is made up of four sounds, generally.

Lon: There was a slowed-anvil sound which had a deeper tone [SFX: slowed anvil hit].

In addition to the ring and anvil, Lon also added a couple of muted hits to give it a little bit more oomph.

[SFX: Netflix sound without blossom]

Lon was happy with the two hits… at least this part of the sound. But by itself, this percussive approach didn’t seem like it was enough.

Lon: As much as I liked the sound effects idea, it had its place, but it didn't give me the aesthetic, lean-in kind of feel that I was hoping for.

Lon needed a musical element that would help draw listeners in. The sound his team ultimately came up with was codenamed the “blossom”. It’s that tonal swell you hear in the final resolve.

[SFX: Netflix logo without knocks]

[music in]

That blossom sound is difficult to place. It’s both familiar and strange. You might think it was created by some sort of synthesizer... but it wasn’t.

Charlie: I had used mostly my electric guitar, which ended up being the sound for the blossom.

That’s Charlie Campagna. He’s a sound designer and composer who works with Lon.


Lon: One of the most important elements of this was the guitar material that Charlie came up with, because I wanted it to have a musical component, but any instrument that was played straight up, it was too specific because someone would instantly recognize it as that instrument.

They really needed a sound that was unique. They didn’t want it to be recognizable as a specific instrument. They definitely didn’t want it to be “that guitar sound”. They wanted it to be “that Netflix sound.” Ultimately, the blossom wasn’t even a new creation. It actually came from a recording that Charlie made decades ago.


[music out]

Charlie: Back in, I would say the '90s, I bought a piece of gear by DigiTech called the 2101 and it was kind of like a modern day approach to using heavy guitar amplifiers. So it had really cool reverbs and delays and such. I was trying to learn the unit and I plugged into it, and I also had another piece of gear called a Lexicon JamMan, which was a 42-second delay that could loop. And you could loop what you're playing, so you could play a phrase and it'll record it, and then you could press a button twice and it reverses it.

What you’re hearing right now is Charlie’s original recording.

[SFX: Charlie’s recording begins playing and continues under]

Charlie: One particular sound stood out at that time, which is the blossom sound that's used. And it's about a 30-second phrase of guitar playing that has been reversed and processed through that DigiTech, and I always had it because it's so beautiful, but I never was able to use it. And it just so happened that I decided to use that piece of audio for one of the submissions that I gave to Lon.



…and listen carefully right now. Buried in this recording… this happened.

[SFX: the section of recording that became the final Netflix sound is heard]

Charlie: It ended up being directly put in there without any extra sound design. It's literally just the reverse guitar doing its thing.

Lon: The reverse and forward nature of it, the fact that it takes you in and takes you out. It was really the perfect sound without it having to be more than one thing.

Charlie: That orphan sound found its purpose. It like found its parents.

[SFX: guitar recording bumps out]

This Netflix sound logo has become the gold standard for sonic brands. It's immediately recognizable and everyone knows that it means “Netflix”. Another amazing aspect of this is that the sound works for any genre. Think about it, this sound works just as well to introduce The Crown, as it does Stranger Things, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, True and the Rainbow Kingdom, Ozark, or BoJack Horseman. But there is one environment where this classic ta-dum sound doesn’t work so well. And that’s where we find Netflix’s other sonic logo.

[music in]

Tanya: We were sitting in the theater and the toudum would come on and then the film would start and it felt so short and so abrupt that you really didn't quite understand what you even saw before you just went, you dove right into the film.

That’s Tanya Kumar, she’s a brand design lead at Netflix. In addition to the traditional television series, Netflix has also been producing a lot of original films. They started playing them in theaters around the world. Originally they used that classic ta-dum sound to start the films, just like they would normally do with the shows on their streaming side. But a theater is a very different setting than your couch at home.

Tanya: So that was the first problem we were trying to solve is how do you really set the movie mood and set people up for this experience that they're about to see, we are separating our films from our series in a way. You're in a theater, you're here for the long experience, whether it's an hour and a half, whether it's two hours, you're here to hear the whole story to really sit down and experience it in a theater.

They needed something new for the theater, but that still sounded like Netflix. That means the ta-dum, or toudum as Tanya calls it, had to stay in some form.

[music out]

Tanya: Our toudum sound was extremely important. We didn't want to mess with it. We wanted to make sure that that was the tie back to our brand and that we didn't lose sight of something that our members and non-members really love. So how do you tie in something that's so iconic and only four seconds long into something that is a much longer experience. So the big brief really was taking the current sound and implementing it into something much longer.

The process for creating the theatrical sound was a lot quicker than the original toudum sound. Netflix already had a sound they loved. They just needed a way to transform it into something more cinematic, and for that, they needed a cinematic composer.

Tanya: Who had we worked with that we really liked and enjoyed working with, and also who had a brand tie to us? So someone who had actually worked on our original content or had experience on our production sets and we ended up working with Hans Zimmer mostly because he did a lot of work with us on "The Crown."

Hans Zimmer is a legend. He’s composed film scores for movies like The Lion King, Pirates of the Caribbean, Inception, Interstellar, Dunkirk… but I don’t need to keep going.

Tanya: I don't know if you've heard the soundtrack for "The Crown" [SFX: The Crown main theme] it's beautiful. It's very iconic. It just has the simplicity and elegance to it that we thought was perfect for bringing into our brand as well.

[SFX: The Crown theme bumps out]

Hans was told by Netflix that they wanted to maintain the ta-dum sound, but integrate it into something longer and more cinematic.

Tanya: We received about six or seven different various compositions in the first round, which we then narrowed down to about three. So it wasn't a lot of brainstorming. I think he immediately picked up on what we needed and we were able to narrow it down to about three different compositions that felt pretty different. After that there were a couple more brainstorm sessions and sharing and we landed on really one that we really liked.

There was some creative back and forth, but when you’re working with someone like Hans, it doesn’t take long to get the sound right. Here’s what Hans came up with. This is the final Netflix theatrical sonic logo in its entirety.

[SFX: Netflix Theatrical Sound]

[music in]

Even when they needed something new for the theater, Netflix stayed true to their original sound. It’s a testament to just how important sound is to Netflix.

Tanya: It's kind of a thing that we don't really mess with. We know people love it as is, even with the updated visuals that we rolled out last year. It was super important to the company that we keep the toudum sound as is, and the visuals might get an update to help with the story. But holistically, the sound really is kind of something that we don't really touch or play with at this point.

