808: The drum machine that changed music forever

Artwork provided by Roland.

This episode was written and produced by Fil Corbitt.

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

MUSIC FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE

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

MUSIC EXAMPLES FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE

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

Twenty Thousand Hertz is produced by Defacto Sound.

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View Transcript ▶︎

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

[SFX: Cybertron 808 Beat]

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

[Music clip: Usher - Yeah!]

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

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

[Music clip: Beastie Boys - Brass Monkey]

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

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

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

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

[music out]

[music in]

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

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

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

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

[music out]

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

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

[SFX: Roland TR-66 Rhythm Arranger]

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

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

[music out]

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

[Music Clip: Phil Collins - One More Night]

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

[Music Clip: Kraftwerk - The Robots HQ Audio]

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

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

They helped introduce new, weird technology to popular music.

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

[music out]

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

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

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

Here it is in Blondie's Heart of Glass.

[Music Clip: Blondie - Heart of Glass]

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

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

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

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

[music out]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[music out]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Music clip: Marvin Gaye - Sexual Healing]

[music out]

[music in]

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

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

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

[music out]

[MIDROLL]

[music in - 808 beat]

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

[music out]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[music out]

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

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

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

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

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

Adjustability was the key.

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

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

Here’s the Kick [SFX]

Snare [SFX]

Closed Hi Hat [SFX]

Open Hi Hat [SFX]

Paul McCabe: crash cymbal [SFX]

Paul McCabe: There's toms [SFX]

Paul McCabe: hand clap [SFX]

Paul McCabe: Rimshot [SFX]

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

And finally Clave [SFX]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Music clip: Cars That Go Boom]

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

[Music clip: Felix da housecat - Kickdrum]

[music in: 808 beat]

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

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

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

[808 beat out]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[music in]

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

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

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

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

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

[music out]

[music in]

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

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

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

[music out]

[music in]

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks for listening.

[music out]

Recent Episodes

VIEW ARCHIVE

Soundmarks: AT&T, United Airlines, and inventive sonic branding

This episode originally aired on Household Name.

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

MUSIC FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE

Prepared by Luke Atencio
Safari by Uncle Skeleton

Twenty Thousand Hertz is produced by Defacto Sound.

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View Transcript ▶︎

[music in]

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

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

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

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

Can you identify a brand from a sound?

[SFX: McDonald’s sonic logo]

McDonald’s

Mickey D’s

McDonald’s

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

[SFX: NBC sonic logo]

That’s NBC

Some are easier to identify than others.

[SFX: T-Mobile sonic logo]

Cingular? AT&T? Phones?

It’s definitely a cell phone

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

I was gonna say Staples.

That’s T- Mobile.

And the really good ones make you feel something…

[SFX: 20th Century Fox sonic logo]

That is 20th Century Fox.

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

I saw the logo.

I started craving popcorn.

I did know that one.

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

[SFX: Netflix sonic logo]

Netflix.

I was gonna guess Netflix!

Netflix!

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

[SFX: Texaco commercial]

In the beginning, companies wrote whole songs.

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

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

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

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

[SFX: Pepsodent commercial]

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

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

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

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

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

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

[SFX: Purina Cat Chow jingle]

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

[SFX: Stouffer’s pizza jingle]

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

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

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

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

[SFX: United rhapsody in blue song]

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

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

Colleen: They use Rhapsody In Blue as a system.

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

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

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

[SFX: Early 90’s United weather forecast]

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

[SFX: O’Hare Gershwinn clip]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[SFX: MGM sonic logo]

...or NBC.

[SFX: NBC sonic logo]

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

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

[SFX: Intel sonic logo]

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

[music in]

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

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

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

[SFX: Bell sound]

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

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

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

[music out]

[MIDROLL]

We’re back

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

[SFX: Ambience of Danni on keyboard]

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

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

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

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

[SFX: CBS News theme]

...or ESPN.

[SFX: ESPN theme]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yeah. Sounds… pretty big.

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

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

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

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

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

Just like AT&T

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

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

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

[SFX: Scene tape [DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYS]]

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

[Danni laughs]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sounds a lot like a film score

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

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

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

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

Danni: What Joel heard, was this...

[SFX: Scene tape [BAG-PIPES]]

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

[SFX: Scene tape [MUSIC PLAYS]]

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

And those four notes… might sound familiar.

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

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

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

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

For AT&T?

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

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

Danni: Yeah [laughs]

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

[SFX: Scene tape [MUSIC PLAYING]]

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

[SFX: Scene tape [MUSIC PLAYING]]

Is that on purpose?

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

Man Made

Danni: Yeah, exactly it was very man-made

How the anthem was recorded mattered too.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[SFX: High quality car door closing sound]

Or maybe tinny, and cheap.

[SFX: tinny, cheap car door closing sound]

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

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

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

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

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

[SFX: Sweet music]

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

[SFX: sour music]

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

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

[SFX: Spicy music]

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

[SFX: Stella Artois Roots music]

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

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

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

Or maybe it’ll all just be ASMR.

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

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

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

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

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

That was weird.

[music in]

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

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

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

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

Thanks for listening.

[music out]

Recent Episodes

VIEW ARCHIVE

Deaf Gain: The promise and controversy of cochlear implants

Original Art by Michael Zhang.

This episode was written and produced by Leila Battison.

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

MUSIC FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE

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

Twenty Thousand Hertz is produced by Defacto Sound.

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View Transcript ▶︎

[music in]

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

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

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

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

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

[music out]

Here he is through an interpreter.

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

[music in]

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

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

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

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

[music out]

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

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

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

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

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

[music in]

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

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

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

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

These paved the way for the very first hearing aids.

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

[music out]

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

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

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

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

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

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

[music in]

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

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

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

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

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

[music out]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[SFX: Switch on clip 1 start]

You hear my voice?

[Crying]

Aww

[Crying]

Hooray!

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

[music in]

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

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

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

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

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

[music out]

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

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

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

[music in]

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

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

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

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

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

[music out]

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

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

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

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

[SFX: Munchkin clip audio]

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

The same thing can happen with cochlear implants.

[music in]

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

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

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

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

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

[music out]

[MIDROLL]

[music in]

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

Here’s Brandon Edquist through his interpreter again.

[music out]

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

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

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

[music in]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[music out]

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

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

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

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

[music in]

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

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

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

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

[music out]

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

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

[music in]

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

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

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

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

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

[music out]

[music in]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[music out]

[music in]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks for listening.

[music out]

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Plants That Listen (and some that sing)

Original Art by Jon McCormack.

This episode was written and produced by Rachel Ishikawa.

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


MUSIC FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE

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

Twenty Thousand Hertz is produced by Defacto Sound.

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Join our community on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Reddit⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

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

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Check out SONOS at sonos.com.

View Transcript ▶︎

[SFX: Data Garden Quartet Philadelphia Museum Exhibit Clip]

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

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

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

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

Exhibit VO - On lead synthesizer, a philodendron.

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

Exhibit VO - Bass synthesizer, schefflera number two.

Exhibit VO - Controlling ambience and FX, snake plant.

