TALKIN' SOUND!...Armchair Analysis Of Popular TV And Motion Picture Effects!

What follows is some correspondence with a fellow Sound Effects Aficionado. I thought I would publish some of the content to show that we can be just as enthusiastic but but not goofy about the the subject.

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Bill, I love your past stories beyond the sound effects and I do think you are excellent at combining sound effects and blending them together and adding embellishment to an effect as you have done before too with previous tracks. I'm curious as to how the wind effects have been done: real wind recorded or artificially produced on a synthesizer? And all of those laser beam effects: how they basically made? And the Star Trek materialization and warp drive: I'm curious as to the origin of those sounds too. I look forward to hearing from you,
Sincerely, Bill

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Up front, let me say that some of my analysis of these effects may be what you could call educated speculation and some is based in fact. Since STAR TREK -THE ORIGINAL SERIES (TOS) was produced in the mid 1960's, everything was analog. This is not to say that there were no electronic sounds, but "synthesis" or "synthesized sound" is more synonymous with contemporary computer generated audio. As an example of the former, the music score and futuristic sound effects designed for the 1956 classic science fiction film "The Forbidden Planet were authored by Louis and Bebe Barron, using funky 1950's vintage vacuum tube driven "cybernetic" circuits. You can get the entire soundtrack through GNP Crescendo Records.

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Curiously, a lot of TOS effects were sounds recorded from shortwave radio receivers. The hand held communicator static is obvious but one sound, that of the ATAVACRON, was unique. The ATAVACRON effect was actually a real life digital signal that was part of a five minute transmission generated by WWV, a National Bureau of Standards (now the National Institute of Science and Technology) time and frequency station situated in Boulder Colorado. There was and still is a sister station at Kokole Point, Kauai Hawaii WWVH and both transmit on the following frequencies: 2500, 5000, 10000 and 15000 KHz.

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The WARP DRIVE for the USS ENTERPRISE sounds quite similar to an accelerating subway train rolling on rubber tires! When I was a kid, we all went to EXPO 67, a big time World's Fair held at Montreal. The transmit system consisted of shiny new and very clean subway cars which moved on rubber tires rather than rail trucks. The sound made by the trains as they moved out of the station was remarkably different from the New York City trains but sounded exactly like the ENTERPRISE taking off at WARP speed.

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As far as the winds are concerned, the recordings you sent appear to be mix of real wind, wind chimes and possibly some man-made wind effects. In the heyday of network radio programs in the 1930's and 1940's, sound effects men and possibly some sound effects women invented various Rube Goldberg contraptions to make wind noises.

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The PHOTON TORPEDO can be traced back to at least 1953 where the effect was heard in George Pal's "WAR OF THE WORLDS". In this movie, the sound is referred to as a SKELETON BEAM". The SKELETON BEAM then became the PHOTON TORPEDO in TOS. This same sound is heard in STAR TREK - THE ANIMATED SERIES, although when used, it was played approximately 1 1/2 times faster then the original speed. STAR TREK - THE NEXT GENERATION also used the effect but variously mixed it with other sounds. In one episode, editors ran the sound at half speed. The late Sam Horta did do some editing on STAR TREK so the movement of various TREK noises to FILMATION and HANNA-BARBERA is no surprise.

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The PHOTON TORPEDO is similar to the LASERS heard in STAR WARS. Sound designer Ben Burtt is quoted as saying that he made his sounds by whacking a radio broadcast tower guy wire with a hammer. The PHOTON TORPEDO sounds very similar albeit heavily amped up.

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The ENTERPRISE PHASERS are an end product of something referred to as REVERBERATION FEEDBACK. What the source audio was is anybody's guess but here's how this works: Since audio was recorded on either magnetic tape or 35mm magnetic film and since both devices had a separate record heard and a separate playback head, one could patch the playback audio into the record head either directly through a cable or through a mixing console. As sound is recorded at the record head, the playback head plays the result which is then fed back to the record head. Depending on how the editor sets each level, the effect could a simple echo...OR...it could go into infinite feedback. After a few seconds, the definition or signature of the original audio is totally lost and then begins to sound like a WAWAWAWA. The recurring or pulsing interval is a product of tape speed against the physical space between the heads. It appears TOS editors played their feedback LASERS at various speeds to depict weapons of various size.

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There were several other effects where this technique was employed. Any sound with a ringing decay is most likely a feedback product. Similar feedback effects can be heard in EARTH VS THE FLYING SAUCERS. The mind control machine, the foo lights and the ray guns were all feedback generated sounds.

