Foley: Hollywood’s hidden sound heroes

This episode was written & produced by Abigail Tannebaum Sharon.

When you listen to a movie, everything the actor touches sounds crisp and clean. However, none of it was recorded on the movie set. Go behind the scenes with some of the unsung heroes of our movie experience. Featuring Fred Newman and Skywalker Sound’s Foley Team, John Roesch, Shelley Roden, and Scott Curtis.

MUSIC FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE

A Great Mess by Watermark High
This Place by Watermark High
Brighter by Roary
A Fresh Start by Wildwood
Something Beautiful by Tim Halperin
Merry Folk by Generdyn
Flower Upon Dirt by Wilhelm
Washedway by Evlov (Theme Music)

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.

Head over to Musicbed to find your perfect track. Be sure to use the promo code “20K” for 20% off any one purchase.

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

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

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View Transcript ▶︎

[Music start]

From Defacto Sound, you're listening to Twenty Thousand Hertz... The stories behind the world's most recognizable and interesting sounds. I'm Dallas Taylor. This is the story behind foley.

[movie foley clip]

Take a moment to really listen to a movie scene. Anything an actor touches, moves and walks on, it’s clean and super detailed. But what you think you’re hearing, isn’t always what it seems. And none of it was recorded on the movie set.

Foley is the live performance of custom-made sounds set against picture. These everyday sounds brought old-time radio to life [old radio show clip], and are the heartbeat of today’s movies.

Foley artists create these sounds out of everyday objects to make them feel real.

Fred: Foley came from this guy, Jack Foley, really invented it. They were going to Showboat and needed some sound effects and they used radio sound effects. The way they would do clomping shoes [clomping SFX] and water paddle wheels [water paddle SFX] and things like that. That was really invented then for the talkies.

That’s Fred Newman, and even he has a hard time describing what he does.

Fred: I don’t really have a title. I think scam artist is the best I’m just doing what I used to do as a kid. That’s what I do. I honk for a living, that’s what I do... I honk for a living.

Fred’s techniques offer a rare glimpse into the artform that inspires today’s foley artists. It’s really a hybrid of old radio and acting.

Fred: What I really do jumps over foley…

Making sounds are all in a day’s work for Fred. He performs sound effects live on the radio variety show “A Prairie Home Companion.”

[A Prairie Home Companion clip]

Fred: As I do so much of the sound effetcs live with an audience, but I always think must be discombobulating, but It works.

I asked Fred, what’s the best, most versatile tool he uses to make sounds on the fly?

Fred: The mouth ends up being the best soundmaker that I can come up with [mouth SFX]. Hearing is feeling and you’ve gotta give the feeling of it. That goes to the heart of acting and storytelling. You don’t want real, you want what works in the service of the story.

Fred’s a trailblazer when it comes to telling stories through sound. So I wanted to know what’s his most memorable moment on A Prairie Home Companion?

Fred: Just before we went out on stage, Garrison said, I think I’ll have Guy Noir go to a chiropractor, he says to me. I’m thinking “ok, undoubtedly we’re thinking spinal adjustment, ok what do I do?” So I’m walking out on stage and I grab one of those ribbed water bottles and a terry cloth towel, grabbed that and some tape that I put around it. And I walked out there, the bottles half full of water, “I’m going to take your left arm and put it over your head here,” and he grimaces a little bit, “I’m going to put my right arm over your chest, and I’m just gonna twist your back…” I didn’t know what it was going to sound like, but I put that water bottle up to the microphone and I just twisted it, but it had enough muffle of the terry cloth that it sounded internal and you hear [crunch] and the audience goes “Oh!” And they all turned in their seats, yeah, you nailed that sound! It was a roll of the dice.

We’ve got so many technological advancements today, yet at the very core of this experience is still just good ‘ol fashioned storytelling.

Fred: I jump back certainly to the older radio, but go back even further to just sitting around a fire telling stories [camp fire SFX], and all around the world most of these stories in most cultures were told with sound. We got to get back to where people just sit and listen. That’s in our DNA. It’s in our culture, that’s what bound us together.

As a master storyteller, Fred’s work is timeless. So when Hollywood needs an obscure, random, tailormade sound effect for a movie, Fred gets the call.

Fred: “We have got this film, do you do a frog?”... I said yeah I do a frog. “Can you do a frog throwing up a wedding ring?”...yeah ok [frog sound effect]. He goes, “ok you got the job, can you be here by 9:30?”

So I asked Fred, what does it take to be a foley artist?

Fred: They’re a curious mix of science and emotion. They have to be actors. They’re moving with the person they mimic that energy whether it’s footsteps or animal growls. But, it’s something in between music and acting. It’s this lovely not quite understood even by the people who do it.

From the golden age of radio, to the modern motion pictures, it’s foley sounds that immerse us in the story. To find foley artists on the cutting-edge of big time movie making, I reached out to these folks…

Shelley: I’m Shelley Roden, Foley Artist.

Scott: Scott Curtis, Foley Mixer.

John: John Roesch, Foley Artist and we’re all at Skywalker Sound.

Skywalker is one of the most well known audio facilities in the world.

John: There’s no limit to one's imagination and that’s very true with foley, also.

At Skywalker Sound, this team is responsible for supporting some of the greatest film stories of all time.

John: Star Wars was a watershed moment where you had combinations of sounds that were never even seen or heard before.

[Star Wars clip]

Shelley: Foley has evolved so much because the modern films are very loud and there’s a lot of music so, we have to think in terms of what we’re playing against and how much sonic real estate we have. So, we usually listen to the track and see what effects is done, what music is doing and what can we do to make this moment shine.

While these artists do improvise, and use their gut to guide them, there’s also a ton of planning and rehearsing that goes into their performances.

John: We are customized so what you’re seeing on screen at that moment, is indeed, hopefully the best possible sound that can be created. Just by the virtue of that live process.

Shelley: We work in a roomful of junk that we treasure. We pick up from the roadside or we’ve collected over the years. Or things that have been handed down to us from earlier foley artists we create sounds with them. And we also create sounds using our feet and our body and we play in the dirt and we play in water. It’s a very fun project.

To create these sounds, Foley artists need a very special space. John, Shelly, and Scott will tell us about their space after the break.

[music out]

MID ROLL

[music in]

To get a sense of how the foley artists create, you need to get a picture of the space.

Shelley: When you first walk into the Skywalker archives Foley Stage, Curtis’ wonderful face greeting you, and his giant board, he can see through the pane of glass, he can see us if he wants to, and then open the sound proof heavy, heavy, heavy door and you behold a gigantic room and a screen in front of you, you see a giant dirt pit and then something that looks like a tub on the right. And all these props, so that’s what our environment looks like.

I asked how they typically start a project...

Scott: We’re given a roadmap of what it is that we’re tasked to do for the day.

John: If it’s at the beginning of the film, basically we’ll establish the characterizations of the footsteps. Just for the record, probably the hardest thing to do correctly are footsteps.

Shelley: Yeah, especially because there are so many variables. The grit and how it interacts with the shoe [footstep SFX]. There’s the room mic and how much balance of the room mic Scott wants to use. [footstep with different mic SFX]

Scott: So we’re both doing two independent performances that have to sync up to picture…

Shelley: Perfectly.

John: There is no right or wrong, it’s just what our ears collectively go “that’s correct, that’s great” and that’s the beauty of working as a team.

To construct a place out-of-this-world, it takes painstaking attention to detail. On Finding Dory, Shelley tell us how she made the water-sound just right.

Shelley: We were tasked to determine how to manipulate water in many different ways because there’s a lot of water, there’s a lot of different fish so, we want to figure out how to make them all sound different.

I just went to the 99 Cent Store and I spent fifty dollars buying, for example, one of those old fashion juicers that you just put on top of an orange and push down. That was little baby Dory’s up and down movements because it allowed for the water to just escape in a certain way through the holes and it sounded really cute.

[baby Dory's swimming movements]

When we’re telling the story with our sound, then we can have a connection with the actor that helps us perform it appropiately.

Scott: Whatever the circumstances are that this particular character has, John and Shelley will essentially get in his head and take that character over and perform whatever is necessary as would that character.

John: And again through all the help, with Scott and then Shelley because she’ll do her characters the same way so we help support each other to where hopefully, you the audience, believe what are you seeing.

We want whatever you’re seeing on that screen be totally real and to that end you have to give it some soul. Certainly in the feet and then even in the props, we want to get the detail there. We want to create a world that works within itself and do it in such a way that you, the audience, don’t know we’ve done it. In fact, that’s the actual key rule of Foley, being that there is really no rules of Foley expect for this one, whatever we do has to be done believable in a way that you don’t know that we’ve done it.

Scott: Working with Shelley and John is so much fun it’s fantastic that we’re as collaborative as we are. I truly believe that that’s a main component as to why the material that we do generate is so, so good.

Part performance art, part storyteller, part science. You could say that these foley artists, mixer and editors are some of the unsung heroes of our cinematic experiences.

They carry on their craft with a quiet pride, and impact us in ways we’ll never see. Foley is subtle and often unconsciously noticed, however these tiny details can create a long and lasting impression on our stories.

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

This episode was produced and edited by Abigail Tannebaum Sharon and me. With help from Sam Schneble. It was sound designed and mixed by Jai Berger.

We’d like to thank Fred Newman and Skywalker Sound’s Foley team; John Roesch, Shelley Roden and Scott Curtis.

All of the music in the episode is from our friends at Musicbed. They do a lot more than license great indie music. Their website in loaded with awesome content like in depth interviews with creative minds, award winning short films and live sessions with their incredible musicians. Dive in at blog.musicbed.com.

We recently collaborated with Seeker on an animated version of our Space episode, and it's pretty awesome. Seeker celebrates science, technology and the future with amazing short docs, explainers and of course, animation. They tell all kinds of stories from around the world through the lens of science. They've got new videos every day, so go check them out at Seeker dot com, on twitter, facebook and at youtube dot com slash seeker. We’ll also be blasting this video on our social channels, so be sure to like Twenty Thousand Hertz. You can find us on Facebook and Twitter under 20korg.

If you or someone you know would like to advertise on the show, reach out through our website or at hi@20k.org. Finally, no matter what --- we couldn’t produce this show without you, and we need your help. So please, take a moment to share this show with your friends and rate us in iTunes. For those who want to help a little more, we’ve set up a donation page at donate.20k.org.