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

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

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

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

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

[music in]

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

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

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

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

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

[music out]

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

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

[SFX: Nature field recording]

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

[SFX: Field recording out]

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

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

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

[SFX: Plantasia music]

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

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

[SFX: Richard Lowenberg -Secret Life of Plants]

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

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

[SFX: Midi Sprout - Computer Dance]

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

And so the MIDI Sprout was born.

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

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

[music in]

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

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

[music out]

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

[SFX: MIDI Sprout music example]

But that sound occasionally changes.

[SFX: Midi Sprout music shift]

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

[music out]

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

[SFX: Nature of Now music track]

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

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

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

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

[music out]

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

[music in]

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

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

[music out]

[MIDROLL]

[music in]

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

[music out]

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

[SFX: rock music play]

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

[SFX: boiling water sound]

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

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

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

[music in]

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

That’s Monica Gagliano.

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

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

[music out]

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

[music in]

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

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

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

[music out]

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

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

[music in]

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

Monica was curious if plants could detect sound vibrations.

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

[music out]

[SFX: Stream sound]

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

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

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

[SFX: Clicking sound]

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

But that’s just a theory.

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

[music in]

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

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

[SFX: Data Garden Quartet Live 4/15]

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

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

[music out]

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

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

[music in]

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

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

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

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

[SFX: Sounds for a Secular Sabbath music track]

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

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

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

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

Thanks for listening.

[music out]

Recent Episodes

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Sonic Illusions: Can you really trust your ears?

Original Art by Jon McCormack.

This episode was written and produced by Carolyn McCulley.

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

MUSIC FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE

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

Twenty Thousand Hertz is produced by Defacto Sound.

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Support the show and get ad-free episodes at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠20k.org/plus⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

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Check out SONOS at sonos.com.

View Transcript ▶︎

[SFX: Virtual Barber Shop Plays]

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

[SFX: continue Virtual Barber Shop]

[music in]

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

[SFX: Virtual Barber Shop Continues]

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

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

[SFX: Shepard Tone]

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

[SFX: Shepard Tone End]

[SFX: Dunkirk soundtrack]

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

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

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

[SFX: Shepard Tone End]

[SFX: Mario 64 Endless Stairs]

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

[End Mario SFX]

[Bowser Laugh]

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

[SFX: Laurel/Yanny music mashup]

So, is it Laurel or Yanny?

[music continues]

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

Diana: I hear Yanny.

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

[SFX: boxing match “ding ding” bell]

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

[music out]

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

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

[music in]

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

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

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

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

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

[music out]

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

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

[SFX: phantom words]

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

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

[SFX: continue example]

[music in]

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

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

[music out]

[MIDROLL]

[music in]

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

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

[SFX: Brainstorm/Green needle illusion]

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

[music out]

[SFX: Brainstorm/Green needle illusion]

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

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

[SFX: Piano Tritone]

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

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

[SFX: Tritone Paradox]

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

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

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

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

[music in]

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

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

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

[music out]

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

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

[SFX: octave illusion]

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

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

[SFX: octave illusion]

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

[SFX: octave illusion]

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

[SFX: busy city street sounds etc.]

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

[music in]

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

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

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

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

[music out]

[music in]

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

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

[music continues]

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

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

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

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

Thanks for listening!

[music out]

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

Original Art by Michael Zhang

This episode was written and produced by Colin DeVarney

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

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

MUSIC FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE

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


Twenty Thousand Hertz is produced by Defacto Sound.

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View Transcript ▶︎

[GoT intro music]

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

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

[GoT music out]

[Show SFX]

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

[SFX out]

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

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

[music in]

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

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

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

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

[music out]

[GoT clip - S3E4]

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

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

[GoT clip plays in full, then bumps out]

[music in]

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

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

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

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

[music out]

[Dragon clip]

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

[music in]

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

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

[music out]

[GoT clip - S8E4]

[music in]

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

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

[music out]

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

[GoT clip - S7E5]

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

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

[GoT clip - S4E10 plays under]

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

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

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

[GoT clip - S5E2]

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

[GoT clip - S5E2 plays and bumps out]

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

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

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

[music in]

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

[music out]

MIDROLL

[music in]

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

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

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

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

[music out]

[GoT clip - S7E2]

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

[GoT clip ends]

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

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

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

[GoT clip - S5E2]

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

[GoT clip ends]

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

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

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

[GoT clip - S7E7]

[music in]

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

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

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

[music out]

[music in]

Twenty Thousand Hertz is produced out of the studios of Defacto Sound, a sound design team dedicated to making television, film and games sound incredible. Matter of fact, the Defacto team even works on Game of Thrones trailers. You can see those, as well as tons of other sound-designy stuff, at defactosound.com.

This episode was written and produced by Colin DeVarney, and me, Dallas Taylor, with help from Sam Schneble. It was edited, sound designed and mixed by Colin DeVarney. An enormous thank you to Paula Fairfield for bringing this show to life and sharing her story with us. Now that Game of Thrones is over, she’s moving onto a project of her own…

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks for listening.

[music out]

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Sound Escapes: Nature’s untouched soundtrack

This episode originally aired on Birdnote.

Over his long career, Gordon Hempton has mastered the art of truly listening. He’s known as the Sound Tracker. Some people call him an acoustic ecologist. His recordings and books have made him an international expert on the beauty and importance of undisturbed, natural soundscapes — and the ways human beings have changed them.

Now, Gordon Hempton is losing his hearing. But with that loss has come an intense urgency to share his life’s work — and his passion — with as many people as are willing to listen.

MUSIC FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE

Balance by Adam Bokesch
Learning to Lose You by Lovelast

Twenty Thousand Hertz is produced by Defacto Sound.

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View Transcript ▶︎

[SFX: Natural Sound]

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

[music in]

This will come as no surprise, but I’m really into sound. And I don’t just host a podcast about it, I’m also a sound designer. I started a company called Defacto Sound, and our team has been collecting and crafting a huge library of sounds for over 10 years.

...and, when it comes to capturing the sounds of the natural world, there’s an undisputed king. Gordon Hempton has made many of the best nature recordings of all time. Every reputable sound designer in the world knows his name, and you’ve heard his recordings in countless movies, television shows, and games.

But Gordon isn’t just an amazing sound recordist. He’s also an exceptional listener, and we can all learn a lot from the way he hears the world.

Today we’re featuring a story by the podcast Sound Escapes. Host Ashley Ahearn spoke with Gordon. Here’s Ashley.

[music out]

[SFX: Hawaiian Rainforest]

What if you had dedicated your life to recording the sounds of the natural world...

[SFX: Hawaiian Rainforest]

...from the rainforest of Hawai’i

[SFX: Cross fade to coyotes and iconic prairie sounds]

...to the vast dry prairies of North America.

[SFX: Sound levels rise and rise]

But then one day you woke up…

...to silence.

[SFX: Sound cuts out, abruptly]

Gordon Hempton: I have pretty substantial hearing loss, I have good days and bad days. And it was about two years ago that I couldn’t understand the spoken word on a telephone or anything like that.