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With regard to the TRANSPORTER materialization, I do not know. It would appear to be a tonality perhaps generated by some musical instrument such as an organ. There is some echo but I couldn't tell you otherwise. According to the website FILMSOUNDS the transporter materialization was done with a piano wire stretched across a physical beam. Since this document will be posted on my blog as well, maybe some knowledgeable audio aficionado will have a more concise answer. Likewise, some of the TOS bridge noises have been around since the late 1950's but their source remains a mystery to me.

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So that's it for the moment. More later!
Bill.
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Hi Bill,
OK, let's take a look at your recent correspondence and see what I can answer and what I can speculate on.

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With regard to the ATOM SMASHER clip that I sent, the Universal Frankenstein Laboratory effect you speak of is the sound of a really big Van DeGraff electrostatic generator! This sound was sourced form the Universal Sound Effects Library. A number of years ago, I visited a science museum in nearby Boston, Massachusetts where such a device was not only on display but was run as part of the visitors tour through the museum. The generator consisted of two vertical cylindrical metal shafts. At the top of each shaft was a huge metal sphere. Inside each shaft are moving components which move very quickly and produce enormous voltages of electrostatic energy.

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Electrical sparks in excess of 5 to 10 feet rise off the spheres and make contact with nearby grounded metal elements. The sight and sound is quite spectacular! Other Frankenstein laboratory machines included Jacob's Ladders. Jacob's Ladders consist of a hefty transformer with two vertical rods attached. When the juice is applied, a nasty spark rises up between the two elements. When the spark disappears, there is a loud pop or snap. One of the stock electric shock effects heard on Hanna Barbera cartoons is just such a device.

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Editors at HB got a lot of mileage out of the Jacob's Ladder by speeding the recording up and mixing them with many other of their remarkable science fiction sounds. In one of the Jonny Quest episodes, a scientist is seen playing a videotape of a missile launch. As the video finishes, a raspy electrical sound is heard, which is the same Jacob's Ladder with the sparks or snaps edited out.

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In the SPACE BATTLE sequence, the far away sounding sonic vibration sounds were taken from the Hanna Barbera Sound FX Libary but to add something more interesting to the track, I rotated the perspective or listener's point of view through a 360 degree spin. This effect has been around since at least the very early 1960's. It was used on occasion in the animated series SPACE ANGEL in various ways. This recording was generated using a device known as an audio generator or variable frequency oscillator, a VFO, with the output passed through an echo chamber. When I was a kid, I had an Eldon audio generator. It produced sine wave or square wave audio from 20 Hz (cycles per second) through 200 KHz. Anything above 20 KHz is only readable by dogs. The VFO had a tunable dial which could be swept up or down in frequency and sounded weird enough without an echo.

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With the WAR OF THE WORLDS, the reversed electric guitar effect applies not to the heat ray or skeleton beams but to the effects heard just before the heat ray fires. That sound, along other WOTW effects, is also included on Disc 3 of the Hanna Barbera Sound FX Library. How they made the ACK ACK ACK heat ray, I couldn't tell you. I have listened to this this at much lower speeds/sampling rates) but couldn't really come up with a good answer.

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I have a three disc DVD set of 1950's science fiction films which includes EARTH VS THE FLYING SAUCERS. It was stated in the commentary that much of the film was done on location in some sort of filtration plant. The equipment inside this facility was the source of the roaring saucer sound. The playback speed was jockeyed from slow to very fast to match the saucers lifting off and landing. My initial guess for the flying saucers was that of a vehicle driving over a bridge. There are a few bridges in this area that when you cross the span at high speed, the resultant audio is very similar to the sound of those stop-motion animated saucers.

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The SPONGE BOB effect, I couldn't tell you. Initially, it was hard to hear because I was listening via laptop with tiny speakers. When I put it on bigger speakers, it was readable but still I couldn't hazard a guess. As far as the generator sound is concerned, I believe it to be just that, a generator. The Hanna Barbera version was altered by wowing it up from slow to a playback speed slightly higher in pitch than the original recording. On occasion the effect was equalized or muffled to make the generator more background. Anytime Jonny Quest and company used an electric boat in the story, the generator noise was used but it was quite muffled and run at low gain.

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With the USS Enterprise warp drive, I believe the sound used was that of a rubber tire driven light rail or subway. The listener's perspective appears tobe from within the rail car.