You’ll find all of these links in the show description.

Thanks for listening.

Recent Episodes

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What do other planets sound like?

Photo credit: garysan97 via Foter.com / CC BY-SA

This episode was written & produced by Kevin Edds.

When we think about sound, our only reference is what it’s like here on Earth. What happens when we leave this thin blanket of atmosphere, and what do other planets sound like? Featuring Dr. Lori Glaze, Dr. Keith Noll, Dr. Scott Guzewich from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

MUSIC FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE

The Way Home by Tony Anderson
Unseen Entity by Convolv
Sirens by Jordan Critz
Our Sky by One Hundred Years
Survive by Watermark High
The Traveller by Matthew D Morgan
Washedway by Evlov (Theme Music)

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

Follow Dallas on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and LinkedIn.

Join our community on Reddit and follow us on Facebook.

Head over to Musicbed to find your perfect track. Be sure to use the promo code “20K” for 20% off any one purchase.

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

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

View Transcript ▶︎

From Defacto Sound, you're listening to Twenty Thousand Hertz... The stories behind the world's most recognizable and interesting sounds. I'm Dallas Taylor. This is the story behind sound in our solar system.

[Star Trek SFX]

When you think about sound in space, classic films and television, like Star Trek, immediately come to mind.

[Star Trek theme]

From the ambient drones in Alien… [Alien drone SFX] to the galactic battle scenes in Star Wars… [Star Wars battle scene SFX] space truly is the final frontier in the study of sound.

Perhaps the best marketing tagline in movie history came from the Ridley Scott film, Alien: "In Space, no one can hear you scream." That phrase is true and not only because of the distance from Earth. It has to do with how sound travels.

Lori: I'm Dr. Lori Glaze. I'm the deputy director of the solar system exploration division at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

Lori oversees about 300 scientists that study all the planets and small bodies of our solar system.

Lori: You don't have sound in space because sound requires molecules. You have to be able to move the molecules with the sound waves, and without the molecules there, the sound just doesn't move. You can try and use your lungs to push the sound out of your mouth but it won't travel anywhere.

That tagline from Alien I mentioned earlier, no one actually heard that either... as it was never read as voiceover in the trailer. It was just text, silent text, perhaps meant to imitate the specific science that explains how sound travels… or doesn’t.

Keith: My name is Keith Noll. I am the chief of the planetary systems lab at Goddard Space Flight Center. I think I've studied almost every planet or satellite in the solar system that has an atmosphere.

Keith knows his stuff about planets, and how sound might actually be possible on them.

Keith: What is sound? It's the vibrations of molecules in the air. It's a pressure wave [pressure wave SFX]. Of course sound can be transmitted through any kind of physical medium. If you are in a swimming pool [diving/swimming SFX] you can still hear sound. That's being transmitted through water. Earthquakes [earthquake SFX] are essentially sound waves being transmitted through the solid earth.

Sound takes on many forms but the kind we're most familiar with is pressure waves moving through gas.

The most common example of how different gasses affect your vocal cords is the old party trick of breathing in a helium balloon.

[balloon inflate SFX]

As the gasses, you're pushing it back out of your lungs over your vocal cords, [voice on helium example] because the density is lower, the vibration frequencies end up being higher and that's why you sound like Mickey Mouse.

Let’s go from planet to planet in our solar system, starting closest to the sun, what would it sound like on their surface to our ears?

Lori: Places like… Mercury and these rocky bodies with no atmospheres would be similar to being in space. There would not be much sound if any.

Keith: Mercury is an airless body, so we're back to listening for Mercury quakes [quake SFX], essentially. That would be really the only source of sound.

And you could only hear these Mercury quakes [quake SFX] if your head was pressed up against the rock, because there’s no atmosphere for sound to travel through.

Next up, Venus.

Lori: In my mind, what sound would be like on the surface, because you have this really dense atmosphere, much denser than Earth's, the sound would be more like or tend toward what things sound like when you're under water [underwater SFX].

If you could imagine something in between air and water, that kind of density, you're running your hand through that and you would feel that.

[continue underwater SFX]

If you were to just materialize on the surface in that environment of 900 degrees Fahrenheit and a hundred times our atmospheric pressure, you would first be crushed [crushing SFX] and then you would probably just burn up completely [burning SFX].

Keith: One thing we do know about Venus is that is has lightning, so you might hear thunder [thunder SFX].

I wonder what other things, like my voice, might sound like. [watery SFX on Dallas' voice] I’m on Venus in this ethereal world that’s a mix between a gas-like atmosphere and water. I’m almost floating, but yet it’s not as restrictive as being submerged in water.

My voice… The thunder… It’s all slightly muffled and distorted as it travels through the thick atmosphere.

[Earth SFX]

Now we’re home: Earth. We’re not going to stay here for long, but it’s worth mentioning the amazing diversity of sound on our planet. The sandy deserts… [sand and wind SFX] lush forests… [trees rustling and bird SFX] the sound of the ocean [ocean waves SFX], both on the surface… and below [underwater SFX]. It’s a rich soundscape, because our ears are perfectly in tune with it… More on that later.

Now Mars. And here’s where it gets interesting since Mars has been the subject of so much fascination for thousands of years. It’s one of the best places where life might have, or could exist.

Lori: Sound on Mars is going to be the opposite direction of Venus because the atmosphere on Mars is very, very thin compared to Earth's so there's just not very many molecules and sound requires molecules.

Countless movies have been made about Mars, including the Hollywood mega-hit The Martian, starring a stranded astronaut portrayed by Matt Damon.

Keith: Loved the movie. It was fun to watch, but it's not the Mars we know, it's a very different Mars.

[The Martian clip]

So the real Mars isn't anything like that, but Mars does have an atmosphere, albeit a thin one.

So that storm scene wasn’t quite accurate.

Keith: You wouldn’t necessarily hear the wind itself… You would hear the dust that's being picked up [dust SFX] and it would be banging against the faceplate of your spacesuit.

We also reached out to Scott Guzewich, a Research Astrophysicist at NASA.

Scott: So I enjoyed that movie a lot, but the atmosphere as it was shown was not scientifically right.

Basically, the problem with what you saw in the movie there where the atmosphere is so thick that it's picking up boulders and knocking things over [storm SFX]. It's just not possible. I mean the wind speed can get very high, as high as hurricane force at the surface sometimes.

So imagine a hundred mile per hour wind on Earth, if you're standing in a hurricane, obviously you'd be almost blown off your feet.

If you were standing on the surface there in Mars and you put your hand out in that hundred mile per hour wind, you would feel it, but it would feel like a gentle breeze [breeze SFX] here on the surface of Earth.

That sounds pretty cool. Standing in a hurricane but it only feels like a soft wind. But you’d die pretty quickly right?

Scott: You wouldn't die instantaneously but you'd want to be getting into shelter as fast as possible. First, the atmospheric pressure is dramatically lower than it is here on the surface of Earth. So, all the water in your body would attempt to boil, basically, instantaneously [water SFX]. The water covering your eye, the water in your mouth, and even the water in your cells and your blood. That wouldn't kill you right away but it would be very uncomfortable immediately. You could probably survive for a few tens of seconds, maybe a minute. You could potentially get a very rapid dose to frostbite on your entire body. Again, you wouldn't necessarily die right away, but it'd be quick.

And how about sound. What could we expect to hear?

Scott: Our ears aren't really designed to work in that sort of very near vacuum sort of atmosphere. So we wouldn't hear too much, maybe if you were scuffling along on the surface [gentle scuffling SFX], you could maybe very faintly hear that sound as you were clawing at the ground and gasping for air [gasping for air SFX].

The temperature obviously is colder in general, so that drives a slower speed of sound, and it seems that a lower speed of sound would tend to lower the pitch, [lowering pitch on Scott's voice] make your voice sound deeper… but then the atmospheric density would kind of go to raise your pitch [raising pitch on Scott's voice], so it seems like the pitch probably balances out.

If voices won’t carry far, how about a piano?

[piano music]

Scott: The very high-pitched, high frequency noise at the far right end of the piano, you probably wouldn't hear that at all, but maybe the deepest bass sounds that the piano makes, you might be able to just pick those up with a microphone if it was sensitive enough.

We’ve explored the first four planets of our solar system, and learned some of the ways their unique atmospheres and conditions shape their soundscape, or lack thereof. We’ll continue our exploration of sound to the outer reaches of our solar system, after the break.

[music out]

MIDROLL

[music in]

On to Jupiter, the King of Planets.

What’s interesting is that Jupiter doesn’t have a solid surface. Hard to imagine but the whole planet is made up of gas that just keeps getting denser and denser—eventually becoming a liquid the closer you get to its core. The pressure and temperature variations are what cause those beautiful swirling bands.

Keith: So the interesting thing on Jupiter is that the pressure and the temperatures where the cloud decks are, are actually not so inhospitable.

Cloud decks?

Keith: So you've got these very distinct cloud layers in Jupiter's atmosphere. So y’know, it's just fun to imagine. What would it sound like? Would you get these echos?... because you have these super powerful lightning bolts, more powerful than anything on the Earth, so you'd have really, really loud thunder [thunder SFX]. You'd hear echoes of echoes of echoes [thunder echoes] just back and forth. It's fun to think about.

How about the rest of the outer planets?

Keith: Jupiter and Saturn, I think you could consider to be pretty similar. Uranus and Neptune are pretty similar to each other. So all four atmospheres are primarily hydrogen and helium.

So if you tried to speak on any of them your voice would be higher?

Keith: I think so, cause the atmosphere is 75% hydrogen which is even less dense than helium and the rest is helium. I think we'd all be Mickey Mouse on Jupiter and Saturn.

And how about our old friend Pluto? Anything different?

Keith: It is probably the thinnest bound atmosphere that we know. But, it also looks really complex. It's got layers. It's pretty different. Mainly because the temperature is so low. Nitrogen there is an ice. Carbon monoxide is mostly an ice. That's probably the weirdest, most different kind of place in terms of thinking about how composition, temperature, pressure would affect the sound.

We’ve covered the planets and acknowledged our old friend Pluto, and it’s becoming clear that detecting sounds throughout our solar system is pretty difficult. So I’m curious, why is it so easy for us here on Earth?

Keith: Our ears are good for a very specific environment. They've evolved. Once you take them out of that they're probably not exactly the tool you would want. If you built an audio receiver and sent it to all these places… What could you hear that the human ear could hear, and more interestingly, what could you hear that the human ear would never be able to hear?