[Sound Escapes music in]

Over his long career, Gordon Hempton has mastered the art of truly listening. He’s known as the Sound Tracker. Some people call him an acoustic ecologist. His recordings and books have made him an international expert on the beauty and importance of undisturbed, natural soundscapes - and the ways human beings have changed them.

Now, Gordon Hempton is losing his hearing. But with that loss has come an intense urgency to share his life’s work - and his passion - with as many people as are willing to listen.

He’ll give us a crash course in the art of truly listening. Something that he says it’s a dying art that is constantly under threat in our noisy, modern lives.

Gordon Hempton: So noise pollution today has become the curtain that separates us from what is truly meaningful. The connection that we have for gaining information, for our sense of place, from nature.

First, I want you to meet Gordon and hear the story of how he became the Sound Tracker…

[music out]

Gordon Hempton believes that we are born good listeners, but over time we lose that skill. As we age, our busy lives and cultural expectations pull us away from this wonderful, innate skill that we all possess.

Anyone who has spent time outside with a kid - maybe on a warm summer night, or walking through a forest, listening for birds, knows that children are the best listeners.

Gordon Hempton: I find that they make great naturalists. There’s nothing we need to teach a preschooler about listening.

Gordon remembers the first time he was captivated by sound. But it wasn’t what you might expect. There were no birds or wind in the trees, no coyotes in the distance - the kind of soundscapes he’s spent his life recording. It was a much more simple, elemental experience.

Gordon Hempton: I think the first time I listened to a natural soundscape, was when I was a child. And I would dive into the pool [SFX] and I would let the air out so I would sink to the bottom of the pool [SFX]. And I really enjoyed the pressure around my whole body, it was the swaddling effect. And when I was down there I felt a calmness and isolation. You know, had I been a fish, it would not have been a silent experience - but with terrestrial ears not much sound goes in. So it was that silence of the natural underwater world for me, where I truly listened and didn’t criticize it, didn’t evaluate it. I simply took it all in.

That last bit - not criticizing or evaluating - just taking it in - is the foundation of being a good listener. And Gordon says that’s what gets schooled out of us.

Gordon Hempton: You’ll receive instruction as soon as you go to school on how to listen. The teacher stands up in front of the class and says, “Class! Listen!” Right? And everybody turns in the direction of the teacher. And they find out that “oh, she’s important.” And so listening is paying attention to who’s important. And you know, there you begin to apply filters.

Over the course of our lives we just keep applying more and more filters. We filter out interests, hobbies, the types of music that we “like” or “don’t like”. We winnow our experiences down to make the world more manageable and less overwhelming. Well, the same is true for the way we listen to the world around us. We don’t hear the birds anymore. Or the wind in the trees.

And life is less rich for it, Gordon says. But here’s the good news: we can re-learn how to listen. Gordon had to do that, too.

But that didn’t happen until many years after his experience as a kid listening under water in the swimming pool.

He was in his 20s, driving non-stop from Seattle to Wisconsin to start grad school in plant pathology. He’s young, he’s full of himself, he thinks he’s got it all figured out. And on this long drive he pulls over somewhere in the middle of Iowa, completely exhausted.

Gordon Hempton: I just laid down in a corn field to get some rest during a long drive, and a thunderstorm [SFX] rolled over me, and I simply took it all in. And I had such a vivid description of the valley as the result of the echoes of the thunder and the textures of the rain and the insects. It was so overwhelmingly informative about where I was, but the question that remained was “Who was I?”

[SFX: Thunderstorm rolls in, builds, rolling peals then trail off…]

Gordon Hempton: And it was at that moment that I truly listened. That I understood that I didn’t know who I was. That I had been living someone else’s life, as if there was some invisible set of instructions. And that the first step that I would take in trying to discover who I was, was to become a listener.

[SFX: Pensive, sound break to let that last thought sink in - the sound of the thunderstorm... building behind his cut, then rolling peals of it trailing off here - segue into rain]

Gordon Hempton is what’s called an acoustic ecologist. He spends hours listening to nature — all the intricate, subtle layers of sound that make up a landscape — and really, an ecosystem. He’s particularly fond of the dawn chorus, that special moment as the sun rises and the birds greet it with song [SFX].

Each day, as the earth rotates on its axis, the sun’s light spreads around the globe, and the dawn chorus happens again and again and again, across the earth’s surface.

It’s kind of beautiful when you stop to think about it - that somewhere, at every moment, birds are awakening and singing to the sunrise. Gordon calls it “the global sunrise.” And he’s described the Earth in his writing as “a solar powered jukebox.” And he wants more of us to experience the wonder of actually hearing it.

[SFX: Rainforest ambience]

Gordon Hempton: I was recently in a very remote part of the Amazon rainforest. And I just was taking it all in. Just, like, listening to the place. And trying to relax, because, you know, I knew there were jaguars and like countless viperous snakes, but, relaxing, nevertheless, because the ears do contain some of the smallest muscles and bones so the slightest tension will interfere. And I begin to hear the insect patterns, and how they are rhythmic and each rhythm is a different insect, especially as the light weakens and we make the transition from day into evening and night. Oh my God. And I realized this is the sound of the spinning Earth. That this is actually like a huge clock, and I’m listening not just to the seconds but to the milliseconds, and it’s a beautiful clock, it’s just so elaborate and so precise that it is beyond human invention.

To make one of his recordings, Gordon chooses his spot carefully. He looks for parabolas in nature - places where sound collects and from where you can hear in many different directions - sort of like scenic viewpoints… but for listening. And often, the locations he picks are popular with wild creatures, as well. There have been times where Gordon will pick a spot and sit down, and then he’ll notice that the grass is flattened or even warm because a deer has bedded down there.

He uses special microphones, arranged to simulate the human head and the way sound comes from all directions. And once he’s got his gear set up, Gordon will sit for hours, perfectly still, just letting the sound wash over him. It’s a sort of listening meditation, that sometimes reveals surprising things.

Gordon Hempton: It takes me a certain amount of time just to get deeply immersed myself. Because it’s not the early sound, it’s not the obvious sound, it’s those faint, subtle layers which really provide the depth of the experience.

I can’t move my head or the microphone will just pick it up. My eyes, you know are quiet, though. You know. They’re just - they can move, they can look wherever they want. And then I look around and it’s amazing how often that I see evidence of ancient people. I was in the cliff dwellings area of Utah. I picked a site that was indicated by wildlife to be a choice listening spot. GH: So there I am, and sure enough my eyes then rest on the charcoal and the smudges on the walls that have been left there for literally thousands of years.

Ancient peoples - like those who left the charcoal etchings on the cliffs - depended on their ears to survive far more than we do today. The human ear evolved to hear within a certain range - between 20 to 20,000 vibrations per second. We don’t all hear those frequencies the same, especially as we age and our hearing degrades, but there’s a sweet spot right around 2 to 5 kilohertz, which is the resonant frequency of the human auditory canal. It’s the frequency our ancestors adapted to hear best.