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There were two versions of the magic effect heard in BELL BOOK AND CANDLE and also heavily used in MISTER MAGOO'S 1001 ARABIAN NIGHTS. Both composites used the same initial musical chord which I believe to be an organ. The note is sustained for about four seconds and than ascends in pitch. The following effect is a chord struck on a piano. The piano element is run at twice normal speed. In the first version, the third element is a chime which is warped downward in pitch. The organ is edited end to end against the piano element, while the warped chime is mixed with and overlays the piano chord.

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The second version of the BELL BOOK AND CANDLE effect uses the same organ note along with the edited in speed up but the piano chord is of a slightly higher pitch. This is quite apparent when listening closely that the piano chord is a distinctly different recording rather than a slightly sped copy of the first piano chord. How's that for excruciatingly painful and remarkably obscure detail? What follows appears to be three overlapping chimes or bells that go into reverberation feedback. This is the version that Hanna Barbera used for the Wonder Twins Power "Shape of a (fill in the blank)". To me, the first version sounds more magical while the second version is more spacey. In fact, the ringing tail was heavily used as various ray guns and other devices and played from half speed to 4X speed. The opening drone tone in the ATOM SMASHER I sent is the organ from these effects but I looped it.

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All the various Warner Bothers airplane and jet plane sounds I have here are recordings of real aircraft played at double speed. In the case of the classic World War II vintage dive bomber, the clip that runs in excess of forty seconds, there is some interesting background. This is the effect you hear in just about every WWII war flick and related television program. Although identified as a "dive bomber" in the Hanna Barbera package, in the Universal library, it's listed as a "single prop TBF". The two recordings are of the exact same aircraft and are the exact identical recording and yet the two are not quite the same. There is a significant difference between the two tracks. When I first got the Universal Sound Effects Library and listened to this clip, it just did not sound the same, but then I figured it out. The Universal recording is the original unmodified recording. The aircraft goes into the dive and flies by but what is missing is the classic screaming or wailing. The screaming effect was added after the fact to better sweeten the recording. After all, it IS a sound effect recording. How the scream was produced, I could not tell you. In reality, the aircraft best known for the dive bomb sound were the German Stuka fighters. Due to this aircraft's unique wing design, when the Stuka went into a dive, a screaming sound was heard.

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Now to the one question I knew you would ask! The additional flute music I mixed in came from a CD entitled DISNEY'S HAUNTED MANSION. This disc is identified as "the complete original Disneyland attraction soundtrack". Included is music, sound effects, voice clips, outtakes and more. I got it on eBAY a few years back. The flute music and wind were from this disc. In fact, it's actually only one half of a stereo recording where the music and wind are on one track and bells tolling are on the other track. Check eBAY. At one time this disc was commonly seen so it may still be there.

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With regard to the Scooby Doo bats, I listened to the intro music and could only discern what sounded like one set of squeaks even though the animation displays many bats. In the HAUNTED MANSION composite I sent, I used the original reverb effect mixed with the gargoyles. If you want, I can generate something similar with the bat sounds you sent. Mixing multiple sounds is easybut the original doesn't sound as busy as the visual shows.

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OK Bill,
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Enclosed in this package are a number of recordings. You mentioned the Hanna Barbera generator slowing down sequence. I have included two versions. The first is the forward to start and reverse to end. I first heard this in the episode of the Jetsons where they are shopping for a new car. There is a brief scene where the family and the car salesman are traveling on a moving floor and this sound is utilized for the effect.

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The second version was heard more often in later HB science fiction oriented programs where the the generator sound is slowed down in pitch to a stop through the use of a variable speed control on the the playback machine.

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I created an effects composite based on your request for a Frankenstein Laboratory with all sorts of snapping electricity, Jacob's Ladders and thunder. I have also included a separate clip of the VanDeGraff machine taken from the Universal Sound Effects Library.

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With regard to the phaser effects, it was not the radio frequency static. The actual source I couldn't tell you but the final audio is the result of reverberation feedback, the theory behind which I detailed in one of the previous letters.

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Thw wind in the Disney Haunted Mansion music does not not appear to be a real wind, more like a synthesized filtered white noise. In fact, if you listen carefully, you will notice that the wind tonality changes pitch in step with the musical notes of the spooky tune. Many electric organs have this and many other effects programmed in as a specialty where the pitch is controlled by the keyboard.

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I was able to secure a copy of the music intro to Scooby Doo with the bat noises to use as a map for replication and so have included three clips. The first is the one I sent previously with the womp-womps and the gargoyle screams. One of the bats you sent is very close if not the same as what's in the original recording with one bat and the second with multiple bats.