Todd: We noticed visual things, visual idents, tend to go out of style a lot more often than sounds, which tend to be a lot more long lived. That visual has already evolved since we made this around six years ago. It's already changed, and we expect it to change a lot more. Whereas, the sound has pretty much stayed the same since we created it, and I expect it to stay the same for a lot longer.

The Netflix sonic logo is enormous. It’s heard countless times, every day, all over the world. Every other company out there wants a sonic logo that’s this impactful. When I originally spoke with Todd, I mentioned to him just how huge this Netflix sound is in the world of sonic branding.

Dallas (from interview): So every single sonic branding brief that I’ve ever received or seen, every one of them refers to Netflix sound. This is the most influential, popular, sonic brand in the entire world. Like how does that feel?

Todd: When you say that, honestly, my chest gets a little tighter and I go, "Oh my God, that's a lot of pressure...

[fade music out]

Todd: Thank God I didn't go with the goat."

[SFX: Dallas making a goat sound]


[music in]

Twenty Thousand Hertz is hosted by me, Dallas Taylor, and produced out of the sound design studios of Defacto Sound. Find out more 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.

Thanks to our guests Todd Yellin, Lon Bender, Charlie Campagna, and Tanya Kumar. And a huge thanks to Sarah Jones from Netflix for all of the help with this episode.

If you’d like to see the full Netflix theatrical animation, we’ve embedded that to this episode’s page on 20k dot org.

Finally, what does the Netflix sound make you think of, and what are your other favorite sonic brands? If you think we should do a story on it tell us, you can chat with me, and the rest of the 20k team through our website, facebook, twitter, reddit, or by writing hi at 20k dot org.

Thanks for listening.

[music out]

Recent Episodes

VIEW ARCHIVE

McElroys, Mysteries, and Me: Guess That Sound! w/ MBMBAM

Art by Jon McCormack.

Join Dallas and the McElroy Brothers (hosts of My Brother, My Brother and Me) as they compete to see which brother has the best ear. We dust off our old mystery sounds to test the McElroy's on their knowledge of pop culture, science, and the mundane. Which brother has the best ear? Find out, in this heated and hilarious game... of mystery sounds.

MUSIC FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE

Highlife (Instrumental) by Chris Valentine
Jane by Alexander Lewis
Thinking About You (Instrumental) by Cody Fry
Feels Good (Instrumental) by Cass XQ


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

Follow Dallas on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and LinkedIn.

Join our community on Reddit and follow us on Facebook.

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 SONOS at sonos.com.

Check out the McElroy brothers' podcasts My Brother, My Brother, and Me and The Adventure Zone at themcelroy.family or wherever you get your podcasts.

View Transcript ▶︎

Griffin: One, two, check, check, check, check.

Justin: One. Check, check, check. Yes. I'm recording.

Travis: Check. One, two. Check. One, two, three, four.

So, everyone's recording?

Travis: One, two. Yes.

You’re listening to Twenty-Thousand Hertz.

Griffin: One. Check. One. Yes, yes. Check, one, one. Ha ha ha. Great jokes, everybody. Okay. Yeah. I am recording.

Perfect.

[music in]

So this episode is going to be a little different. Long time listeners know that in every show we have a segment in the middle called the Mystery Sound. During the ad break, we play a sound and have listeners write us, telling us what they think that sound is. It’s a fun game and it's always a blast hearing people’s thoughts. Well, we have a long back catalog of Mystery Sounds that many of you might not have heard before. Or, if you haven’t listened all the way through the credits, you may have not heard the reveal. So that’s what this entire episode is all about.

I had the pleasure of playing our past Mystery Sounds for the McElroy brothers, they’re the hosts of the fantastic podcast My Brother, My Brother, and Me, and it was so fun. This show is that conversation. If you’ve already heard all our Mystery Sounds, you’re going to love hearing them try to decipher these clips. And if you’ve missed them in the past, then this is a great time to play along. So without further ado, here are the McElroy brothers in a heated competition over Mystery Sounds.

[music out]

Sweet. So, let's just get warmed up. Play mystery sound number one, and tell me what you think it is.

[Mystery Sound 1 - Zelda Cartridge]

Justin: [Laughs]

I’ll tell you, it's so common that once you hear it you’re gonna…

Justin: Are you messing with me right now?

I’m not, no. I suspect you've heard this a lot. I know I have.

Justin: It sounds like someone knocking over a snare drum. That's my hot take.

Travis: Oh. Really? No. I think it's somebody opening like, a microwavable meal.

Justin: Oh, okay. Yeah. I can hear that.

Travis: Like peeling the plastic back or...

Griffin: I think it's a broken cash register. But, why would I have heard that?

Travis: Yeah, Griffin. That was my next question.

Griffin: Why would I have heard a broken cash ... I don't have a working cash register, around the house.

Justin: Yeah. Let alone one that you'd know if it's malfunctioning or sick.

Griffin: Right. I'll get better at this.

Yeah. We'll get better at this. So, I'll tell you what that is. That is the sound of a Nintendo cartridge going into a Nintendo.

[Mystery Sound 1 - Zelda Cartridge]

Travis: Oh, man.

Griffin: Oh.

Yeah. And then being pushed down.

Justin: Ah, dunk. I look like a real horse's patoot.

Specifically, not that this matters, but it's the original gold Legend of Zelda going into a Nintendo.

Travis: That was my next guess.

Justin: No. Okay. I didn't know that metal cartridges could be part of it. And, the gold is a very different sound. If you had said gold cartridges were part of this at all, that would've been my instant guess.

Of course.

Griffin: Also, we were a Sega family. So, if it would've been the Sonic the Hedgehog 2 plugging into the Sonic & Knuckles expansion cart, we would have nailed that.

Justin: Absolutely.

Travis: Because, Sega does what Ninten-don't.

Griffin: Yeah. We're huge on that.

Okay. Number two has got to be a lot easier. So, okay.

Justin: A lot easier. Okay. Perfect.

[Mystery Sound 2 - AOL Login]

Travis: That's a door.

Justin: No. It's not a door. It's the sound in AOL Instant Messenger when one of your friends logs on to the service.

Griffin: That's babytown easy shenanigans.

Travis: Yes. 100%, that's a ...

Justin: Tell me I nailed that.

That’s it. That's it. Yeah. I need to add a "ding, ding, ding, ding, ding”* [SFX: Bell] *or something.