That's what I want to know.

Surprisingly, we have never recorded another planetary body with a traditional microphone.

So what does the future hold for us to truly be able to test our sound theories on other planets?

Scott: There is going to be a microphone on the next Mars Rover. The rover launched in 2020, it's supposed to have a microphone on it. We expect that it'll hear a few different things. The sound as the rover drives across the surface for example, will be transmitted both through the atmosphere and through the body of the rover itself. You should be able to hear the wheels kind of crunch along on the sand and on the rocks.

We’re so accustomed on Earth to hearing sound associated with what we see. But in true outer space no one can hear a titanic supernova explosion, or a hurtling asteroid smash into the moon, or even… hear you scream.

Lori: How rare is sound in the known universe? It's pretty rare. Even just in our known solar system, places like the moon and Mercury and these rocky bodies with no atmospheres would be similar to being in space. There would not be much sound, if any.

When we think of Earth as special in terms of being able to even support life, it goes much further than that. It’s one of the true places in the universe where sound is abundant and has impacted that life on an evolutionary level.

Scott: If you look at life on Earth, being able to hear something seems to be a very big advantage biologically. From very simple animal species [forest animal SFX], there is a benefit to being able to hear sound. Because you can become aware of either predators [growl SFX], or prey [squeal SFX], or food sources. So if I were to really get out my speculation hat, y’know alien life in the universe would probably have an advantage to hear things also... in whatever planet or ocean or atmosphere they lived in.

However, these aliens might perceive sound in a completely different way, a way that’s in tune with their own environment, and perhaps hear completely different frequencies.

When you think of space, it’s mostly… space. Where no medium exists to transport sound. Yet, it’s perfect for… light. Light fills the universe, but sound does not.

Keith: The whole universe is connected by light. Light anywhere in the universe can travel to anywhere else in the universe, but with sound you really are truly in different islands of sound and they're all isolated because they're all stuck in this space that doesn't transmit sound. It transmits light perfectly well but not sound.

Sound as we perceive and understand it, is so unbelievably rare, but it’s abundant right here, where we are, within this thin blanket of atmosphere. But if we travel straight up, it goes away very quickly. It gets quieter, and quieter… until it’s gone.

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

This episode was produced and edited by Kevin Edds and me. With help from Sam Schneble. It was sound designed and mixed by Colin DeVarney.

We’d like to thank Dr. Lori Glaze, Dr. Keith Noll, and Dr. Scott Guzewich for speaking with us.

We’d also like to thank Elizabeth Zubritsky, Aries Keck, Nancy Jones, Richard Melnick, and Kevin Hartnett at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

The music you’ve been hearing is from our friends at Musicbed. They license music from great indie rock and pop artists, as well as classics like Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis. Head over to Musicbed dot com to find your perfect track.

If you or someone you know would like to advertise on the show, please reach out, and we’d be happy to give you more information. You can contact us at hi at 20k dot org or through the website.

Finally, no matter what --- we couldn’t produce this show without you, our listeners, and we need your help. So please, take a moment to share this show with your friends on Facebook, Twitter, in-person, or wherever. For those who want to help a little more, we’ve set up a donation page. Every bit helps us bring these amazing stories to our listeners, so if you love the show and have the means, please consider visiting donate.20k.org.

You’ll find all of these links in the show description. Thanks for listening.

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Dolls That Talk (and some that listen)

This episode was written & produced by Miellyn Fitzwater Barrows.

Talking dolls have been around for over a century, but the fascination with making inanimate objects seem human reaches back into our early history. What is it about creating a companion that can interact with us, especially for a child, that fascinates us so? And what will that look like as our technology continues to advance? Featuring Carlene Stephens, Curator for the Smithsonian National Museum of American History and Claire Gartland of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

MUSIC FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE

Washedway by evolv
Simple Things by Dexter Britain
Summer Time by Night Fevers
Garden Graves by Nikolaus Meyer
Crossing by Nikolaus Meyer
Burning Man by SOLIS
Lethal Shot by Generdyn
The Time to Run: Finale by Dexter Britain

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

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Thanks for listening!

View Transcript ▶︎

[Music start]

From Defacto Sound, you're listening to Twenty Thousand Hertz... The stories behind the world's most recognizable and interesting sounds. I'm Dallas Taylor. This is the story behind dolls that talk, and some that listen.

[talking dolls montage]

Talking dolls have been around for over a century. But the fascination with making inanimate objects seem human reaches back into our early history.

What is it about creating a companion that can interact with us, especially for a child, that fascinates us?

One of the first people to create a talking doll was Thomas Edison, in the late 1800’s. He used a small version of his phonograph and worked with toymakers to make a doll that would house it.

Carlene: My name is Carlene Stephens. I'm a curator in the division of Work and Industry at the National Museum of American History.

We have an Edison talking doll in our collection here. It's one of only a handful that have survived. Ours for some reason has no hair, no clothes except shoes and socks. It's also a very heavy doll. I try to picture little girls or little boys carrying this thing around, and the doll is almost as big as a toddler.

The doll’s voices were on wax cylinders that couldn’t be mass-produced, so reach one was recorded individually. Every doll featured one of several nursery rhymes performed by young women. Here is a restored version of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star [Twinkle Twinkle Little Star clip].

Carlene: Untrained teenage voices shouting into primitive audio machines resulted in some pretty screechy, horrifyingly screechy records.

If you didn't know the nursery rhyme the words could be unintelligible. It was that bad.

Regardless of the quality of their performances, these women might have been the first professional voiceover artists.

Carlene: But the real purpose of the doll to be able to speak these nursery rhymes didn't succeed.

An Evening Star Article at the time had the headline: “DOLLS THAT TALK: THEY WOULD BE MORE ENTERTAINING IF YOU COULD UNDERSTAND WHAT THEY SAY.”

In addition to being not at all intelligible, they often broke. Many of them were returned...

Carlene: The fragile nature of the phonograph itself, the mechanism inside, the heaviness of the doll, the large size of the doll. The dolls didn't sell well either.

In all, Edison’s doll was a massive commercial failure.

It wasn’t until 1960 that we had a true successor to Thomas Edison’s talking doll. And this one was commercially successful. Her name...Chatty Cathy.

[Chatty Cathy commerical clip]

Some people were unnerved with having a talking doll in their house. The Twilight Zone even made an episode about a murderous talking doll...and get this...they hired the same actress, June Foray, who voiced the actual Chatty Cathy doll.

[Twilight Zone Talky Tina clip]

Spoiler alert...that’s exactly what Talky Tina did.

But cultural discomfort didn’t hinder toy progress. Once we had a doll that could successfully talk, there was another element to add, animation.

In the 1980’s, Ken Forsee, a former Disney animatronics artist, created Teddy Ruxpin. Teddy’s slogan? The world’s first animated talking toy.

While at the time this animated bear seemed like exciting new technology, it actually was in line with an incredibly old tradition of clockwork machines built to move on their own, also known as automatons.

Carlene: As soon as the clock was invented, around the year 1300, it was immediately apparent that with that kind of mechanism it was possible to do other things like animate figures. Nobles employed very talented mechanicians to build little figures for banquet tables. You would wind them up and they would roll across the table [wind up SFX] and do various things.

I once saw a photograph of a full sized animated bear. The exterior was bearskin, but inside there was an animated set of clockwork and that probably dated from the 17th century.

[Teddy Ruxpin clip]

In the 19080’s version, the child could insert a cassette tape into Teddy’s back and he would move his mouth along with the words that played [continue Teddy Ruxpin clip]. Along with the audio track, the tape had a second, secret track [control track SFX]. It was this control track that actually made his eyes and mouth move in time with the words, as if telling the story.

But some regular tapes could be played through Teddy and even a few would make him move...especially heavy metal for some reason [heavy metal clip]. How they did that is still a mystery to me.

This brings us to a different tradition. One of using technology for unintended purposes. In the 21st century, dolls can not only talk to you, but they can also listen. And some of them might be telling others what you’re saying. Find out who could be listening in on your secrets, after the break.

[music out]

MID ROLL

[music in]

Like most everything else, there’s a twenty first century high-tech version of the talking doll. One that isn’t just designed to keep your kid company...it also gathers information.

Meet my friend Cayla.

[Cayla commerical clip]

Claire: The doll asks what the child's name is, what their mom and dad's name is, where they go to school. Where they live.

My name is Claire Gartland, and I am the Director of the Consumer Privacy Project at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, EPIC. My organization filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission against the manufacturer of the smart toy, My Friend Cayla.

With a Bluetooth connection that accesses the internet through an app on your app, this doll can not only ask your child questions, she saves the answers.

Claire: These conversations, with this super personal customized information, is being recorded, and it's being sent to third parties.

The biggest concern that they’ve raised, is that there now could be a database of voice recordings that’s accessible by law enforcement and national security officials.

Claire: These dolls are marketed to be a child's best friend. The advertising says, "You'll be amazed at what Cayla can talk about [Cayla commerical clip]. She comes pre-programmed with all kinds of phrases and responses to really intimate, sensitive questions like whether the child is pretty or why her father wasn't able to make it to her soccer game, all kinds of really sensitive conversations that a child shouldn't be having with some company.

[Cayla clip]

Another major concern is security. The doll’s way too easy to pair with your device.

Claire: There are no authentication requirements for a user. When she is powered on, she is discoverable in your Bluetooth connection menu as My Friend Cayla, so it's clearly a child's toy. You don't even have to have her application downloaded on your phone. Anyone can connect to her if there's not an existing Bluetooth connection available. The doll can be used essentially as a Bluetooth headset.

I had that experience myself when I was connected with her and playing around with her interactive features. I received a phone call to my phone, and Cayla, the doll, started ringing.

A phone can connect to the doll from 50 feet away through a brick wall. It would be really easy for the caller to essentially speak to a child through that doll. And let’s remember that the real problem here besides the fact that that’s just creepy is that parents are not told about this.

Feels a little sci-fi, and then you have to remind yourself that this is actually happening right now.

And if this is happening right now, what’s just down the road? Imagine a future where androids are created to be companions to our children. They can walk, talk, listen and answer.

What does that future doll look like in your mind? Is it a little scary? Aside from those pesky privacy concerns, there’s something else at work here.