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So there you go, more stuff. And so! More later!
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Bill.>

FOR ALL YOU SOUND EFFECTS FANS OUT THERE! IF ANY!

The following is an email recently sent to a fellow sound effects aficionado who frequents the ToonZone Animated Cartoon Forums. I decided to also publish this email on the Random Access Thought Blog with audio links via TWAUDIO.
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Hi Bill! Merry Christmas!
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I had mentioned in a previous transmission that I would relate some additional background information on the remarkable but truly esoteric subject of motion picture sound effects. SO! Here is more of that detail:
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MY VISIT TO UPA PICTURES!
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Back in 1979, I took a trip out to Los Angeles to visit a friend of mine, a Mister Ronald Gordon, who was trying really hard to convince me not only to visit southern California but also to live in southern California. I spent about five weeks hanging out in lovely Glendora, a typical suburban tract some sixty miles out from LA. While I ultimately did not relocate, I did spend much of that time visiting various animation houses, broadcast music syndicators and radio stations, littering each one of them with my most likely not-too-impressive resume, since at that time I had only been employed by two local radio facilities, one in here in Albany and the other in New Haven.
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I dropped by a number of AM and FM stations including KBIG and KNOB in Los Angeles, along with numerous others whose callsigns I can no longer recall. I also made a point to visit Drake Chenault which, at the time, was one of the largest purveyors of pre-programmed taped music for low-budget automated broadcast outlets. But the most fun was getting inside such studios as Hanna Barbera, Jay Ward and Walt Disney Studios.
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What I learned in these places was that you needed to be in a union to get a job but you couldn't get a job if you weren't in a union. But getting into a union was extremely difficult since there was, and presumably still is, intense internal competition for employment. Disney is in Burbank but so was UPA Pictures, which was only a few blocks away. So of course I stopped by with many questions about their editorial department and their unique effects. What I learned at UPA was that unlike HB, JW and WD, UPA Pictures "farmed out" their soundtrack work and actually did not have much in the way of audio facilities onsite. Custom music, such as the songs performed by Robert Goulet and Judy Garland for "Gay Purree!" were taped at Capitol Records, with voicetracks and sound effects recorded at other third party vendor locations.
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In fact, if you check film credits, if any, you may see names like Marne Fallis and Sam Horta (flag this name, I have more!). These names have been billed on numerous late 50's and early 60's low-budget animation efforts like "Popeye". Another fella, Phil Kaye, did effects for Rankin-Bass features like "Frosty The Snow Man" (Jacky Vernon:'Happy Birthday!'), plus all the "Roger Ramjet" stuff and some Jay Ward work, including "Super Chicken" and "Tom Slick".
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These gypsy-esque editors collected their sound effects from studio to studio along the way and deployed them from film to film along the way and this is why you, as viewer and listener, may hear sounds from Hanna Barbera or Walt Disney, in a 60's "Popeye" cartoon produced by Paramount Pictures which, by the way, had a remarkable library of their own, and which has never been released. Furthermore, many of these effects ultimately came to rest in post houses like Ryder, Edit-Rite and Producers Sound Service. I visited Producers Sound Service on the Sunset Strip just a few blocks downrange from Jay Ward, and had I been truly evil, I could have stolen reels of magnetic film containing these same effects right off the shelf in the lobby. But I was a Good Boy!
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So, when you view a "Pink Panther" cartoon and Pink is riding a bicycle making the famous Hanna Barbera squeak noise and then the bad guy flies overhead in a jetplane that sounds like the "Rocky The Flying Squirrel" sound, know that some freelance sound editor came through those doors, did some editing and left copies of those marvelous effects behind in their library as he or she moved on to the next assignment. The ending to this story is sad though because companies like PSS and Edit-Rite did finally close their doors, What became of their libraries? Who is to know?
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THE STORY BEHIND STAR TREK: THE ORIGINAL SERIES SLIDING DOOR EFFECT!
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Back in the early 1960's, if you were watching TV on a typical Saturday night, you were most likely watching "My Three Sons" (because what else was there to do back then), which starred Fred MacMurray and William Frawley. The program was sponsored by Hunt's Tomato Ketchup (or Catsup). One fairly persistent theme and catch phrase for Hunt's was that "It takes one whole fresh tomato to make one bottle of Hunt's Tomato Ketchup". While this slogan was smoothly intoned by an unseen, offscreen and uncredited voice-over announcer, the camera lens (and our electronic, though analog, third eye) focused on an empty ketchup bottle. A human hand missiles in and places one whole fresh tomato on top of the one completely empty bottle. There is a "hiss-squeak-thump" noise as the tomato miraculously slips right into the bottle! 60's special effects! How cool was that? It was a neat sound and while the effect never did appear in any cartoons (to the best of my knowledge), it did show in an episode of "Hogan's Heroes" as a flag popping out of a cannon and a couple of times in "Bewitched", when Samantha had a power failure.
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But the Hunt's Tomato effect does live on in truncated form. The "hiss-squeak" part was somehow appropriated, and, with a little audio compression added to give some heft, this same sound is now heard as the sliding doors on the USS Enterprise in "Star Trek: The Original Series" (STOS). This clip, along with all the other STOS effects, was made available some years back on a consumer CD produced by Crescendo Records. I don't know if the compact disc is still in print, but many copies are available on eBAY. According to the liner notes, The sound was created by recording a pneumatic airgun and then playing it backwards. I have rendered the effect in reverse myself and it sounds like a plan to me.
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THE HORTA, THE BATHTUBS, THE GENERATORS AND THE TRANSPORTERS!
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One of the sound guys who worked on the original "Star Trek" series was Sam Horta. This name is frequently seen in sound editor credits, especially in 70's vintage Filmation cartoons, like the "Archies", "Fantastic voyage" and "Star Trek: The Animated Series" and also more recently with "Ren and Stimpy". When access to the Internet became commerically available by the mid 1990's, I hoped to seek out and contact Sam but sadly he passed away at just around the same time. But Sam lives on in name as well because one of the many cockamamie alien species encountered by Kirk and Spock were the silicon-based cold-stone lifeforms known as the Horta!
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I had mentioned in a previous email that, at Hanna Barbera, many new effects were created out of existing sounds. Included in this transmission is an mp3 containing the so-called UNNNG bathtub sound plus additional familiar derivatives of the same effect, which goes to show you can get more bang for the buck through audio recycling! Also included is a short clip of the GENERATOR effect restored fairly close to its original frequency and pitch. This is what you may want to listen for should you decide to scope out the "UFOs-through-the-tollbooth" scene in "Close Encounters Of The Third Kind".
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One other noise I'll toss in for this session is a vibrato-like effect usually heard during the transport sequence in STOS. Like the sliding door, this sound has become synonymous with "Star Trek" but predates the series by upwards of eight years. You can hear this twang in "Mister Magoo's Christmas Carol" when the titled character is seen careening around his bed in the morning after his experience with the three ghosts of Christmas. Also too, in "Gay Purree", as Jean Tom spies a mouse, his feline talons come popping out of his paws just prior to launch.
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That's it for this time. More stories later! I hope you had a Merry Christmas and all the best to you and your family for a Very Happy New Year!
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Bill