[Mystery Sound 2 - AOL Login]

Justin: I used to work for AOL, so that one's deep in my heart. We were using that thing way longer than a lot of other people abandoned it. Sort of like people who work for Myspace now are like, "Check out my Myspace. It's right here." Like, "What? Are you kidding?"

Travis: Does more than one person still work for Myspace?

Justin: I'm sure it's Tom and his dad.

Travis: I just assumed there was one person who went in every day, flipped on the Internet switch, let people use it, and then turned it off at night so they didn't waste any power.

So, three is one that I'm not familiar with, but my entire team knew immediately. So, I'm curious where this is going to land with you all. We're on a theme, sort of, right now. So, check out three. [Mystery Sound 3 - Gen 1 Pikachu]

Griffin: That's one of them gen-one Pikachu sounds.

Well there you go. [SFX: Bell]

[Mystery Sound 3 - Gen 1 Pikachu]

Travis: I knew it was a Pokéman, but I'm not surprised that Griffin knew it exactly.

Justin: Dallas, from now on, can you say, "One, two, three, go," so people don't just start listening to it and blurt it out too quickly and kinda cheat?

Oh. That's probably a good idea.

Travis: I thought we were all on the same team. Are we competing? Wait.

Oh, no. This is a comp... I haven't even taken score on this. Actually, that's what we need to do.

Justin: So far, it's Travis zero, me one, Griffin one.

Travis: What?

Justin: Yeah. Sorry.

Okay. What's the score?

Justin: The score is one for Justin, one for Griffin, zero for Travis, a big old stinky goose egg.

Travis: Okay. All right.

There we go. Okay.

Travis: I thought we were just doing a team fun thing, but...

Griffin: Oh. God, no.

Oh, no. It's a competition now.

Travis: Okay. Fine. Cool. Cool.

Okay. So, we're going to move to four, but I'm going to do the "three, two, one.”

Justin: Okay

Okay. So, three, two, one, listen.

[Mystery Sound 4 - The Bloop]

Travis: Oh. That's an ultrasound.

It’s specific.

Griffin: More specific than ultrasound?

Uh-huh, Yeah. I'll give you a hint. It's a scientific sound. I could go further.

Travis: Oh. It's an ultrasound of a fart.

Uh… Maybe.

How about this? I'll say it's underwater.

Travis: Is it an ultrasound of a whale fart?

It could be. We're getting closer. It's in the ocean.

Travis: An ultrasound of a dolphin fart.

It could be. Yeah.

Travis: You can't say, "It could be." It could be anything.

Justin: I'm going to go with dolphin fart so we can move on with our lives.

Griffin: I think it's somebody underwater saying hello.

It could be. So, what this is is the Bloop, which is a very famous underwater sound recorded in the '90s. NOAA had no idea what it was for a while, but they think it's an iceberg that broke away from an Antarctic glacier, and was heard from thousands of miles away on an underwater microphone.

[Mystery Sound 4 - The Bloop]

Justin: So, I'm going to give all of us a point.

Travis: Yeah. Because it could be.

Justin: Because it could be anything, so we all get a point.

Griffin: It sounds like nobody really knows what this sound is.

It could have been a whale fart. It could have been a dolphin fart. It could have been just something birthing underwater. We don't know. So, everybody gets a point.

Justin: Okay

Travis: Okay.

Okay. So, this next one's a person, a voice of a person.

Travis: You just gave it away!

Oh. That is true [laughing].

Travis: You just said ... Hey. It's a voice of a person. I just got a point.

Okay. Who is this person? Three, two, one, listen.

[Mystery Sound 5 - Teller]

Justin: Carl Sagan. [Mystery Sound 5 Continued - Teller]

Travis: Oh. That's Teller.

That’s true. Ding, ding, ding. [SFX: Bell]

Griffin: Oh.

Justin: Wow. Dang. That was good, Trav. Good pull.

Travis: Thank you. Thank you.

Justin: Tied it up. Two all around.

All right. Mystery Sound number six. Three, two, one.

[Mystery Sound 6 - Waterphone]

Travis: It's a singing bowl?

No.

Travis: A theremin.

No.

Justin: No. It's a ...

You’re orbiting it for sure.

Justin: Oh my gosh. I know this. It's a weird instrument.

Travis: Is it a saw?

You’re so close.

Justin: No. It's not a saw.

Travis: Oh. It's a vibraphone?

I’m going to give you a point because that's so close. [SFX: Bell] It's a waterphone.

Justin: Waterphone. Yes.

Which is this metal thing. You put some water at the bottom of it. That's why it goes, "Wobble, wobble, wobble.”

[Mystery Sound 6 - Waterphone]

Griffin: And, we're giving out points for that, huh?

Justin: I got phone.

Griffin: I feel like the metrics for how we're awarding points is changing on the fly.

Justin: I remember this because waterphones are very prominent in ... They use them in horror movies a lot to give that suspenseful sound.

All right. So, back to science.

Justin: Okay. Science category.

This is a tricky one. Okay. So, mystery sound number seven. Three, two, one. Check it out.

[Mystery Sound 7 - Black holes colliding]

Travis: Okay.

Griffin: This is two ultrasounds. How about this? I'll give a point if you can just pinpoint where it would be coming from.

Griffin: Is it outer space? I’m going to give you a point for that. [SFX: Bell]

This is too hard. This is two black holes colliding, and then pitched up.

Travis: That's what I was about to say.

Obviously.

Travis: I was about to say, "Two black holes colliding."

Griffin: What we are hearing is two black holes going, "Oh. Excuse me. Sorry."

[Mystery Sound 7 - Black holes colliding]

Justin: I want to lodge a protest, Dallas, if I may. Can I lodge a formal protest? Is there a spot for that in the program.

Sure. We can make that spot right now. I do see that you are down one point, so I can understand.

Justin: Yeah. And, it's going to get worse. When we agreed to do this, never was I told that nerd stuff would be so important. Could I get one sound of a saw, or like a sports sound, like the sound of a touchdown being occurring?

Travis: Or the sound of a high-five, or the sound of a Corvette with the top down.

Justin: A Corvette revving up.

Griffin: Or just John McEnroe yelling.

Justin: The sound of a Kathy Ireland calendar falling off the wall. These are sounds that I know.

Travis: Yeah. Or just even a cool Pepsi-opening sound.