Gordon Hempton: Now, they aren’t around anymore. We can’t ask them or run experiments or even listen to their world. But what we can do, is take all kinds of sounds, put them in the studio mix, put insects [SFX], frogs [SFX], put howler monkeys [SFX] in there just because they so much fun to listen to. I’ve even put modern sounds, like people talking [SFX] and highway noise [SFX]. So I mix all these sounds together and then I apply a steep filter so only those sounds that are around 2.5 kilohertz make it through [SFX].

There’s only one sound that makes it through the filter…

Gordon Hempton: Birdsong [SFX]. Birdsong makes it through. And isn’t it surprising, and perhaps not surprising that bird song is the number-one indicator of habitats prosperous for humans? That if the birds are singing, there’s food, water, shelter, and there’s also a favorable season to get the young off the nest. And I believe that the ability of our distant ancestors as nomadic tribespeople, to be able to hear faint birdsong, guided them as a sonic beacon towards prosperity. And we are here today. Isn’t that great? That birdsong, more than any other sonic element of nature, appears in our classical music? Appears through the ages? That birdsong is music to our ears.

So what happens when you lose the ability to hear that music?

We’ll learn about Gordon’s struggle with hearing loss, and find out what we can all do to become better listeners, after the break.

[MIDROLL]

[music in]

Gordon Hempton is one of the most accomplished nature-recordists of all time. After a long career as a sound recordist, Gordon has so much to teach us about listening to our world. Back to Ashley.

[music out]

[SFX: city sounds]

Birdsong may be music to our ears, but we live in a world where it is harder and harder to hear it - or any natural, undisturbed soundscape, for that matter. We humans are spending more of our time in crowded, noisy cities…

Gordon Hempton: Urban soundscapes are the harsh reality. I don’t think that I’ve ever experienced an urban soundscape where all the sound elements relate to each other in any way. It’s simply an exploding place, and you’re in the way of the shockwaves.

And that may not be good for our health. Research has shown that transportation noise can contribute to higher blood pressure and cardiovascular problems. Living in noisy environments can elevate stress hormone levels in our blood… even shorten our lives.

And those clanging urban environments lack harmony, Gordon says. The sounds in a city have not evolved together the way sounds animals make in nature co-evolve over millennia.

Gordon Hempton: If the Pacific Wren is singing [SFX], it will be singing in its own bandwidth and niche in such a way that it is recognizable to other Pacific Wrens. And the thrushes [SFX], for example, will be singing something entirely different.

Gordon says that when we listen to nature, uninterrupted, we start to hear a bioacoustic system at work - a network where birds and insects and predators and prey are all talking to one another. Like a kind of sonic social network.

If you want to be a good listener, Gordon says the first step is to acknowledge that you’ve probably been doing it wrong.

The second step is to put down your phone, close that social media app, and take control of your own attention span.

Gordon Hempton: In our modern world we do have a choice to pay attention to this, pay attention to that, and there is such a thing as called the “attention economy.” It’s kind of the new currency. Because when they get your attention then they can sell you this, or sell you that, and that’s the way the whole thing works in our world. But that is all intentional information. That’s all information that’s often loud and called “important.” And all these things remove us from the present moment. And once you become aware of the actual place you are, fully, it’s transformative. There’s no other way of expressing it. Because you can never go back.

Gordon talks about noise as a form of pollution. It clouds out our thoughts and it can even separate us from our feelings.

So, the next step to becoming a good listener?

Gordon Hempton: Notice how you feel. There’s already a conversation happening between your senses and where you are. So no matter where you are, notice how you feel. There is this connection going on. Stand on a downtown street corner for just a few minutes and then notice how you feel. And then make the journey sometime to a true wilderness area - and notice how you feel.

When Gordon’s struggling with tough life questions, he says he tucks them away until he can get to his favorite wild place, way out on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State…

Gordon Hempton: And then I pull them out and I ask the quiet - in thought only - I read down the list, I ask the quiet, and the quiet immediately responds to me. Of course, not in words, but in feeling. In feeling. Because it’s - it’s really not the information that’s getting in the way, but it’s the distractions of modern life that are getting in the way. When you’re a true listener there are no distractions. It’s all information.

Gordon talks about his transformation into a “true listener” as a sort of pilgrimage. He says he realizes now that throughout his life, he’s been on a quest to find a true connection to home, to the earth... through his ears.

But then, one day at the age of 50, his ears failed him...

Gordon Hempton: The first time I lost my hearing I was laying in bed and I had my bedroom window open, because I always - I love sleeping where I can listen to the outside and know where I am. And I woke up one night and I was hearing “va vum va vum va vum va vum.”

Gordon thought it was a large tanker ship motoring by his home on the Washington coast, but the sound was actually his own heart beating. Within a matter of days, his hearing was gone.

He figured it was the flu - and that it would pass and his hearing would come back. But as the months went by and doctor after doctor couldn’t diagnose the problem, Gordon started to lose hope.

Gordon Hempton: It was very discouraging. It took me, um - really, it’s hard. [long pause and crying] It’s hard for me... to relive that. I was put out of work. Unprepared to be out of work. I was cut off from… everything and everyone I loved. Including the voices of my children.

And on top of that my own brain created a storm of noise. The sound was a lot like an AM radio being played through a long hose or a tube. It strangely sounded musical, but you couldn’t really make out a rhythm or any words. And the tune never seemed to change. And that was my life, 24/7.

A year and a half went by and Gordon was grasping for answers. He started sinking into depression… and then, out of the blue…

Gordon Hempton: One night next to the wood fire I heard the fire crackle [SFX] perfectly in such detail. The cellulose chambers collapsing and those high frequencies. And then plus the draw of the air. And like, my, the true world, the real world around me, was so vivid. And it lasted like 5 seconds and then disappeared. That’s all I needed. I knew it was possible to hear again.

As his hearing came back, Gordon threw himself wholeheartedly into his work. He started an organization to advocate against noise pollution in national parks and wild places. He wrote articles and did interviews about the importance of protecting natural soundscapes.

But then, four years ago, Gordon’s ears started to fail him once again.

It was an April morning and he woke up and noticed that he couldn’t hear the sounds of birds outside his window.

Gordon Hempton: And so I leaned over and asked my wife, “Do you hear bird song?” And she goes, “Yes.” And… [sigh] Here we go again. And, once again I didn’t waste any time. I went to the doctors and got all kinds of diagnosis and prognosis. And I’m still in the middle of it.

But he’s determined to continue his work.

He’s hired two young assistants - with healthy ears - to help him go through the thousands of recordings he’s made over his career.

Gordon Hempton: You know it’s been interesting to lose my hearing. You start out devastated at first, but in long term it’s really been a blessing. Because I can no longer work alone, and I have to work with young people with perfect hearing. This is an opportunity for me to pass on, not just the information of what I’ve learned over the decades about listening to nature, but also to pass on my passion.

Gordon still doesn’t have a diagnosis for his hearing loss, but he does have a heightened sense of urgency to bring his recordings to the greatest number of people, while he still can...

...because the ability to listen - to truly listen - is such a profound gift.