From the RAT Files Circa 2003: The Hobby of a Lifetime!

The following was originally composed as radio copy for a feature entitled THE RANDOM ACCESS FILE for THIS WEEK IN AMATEUR RADIO for airing on October 25, 2003. For more information on this audio news service, please click on http://www.twiar.org/

I remember this little kid. Cute kid. About nine years old. I remember this little kid sitting in the front room at his house at 644 Morris Street which was actually a huge rambling apartmentthird floor up in the Pine Hills section of Albany. Crouched by the big bay window, tightly gripping a heavy chrome microphone with the big quarter-inch plug jacked into a Roberts upright reel-to reel tape recorder, he sat there belting out a play-by-play commentary over the fly-in, the fly by and the fly away of the glorious Goodyear Blimp , a silver helium-filled, lighter than air baggy cigar gliding gracefully high in the starlit skies over the city on a crisp and chilly Friday October evening with its glittering red, yellow, green and blue pinpoints of light that spelled out the word GOODYEAR in giant sparkling letters across its massive broadside.

Then I remember remember this other little kid. He's about a year older. About ten. He's feverishly tape-recording the warbling, the chortling and the singing noises of the Three Amigos coming out of a big beige-colored RCA Color TV three-inch speaker from a NBC show called "The Wonderful World of Disney". He's doing this with the same grey wrinkly-metal clad tape machine with it's light-glinting plastic seven-inch diameter Scotch Brand magnetic tape reels coasting around and around at an amazing seven-and-one-half inches per second. All the funny music, the silly voices and the bang-clang sound effects preserved on a thin quarter-inch slice of acetate plastic and magnetic stuff that the 3M Company called type 111, all of which is basically just coherent rust.