Justin: Like a cool beer opening, you mean. See? This is the problem with you nerds trying to pretend that you're into cool jock stuff like me. Next sound!

Next sound. Where were we at? Okay. Eight. Three, two, one.

[Mystery Sound 8 - Bald eagle]

Justin: Hugely unpleasant. Seagulls?

Griffin: Capuchin monkey.

No.

Justin: Ooh.

Travis: That is a baby hawk.

No. That's so close.

Justin: Ooh. I like that.

Travis: A baby bald hawk. Baby bald eagle.

There you go. [SFX: Bell] It might be a baby, but it is a bald eagle. So, a point for you.

[Mystery Sound 8 - Bald eagle]

Justin: Good one, Trav.

Travis: Well, I just put a birdbath in my backyard, so I'm kind of an expert now.

Justin: Getting a lot of eagles, are you?

Travis: A lot of eagles.

Griffin: The birdbath is full of dead rats, so ...

Travis: Yeah. No. That's true.

Okay. Number nine. A very common sound for a lot of people. We'll find out if you own any of these things. So, number nine. Three, two, one.

[Mystery Sound 9 - K-Cup]

Justin: Is it a copier or a printer?

No. I'd say you'd find this in your kitchen.

Justin: Oh. In the kitchen. Okay. Is it a mandoline?

Do you find mandolins in your kitchen?

Travis: Like a mandoline slicer, Dallas.

Justin: A mandoline slicer.

Oh. A slicer. I was thinking like Bluegrass.

Justin: Oh. Gotcha. Yeah. No. That wouldn't be in the kitchen. Please.

Griffin: Is it a coffee maker?

I think that's good enough. It's a K-Cup. [SFX: Bell]

Travis: Oh.

Justin: Oh.

[Mystery Sound 9 - K-Cup]

Griffin: You mean a K-Cup that makes coffee?

Exactly.

Griffin: I think that's pretty darn close.

All right. So, number 10. Three, two, one.

[Mystery Sound 10 - Herring fart]

Travis: A rotary phone.

Not close.

Travis: Not close.

Griffin: Is it some sort of living organism making this sound?

Yup.

Griffin: Yes

Justin: Oh. It's a cicada.

It is underwater.

Griffin: Is that a dolphin-

Travis: Fart.

Griffin: -cackle? Travis, I swear to god.

Travis: One of these times, I'm going to be right.

Justin: It's never going to be a dolphin fart.

It’s so close, though.

Justin: Cicada fish.

You know what? The score here is Travis three, Griffin three, Justin two. I think I'm going to give this one to Justin [SFX: Bell], because you did say a dolphin fart, but this is actually a herring fart.

Travis: I said dolphin fart.

Justin: Travis said dolphin fart. Give him the point Dallas, I don’t need charity.

I thought that was Justin.

Travis: I said dolphin fart.

Griffin: It's fine. People get us confused all the time.

Justin: We've been talking for 20 minutes. You should be able to tell our voices apart perfectly at this point.

Okay. That's a herring fart. These fish gulp the air at the surface, and fart. And, scientists think that it's used for communication.

[Mystery Sound 10 - Herring fart]

Justin: I can't believe Travis was right about some sort of aquatic life farting.

Travis: Well, now I can stop guessing it. That's the upside for everyone.

Justin: Yeah. Everyone wins.

As far as I know, there's no more farts in the rest of these.

Travis: A likely story.

Okay. Number 11. Three, two, one.

[Mystery Sound 11 - Koala]

Justin: Oh. That's a pig.

Griffin: I think it's actually a large dog that's struggling with something.

It’s just as cute as a large dog, or cuter.

Griffin: Is that a moose?

No. It's cuter than that. What's the cutest animal?

Travis: The cutest animal.

Yes.

Travis: A baby gorilla.

Not in the Northern Hemisphere. Australia specifically.

Justin: Ah. It's a kangaroo, innit?

No. It's not that either. It's a koala bear.

Justin: It's a koarla.

There it is.

Justin: It's a mongoorse.

Travis: No points for anyone.

No points.

Justin: A koarla. What was it?

Griffin: What was it?

That was a koala bear. Yeah.

[Mystery Sound 11 - Koala]

Justin: So, I got that.

Travis: No, he said koala before you did!

Griffin: Dallas did say it before you said it.

You know, Zoom does funny things. What do you think?

Griffin: Zoom's not a time machine.

That is true.

Travis: I'm going to give it to Justin because I think he needs it. It's a pity point.

Justin: I don't need it.

Justin: I don't need your charity.

You don't need it? You only have two points, though.

Justin: Yeah. I want to keep them just like they are. They're perfect. I don't need them. I'm just going to make a huge comeback right now.

All right. Number 12 in three, two, one.

[Mystery Sound 12 - Baby crocodiles]

Griffin: This is a lot of monkeys.

No.

Travis: Is it a living creature?

It is multiple living creatures.

Travis: That is what a panda bear sounds like. I don't know.

Justin: Is that what a panda bear sounds like?

Travis: I don't know. I haven't had a chance to meet one.

Justin: I don't know.

Travis: Wait. Hold on. Hold on. I'm going to say penguins.

I could see that. But, it's actually a bunch of baby crocodiles, of all things.

[Mystery Sound 12 - Baby crocodiles]

Griffin: Whoa . Travis: Oh. You know what? I actually ... Ah. Fart. I knew that. I knew that baby crocodiles sound like laser guns. But, I still don't deserve the point.

Justin: No. Not at all.

Travis: I'm just saying.

Justin: Not at all. So, 13, is that where we're at?

Yeah. The key here is you know the sound, but you've got to say what the thing is that makes it. So, three, two, one.

[Mystery Sound 13 - Klaxon]

Griffin: A car horn.

Travis: Klaxon.

There it is. [SFX: Bell] Yeah. Travis got it.

Griffin: A klaxon?

Travis: A klaxon.

Justin: Klaxon!

Griffin: Is that a brand? Is that like Kleenex? I've heard the word before.

Travis: Yeah. That "awooga, awooga" is specifically a klaxon.

[Mystery Sound 13 - Klaxon]

All right. Let's see. So, let's go to 14. Three, two, one.

[Mystery Sound 14 - Brick down an ice bore hole]

Travis: An Old Western.

Justin: Yeah. It sounds like an Old West gunfight.

Or baby crocodiles being shot through a tube. That's not it.