Gordon Hempton: I am sure there are people who take their hearing for granted. And all I can say is, “Boy, you have a real transformation comin’ up.” You’re going to find out that sound will change your life.

[Sound Escapes music in]

Gordon has teamed up with Sound Escapes to create a 6 episode series, taking listeners on an audio tour around the world. You’ll be immersed in amazing soundscapes from some of the most unique ecosystems on earth.

We’ll start in a rainforest on the Big Island of Hawaii in episode two. Then we’ll head to the grasslands of Saskatchewan to hear a prairie dawn chorus - complete with coyotes.

In episode four Gordon takes us to the Land Between the Lakes in Tennessee. Then in episode five we’re off to the banks of the Mississippi River in Arkansas to hear so many birds that Mark Twain called the experience “a jubilant riot of music”.

Episode six takes us to a remote lake in Eastern Washington. And finally, we end in Ecuador, with some amazing sounds Gordon recorded along the Zabalo River.

Gordon Hempton: Well, for me, the podcast series is an opportunity of a lifetime. Because I’ve spent a lifetime recording all over Planet Earth, and I do have my favorites. It wasn’t hard at all for me to pick themes or locations where I felt these moments - as a listener - of being spiritually enlightened just from listening to the real world around me. Where I felt like, “oh man, life is beautiful, what an opportunity.”

Gordon Hempton: But beyond that, I want you to know that these are only invitations, these podcasts, to the live concert. These are invitations to listen to yourself and not listen to what I think you might want to listen to. But invitations so you can go and explore the world, notice how you feel, listen to the place, and find your special spots.

These recordings are Gordon’s gift to all of us all, and we’re so grateful to share them with you.

Let’s start listening…

[music out]

[SFX: Birdsong continues]

[music in]

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

Special thanks to Ashley Ahearn, Mark Bramhill, and the whole team at Birdnote. The soundscapes Gordon Hempton created with BirdNote are truly spectacular. Really, they’re not like any podcast out there — you don’t want to miss them. You can check out the whole series at BirdNote.org/SoundEscapes or search for “Sound Escapes” wherever you listen to podcasts.

You can hear more of Gordon’s work and buy recordings on his website - sound tracker dot com. Also, if you’re a sound designer, visit Boom Library dot com and look for the Quiet Planet Series. They’re incredible and we use them all the time here at Defacto Sound.

Finally, you can interact with me on the Twenty Thousand Hertz Facebook and Twitter pages or by writing hi at 20k dot org. You can also find our archive, show notes, and transcripts on our website - 20k dot org. That’s two zero kay dot org.

Thanks for listening.

[music out]

Recent Episodes

VIEW ARCHIVE

The Voyager Golden Record: Humanity’s message to the cosmos

Original artwork by Michael Zhang.

This episode was written and produced by Leigh McDonald.

In the late '70s, NASA launched Voyagers 1 & 2 to explore the furthest reaches of our solar system and beyond. But something amazing was included on those space probes... a 90-minute time capsule of sounds, language, and music from Earth called The Golden Record. Its intended recipient? Any intelligent extraterrestrial life that might stumble upon it. What did Carl Sagan and his team put on the record to represent all of humanity? How would aliens decode it?

For the first time ever, the album will be deconstructed track-by-track. Featuring Tim Ferris and Linda Salzman Sagan, two pioneers behind the record.

MUSIC FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE

Polaris by SVVN
Silence by David A Molina
Who am I by Dario Lupo
Closing Rhyme by Chad Lawson

MUSIC DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE

Greetings from Kurt Waldheim, Secretary-General of the United Nations - Voyager Golden Record
Greetings in 55 Languages - Voyager Golden Record
United Nations Greetings / Whale Songs - Voyager Golden Record
Sounds of Earth - Voyager Golden Record
Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F Major, BWV 1047: I. Allego by Johann Sebastian Bach, Performed by Munich Bach Orchestra, Deutsche Grammophon
Ketawang: Puspåwårnå (Kinds of Flowers), Performed by Pura Paku Alaman Palace Orchestra - Nonesuch Records
Cengunmé, Mahi musicians of Benin by Charles Duvelle
Alima Song by Mbuti of the Ituri Rainforest - Smithsonian Folkways
Barnumbirr (Morning Star) and Mokoi Song, Performed by Tom Djawa, Mudpo, Waliparu - Recorded by Sandra LeBrun Holmes
El Cascabel by Lorenzo Barcelata, Performed by Antonio Maciel and Los Aguilillas with Mariachi México de Pepe Villa - Bicycle Music Company
Jonny B. Goode by Chuck Berry - Universal Music Enterprises
Mariuamangi by Pranis Pandang and Kumbi of the Nyarua clan - Recorded by Robert MacLennan
Sokaku-Reibo (Depicting the Cranes in Their Nest), Arranged by Kinko Kurosawa, Performed by Goro Yamaguchi - Nonesuch Records
Partita for Violin Solo No.3 in E Major, BWV 1006: III. Gavotte en Rondeau by Johann Sebastian Bach, Performed by Arthut Grumiaux - Universal Music Enterprises
The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflöte), K. 620, Act II: Hell's Vengeance Boils in my Heart by Wolfgang Amadeaus Mozart, Performed by Bavarian State Opera Orchestra and Chorus - Warner Classics UK
Chakrulo by Georgian State Merited Ensemble of Folk Song and Dance - Melodiya Studio in Tbilisi, Georgia
Roncadoras and Drums, Performed by musicians from Ancash - Recorded by Jose Maria Arguedas
Melancholy Blues by Louis Armstong and His Hot Seven - Columbia Records
Mugam by Kamil Jalilov - Smithsonian Folkways
The Rite of Spring (Le Sacre Du Printemps), Part II - The Sacrifice: VI. Sacrificial Dance (The Chosen One) by Igor Stravinski, Performed by Columbia Symphony Orchestra - Sony Classical
The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II: Prelude & Fugue No.1 in C Major, BWV 870 by Joann Sebastian Bach, Performed by Glenn Gould - Sony Classical
Symphony No.5 in C Minor, Opus 67: I. Allegro Con Brio by Ludwig Van Beethoven, Performed by London Philharmonia Orchestra - Warner Classics
Izlel E Delyu Haydutin by Valya Balkanska, Lazar Kanevski, Stephan Zahmanov - Nonesuch Records
Navajo Night Chant, Yeibichai Dance by Ambrose Roan Horse, Chester Roan, Tom Roan - Smithsonian Folkways
The Fairie Round by Anthony Holborne, Performed by Early Music Consort of London - Warner Music UK
Naranaratana Kookokoo (The Cry of the Megapode Bird), Performed by Maniasinimae and Taumaetarau Chieftain Tribe of Oloha and Palasu'u Village Community in Small Malatia - Solomon Islands Broadcasting Company
Wedding Song, Performed by young girl of Huancavelica - Smithsonian Folkways
Liu Shui (Flowing Streams), Performed by Guan Pinghu - Smithsonian Folkways
Bhairavi: Jaat Kahan Ho, Performed by Kesarbai Kerkar - Silva Screen Music America
Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground by Blind Willie Johnson - Legacy Recordings
String Quartet No.13 in B-Flat Major, Opus 130: V. Cavatina by Ludwig Van Beethoven, Performed by Budapest String Quartet - Bridge Records

Twenty Thousand Hertz is produced by Defacto Sound.