It’s called the uncanny valley and it’s a hypothesis put forth in an 1970 essay by then Robotics Professor Masahiro Mori. The basic concept is that there’s a spectrum: One one end, robots that look and act like humans which we find appealing. And on the other end, robots that look and act nothing at all like humans which we find cute.

But the spectrum sags in the middle forming the uncanny valley. Carlene Stephens explains:

Carlene: The study shows that there's a curve. Up here the thing looks, talks, moves a whole lot like a human and this might be C3PO, roughly speaking. And up here doesn't have any resemblance. It's R2D2. Down in here there's this area where people get freaked out.

The C3PO: appealing. R2D2: appealing for completely different reasons. Down in here might be the Edison talking doll [Edison talking doll clip]. Just creepy. If you look at our automaton, creepy. It's down in here where people have that reaction. This is the uncanny valley.

Getting as close as possible to human and missing and being just repulsive in so many ways. The early efforts to anthropomorphize robots, those fall into that uncanny valley. People start looking and start noticing the shortfalls rather than the excellence in almost getting there.

We’re still a long way off from creating toys that fully replicate human behavior. But as quickly as technology has developed over the past century, that future might not be so distant.

Just think about the difference between the Edison doll [Edison talking doll clip] and My Friend Cayla [Cayla clip].

What’s next for talking dolls? As creepy as they are, we still keep buying them, so I don’t think they’re going away. What are they going to be like in 10, 20 years?

By connecting them to the internet, have we already crossed the line? That makes them smarter than us. Do we really want that?

Twenty Thousand Hertz is presented by Defacto Sound. A sound design team dedicated to making television, film and games sound insanely cool. Find out more at defactosound.com. This episode was produced by Miellyn Fitzwater Barrows and me. With help from Sam Schneble. It was sound designed and mixed by Kenneth Gilbert.

Thanks to Carlene Stephens from the Smithsonian National Museum of of American History, Claire Gartland from the Electronic Privacy Information Center and Teddy Ruxpin for being my bff in the ‘80s.

[Teddy Ruxpin clip]

The music you’ve hearing is from Musicbed. They represent more than 650 great artists ranging from indie rock and hip hop to classical and electronic. Head over to music.20k.org to hear our exclusive playlist.

Mast created our art and Pocketknife built our website, which you can find at 20k.org. Connect with us on facebook and twitter. Our handle is 20korg on both. Consider supporting the show. You can do this by visiting donate.20k.org. Another thing that makes a massive difference is to text all your friends and tell them to immediately subscribe. If you love this show, surely you’ll have a few friends who will as well.

All of these links are down in the show description.

Thanks for listening.

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Car Sounds: Crafting every click, rev, and beep

This episode was written & produced by Miellyn Fitzwater Barrows.

Some car sounds are more obvious like the horn or engine... but what about the not-obvious-until-you-point-them-out sounds like the hollow thud of a trunk or the click of a latch? The sounds a car makes are so closely associated with quality, so how, exactly, do car makers handle this aspect of the driving experience? Featuring Car Enthusiast & Sound Mixer Brian Garfield, David Zenlea from Road & Track, and Tom Teknos from Ford.

MUSIC FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE

"A Million Years" by Awake or Sleeping
"Boy with a Kite" by Joe Moralez
"Reach" by  Roary
"Way Out - Instrumental" by  Could Ever
"Take me Home" by  The Analog Affair

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

Follow Dallas on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and LinkedIn.

Join our community on Reddit and follow us on Facebook.

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View Transcript ▶︎

Hey everyone, it takes a lot to make this show happen. So if you love this show and want to help us out, please consider supporting us at donate.20k.org. Thanks.

[Music start]

From Defacto Sound, you're listening to Twenty Thousand Hertz... The stories behind the world's most recognizable and interesting sounds. I'm Dallas Taylor. This is the story behind why your car sounds the way it does.

[car engine start SFX]

Some car sounds are more obvious, like the horn [horn SFX] or the engine [engine SFX]. But what about the not obvious until you point them out sounds like the sounds of the blinker [blinker SFX], the satisfying “spsss” sound of opening the trunk [truck opening SFX] or the click [door lock SFX] of locking the door.

Every sound a car makes is important to the experience of driving and automakers know this.

David: Every sound in a car has been carefully engineered. That becomes more and more the case as you go up in price. My name is David Zenlea. I'm a features editor at Road and Track.

The door sound for instance, there’s gaskets on either side of your door and the thicker a gasket a car has, that insulates a car from outside noises but it also will affect the way that car sounds, the door sounds when it closes.

The gasket is that black rubber strip on the inside of your door frame. Here’s what an older car sounds like without much thought given to the gasket [old car door SFX].

And here’s what a newer car sounds like with the sound of the gasket in mind [new car door SFX].

David: Automakers know that consumers are sensitive to noises like that and they are very careful about making sure that it meets consumer expectations.

Keep in mind, this is the first sound you encounter when you test drive a car. It’s a subliminal selling point. If the car door sounded loose or unpleasant or dissonant, you’d automatically make assumptions about the quality of the rest of the car. So, this is the care companies first opportunity to communicate to you how well built this car is.

Brian: As an enthusiast and a consumer the thunk of a door is important to me. A lot of German cars have a very heavy door or a thunk to it, it feels solid [heavy car door thunk SFX]. Every time I get in and out of a car that doesn’t sound like that [light car door thunk SFX], it doesn't seem as nice of a car to me. [heavy door thunk and car honk SFX]

My name is Brian Garfield and I am a car enthusiast and amateur racer. At an early age I could not wait to drive. Growing up, both my parents used to motocross which is a form of ameteur racing. I used to race an original Mini Cooper.

Because my parents were automotive enthusiasts, there were always car magazines around the house. Car and Driver, Road and Track, Motor Trend, Autoweek which I always read. And in about the 90’s I got into autocrossing like my parents did in the 60’s and I got them back into it. So we actually did it as a family and we still do it as a family.

Just like when I grew up, all of us are enthusiasts. My younger son drives a Mini Cooper and my older son drives the BMW with a performance exhaust. My wife drives that Subaru STI and I’m driving the Miata with an X5. That’s where we like to spend time and that’s what we like to do as a hobby.

Many people’s live revolve around cars. So what does a certified car guy listen to while he drives?

Brian: I can be entertained by the sound of the motor [car motor SFX]. I like to hear the car and stay connected to it. It’s not uncommon for an enthusiast to drive for hours at a time without listening to the radio, without listening to anything but the sound of the motor. [contine car motor SFX]

For decades, automobile enthusiasts have had a fascination with how cars sound.

David: The very first issue of Road and Track which started in the late 50s has advertisements for exhaust headers and special mufflers and this was popular throughout the 60s. Some muscle cars like the 1970 GTO [GTO SFX] had an option where you could pull like a little lever and make a louder noise [continue GTO SFX]. We've had a long time of sort of editing or engineering the way an engine sounds. The way an exhaust pipe sounds [exhaust pipe SFX] is a very careful engineering process because they're trying to produce a certain sound and trying to edit out certain sounds, but the electronic editing of engine sounds is a little bit more recent.

Yep. You heard that correctly. Electronic editing of engine sounds. But what does that really mean?

David: The way that automakers go about creating engine noises differs and it’s an evolving technology. They basically take a recording of the engine, they take out things that they think a customer wouldn't want to hear and then they play that back through the speakers inside the cabin.

While bringing the sound of the engine back into the cabin can add to the visceral experience of driving...some car enthusiasts are a little uneasy about the practice.

Brian: I’m kind of torn, as an enthusiast I appreciate that I can hear it even more raw. And if you were to put the windows down you wouldn’t hear it as well as if you put the windows up. That’s how you know it’s being pumped into the car. As an enthusiast you might go, “Wait a minute”, but as a lay person you’re like “Wow, there’s a neat car sound.”

David: The first one that really drew the ire of automotive enthusiasts was the BMW M5, the current generation. It debuted in 2012 [BMW M5 engine SFX]. It basically plays the soundtrack of its engine over a stereo inside the car and if you pull the right fuse you basically will cut the engine noise from inside the car.

One of the reasons they do this is that cars are so much better insulated than they used to be. Features like dual pane glass, which are great for blocking out road noise and wind, block everything else out too.

Brian: In luxury cars, they’ll do things to quiet them down, but you’ll still hear that deep low frequency sound from an 8 cylinder and the customer wants to know it’s an 8 cylinder. They want to be able to say say “Here’s my such and such car, it has a V8.” [V8 SFX]

Less road noise also mean less engine noise. And for engineers, playing the engine soundtrack over the car stereo was a workaround.

David: Performance cars, in particular, you want to hear what’s going on in the engine [car engine FSX] so they’ve had to figure out ways to sort of pipe that back in. The other reason of doing this electronically is that modern engines don’t sound as conventionally good as older engines.

Back when V8's were synonymous with sports cars cars with bigger displacement engines and more cylinders tend to make a deeper noise [deep car engine SFX]. It’s very hard to disconnect the buyer impulse from all those things that automakers have been driving into us for many years. It’s something we've come to associate with power and masculinity and wealth.

This seems like a lot of effort for engineers to put into something that is secondary to the function of the car. Just how important is the engine sound for buyers?

David: The sound of an engine is, a selling point for any car. What customers want to hear from their engine, how much they want to hear from their engine, depends on the kind of car that that person is buying. The automaker first has to figure out, "Well, what do people actually want to hear?" Then they have to actually getting into tuning the engine sound.

The unique feeling you get from a car, whether that’s power, safety, fun or practicality is no accident. Automakers know that the way a car sounds is critical to this experience. What factors do they consider when determining how a particular vehicle should sound, and what tricks and tools do they use to achieve that sound? We’ll find out, after the break.

[music out]

MIDROLL

[music in]

A lot of thought and care goes into designing the sounds cars make. Automakers design the sound of a car to meet consumer expectations, but just what are the factors and characteristics they consider when designing those sounds?

Tom: For a luxury car, you're going to want the sound to be a lot more refined, smoother, at a lower volume [luxury car SFX]. For a sports car you'd want it to be a lot rougher with a lot more character and at a much higher volume [sports car SFX].

My name is Tom Teknos. I’m an NVH technical specialist at Ford motor company.

NVH stands for noise, vibration, and harshness. Noise and vibration, those are just what you’d think. Harshness is the term they used to use to describe ride quality, but now, it deals more with the noise and vibration of the powertrain.