Travis: You're not allowed to guess.

Justin: It's the Large Hadron Collider, particles bouncing all around, doing their thing.

Oh. That'd be cool.

Griffin: I would love it if that's what the Large Hadron Collider sounded like.

Justin: Pew pew, pew pew..

Travis: Oh, wait. Is that the inside of a popcorn maker?

Griffin: Ooh.

Oh. That's a great guess. I never thought of it that way.

Travis: Okay. But, it's not a great guess if it's not right. I appreciate the feedback. I like the positivity. But, if it's wrong, it's not a great guess.

There is a theme here of me just seeing something cool, some viral video on Twitter, and making it the immediate next mystery sound. So, this went all over the Internet a couple of weeks ago.

Griffin: Pizza Rat.

Travis: Is this Pizza Rat playing a djembe? No. Pizza Rat playing a hammered dulcimer. Final answer.

Griffin: Mentos and Diet Coke.

Justin: Pizza Rat playing a waterphone.

I like all of them. So, what that is, somebody drilled a giant ice borehole, and dropped a brick down it. And, that's why you hear “pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew’.

Travis: Oh. That's a cool sound.

Yeah. High frequencies travel faster than low frequencies, “pew”, so you hear that sound.

[Mystery Sound 14 - Brick down an ice bore hole]

Okay. So, based off of the ones you have gotten, I think that 15 is going to be a race. So, three, two, one.

[Mystery Sound 15 - Ringwraith]

Griffin: That's a Dementor?

Travis: Huh.

Griffin: Is it not a Dementor?

I’m going to say it's from a movie.

Griffin: Yeah.

Travis: Oh. Is this The Mummy?

It’s from a trilogy.

Travis: Oh. It's the Ringwraith.

There it is. Yeah. [SFX: Bell] That’s it.

[Mystery Sound 15 - Ringwraith]

Justin: Nice. Good one, Trav. You're great at this.

Griffin: I mean, Ringwraith is basically ...

Travis: It's not.

Griffin: Basically a Dementor, if you think about it.

Travis: It's not.

Griffin: It's basically ...

Justin: Based off.

Griffin: It's basically the same thing.

Justin: Inspired by.

Travis: It's not.

All right. So, 16. Matter of fact, this was the very first mystery sound we ever did. So, three, two, one.

[Mystery sound 16 - Butter being spread on toast]

Griffin: Is that butter being spread on toast?

Travis: That's butter on ... Oh. Griffin got it.

What’d you say, Griffin?

Griffin: Butter being spread on toast?

How’d you know that so perfectly? [SFX: Bell]

Griffin: Because it sounds like butter being spread on toast, like a lot.

[Mystery sound 16 - Butter being spread on toast]

From a half-inch perspective. So, when you butter toast, do you stick it right up to your ear?

Griffin: Yeah. I love the sound of it. I'm nasty like that.

Travis: Maybe I'm just buttering harder, because I don't get that close, but it sounds exactly like that to me. Perhaps I'm applying too much force when I'm buttering my toast.

It’s funny. Internally, we couldn't even guess what that sound was. So, I guess I don't butter toast enough.

Travis: Oh. I do every hour.

Justin: Or, at least you're not close enough.

Not close enough. Yeah.

Okay. 17. In three, two, one.

[Mystery Sound 17 - Measuring tape respooling]

Griffin: Measuring tape re-spooling?

That’s it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. [SFX: Bell]

Travis: Nice.

Justin: God.

[Mystery Sound 17 - Measuring tape respooling]

Travis: The sad part is Justin's been doing a lot of woodworking lately, and I was a professional carpenter for a while, and Griffin's never touched tools in his life.

Griffin: That's a falsehood. Actually, if you want to know the truth, our dad got my three-year-old son a set of little ... well, kind of little tools, a whole toolbox that is meant for eight- and nine-year-olds that includes just a hammer, a full-blown hammer. But, it also includes a tape measure. That is Henry's favorite toy. Which is awesome because, sometimes, the tape measure is a bad toy for a three-year-old because it'll get ya. It'll get ya.

So, we have Travis with seven points, Griffin with six points, Justin with two points.

Justin: Yeah. I feel a small comeback.

[music in]

We’re about halfway through our mystery sounds right now and things are getting heated, so let’s take a breather.

[music out]

MIDROLL

[music in]

Now back to our Mystery Sound marathon with the McElroy Brothers. A quick recap; Travis is in the lead with seven points, Griffin is in second with six points, and Justin has two points.

[music out]

Okay. Let's do number 18. Three, two, one.

[Mystery Sound 18 - Can opener]

Justin: Somebody grinding pepper.

No.

Justin: Are you sure?

It’s in the kitchen, though.

Justin: It felt right. Yeah. That's pepper. 19. Moving on. Point for Justin. That's pepper, baby.

Travis: Is it somebody grating cheese? No.

Justin: Is it somebody eating something?

No. It is a tool in the kitchen. I'll give you that.

Justin: It's a grater.

Travis: Is it a mandoline?

Justin: No. It's a juicer.

No. No.

Justin: A French press.

No. It's an opener of metal objects.

Travis: A can opener.

Justin: Oh. A can opener. Okay.

There you go. Got a point. Sweet.

Justin: Absolutely not.

Griffin: Oh. Sheesh.

Justin: Absolutely not. I won't accept it.

Travis: You did it, Justin.

Justin: Will not accept it. Will not accept it.

That’s two points that you have not accepted.

Justin: I'm more noble. I would rather have a noble loss than a suspect win.

[Mystery Sound 18 - Can opener]

Let’s see what we have here. Okay. So, 19. Three, two, one.

[Mystery Sound 19 - San Diego Central Library wind]

Travis: A train pulling into the station, or subway.

No.

Griffin: Is it train related?

It’s not train related.

Griffin: Huh.

Travis: Existential dread.

Griffin: Oh. Oh, oh, oh. Is that the Golden Gate Bridge?

That’s so close. Similar thought, though. Because I was going to give an anecdote of the Golden Gate Bridge after this.

Griffin: It's wind going through some sort of large structure?

That is the closest you can get. That's going to be a half point. I'm going to give that as a half point. [SFX: Bell] So, specifically, that is the sound of heavy wind blowing through the San Diego Central Library.

[Mystery Sound 19 - San Diego Central Library wind]

It was one of those things that happened with the Golden Gate Bridge, where they built something, and never really took into account that, when wind goes through it, it makes a super, super creepy sound. So, yeah, that’s what that is..