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Get your copy of the Voyager Golden Record at ozmarecords.com.

View Transcript ▶︎

[SFX: record needle going on to record, scratchy start

Kurt Waldheim [1-01]: As the Secretary General of the United Nations, who represents almost all of the human inhabitants of the planet Earth, I send greetings on behalf of the people of our planet.]

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

[Clip continues - Kurt Waldheim [1-01]: We step out of our solar system into the universe seeking on peace and friendship. To teach if we are called upon. To be taught if we are fortunate. We know full well that our planet and all its inhabitants are but a small part of this immense universe that surrounds us. And it is with humility and hope that we take this step.]

[music in]

That was Kurt Waldheim, the fourth Secretary-General of the UN. And what you just heard is the first track from the most epic album of all time. It was made by a team of scientists, artists, and historians hoping that one day other intelligent life forms might find it. It’s the Voyager Golden Record. It’s also a time capsule, and there’s actually two of them. They’re currently over 11 billion miles away, hurtling through space at over thirty thousand miles an hour.

These literal golden records are attached to the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 space probes. These probes were launched in the late seventies and today they are farther away from earth than any other human-made object. The Voyager probes could continue to explore worlds unknown for more than a billion years. So, there is a theoretical chance that alien life could find one of these probes.

In the seventies a committee chaired by Carl Sagan curated a record to ride on each craft. Here’s Carl talking about the record on the original COSMOS television series.

[music out]

[Carl Sagan: A phonograph record, golden, delicate, with instructions for use. And on this record are pictures, sounds, greetings, and an hour and a half of exquisite music, the earth’s greatest hits, a gift across the cosmic ocean from one island civilization to another.]

Recently, Ozma Records has re-pressed the Voyager Golden Record using the original master tapes. Before then, no one on earth could hear the Golden Record in context. But now, we’re going to explore it together, track-by-track.

Kurt Waldheim, who you heard at the beginning of the episode, is track 1 of the record. He greeted whoever might find this record on behalf of all humanity. Here’s track 2, which are hellos and greetings in 55 languages.

[SFX 1-02: Greetings in 55 Languages]

Linda: I think it was an amazing project.

That’s Linda Salzman Sagan, she was in charge of organizing all of these greetings. She was married to Carl Sagan at the time the records were made. Their son, Nick Sagan was recorded for the English greeting when he was just 6 years old.

Linda: Nick gave the greeting in English, and we never told him this. He just said “hello from the children of planet earth” and that was his greeting.

Linda: I get choked up when I think about it. I kind of appreciate his wisdom. That he made a special greeting. He’s a very remarkable young man.

[SFX 1-02: Hello from the children of earth]

The greetings continue into track 3. This time it’s from more members of the United Nations.

[SFX 1-03: UN greetings in several languages]

The UN greetings on this track are mixed with another sound: humpback whale songs.

[SFX 1-03: UN greetings mixed whale songs]

And by the track’s end, the whale songs are the only sounds left.

[SFX 1-03: Just whale songs]

The choice of Whale Songs was deliberate. Carl Sagan believed they carried a lot of information - just like human speech.

[Carl Sagan: If I imagine that the songs of the humpback whale are sung in a tonal language, then the number of bits of information in one song is about the same as the information content of the Iliad or the Odyssey.]

If this record is found by intergalactic life, it’s possible they could understand a whale’s song just as well as they could understand human speech.

That brings us to track 4, “The Sounds of Earth.”

[SFX 01-04: Sounds of Earth]

This is a 12 minute sound essay that depicts the history of our planet. The first part is known as “the Music of the Spheres”. It’s a sonic representation of the planets in our solar system rotating around the sun. The music is composed mathematically - each planet is given its own frequency. The highest pitch is Mercury. The lowest is Jupiter.

Timothy Ferris and Ann Druyan led the production of the sound essay. They wanted to present an evolution of our planet. So next comes the sound of thunder, volcanoes, bubbling lava - this is prehistoric earth.

Each minute of the track takes us through thousands of years of planetary development. From the birth of life on earth, to the modern day, and beyond. Linda also helped collect many of these sounds.

Linda: When we were going to actually record sound. I think Ann suggested that we try to do it in an evolutionary way. So I went to a professor at Columbia who specialized in anthropology and I got the sound of him striking a flint. You know there was a sense of wonder to it and a sense of the ridiculous and the sublime.

[SFX 01-04: Sounds of Earth]

About halfway through we hear the first signs of human life:

[SFX 01-04: Sounds of Earth continue underneath VO]

A heart beat…[SFX] Footsteps…[SFX] The first tools….[SFX] Then modern tools...[SFX] Transportation….[SFX] The launch of a spacecraft...[SFX]

The last human sound is a recording of Ann Druyan’s brain activity. The hope was that extraterrestrials might be able to decode that data, and read her thoughts.

Timothy: It's an odd idea to think about whether alien civilization can make sense of an EEG but, one doesn't know.

That’s Timothy Ferris, who produced the Golden Record.

Timothy: You know when you play a piece of music for someone, you don't know what they're gonna make of it exactly. If you're playing it for them you hope they'll find something rewarding in it.

Timothy: But, I suppose that's the idea behind the Voyager record is that if someday far away in space and time you come across this thing, we hope it's meaningful to you in some way.

The essay ends with the sound of a pulsar [SFX]. The patterns of this sound, plus the image of pulsars on the cover of the record, can be used to calculate time and distance in space. It comes together as a map of Earth’s location in the Galaxy.

Timothy Ferris also led music selection for the record. Which brings us to track 5. This is the “Brandenburg Concerto” by J.S. Bach.

[Music 1-05: Brandenburg Concerto]

Timothy: I was concerned to represent some music that has strong mathematical foundations because we might well be communicating with creatures who don't have hearing or don't have hearing in the range or whose timescale is different so that our rhythms might not make sense. None of us imagined that aliens would be like us and that they would lounge back and listen to the music and experience it the way we do.

Timothy: So, I was interested in finding relationships in the music that would make sense even if you were just mathematically analyzing it. And, there are some pieces by Bach and Beethoven that are there for that purpose.

[music out]

In addition to mathematical principles, Timothy also wanted to find songs that could properly introduce us.

Timothy: Much of the time, though, we were just including pieces because they were heartbreakingly beautiful and we thought they represented our human values.

Next up is track 6. It’s an Indonesian folk song called “Ketawang Puspawarna.”

[Music 1-06: Ketawang Puspawarna]

The piece is an introduction for a prince. The lyrics name different flowers. Each symbolizes a spiritual or philosophical state. Apparently, this was a favorite of Carl Sagan.

[music out]

Timothy: Carl Sagan and I were friends. We both had a particular interest in extraterrestrial intelligence. How, really, would you communicate with an alien intelligence in the distant future was of great interest to us. Music was settled on quite early, to make a record with music and then we realized you could put other things in the grooves too, and so we had natural sounds and greetings and the photos and all.