The powertrain is the set up that makes the car go and going can be noisy.

[car driving SFX]

Ford, and other automakers, have to figure out what customers expect in their cars and how they’re going to give it to them accurately and consistently.

Tom: You don't want to have a four cylinder Focus [four cylinder SFX] sounding like a Ferrari [Ferrari SFX]. Likewise, you don't want to have a really powerful sports car [sports car SFX] that sounds like a golf cart [gold cart SFX]. That's kind of the whole point of our jobs is to make sure that the character does match the performance level of the vehicle.

The automaker, it seems, would have a lot to figure out. And it can get really complicated, really fast.

Tom: Every different vehicle class and every engine family is gonna have a different characteristic sound. So, just corporate wide at Ford, there are ranges that are established. We call them part of the DNA of that particular vehicle. Then those ranges kind of define how loud the engine sound should be during acceleration. What's the basic character, so that when we execute a program, it's done consistently year after year and model after model?

Sure, but how exactly do they do that?

Tom: We pipe in a significant amount of engine sound into the cabin using the audio system. It's completely synthetically generated, but it sounds so true. You can shape it to make it sound however you want. You digitally generate the sound first from your desktop, then once you've arrived at a sound that you're happy with. You think, "Okay, this is the right character for this vehicle.” Then that's migrated into the vehicle.

All of this is to make sure that the driver’s are getting real time feedback on how the engine is working. Even if that has to be amplified or even reproduced.

Tom: I'm not exactly sure where this is gonna end up going, but one thing I know for sure is that vehicles that don't produce a lot of noise naturally and are performance oriented vehicles, industry wide, everyone is using this electronic sound enhancement.

Hybrid and electric cars are clearly becoming more and more popular. And it’s almost certain that this trend will continue. As new generations grow up without the roar of a gasoline engine, what will they want to hear?

Brian: Nostalgic to me is still a V8 because that’s a muscle car. The V8 is synonymous with power, with strength, with a cool sound. I think that’s still going to define nostalgic for a while. But, the same way that our language changes over time, our definition of performance through our ears will change. As more and more things become electric, the electric motors will become a sign of performance.

These new engines produce a completely different and much quieter sound. Which creates a whole new set of questions. Will these cars be so quiet that you can’t hear them coming up behind you? Do we need artificial sound for safety? And what about future generations who drive electric cars, will they still associate the sound of the V8 with performance and power? Will a quiet whirl [whirl SFX] become the new sought after sound?

Twenty Thousand Hertz is presented by Defacto Sound. A sound design team dedicated to making television, film and games sound insanely cool. Find out more at defactosound.com. This episode was produced by Miellyn Fitzwater Barrows and me. With help from Sam Schneble and Stephanie Wilkes. It was sound designed and mixed by Nick Spradlin.

Special thanks to Brian Garfield, David Zenlea at Road and Track and Tom Teknos at Ford. All of the music you've been hearing in in this episode is from our friends at Musicbed. The track you’re listening to currently is Take Me Home by The Analog Affair. Musicbed has been licensing music by great indie artists like this since 2011. They have thousands of songs from dozens of genres. Check them out at musicbed.com.

Connect with us on facebook and on twitter and tell us what sounds you like and what sounds you dislike in your own car.

Finally, we need your help to keep this podcast on the air. Consider supporting the show. You can do this by visiting donate.20k.org. You can find this link in the show description.

Thanks for listening.

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Audio Descriptions: Not just for the visually impaired

This episode was written & produced by Miellyn Fitzwater Barrows.

Did you know there might be a track of audio on your favorite movies and television shows that describe all of the actions on screen? This technology was designed for the visually impaired, but it could be used for the masses. It’s still not as widely provided as some would hope. Meet the consumers and activists fighting for a better-described tomorrow. Featuring Tommy Edison, Robert Kingett, and Colleen Connor.

MUSIC FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE

Washedway by Evolv
Unspoken by Am Architect
Joining Hands by Evolv
Clear Blake by Ewing
You Are Not What You Think You Are Evolv

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

Follow Dallas on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and LinkedIn.

Join our community on Reddit and follow us on Facebook.

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

Please take 20 seconds and complete our Listener Poll.

Defacto Sound’s website by Mast & Pocketknife, and be sure to tell your friends in the TV, Film, & Game industries all about it.

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

Finally, please take a moment to text a friend or spread the word on social. It makes a world of difference.

View Transcript ▶︎

[Music start]

From Defacto Sound, you're listening to Twenty Thousand Hertz... The stories behind the world's most recognizable and interesting sounds. I'm Dallas Taylor. This is the story behind a cool hidden audio track in movies and TV.

[The Matrix clip]

Tommy Edison is a successful film critic. And there’s one famous movie he just couldn’t ever get through.

Tommy: Everybody was like “Oh, you gotta see The Matrix. It’s the greatest movie in the world it’s so great, blah, blah, blah.” And I must of watched it half a dozen times and got nowhere. Maybe 10, 12, 14 minutes in and that was it.

But Tommy’s movie going experiences tend to be different than most.

Tommy: I’m known on Youtube as the Blind Film Critic.

That’s right, Tommy is blind and a well known film critic on Youtube. When he discovered audio description, everything changed.

[The Matrix clip with audio descriptions]

That was from the audio described version of The Matrix. When you watch a movie online, you usually have multiple audio options. These audio options can include different languages like Spanish or French. But in this case it’s a track describing what’s happening on screen for those with visual impairments.

Tommy: Then I understood what made this movie so great. And what was so special about it. That was the thing that really turned me onto audio description. It sort of changed my life. For example, [Daredevil clip] Daredevil I tried to watch the first couple of episodes without audio description and I could not have been more lost. And then they got it together and got the audio description on. And like I knew the flashbacks were happening, all different kinds of things and it made so much more sense. Plus the descriptions of the fights are incredible.

[Daredevil audio description clip]

Many online shows don’t have audio descriptions. And even Daredevil, a Netflix original series about a blind superhero, had to have activists rally to have it described.

Robert: It was kind of strange because I thought, you guys are making a show that features a blind character, why is it not accessible to the blind?

My name is Robert Kingett. I am a journalist, author and essayist. I was legally blind until my last birthday, when I had a glaucoma attack. Now I don’t see light, I don’t see shadows, I don’t see anything at all. You tend to rely a lot more on your vision than you might realize, so I kind of have to learn everything over again.

Whether it’s your everyday life or while consuming entertainment, when you’re blind, your understanding of what’s going on can hinge completely on your sense of hearing.

Robert: Hearing is everything. The first time I watched a TV show with description, it was That 70’s Show. And from then on I was hooked. I was like, “Oh now I get why my sighted people around me are laughing, ok.”

Federal law requires major television networks to each provide 50 hours a year of visually impaired accessible shows. But that’s only in the top sixty markets. And there are no requirements at all for online streaming platforms like Netflix or Hulu.

Robert: I don’t have cable in my house, I have an Apple TV. And I had to hunt and hunt for a movie that has audio description. In about ten years or so I don’t think many people are going to be actually watching TV, I think everything is going to be online. So, let’s try to get ahead of the curve and make things accessible for streaming platforms. And the law is not in the twenty first century as of yet.

More and more people are tuning in online. And even the shows and movies that had audio descriptions elsewhere, like on broadcast for BLU-Ray, didn’t offer the track during streaming.

Robert: I was trying really hard to at least say, "Okay, well here's the TV show that has has audio description. Why can't you just reach out to the studios and get the track and then layer it on as a separate track on your service?"

And for years they said, "We did not have the technical means." They said that, "We don't know where to begin."

Regardless of how much people at a company might want to help, cutting through all of the bureaucracy to get any corporate entity to spend money can be difficult.

Robert: The American Council of the Blind jumped in so... in a settlement, Netflix has agreed to describe all of their original content, and they will make efforts to get the tracks from movies and TV shows, if they exist. And now that it is on Netflix, Hulu should have no technical problem. If it's on Netflix, then it can occur on YouTube and other places.

The demand for audio descriptions is finally on the rise. But it’s a relatively new technology and there are still no real standards for it. But that’s beginning to change. We’ll get to that, in just a minute.

[music out]

MIDROLL

[music in]

Audio descriptions are becoming more and more common in media, but it’s still a relatively new development with little standardization. Fortunately, people like Colleen Connor are working to change that.

Colleen: I started a business called Audio Description Training Retreats with a woman who has been a describer for about 10 years. We are training people to be audio describers for media and art for the blind. We want to create a certification. We want to create at least a standard of audio describers coming up with some sort of rules and some sort of curriculum for practice.

And of course, that starts with quality.

Colleen: Something that makes a good audio describer or a good script is being able to pare down your words. They don't have to be complete sentences. The person can still hear what's going on. You have to think of it as what is the dialogue cover? What is that sound effect cover? If the phone rings, you don't have to say, "The phone rings." Because we just heard it. So, it's a different way of thinking about things. You have to be observant as a describer and the best description is something that eventually, about 15 minutes in, you don't even notice it anymore. It becomes the narrator of the story.

[Frozen audio description clip]

Good audio description will get you set up for whatever emotionally needs to be conveyed, but it doesn't try to describe absolutely everything, so that you can have your own conclusions for things. Audio description is not there to interpret. You are not belittling your audience by interpreting anything. You wouldn't say, "Mary is really, really sad." You would say, "Mary cries."

You don’t want to distract from the action. You're being someone’s eyes and filling in that visual picture so that they can follow along with the rest of the experience.

Having access to the movies and television shows that influence our culture is important for all of us. And many people who are blind can sometimes feel isolated from the rest of the world.

Unfortunately, the biggest hurdle for this technology is simply, awareness.

Colleen: If the studio and the directors and the people writing this content, if they're not aware of that audio description is existing, they're not going to put it in the contract. It’s so important to focus on the positivity and have it be a positive thing for everyone. It’s such a cool service.

And this service just doesn’t have to be for the visually impaired. Think about it, you’re listening to a story right now, not watching it. How cool would it be to catch up on your favorite TV shows and movies on a road trip or on your morning jog or while doing the dishes?

Storytelling empasses all of our senses. There are times where seeing something tells a story or hearing something tells a story. Touch, taste and smell all tell a story. Even if you’ve watched a movie or television show in the past your mind might unlock something new simply by hearing it.