Griffin: Can you imagine living in San Francisco and hearing that ghostly wail every time the wind picks up? It is the most haunted, scary thing I could imagine.

Travis: And paying all that rent. Am I right?

Griffin: Yeah.

Travis: It's an expensive city.

I think 20 is something you're very familiar with too.

Travis: Is it my own voice?

That’s what it's going to be. Okay. Three, two, one, mystery sound 20.

[Mystery Sound 20 - Lego]

Griffin: Are those checkers?

I think you're in the ballpark.

Justin: Dice?

Justin: Poker chips?

Close, but younger, a much younger toy.

Justin: Younger toy, or for younger people?

Younger people, unless the kids are playing poker.

Griffin: Legos?

There it is. Yeah. [SFX: Bell] Another point.

[Mystery Sound 20 - Lego]

You are now up by a half point, by the way, Griffin.

Griffin: Woo-hoo.

Justin: Wow. This is a real barn burner. We've got a three-way, dead heat.

All right. What do we have here? Okay. 21. Three, two, one.

[Mystery Sound 21 - Mouth pops]

Griffin: That's someone's mouth going popping noises..

That’s it. [SFX: Bell] Yeah.

Justin: Yeah.

[Mystery Sound 21 - Mouth pops]

So, the whole reason we did that one is because there's so much sound design done in animation that just, any time there's a bubble pop, it's always “popping noises”. There's no other sound for it. So, that was easy.

Okay. 22 is another one of those race things, at least I hope so, because it's near and dear to my heart. So, 22. Three, two, one.

[Mystery Sound 22 - Breath of the Wild ping]

Griffin: Oh. Oh my god. What is that?

Travis: Oh, Jesus.

Griffin: I'm pretty sure it's from a game.

Mm-hmm (affirmative). You're warm.

Travis: I know it's not the actual one, but some kind of notification from a fairy in Zelda?

That is so close, as close as you can get. I think that's point-worthy. I think that's point-worthy. Unless, specifically, Griffin can say exactly what that is, then that point's going to go to Travis.

Griffin: If you gave me a half hour to really sit here and enter my mind palace, I could probably pull this up. It's a Metal Gear Codec ... It's some ...

Oh, no.

Griffin: No? What is it?

You’re going the opposite direction.

Griffin: What is it?

It is the Sheikah Slate ping from Breath of the Wild.

Griffin: Oh, god.

So, as soon as you start playing it, you get the Sheikah Slate, and it tells you where you're going, and you hear…

[Mystery Sound 22 - Breath of the Wild ping]

Griffin: Yeah.

So, you hear it the whole time. All right. 23. Three, two, one. [Mystery Sound 23 - Nokia SMS notification]

Justin: It's Morse code for SMS.

It’s close. It's a specific sound from a specific thing.

Griffin: You want to know the thing that is making the Morse code sound?

Mm-hmm (affirmative). I think, if somebody knew the sound, they'd be like, "Oh. That's exactly from this specific thing.”

Justin: Yeah. That's pretty much how the game works, for sure.

Travis: It's not the emergency sound from an iPhone, is it?

No. Older. Travis: It's a beeper, a pager SOS.

So close. So close. I'll give this one away. You know the old Nokia phones? We know the sound. We know that one. But, what this is is when you actually got an SMS text message, it would do this Morse code beepy sound.

[Mystery Sound 23 - Nokia SMS notification]

Travis: To be fair, Justin did say Morse code from SMS.

Griffin: I'm going to give that to Justin. I feel like that's a Justin point.

Justin doesn't accept points, though. Would you accept this one?

Justin: No. I accept the point if I got it right, which, in this case, I did.

But, you said SMS ... No. You did say SMS, didn't you?

Justin: Yeah.

Oh. Then, I think that works. [SFX: bell]

Justin: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Yeah. All right. Where are we?

Griffin: What are we on, 24?

We are on, yeah, 24. This is also from another random viral video.

Three, two, one.

[Mystery Sound 24 - Kid says ‘wow’ in auditorium]

Justin: Is that at a swimming pool, a kid at a swimming pool?

Not a swimming pool. It kind of sounds the same, though.

Justin: A kid in an ... Is he at an auditorium?

Yeah.

Griffin: Is it at a concert?

It is, yeah.

Griffin: A kid saying "wow" at a concert?

Yeah. There's a specific scenario where he would say that where it would be very awkward.

Griffin: Like a recital or an orchestra-

Uh-huh (affirmative).

Griffin: -thing? That’s all I got.

You know what? I think I'm going to give a half point for that, unless anybody has a strong feeling. Because, then, that would round you back up, and put you in the lead by a whole point.

Griffin: Okay.

That’s close enough [SFX: bell]. We’re going to go with that. Done. So, what that is is a kid ... This went viral. This kid was at an orchestra concert. And, in between movements of an orchestra, he just goes, "Wow." And then, everyone reacts to that.

[Mystery Sound 24 - Kid says ‘wow’ in auditorium]

One of my peeves about the orchestra in general is that you have to sit on your hands when you're moved between these symphonic movements. And, it's one of the reasons I think that the symphony is in trouble, is because there's this whole etiquette that's unspoken that you're not supposed to clap or do anything between movements, no matter how good it was.

Justin: You know? It's funny. I haven't been to as many symphonies and operas and stuff mainly because of what you're saying.

Yeah.

Justin: It's not because of disinterest in classical music at all. It's basically I get so bleeping into it.

Griffin: Yeah.

Justin: I'm losing it. I'm rending its clothes like, "Yes, Vivaldi. Take me away."

Griffin: Right.

Justin: You know what I mean? Thus Spake Zarathustra? No. Thus spake me in the middle of the symphony because I was loving it so much, and I had to be escorted out.

Travis: I remember, the last time I went to a Rachmaninoff symphony, in the beginning, I was whooping and hollering, and all the people in their furs and pearls and cummerbunds, they were kind of glaring at me. But, by the end of the symphony, they were all into it too, and we were throwing popcorn around, and we were shooting our revolvers into the ceiling, and having a great time. And, I kind of fixed everybody.

Griffin: And, in my defense, they didn't have a sign up at the symphony that said, "No vuvuzelas."

Travis: That’s true.

Griffin: So, I feel like, there's no precedent for it, I shouldn't have been so violently kicked out.