Timothy: Two of my deepest interests in life had always been science and astronomy, the universe as a whole on the one hand and music on the other. So, here was the chance to bring the two together.

Determining which songs represent humanity best is an enormous task. Tim, Carl, and others listened together to album after album. At one of these gatherings they found track 7, “Cengunmé.” It’s a percussion song from Benin, a nation in Africa.

[Music 1-07: Cengunmé]

Timothy: The listening sessions themselves were great. A lot of 'em were done in my apartment in New York. At that time I was, among other things, a music critic and had thousands and thousands of LPs lining the walls and a good stereo. Which is what people used to do in those days, they’d just sit and listen to music on a stereo.

[music out]

It would have been incredible to attend these listening parties. Imagine listening to music with the greatest scientific minds, trying to figure out what music should be on intergalactic greatest hits record.

Track 8 is “Alima Song” This piece is performed by the indigenous people in the rainforests of the Congo.

[Music 1-08: Alima’s Song]

This song is followed by “Australia Barnumbirr and Moikoi Song.” Track 9 sounds like this:

[Music 1-09: Australia Barnumbirr (Morning Star) and Moikoi Song]

Which is followed by track 10, “El Cascabel,” a Mariachi song.

[Music 1-10: El Cascabel]

Timothy: You have to consider the dynamic you're in if you're going to make a brief collection. 90 minutes from all the music on Earth, then you are automatically going to exclude almost all of the great music because there's so much of it. We could have done a Voyager record every year over the past 40 years and they'd all be terrific. It's not as if you're gonna run out of great music.

Timothy: We tried to get music from all around the world, not just from the culture that had created the spacecraft.

[music out]

Timothy: You end up really with one piece representing each kind of thing. The one rock track on the record is “Johnny B. Goode” by Chuck Berry.

Here’s track 11.

[Music 1-11: Johnny B. Goode]

Timothy also used some creative engineering to get as much music as possible onto the record.

Timothy: The disc is the size of a record that use to be recorded at 33-1/3 revolutions per minute. I cut the Voyager record to half speed so that we could have twice the content. This took our high end response down from around 18,000 hertz to around 12.5 [SFX: “Johnny B. Goode” adjusts to 12.5 hertz], somewhere in there. I figured a little bit of high end loss was a good trade off for doubling the information content of the record.

[music out]

This doubled space allowed for even more diversity and culture onto the record. Like track 12, “Mariuamangɨ,” a traditional folk song from New Guinea.

[Music 1-12: Mariuamangɨ]

Track 13 it “Sokaku-Reibo.” This Japanese folk song is played on a bamboo flute. Its title means “Depicting the Cranes in their Nest.”

[Music 1-13: Sokaku-Reibo (Depicting The Cranes In Their Nest)]

Next up is track 14. It’s from the Baroque period of Western European music. This is “Partita for Violin Solo No. 3 in E Major” by J. S. Bach.

[Music 1-14: Partita for Violin Solo No. 3 in E Major]

Timothy: Music means a lot to us and I would be surprised if something like music didn't mean a lot to at least some other intelligent species. The fact that it is non-specific and yet communicates something to everyone.

[music out]

Track 15 moves us forward in history, to the Classical period. This is from the Mozart Opera, “The Magic Flute”

[Music 1-15: The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflöte)]

Timothy: There's something fundamental about rhythms that it's difficult to imagine any intelligent species not having some familiarity with. I thought music was a good way of, maybe communicating isn't perhaps the right word but memorializing the human species.

Track 16 is an ancient drinking song from the country of Georgia. It dramatizes preparing for battle.

[Music: 1-16: Chakrulo]

We’re now halfway through the Voyager Golden Record. At the end of one side of a record, there are wide grooves that catch the needle. These are known as the “take out grooves” or “run out grooves”.

Popular bands sometimes used to leave secret messages hand etched in between these grooves.

Timothy: So, I had composed a dedication and cleared it with the other members, which was "To the Makers of Music, all worlds, all times." When the record was completed and was sent to NASA there's something called a Compliance Officer whose job it is to make sure that every part going on to a spacecraft meets exact specifications. When the Compliance Officer checked The Voyager record here was this handwriting and there was nothing about that in the blueprints, so he rejected the part.

[music in]

So with the project near completion, a simple hand written message almost derailed the entire thing. We’ll flip the record to Side B and finish the story, after the break.

[music out]

MIDROLL

[music in]

11 billion miles from here, the twin Voyager spacecraft carry golden records. These discs are time capsules - memorials of our global culture. But a tiny visual detail of the record almost stalled the entire project.

Here’s Timothy Farris again.

Timothy: We went through an anxious week or two when NASA was preparing a blank disc to replace the ones we had worked so hard on for fear that the non-standard part might threaten the launch. Carl had to go to the head of NASA to get a waiver. His argument was that this would be the sole example of human handwriting on the spacecraft and that argument carried the day. So, it was with a certain amount of relief that Carl and I and our collaborators watched the launch of the first of the two Voyagers down at the Cape because there were times when we weren't sure it was going to work out at all.

Thankfully it did work out. So it’s time to flip the record.

[music out]

[SFX: Record flip, needle drop]

[Music 2-01: Roncadoras and Drums]

This song, “Roncadoras and Drums,” is track 17. It’s from the Ancash Region of Peru.

[music continues]

The Voyager probes were launched in 1977. Compared to the spacecraft of today, they used simple technology. So NASA engineers had to use special techniques to reach deep space.

[music in]

Timothy: The Voyagers are accidentally interstellar. They used a sophisticated technique to fly past the giant planets; Jupiter, Saturn, on out to Uranus and Neptune in such a way that they were able to accelerate to ever higher velocities. So their velocities exceed the escape velocity of the solar system. That means they'll leave the Sun and our planets behind forever and drift in the Milky Way Galaxy. Because they're going to last so long in space, a billion years is the lower bound on their likely lifetime, it seemed appropriate to put some kind of time capsule aboard the craft.

Each probe travels in a completely different direction. Their billion-year journey is likely to be lonely, It’s fun to imagine a lonely spacecraft drifting through space to track 18, “Melancholy Blues,” performed by Louis Armstrong and the Hot Seven.

[Music 2-02: Melancholy Blues]

Next is track 19 “Muğam”by Azerbaijani musician Kamil Jalilov.

[Music 2-03: Muğam]

Both Voyagers are now interstellar. That means they’ve completely left our solar system. They are the first and only human-made objects to do so.

The Voyagers will fly on for a billion years, but unfortunately they won’t function for that long. Soon, scientists may have to start shutting down instruments to try and save power. They still send data back to Earth each day. But eventually the probes will go dark, and become hunks of metal hurtling through the void.

[music out]

This is Carl Sagan again.

[Carl Sagan: We do not know whether there are other space faring civilizations in the Milky Way. If they do exist, we do not know how abundant they are, much less where they are. But there is at least a chance that sometime in the remote future one of the Voyagers will be intercepted and examined by an alien craft.]