Audio descriptions were created as a tool to aid in accessibility, but this is simply storytelling. And it’s a huge win win for all of us.

Twenty Thousand Hertz is presented by Defacto Sound. A sound design team dedicated to making television, film and games sound insanely cool. Find out more at defactosound.com. This episode was produced by Miellyn Fitzwater Barrows and me. With help from Sam Schneble. It was edited by Miellyn Fitzwater Barrows and mixed by Nick Spradlin.

Special thanks to Tommy Edison. He has some really cool videos on Youtube that you should definitely check out. You can find him on Youtube under The Blind Film Critic. Also, a big thanks to Robert Kingett and Colleen Connor.

All of the music in this episode is from our friends at Musicbed. To find out more, check out their website at musicbed.com. Also, if you open your browser right now and go to music.20.org, it will take you to a playlist of tracks that we used in this episode and past episodes. I think you’ll really enjoy hearing them. We’ll also put this link in our show description.

Thanks is always to Mast who created our artwork and Pocketknife who built our website. In addition to building the Twenty Thousand Hertz site, they also recently rebuilt the Defacto Sound website from the ground up. And it’s packed full of some very cool projects.

So, if you want to peek behind the curtain and find out more about the people behind this show check out defactosound.com. Be sure to tell your friends in the TV, Film and Game industries all about it.

Take our very short listener poll at poll.20k.org. It shouldn’t take longer than thirty seconds. This poll is really helpful in determining the direction of our show and who is listening.

Finally, as always, we need your help getting the word out. The only way anyone will know about this show is if you tell them. Can you think of someone who might love this show? If so, send them a text or post this show to facebook or twitter. You can find direct links to this show, as well as all of the links that I’ve mentioned in the show description.

Thanks for listening.

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Inside Movie Soundtracks: How every layer tells a story

This episode was written & produced by Miellyn Fitzwater Barrows.

When you think of a movie soundtrack, you probably think music. And sure, that’s one of the many, many things going on there. What else goes into making a scene sound “natural”? It isn’t what you’d think. Meet a major motion picture sound designer who unpacks all the layers of sound that go into your favorite movies and a woman who gets tigers to sing... on tape. Featuring Sound Designers, Chris Aud and Ann Kroeber.

Music featured in this episode:

Washedway by Evolv
Spark by Eric Kinny
Take Me Home by The Analog Affair
Sommer by Longlake
Man on Wire by Steven Gutheinz
Eyes Wide Open by Tony Anderson

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.

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Take our 20-second listener poll here: poll.20k.org

Thanks for listening.

View Transcript ▶︎

[Music start]

From Defacto Sound, you're listening to Twenty Thousand Hertz... The stories behind the world's most recognizable and interesting sounds. I'm Dallas Taylor. This is the story of how sound and film can bring a world to life.

[movie SFX montage]

When you think of movie sound, your mind probably goes to music. But you may not realize that there are about a million other pieces that go into making your movie experience sound amazing.

Chris: I’m Christopher Aud and I’m a Sound Designer and Re-Recording Mixer at Warner Brothers.

Chris has been on the sound team for quite a few films. More recently, Mad Max: Fury Road [play clip], Man of Steel [play clip] and Transformers [play clip] ...yea. Chris likes to break a soundtrack down into what he calls, the three main food groups; music, dialogue, and sound effects.

The first food group is what most people think of when talking about a soundtrack, music. It has the ability to heighten and define the emotional experience for the viewer [play music]. Music can be a subtle way to set the mood or it can be placed front and center. You only need to hear two notes from the Jaws theme to know exactly what it is. [Jaws theme]

Afterall, music was the first sound to be paired with motion picture and still today is the most widely recognized element of a soundtrack.

Ok, next food group, dialogue. It’s not as straightforward as you might think.

Chris: The dialogue is made up of all of the production audio. Anything the characters are saying hopefully has been recorded and recorded well. Like in the case in the project I’m on right now, they were smart enough to know that they were not getting the proper recording cleanly, so they shut off all their wind machines and had the actors re-do the lines right there on the set wild. Then the picture editor came in, pulled up those wild lines and cut them in-sync as best as they could.

The next thing that goes on with dialogue is what we call group ADR, where we hire a bunch of voice actors to come in and do all of the sound that not recorded on the set, [crowd SFX] but of the people that you see on camera, who are generally extras or voices that you might be needing to hear to tell the story through the radio or television.

We as reviewers are often hearing something completely different from what was recorded on set.

Chris: Say a gigantic club scene, [club scene SFX] lots of people talking, dancing, and yet on the set all you’re hearing are the main characters talk and everyone else is completely silent. They’re moving their mouths looking like they’re talking or yelling at each other, and they’re dancing to a song that is not playing in the room. And that all gets put in after the fact so it feels real and live to the audience, but for the actors and everyone on set at the time it’s a very different experience.

Now let's go to a sound designer's favorite food group, sound effects.

You might think something like an explosion is recorded by just that, an explosion right? But this is what a raw explosion sounds like [raw explosion clip]. And then, here’s what a movie explosion sounds like [movie explision clip]. Let’s break that down. These are a lot of different elements coming together to make that sound powerful. There’s the thump [thump SFX], the mid-range [mid-range SFX], the high frequencies [high frequencies SFX], the debris [debris SFX], and that’s just a small sample of what could be thirty plus sounds coming together to make that single moment.

Chris: Typically the dialogue track ends up being kind of sterile. You don’t really have a sense of place, an environment, so the sound effects provide that on a real basic level. So there’s backgrounds [backgrounds montage] that we put in, whether there’s winds and birds and traffics, or more interesting weird sounds [Sci-fi SFX]. Sometimes we’re just going for the emotional feel as opposed to the reality to help support the story that we’re trying to tell.

Sound designer’s have been able to create sounds that have become cultural reference points. So much so, that they sometimes become cliche.

Chris: Crows when the bad guy shows up. Sirens when something bad is about to happen, even if the cops aren’t coming in the movie, you’re hearing an off stage siren. Clock ticks in really quiet rooms. Sometimes it works. It all comes back to telling the story. Is it helping tell the story at that moment?

You might assume that most of the sound effects that we hear in a movie are sounds that literally translate to what’s going on visually. The sound of someone breaking a bone probably comes from just that right? Sound designer’s don’t actually break their bones or someone else’s just for the sake of their craft. Snapping celery *[celetry snap SFX] and other crunching vegetables [crunching vegtables SFX]*are classic tools for these gorey sounds.

Often times sound designer’s mix in sounds that are entirely unrelated in order to hit that sweet spot. And when they’re designing something that doesn’t exist in real life, that’s when things get really interesting.

Chris: Right at the top of Mad Max: Fury Road, the startup of Mad Max’s car out in the middle of the desert [play Max's car startup]. What a brilliant little cinematic moment visually, and to make sound for that was pretty cool and fun. And we’re not using just straight up car sounds in there, there’s other things hiding in there that make it fun and interesting.

I asked him, what was in the secret sauce?

Chris: There’s a couple of sewing machine type spin ups going on in there because you’re right on the belt of the motor that’s sticking out through the hood. So, there were other things to help sell that whine and start up that weren’t just car motor things.

Let’s listen to that again [play Max's car start up].

Chris: Almost nothing we do ends up being exactly the thing that you think you would pick up or grab or use to make the sound that you’re hearing. Sometimes that just has to do with the way the sound is recorded that we’re using. Sometimes we use microphones stuck way up inside of things, contact mics, and we’re getting sound that someone has never really experienced first hand. Because they’re not sticking their head inside a dishwasher.

That’s a really interesting thought. In movies, we’re experiencing sounds that most people have never heard first hand. But, in order to get the recordings, someone has to be out in the field capturing it. We’ll meet of os those people, after the break.

[music out]

MID ROLL

[music in]

How do sound designers go about finding and recording sounds? To answer that question, I found someone with some really interesting adventures in the field.

Ann: My name is Ann Kroeber. I have been working in sound for movies and games for a bazillion years. I worked with my late husband Alan Splet and we worked together on a lot of iconic movies.

Ann has recorded sounds for Jurassic Park [play clip], King Kong [play clip], The English Patient [play clip], and a whole slew of other films. One thing she’s had a lot of experience with is recording animals.

Ann: All you have to do is just pay attention to them and be present with them and treat them with respect. They’re fascinated by the recorded and they talk to me. They talk into my microphone.

When she worked on the Harrison Ford film Mosquito Coast, Ann needed monkey sounds. So she went to the San Francisco Zoo.

Ann: They were hiding up on a big high rock and the zoo keeper told me, “Ok there’s two rules, you can’t look at them and you can’t talk to them.” And I said, “Oh listen, I can’t record that way. I’ll sign a release.” She had said “Ok, but be very careful.”

There’s one little monkey up on top of this high rock and he’s looking down and kind of watching me. And I said “Hey, come here a second I want to show you something. Come on. Come here.” He came down this rock and a whole troop of monkeys followed him and they made a semi-circle around me and I told the monkeys what I was doing. And they were like young children actually, and just by respecting them and just being present with them and talking to them, I just told them about the microphones and I told them about the tape recorder. I said “The sound goes in here and it comes around here.”

And they’re looking and they’re all fascinated by this. I had this sounds I had recorded of these dusty tiki monkeys, they’re like little chirpy kind of things. And I said “Hey guys, do you want to listen to this?” And they kind of nod their head yea. And so I turned it on, I played these dusty tiki monkeys [dusty tiki monkeys clip] and they’re listening really intently. And afterwards I said “You guys can do better than that.” And they all just jumped up and it was just incredible. They all jumped up and just started hooting and hollering and circling me and making this amazing racket [monkey sounds]. And one monkey would jump on my shoulder and howl into the microphone and I mean I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. I was just so stunned by this amazing response from them.

Another film took to her the Mohave Desert to record big cats.

Ann: There’s this beautiful bengal tiger that was in a compound and he was very lonely. Usually, they’re kind of scared in the beginning they see this microphone and this big floppy thing on the end and they’re like “Whoa, what’s that.” Then I explain to them what it is. Once the tiger calmed down he would talk into the microphone, he would just go [tiger snarl]. And it would be like he was sort of telling me the troubles I’ve seen.

I found out that these big cats make this amazing sound at night [night SFX], it’s kinda of a chuffing chorus that they do and they won’t do it around people. So, I set up these microphones outside. Finally the cats started up and oh my god it was just so beautiful echoing through that place [cat chorus SFX]. So, when it was done I went over and listened to the recording and I just started crying. He’d gone right up to the microphone, right up and done, like an old jazz singer doing his solo to the chorus.