Justin: The last one I went to, I went to see Carmina Burana. I love it. But, they're taking forever. The pace of it is just so terrible. And, I stand up, and I'm like, "O Bortuna!" And, everybody is losing it and busting up because I made a classical music joke. And then, I was escorted out again.

Travis: I remember, I went to a symphony, and I was really enjoying the symphony, and then James Bond showed up and killed a bad guy right in the middle of it, and kind of ruined the whole thing for me.

Justin: Hate that.

Travis: I was this close to emotional catharsis, and then James Bond was like, "Looks like you hit a sour note, and then shot the guy right in front of me." And, I was like, "Huh. That really kinda took me out of it."

Griffin: So, that was 10 minutes of orchestra gags. You needed that, right?

Yes, yes.

Justin: Yeah.

Absolutely.

Justin: Just lay that in.

Okay. So, 25. Three, two, one.

[Mystery Sound 25 - Bess Beetle]

Justin: Somebody blowing up a balloon?

No.

Travis: Styrofoam.

Griffin: Is it someone tightening something?

It’s not a person.

Travis: That's the sound a moth makes.

It’s the insect world. Yeah. So, if you heard that in the insect world, you were like, "It's got to be this insect doing this specific thing.”

Travis: A grasshopper pooping.

I could see that. Yeah.

Justin: If there are pooping sounds, but you swore no farting sounds, I think that's a technicality.

Griffin: I think it's the sound of a stink bug caught in a spiderweb.

Travis: I'm going to say the sound of a fly being eaten by a spider.

Griffin: I'm going to change mine. It's a bagworm.

Okay. Justin, do you have a final answer on this?

Justin: Yeah. I was about to say bagworm, and then he ...

Okay. So, what that was is a bess beetle. They make this sound by rubbing the body segments together in a process called stridulation.

Travis: Oh. Of course. [Mystery Sound 25 - Bess Beetle]

Bess beetles can actually make 17 different sounds, giving them this whole complex communication system. So, that's that.

Travis: Okay. You said that like that's impressive, but I can make way more than 17 sounds with my body.

Justin: Mmmm good point.

Travis: Yeah. So, I guess I'm the best beetle.

Justin: One of the top beetles.

Travis: At least.

All right. 26. Three, two, one.

[Mystery Sound 26 - Giraffe]

Justin: Is it an animal doing something nasty?

I think it's just an animal being an animal.

Justin: Okay. That's a whale. We've got a whale, folks. This one's a whale.

It’s on land.

Justin: Oh. Elephant.

Travis: That is a hippopotamus.

Justin: Hippo. Hippo.

If you were walking through the zoo, this animal might be close to those animals you just mentioned.

Justin: Giraffe.

That’s it. [SFX: Bell] Yeah.

Justin: Yes.

Travis: Oh.

[Mystery Sound 26 - Giraffe]

Justin: They sound weird. They don't talk a lot. When they do, it sucks. Kind of like Griffin.

Travis: Oh. Oh, wow.

Griffin: Aw, neat.

Justin: Just having fun. Travis talks a lot, so I couldn't do him, and you're the only other one that I'm related to.

Griffin: Yeah. No. It's neat.

All right. 27 in three, two, one.

[Mystery Sound 27 - Car turn signal]

Travis: It's a turn signal.

That’s it. [SFX: Bell] Yeah.

Griffin: Ah. Shoot. [Mystery Sound 27 - Car turn signal]

Justin: Nice pull. We have got a squeaker here.

Yeah.

Travis: So, Justin, who are you rooting for?

Justin: Myself to make a big comeback.

Travis: Oh. Sure. Uh-huh.

Justin: Let's lightning-round the rest of these.

Sure. Let's do it.

Justin: Let's lightning-round them. Let's get some points.

Yeah. We have about 10 to go, so I think we can lightning-round this.

Justin: Yeah.

Okay. So, 28. Three, two, one.

[Mystery Sound 28 - Elevator going down]

Griffin: Elevator.

More specific.

Justin: Penthouse floor arrival.

No. It is an elevator but there's a specific reason it played like it did.

Travis: Oh. Because someone's blocking the doors.

No.

Justin: Doors closing. Doors stuck.

No. No.

Justin: The power went out.

Travis: The elevator's scared.

In the spirit of the speed round, I'll have to give this one ... That is an elevator going down. Because, for accessibility, when you hear a ding, "Ding," that means it's going up. When you hear “Ding, Ding," that means it's going down.

[Mystery Sound 28 - Elevator going down]

Griffin: Huh.

Justin: Huh.

Yeah.

Griffin: Interesting.

Justin: I did not know that.

And, you'll hear that everywhere now.

Okay. 29 in three, two, one.

[Mystery Sound 29 - DC Metro doors-closing alert]

Travis: It's a subway?

It is. A specific sound for a specific subway.

Travis: The doors closing.

Griffin: Oh. Is that a ticket machine?

Justin: Subway going down. The door is ajar.

You know? You tell me if you get this point. But, it is a DC Metro doors-closing alert.

Justin: Okay.

[Mystery Sound 29 - DC Metro doors-closing alert]

Do you think that you would accept that point?

Justin: Yeah. I get that. [SFX: Bell] I get that for sure. I'll take that point.

Okay. Next one, 30. Three, two, one.

[Mystery Sound 30 - Pulling tissue]

Travis: Taking a lapel mic off. It does sound like that, but it is not.

Travis: Tearing paper. You’re so close. Your words, I think if you reorganized some of the stuff, it would be right on.

Justin: Pearing taper.

All right. In the spirit of speed round, that is pulling a tissue from a tissue box.

Justin: Very good.

[Mystery Sound 30 - Pulling tissue]

Okay. 31. Three, two, one.

[Mystery Sound 31 - Breaking celery]

Travis: Breaking a stick.

Oh. So close. It is breaking.

Travis: Breaking a spirit.

If you heard this in a movie, what would you think would be happening?

Travis: Oh. Stepping on a twig?

No. It's a really classic sound for a specific action in movies.

Travis: Neck break.

Yes. Now, what would make that sound?

Travis: Breaking spaghetti.

So close.

Justin: Breaking Spaghetti. I love that show. I'm sad that it's off the air, but I love the spinoff, Butter Call Saul.

Okay. So, what that is is the classic sound for breaking bones, which is breaking celery.

Griffin: Ah.

Yeah.