The Voyagers’ themselves will die. But their mission won’t.

So , back to the music - track 20 is from a ballet, Igor Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring.”

[Music 2-04: The Rite of Spring]

By the way, when this was premiered in Paris in 1913 - people rioted - this was not what they expected from a ballet.

[music out]

The next piece, track 21, is prelude and fugue no. 1, from Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier.

[Music 2-05: The Well-Tempered Clavier]

And coming up next is track 22.

[Music 2-06: Symphony No. 5]

An epic symphony for an epic journey. This is Beethoven’s “Symphony No. 5”.

[music continues]

This music sounds familiar to us, but we really have no idea what aliens might make of it. If they can hear like we do at all, they might only be able to hear the higher frequencies...

[SFX: Symphony No. 5 high frequency]

Or maybe the low frequencies...

[SFX: Symphony No. 5 low frequency]

Or maybe they’ll interpret the grooves of the record in a totally different way, and they won’t hear music at all….

[SFX: Symphony No. 5 vibrations only]

Seems like miscommunication is a big possibility. Could we anger aliens with the Golden record? Track 23 is “Izlel E Delyo Haydutin.” This Bulgarian folk song is about an unkillable rebel hero.

[Music: Izlel E Delyo Haydutin]

Could aliens interpret this as a threat?

Timothy: I never took that part of it very seriously, the idea that we'd somehow be threatening someone. There is just nothing in the history of human species or any other relatively intelligent species to suggest anything of the sort. So, I saw no reason to get into such considerations in making the Voyager record.

[music out]

The Voyager Gold Record is truly a message of peace. Much of the music is friendly and joyful.

Next up is track 24. It’s a Navajo Night Chant called the “Yeibichai Dance.”

[Music 2-08: Navajo Night Chant]

Track 25 is “The Fairie Round,” by British composer Anthony Holborne.

[Music 2-09: The Fairie Round]

Track 26 is from the Solomon Islands. It’s name, “Naranaratana Kookokoo,” which translates to “The Cry of the Megapode Bird”.

[Music 2-10: Naranaratana Kookokoo]

If he had to do it all over again, Timothy says he would still use a record over newer, digital technology.

[music in]

Timothy: People say "Well, with digital technology, we could include so much more information" but more isn't necessarily better. A 12-hour feature film is not necessarily better than a two-hour feature film. So, just shoveling large amounts of data in to a time capsule does not necessarily create a work of art. With the Voyager record, we were interested in creating a work of art.

There’s also the question of durability. Remember these records are supposed to last 1 billion years. They’re not vinyl records, like you’d find at home on your shelf. The Voyager Golden records are made of copper and plated in gold.

Timothy: If I were doing the Voyager record today, I would use exactly the same technology because I can warrant that the information on that disc will last for a very long time. There is no digital medium that would give me the same assurance. So, the technology of making the record, I would have done the same. That would probably be a little harder to do today than it was in the '70s when that was the universal industry standard.

Track 27, “Wedding Song,” is a Peruvian folk song. The young woman singing the song laments marrying too young. It’s a haunting melody.

[Music 2-11: Wedding Song]

Track 28 is “Liu Shui.” The title means, “Flowing Streams,” in Mandarin. It captures the feeling of ever-moving water.

[Music 2-12: Liu Shui]

The Voyager craft will flow through space almost endlessly. And possibly long after we’re gone.

Timothy: I have no way to estimate the odds that the record would ever be encountered by an alien civilization. There's so many variables. We don't yet know at what rate intelligence emerges on planets that have life. I imagine that life itself is fairly widespread in the universe.

Timothy: Another big variable is we don't know how long intelligence typically lasts. A powerful species, technologically powerful species like ours might still be here in a hundred thousand years or it might not.

Timothy: You then get to the question of how many of those intelligent species get involved in space exploration or wire up a whole part of the galaxy so that they would even be able to detect something like Voyager. We don't know that either. The Voyager probe would be pretty easy to pick up. It doesn't look like a space rock. Discovering its out there in the first place, though, is pretty much a random chance.

The next track, track 29, “Jaat Kahan Ho.” from India.

[Music 2:13 - Bhairavi: Jaat Kahan Ho]

The Voyagers will travel huge scales of time and distance, truly entering the unknown. Carl Sagan talks about this in his book, Pale Blue Dot.

Quote - “Perhaps no one in five billion years will ever come upon them. [In that time] the evolution of the Sun will have burned the Earth to a crisp or reduced it to a whirl of atoms.

Far from home, untouched by these remote events, the Voyagers, bearing the memories of a world that is no more, will fly on.”

[music out]

[Music 2-14: Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground]

We’re nearing the end of the record. This is the second to last the track on the record. Track 30.

Timothy: My very first suggestion was the track, “Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground,” a field recording from decades ago in the American South.

This song is about enduring a cold night with nowhere to sleep.

Timothy: Everything on the Voyager project was both personal and universal. We're trying to represent the whole human species. The first meeting we ever had on the Voyager record, I proposed two goals. The first that we try to be as inclusive as possible.

Timothy: And second, that we make a good record.

[music out]

[Music 2:15 - String Quartet No. 13: in B-Flat Major, Opus 130: V. Cavatina]

The final track, track 31, is Beethoven’s “String Quartet No. 13: Cavatina”.

This record is about humans. It could be our first introduction to alien life - or, It could become the only remaining evidence of our existence. Or, it might just be for us.

Linda: You know Einstein said imagination is more important than knowledge. There's a certain wonderfulness that this project was wrapped up in.

Timothy: The Voyager record says about humanity that however limited or small or primitive we may be or have been when we made the record, we had the imagination and the intellect to think about scales of time and space far beyond our own.

The Voyager Golden Record will circle our Galaxy essentially forever. That means there is plenty of time for it to be found - If there is anyone out there to find it.

It’s message may not be understood, but it’s intent may be. The Voyager Spacecraft itself is a message to the cosmos, it simply says “we are here, and we are listening”.

[music out]

[music in]

CREDITS

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

This episode was written and produced by Leigh McDonald...and me, Dallas Taylor. With help from Sam Schneble. It was sound designed and mixed by Nick Spradlin.

Thanks to science writer Timothy Ferris. Timothy was the lead producer on the Voyager Golden Record. You can find him online at timothyferris dot com. Thanks also to artist and writer Linda Salzman Sagan.

We absolutely couldn't have made this episode without Ozma Records. They recently repressed the Golden record from the original master tapes. For 40 years before that, no one on Earth could listen to it. It also comes with an incredible book that I keep in my own studio. It outlines the history of the project in much greater detail than we had time for. It also includes all of the photos that were on the record. Go buy it at Ozma Records dot com. Thats, O-Z-M-A records dot com.

The non-Golden Record music in this episode was from Musicbed. Find out more at musicbed.com

Lastly, what would you include on a contemporary Voyager Golden Record? Let us know what music and sounds you’d choose on Facebook, Twitter or by writing hi at 20k dot org.

Thanks for listening.

[music out]

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