Ann started her own library with all the sounds she’s collected over the years. And she’ll continue to influence the way our movies sound, well into the future. If you turn off the picture and listen to the sound, it’s amazing to hear the great length sound designer’s go to build suspense, foreshadowing, emotion. All of these are essential pieces of the experience. They come together to make up a pretty fantastic whole. Whether it’s a simulation of real life [traffic and crowd SFX], or a fantasy brought to life [animal SFX]. They help us find a way to escape, even if it’s just for a little while.

Twenty Thousand Hertz is presented by Defacto Sound. A sound design team dedicated to making television, film and games sound insanely cool. Find out more at defactosound.com. This episode was produced by Miellyn Fitzwater Barrows and me. With help from Sam Schneble and Stephanie Wilkes. It was sound designed and mixed by Jai Berger.

We’d like to thank Chris Aud and Ann Kroeber for speaking with us. If you want to know more about Ann Kroeber’s sound effects library, visit soundmountain.com. All of the music in this episode was from our friends at Musicbed. Check out their incredible library at musicbed.com. We also have a public playlist set up just for the music we use in the show. You can hear that at music.20k.org.

Big thanks to Pocketknife for our website and Mast for the art. Continue the conversation by connecting with us on Facebook or Twitter, under the handle, 20korg. We’d love to hear what you think.

Finally, if there’s someone you know who might love this show, we’d be honored if you sent them a message, a text, or share the show on your facebook or twitter accounts. Thanks for listening.

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From Analog to Digital (and back again)

Photo credit: Hernan Piñera via Foter.com / CC BY-SA

This episode was written & produced by Miellyn Fitzwater Barrows.

The transition from analog to digital seemed like a fairly simple and expected process. So why are so many people reverting back to analog? In this episode, you'll learn about the Jedi skills old radio DJs had to have to spin vinyl on the radio, and meet a man who’s found himself trapped in a digital world and learn what he does to escape. Featuring Rick Adams and Craig Crane. 

Music used in this episode

"Blues to Lose" by Dominik Hauser
"Scratching" by Dmitry Lifshitz
"Small Memory (Instrumental)" by Mint Julep
"Twilight Still (Instrumental)" by Mint Julep
"Colorbloods - Instrumental" by Brooke Waggoner
"Desert Vista (Instrumental)" by David Swensen
"Doin' That Thing (Instrumental)" by Soul City

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.

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

View Transcript ▶︎

[Music start]

From Defacto Sound, you're listening to Twenty Thousand Hertz... The stories behind the world's most recognizable and interesting sounds. I'm Dallas Taylor. This is the story behind the transition from analog to digital.

When you put a record on, you have control over the needle and how the recording plays in a completely different way than with your phone and digital files where you just hit play. You had to lovingly place a record on a turntable and carefully set down the needle.

Rick: You really had to take your time with vinyl. If you dropped it, there would be this terrible ripping sound and you potentially ruin permanently your most sacred songs or somebody else's to that matter. You really wanted to take the time and put it down properly.

That’s Rick Adams.

Rick: I’m a Broadcaster, Producer, Writer, Performer…

And a Radio DJ just as radio was going digital. We’ll get to his story in a minute, but first let’s go back a bit. To 1931 when they began to use vinyl for recorded music. It was tough, light and sounded great. Vinyl records were used by soldiers throughout World War II and became widely used after the war.

Rick: There’s something really beautiful about that “whaboom” as it drops into a valley of audio. And these grooves, so ridiculous on either side, left and right, that recorded this audio and even though you sort of logically understood what it was about it, it didn’t make any sense. It was magical, how the heck does this work?

Vinyl is made from dinosaurs and pieces of dirt and decomposed plants , so it's alive.

It does sound kind of alive. There’s just something about taking one out, dusting it off, and setting it up to go. But, if you were a DJ, you had to be able to start at any song on the record.

Rick: You would take your finger, you'd find the beginning of the track and then you would rotate the disk for about the sort of third of the size of the disk to the left, so they would move back to give yourself some speed. When you push the button or open the fader and you're talking, it would hit speed and you wouldn't get this roar, you just get this “baaa” straight into the beginning of the track.

It was a point of professional pride to be able to do this just perfectly.

Rick: Amongst DJ, it's all about timing and you know again, total nerd pride and Jedi skills. It's just like how do you push the button, get the music playing and just after you played the jingle on the cart machine so that it hits absolutely perfectly. There was some artistry about that. It was quite exciting and it would add to the stress level the job, but it would keep you on your toes.

I can imagine, but stress is a part of a lot of jobs, right? Like Craig Crane’s...

Craig: I work in the visual effects industry, servicing films from studios such as Marvel, Disney, Warner Bros. We laser scan every set, every vehicle, every location used for filming so those area can be enhanced, demolished, have creatures walking through them…

But for Craig, records offer a way to relax. He describes himself as an analog man trapped in a digital world.

Craig: The more we've become digitized, I can't function the way I do professionally without a digital environment to work in. It's only a matter of time before we ourselves become digitized. In the last 2 or 3 years, I've started to miss that analog hands-on approach to everything really, from how we communicate with people, with how we create.

Living and working in a digital world began to take its toll on Craig.

Craig: I was desperate to try and find a way to decompress from all this compression that's around us.

But then, one day, going through some old boxes, he came across a walkman. Not only did it still work, but it sounded amazing.

Craig: It was the past just reaching out and grabbing me and pulling me back. I remember where I was when I made that tape. I remember what shops I bought the records on that I'd made that mix tape with. It was just total recall. Not only that, but I was listening to the sound, and what really surprised me was that I was actually listening to entire tracks rather than swiping across, next track, don't like that, next track, next track. I was actually listening to this entire cassette.

That's when I just started thinking, "You know what? I can't remember the last time I actually just sat down and listened to 90 minutes of continuous music on an iPad or an iPhone or an iPod." Then that was the genesis of this mission that I am currently on now.

Craig was working on a bunch of films at once and desperately needed some down time.

Craig: It was almost as if I was meant to find that box of tapes and that old Walkman.

The journey started from there. He became obsessed.

Craig: I decided to hit eBay, get a cassette deck, get all my vinyl cleaned, and I just started making tapes. It was a fantastic time because these records I hadn't touched for a good couple of decades. As soon as you put the needle on to that disc, it just takes you back. It takes you back to some fantastic memories.

Then he found that something interesting began to happen. Find out how this simple rediscovery changed his life, after the break.

[music out]

MID ROLL

[music in]

Craig Crane lives, and works, in a digital world. When he rediscovered his record collection, He started re-buying vinyl copies of albums he purchased on iTunes to recapture that analog sound.

Craig: The digital online version, yes it sounds ok, but as soon as you do and A/B comparison, the analog source is going to always win hands down in my ears. So I’m not telling you or anyone listening to this that analog is better for them, I just came to a point where I decided it was better for me.

In addition to missing the sound of vinyl, he missed the thrill of the search. The challenge of digging through trophs of records to find just the right one. Acquiring music had gotten too easy. He wanted to be out there hunting. He also found that the way music is being prepared for the web isn’t appealing to him.

Craig: The digital compression that's used for mass market appeal, such as streaming platforms, iTunes, it's compressed to the point where it's just a facsimile of its former self. It's stripped of all its warmth. It's stripped of all the ingenuity that went into how the original album was produced.

After he discovered how much more he enjoyed the sound of music playing from a record, he decided to challenge himself. He would only listen to analog music for an entire month. This eventually led to his project and website, Analogue October.

Craig: I spend all of September just making tapes. 1st of October, I put a sticker on the back of my iPod that basically just said banned for 1 month. I set about. Day 1, totally loved it, day 2, day 3, day 4, and as I got towards the end of October, I had a trip planned to New York for a Marvel film. We were going to be out there for 3 or 4 weeks capturing buildings as reference for an upcoming film.

Packing for New York, he faced a dilemma. Stick with his analog experient for a while longer, or switch back to the iPod. He went for the analog and packed his walkman and 30 cassette tapes. Craig: I just made sure that I packed a bit more carefully than I would normally.

He had a blast walking around Manhattan with his walkman, headphones, listening to his cassettes.

Craig: It was very interesting seeing people's reactions as well. It was bizarre. People I thought would look at me like, "Hey dude, have you not heard of the iPod," but a lot of people would actually come up and say, "Oh my, I've not seen one of those for years. You got to let me have a listen." As soon as you put the headphones on, they're like, "That's tape?" Yeah. They don't remember tape ever sounding that great.

The Walkman still seems to have a very fond place in people’s minds. Maybe because it was a monumental shift in the way we consume music. It paved the way for all the mobile music devices that followed. I asked Craig what he had learned from making this change in his life.

Craig: I was in a very dangerous position where I was not switching off. I was pulling 18 hour days, 20 hour days, 7 days a week, not taking vacations. What I have learnt from this process is that if you want to sit in your lounge with your headphones on and your feet up, and put a record or 2 on, and make a few tapes, you're allowed to. I was really on the verge of just pushing myself too hard. That little cassette that I found in that box, who knows. It may even have saved my life.

Does analog sound better than digital? It’s completely a matter of taste. But, was there something we lost when we went to digital? Absolutely. We lost the rituals that prepared us to listen. Spending hours at a record store, ready and eager to discover something new. We lost the excitement of flipping through bins of albums, pulling one out and deciding if it was worth the commitment.

Once we gathered our collection, we lost the journey of going through a shelf of albums, pulling out the one that sparked a memory. Remembering who you were when you first laid eyes on the artwork. The smell of the paper, the dust, the excitement of finding a bonus track at the end of an album. It has less to do with what sounds better and it has so much to do with the quieting of our minds to listen and enjoy the experience.

We lost that moment right before the first track played. Where we were fully invested in the experience of music.

Twenty Thousand Hertz is presented by Defacto Sound. A sound design team dedicated to making television, film and games sound insanely cool. Find out more at defactosound.com. This episode was produced by Miellyn Fitzwater Barrows and me. With help from Sam Schneble and Stephanie Wilkes. It was sound designed and mixed by Kenneth Gilbert and Colin DeVarney.

We’d like to thank Rick Adams and Craig Crane for speaking with us and Pocketknife for doing our website and Mast for the fantastic artwork. Check it all out at 20k.org.