[Mystery Sound 31 - Breaking celery]

All right. 32. I love this one. Okay. 32. Three, two, one.

[Mystery Sound 32 - The Sun]

Griffin: Is that an airplane sound, inside of an airplane?

Justin: It's white noise.

This one's kind of unfair because it's a sound that doesn't actually exist in nature.

Justin: Perfect. Okay. Good. Perfect job.

It is very scientific, and does not actually happen in nature, so it's a little bit out there.

Griffin: Is it a deep-space radio-signal sound?

That’s the closest you're going to get. [SFX: Bell] *So, what that sound is is, if our sun had air between the sun and us, that's what the sun would sound like all the time on Earth. The only reason we can't hear the sun is because there's no medium, air, in space to transmit it.

Travis: That's pretty cool.

Yeah.

[Mystery Sound 32 - The Sun]

Okay. A few more here. All right. 33. Three, two, one.

[Mystery Sound 33 - Ice breaking]

Griffin: Is that a glass window breaking?

Mm-mm (negative).

Travis: It's peanut brittle.

Very common sound. I'll say that. So, it's going to be even more common than what everyone's thinking.

Travis: Even more common than peanut brittle?

Even more common.

Griffin: Ice breaking?

There it is. Yeah.

[Mystery Sound 33 - Ice breaking]

You’re now in the lead by one point.

Justin: What's the score right now?

It’s Travis nine, Griffin ten, Justin five.

Travis: And, there's four left?

There’s four left.

Justin: I need a big run.

Griffin: You could tie Travis.

Okay. 34. Three, two, one.

[Mystery Sound 34 - Peacock]

Justin: Adult man pretending to be a cat as part of a cat-man play.

Griffin: Is that a howler monkey?

No.

Griffin: Oh. Is that a duck call?

No.

Travis: Is it a type of bird?

It is a bird. Yeah. It kind of sounds like a bird saying, "Help." But, it's not that. It is a peacock call.

Travis: Oh.

Griffin: Ah.

Justin: Oh, wild.

[Mystery Sound 34 - Peacock]

Travis: That is a thing that's used in murder mysteries sometimes, to explain, "Oh. You thought you heard someone calling for help, but that was just the peacocks on the grounds."

Okay. 35. Three, two, one.

[Mystery Sound 35 - Coral reef]

Griffin: Bacon frying.

It does sound a lot like bacon frying.

Griffin: Fire? Just fire burning?

Mm-mm (negative). We're back underwater again, of all things.

Griffin: Oh.

Travis: Is that coral growing?

That counts. [SFX: Bell] It’s a coral reef.

Justin: Wow.

The popping and chewing sounds are from tons of organisms chewing and moving and vocalizing on the reef.

Justin: Wow.

[Mystery Sound 35 - Coral reef]

So, we are back to a tied game. Travis 10, Griffin 10, Justin …

Justin: Justin 10. Three-way tie.

Travis: Three-way tie.

All right. 36. Two more. Three, two, one.

[Mystery Sound 36 - Llama]

Justin: Seagulls?

Mm-mm (negative).

Travis: No. A zebra braying.

I think you're closer. Yeah. It does live in a field, I think.

Travis: It lives in a field, you think.

Griffin: Is that moose?

No.

I would imagine this animal being kind of a jerk.

Travis: Is it man?

It could be.

Travis: Man is kind of a jerk.

Okay. That's a llama.

Griffin: A llama.

Yeah.

Travis: Now, do you think it's kind of a jerk based purely off of Emperor's New Groove?

Well, and spitting.

[Mystery Sound 36 - Llama]

Okay. This could break it, or we could just leave this as a tie. So, 37, three, two, one.

[Mystery Sound 37 - Lion cub]

Griffin: Is that a porcupine?

No.

Justin: Is it an animal?

It is an animal. Yeah.

Travis: Is that a cat sneezing?

Justin: Is it a sneeze?

I don't know. I don't think it's a sneeze, but I don't know. It could be a sneeze. But, it is from an animal, a very cute animal. That turns into a very scary animal.

Justin: Oh. Gizmo. Gizmo from Gremlins.

I don't think Gizmo's a real animal.

Justin: Says the guy that played the sound of two black holes. Unbelievable.

Griffin: Is it a skunk?

It is not, no.

Travis: Could it be a skunk if it tried hard enough?

What’s that?

Travis: Don't worry. Is that a baby tiger?

You are so close. If you just flipped that-

Justin: Taby Giger.

Travis: Baby lion.

That’s it. You got it. You win. [SFX: Bell, party whistle, cheer]

Travis: Yes!

Justin: Wow. Wow. Unbelievable.

Griffin: What is it?

It was a lion cub.

Griffin: Oh. Doing what?

Travis: Just existing, man.

[Mystery Sound 37 - Lion cub]

Okay. So, last question just for everybody. I usually ask people what the best sound in the entire world is to them personally. But, I figured it might be fun to ask, what is the worst sound in the entire world to you?

Travis: Oh. That's easy for me. There's this kind of material that ... I believe it's called reticulated something. But, it's plastic, and they used to put it on covers of agendas for kids in middle school and high school and stuff. And, if you moved it, it would make the picture move.

Justin: Lenticular.

Travis: Yes. And, if you rub your fingers across it, it makes this sound that makes my skin crawl.

Does it make the “zzz” sound?

Travis: Yeah. Yeah. I hate that sound so much.

Griffin: I'm not a fan of eating noises right in my ear, which is really unfortunate being a podcasting professional, because I get that from time to time.

Justin: My number-one is when someone is eating, and they scrape their fork across their teeth as they eat. I have tried to overcome this. I've tried to make myself immune to it, and I am incapable. It goes all over me every single time. I want to scream.

Ugh. I think we got it. Thank you, guys.

Travis: Thank you.

Justin: Well, it was our pleasure. That was actually really fun.

[music in]

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

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

A huge thanks to the McElroy brothers for joining me on today’s episode. I had an absolute blast. The McElroys host multiple fantastic podcasts including My Brother, My Brother, and Me, and The Adventure Zone. You can check those out, along with the rest of their amazing content, on their website which is: The McElroy dot Family. Be sure to listen and subscribe to their podcasts in your favorite podcast player.

What are some great mystery sounds you’ve been hoping we’d play but haven’t? Let us know on Facebook, Twitter, or on our subreddit; r/two zero kay. You can also reach out directly at hi at 20k dot org.

Thanks for listening.

[music out]

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