If you find yourself on Facebook or Twitter, follow us at 20korg and say hello.

Thanks for listening.

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Sounds We've Lost: Echoes of the Past

This episode was written & produced by Miellyn Fitzwater Barrows.

When was the last time you heard a dial-up modem? A dot matrix printer? A CD dropping into its plastic tray? Did you know it would be the last time? We talk to Rick Adams, a British reporter, about the impact of Big Ben being silenced for repairs next year and Madeline Ashby, a futurist, who has some pretty wild ideas of what sounds we’re about to lose... and have already lost but haven’t realized it yet. 

Madeline Ashby
Rick Adams
Julian Berry

Music used in this Episode

"London Rap Song" by English Through Music
"Zeta! (Instrumental)" by Ramova
"Drum and Bass Boutique" by Daniel J. Schmidt
"Blue Skies" by Matthew S. McCullough
"Lullaby" by Matthew S. McCullough

Check out Defacto Sound, the studios that produced Twenty Thousand Hertz, 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.

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View Transcript ▶︎

[Music start]

From Defacto Sound you’re listening to Twenty Thousand Hertz...the stories behind the world's most recognizable and interesting sounds. I’m Dallas Taylor. This is story behind the sounds that have come and gone.

[old automoible honks SFX]

There are all kinds of sounds that used to be common most of us just don’t hear in modern times...

Horses clopping by pulling carriages [horse clopping SFX]

The steam train coming through town [steam train SFX]

Telegraphs [telegraph SFX]

Automobile engines sputtering to life [automobile engines SFX]

Picking up the phone, on your wall in your kitchen [dial tone SFX]. You hold it to your ear and hear a dial tone. Most people just have cell phones nowadays, but it used to be you had to have a dial tone [dial tone SFX]. And if there wasn’t a dial tone, that meant that someone else was on the line. And you had to wait to make your call.

Then there’s the dot matrix printer [dot matrix printer SFX]. It was so loud and took so incredibly long just to make one sheet, but at least you had a hard copy of your work? And ripping the perforation off the edges, [ripping SFX] ugh.

Remember the dial-up modem? It used to be that we plug our computers into a phone line and call the internet? Or, however that worked. It took forever and had this sound [dial up SFX].

Or that whirl of winding a cassette tape in your walkman [walkman winding SFX]

And what about that plastic on plastic click of carefully laying the CD onto the tray [CD click SFX]. When was the last time you put a CD in? Did you know it would be the last time?

Let’s go back a bit, and take a trip across the Atlantic.

["Welcome to London" flight attendant clip]

We found this old recording of Big Ben. For those who don’t know exactly what Big Ben is, here’s a quick tutorial.

[Big Ben song]

Now that you know, check out this old recording of Big Ben. Which is not a person, not a clock, not a tower, it’s a bell, ding dong.

[Old Big Ben recording]

That was 1890.

[Continue old Big Ben recording]

Rick: It's a time machine and it's beautiful and I love that about audio. It conjures up such beautiful imagery. I've always said and always believe that the pictures are better in audio, they just are.

That’s Rick Adams.

Rick: I’m a broadcaster, producer, writer, performer. So when I heard the recording, it was chilling and exciting and uplifting because just thinking about the fascination with this sound began over one hundred and fifty years ago.

For the past century and a half the bell has rung well over one million times. Just think about that, Jack the Ripper and David Bowie heard this bell daily at some point in their lives. And now they’re set to be silenced for several months next year for major renovations.

Rick: When I heard they were going to stop the chimes I just really thought “Wow, this is going to hugely impact London life”. Big Ben is docked neatly on top of the house of the parliament where everybody shouts to each other [arguing crowd with Big Ben chiming in the background SFX]. It seems like this quiet, beautiful device that reminds everybody that time is pressing on and you'd better make a decision soon. Otherwise, life will pass you by because it's been there like the sentinel looking down upon all of us in the Elizabeth Tower.

Elizabeth Tower was finished in 1859. The great bell, eventually named Big Ben, was hung shortly after. At one point the striker had to be replaced, but it then rang continuously until World War 1 [zeppelin's flying SFX] when it was silenced for two years to hide it from German zeppelins at night.

After that, there were only two other times that it was silenced. Both times for repairs.

Rick: It's a massive beautiful machine, but somehow it doesn't feel like a machine. It feels like this beating heart of the British nation because the sound’s are so iconic. It’s going to be weird to think that Londoners and people who work in London aren’t going to hear those familiar chimes.

Thankfully, they’ll only be gone for a short time, but it makes you realize that so many things you take for granted can change before you realize it’s happening.

Madeline: We are always sort of inhabiting a world of sounds that can go away at any time.

And I want to know what kind of impact losing all these sounds has on us. So I reached out to…

Madeline: Madeline Ashby, I’m a Science Fiction writer and a futurist. I often write stories for companies and organizations that want to know the future of a given thing. They give me a technology or a platform or something they’ve developed and they ask me to write about the human cost of it.

The human cost of design and of innovation means sort of taking into account how people will actually use a device, or technology, or a platform. That’s sort of like being able to say well, we have phones that can take pictures [camera click SFX], so naturally those phones might be used to take pictures that parents don’t want their kids taking.

It’s sort of seeing the unseen uses of technologies. Like the famous saying, “The street finds its own uses for things.” One of my jobs is to find out what the street will use certain things for.

I asked her, what’s the biggest lost in terms of sounds that we’ve experienced? And she said…

Madeline: The sound of silence. We are so used to being socially connected through the internet and through other technologies that we’re never alone. So we very rarely actually hear the sound of silence any longer.

It’s like light population, expect with sound. Today it’s very hard to find a place that is completely quiet. How this constant noise might be affecting us, we’ll find out after the break.

[music out]

MID ROLL

[music in]

True silence is becoming harder and harder to find. What does that mean for us as humans?

Madeline: It’s possible that we are overloaded in ways that we not only didn't predict but which we are only just now beginning to understand, biologically. Similar to the blue light pollution problem where if you look at blue light before going to bed might be harder to sleep, I think that it's possible that the amount of sound that we are exposed to [montage of everyday sounds] in an ambient way really might be having a detrimental impact on things like attention, or focus, or even just settling down for sleep or mood.

I think that there are serious consequences biologically to something like for example the open office plan.

[Office SFX]

It’s true that a lot of office employees are now expected to work inside wide open loft type spaces. They’re suppose to be good for productivity and sharing information. And really, what an open office plan is good for...

Madeline: It's really good for extroverts, it's really great for surveillance and mutually assured surveillance. And it's great at spreading sound.

Which is to say, that is it terrible for quiet.

Madeline: I think that people will seek out silence and I think you see that now in sort of the mindfulness movement. that's already sort of on the rise people are sort of seeking that out and are also seeking out things like ASMR, ASMR videos.

[Ambient SFX]

ASMR, the for uninitiated, is autonomous sensory meridian response. It’s when you experience a relaxing euphoria connected with a tingling in your head and neck. It’s specifically suppose to be induced by audio and/or visual stimulation and there are well over five million videos featuring the tag ASMR on Youtube alone.

Madeline: That are very quiet and the sound of quiet is really important in developing a sense of peace and relaxation and stimulating that part of your brain.

[ASMR Clip]

Obviously.

With the introduction of new technologies, we’re more connected than ever before.

Madeline: Our soundscape does change over time and one of the one of the ways and that changes is that our use of language changes over time. The cadence of our speech is different now than it was 100 years ago. One of the things that you hear now, more than you ever heard, are A women's voices and B cursing. As culture changes we speak differently and as our media changes, we speak differently. So not only are there more sort of sounds from media like the sound of a television blaring…[television SFX]

or the sound of someone watching something on online...

[online video SFX]

Madeline: The sound of a videogame playing in the background. [video game SFX]

or the sound of of the constant pinging text messages...

[text SFX]

Madeline: Those are sounds that are now part of our ambiance. But there's also the way that we speak that is influenced by the content of that media or that develops from media. One of the most interesting things that I've noticed is that our speech now is influenced by the Internet. So what was a meme that you read with your eyes can come out through your mouth, through your speech.

[people speaking meme's montage]

you might have read those things online and then suddenly they're coming out in your speech. So it's possible that we can have our speech change over time that's a change in sound. And I think that yeah I think that changes in sound can be that that dramatic.

Over the next 30 years what we’re gonna see is a continued trend toward layers of intimacy in terms of direct communication and contact as privacy goes away.

I think that what you're going to see are sort of more and more localized networks of of groups of people who find more private ways to contact each other and in ways that that re-create intimacy over great distance.

So, in-ear buds or in-ear microphones or bone phones or something like that for select groups of people. Leaving mics always on as a as a sign of intimacy. The sounds that we stand to lose currently via technologies are sort of rougher sounds, the sounds of audio clipping for example [audio clipping SFX]. The sounds of something brushing a microphone [micrphone brushing SFX], as microphones get smaller and answer more malleable and as they get more ambient we’re just gonna lose out on the technologies that change how sound actually sounds.

Just listen. What do you hear right now? Outside of your earbuds, or car stereo, or wherever you’re listening to this.

Over the next ten to twenty years there’s a good chance that some of those sounds you just heard will be majorly different or gone altogether. But, on the bright side, they could be replaced with all kinds of new fun sounds. Maybe they’ll come from your friendly robot assistant [robot assistant SFX], or your trusty robot dog [robot bark SFX]. Maybe your inevitable robot overloads [robot SFX]. But really, who knows what we'll be hearing over the next decade. I can tell you what it probably won’t be, silence.

Twenty Thousand Hertz is presented by Defacto Sound. A sound design team dedicated to making television, film and games sound insanely cool. Find out more at defactosound.com. This episode was produced by Miellyn Fitzwater Barrows and me. With help from Sam Schneble and Stephanie Wilkes. It was sound designed and mixed by Kenneth Gilbert and Colin DeVarney.

Kenneth was also the ASMR host you heard earlier. We hope he doesn't leave us for Youtube. Special thanks to Rick Adams and Madeline Ashby, as well as English through Music for letting us use their track London Rap Song. Check them out at englishthroughmusic.es.

Our artwork is by Mast and our website by Pocketknife. Finally, if you’re enjoying the show please subscribe, leave a review, tell a friend, give us a like on Facebook or follow us on Twitter. Thanks for listening.

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