Of course, all this this happened some forty years ago and all this courtesy of Dad, who faithfully made the commute upstate every Friday night after work because he lived in the Bronx and who sometimes lugged the twenty-five pound Roberts with him just so some little kid could practice blimp announcing or generate an endless succession of mouth-fart noises or sometimes even secretly spied on Mom and Dad's kitchen conversation using the heavy chrome mike with the big quarter-inch plug jacked into the Roberts all weekend-long.

And then there was this other little kid who finally got his own portable Airline tape recorder from Montgomery Ward with the tiny three-inch reels. The big fist-sized microphone was concealed on the front face of the machine which unhinged along with a long thick coily cord, which then could be parked in front of the TV in order to snag the cool Hanna-Barbera sounds from Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear and Top Cat plus neato noises from Hollywood flicks like "Forbidden Planet", "The Day the Earth Stood Still" and "Robinson Crusoe On Mars". All these little kids soon grew up to be me who's talking to you right now.

The Roberts machine would eventually return to me and stay with me and finally die with me many years later but not before a succession of other tape recorders came along, like the monster WEBCOR that I borrowed from Kurt Hackel down the block. It never got returned because he and his family moved away and he said he didn't want it anymore. Then there was the Mercury five- inch reel-to-reel portable and another Wards Airline seven-inch reel job, both of which I played and plowed into the ground until no reels would turn anymore.

But during the associated tenures of all these machines, many more hours would be spent recording silly sounds off the TV or the sometimes seemingly bizarre noises right outside my bedroom window. The Goodyear Blimp would make many more migrations to our city over the course of a half-score of years and on many occasions, the mike would be thrust out the window to document the low "brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr" of the blimp engines. Scary space noises also came in over the crunchy static on a shortwave radio, a big one down at Terry O'brien's house. Terry and his brother Mike had this huge ominous pinewood-finish shortwave radio console with the eerie green tuning eye circa 1940 in their attic bedroom and the WEBCOR was dragged over to archive the weird burbling teletypes, the oodly-doodly howling facsimiles, the impending BEEP..BEEP..BEEP of CHU , the monotonous drone of the WWV and other boinking, beeping and blipping baudot blasts that boodled and oodled their way beyond the heavy cloth speaker and into the microphone.

The many hours spent tape recording soon gave way to many more hours spent hunched over a splicing jig, mounted on my little desk which was hand painted a horrible stark blue color by my well-meaning Mom who felt that wood-aging and antiquing was her personal calling. These hours would be spent carefully slicing and carefully splicing and carefully matching the forty-five degree sliced ends of the tape together with some very sticky milky-white splicing tape, all of which you could get at the Lafayette Electronics store or the Radio Shack. Splicing the tape meant you could connect a bunch of sounds together or maybe shorten or maybe lengthen a song, which seemed a really cool thing to do.

And so this became my hobby. At least it was my indoor hobby. I wasn't a total nerd though. I did actually go outside and do the skateboard and sprain my ankle, many times. And I did go and bat the ball and break the window, many times. And other kid stuff like that too. I did also get into the fine art of throwing stainless-steel razor-edged boomerangs with intent to kill. But here, I digress.

The concept of sound effects as a hobby was further cast in stone when I chanced to see a 50's vintage George Reeves Superman re-run on the tube where some kid running around with a tape machine collecting sounds actually helps Superman catch some big bad thugs by using the recorded sounds of the Man of Steel flying and landing to drive them crazy. I figured if it was good enough for Superman, then it was surely good enough for me. Now of course to our well meaning but terminally-misdirected though-most times kindly Certified Social Workers of our latter day, such an activity would be tagged to as "therapy". Because I was a kid doing all this, the CSWs would pencil it in as "play therapy".

Basket weaving is therapy. Potholders is therapy. Making a lamp out of some chunks of wood is eighth-grade shop class. Drawing pictures of Boogie men is not only play therapy but is also disturbing. Manipulating sounds at your very whim is magic. More than a hobby. Beyond an adventure. Magic! Those hours and hours of taping sounds and splicing sounds did become a minor obsession and this is actually how I got into broadcast radio. At the time, my primary goal was to gain access to sound recording equipment and that I did for about twenty years at various radio stations here in New York and Connecticut.

Access initially came in the form of big glowing rosy red tube-amplified AMPEX 350s and then the solid-state 440s, Scully 280s and Studer REVOX A77s. To be sure, I loved doing radio. But I loved playing with the sounds even more. A universe of monster ten-inch reel-to-reel tape machines, lead-weight sixteen-inch diameter turntables and audio consoles with audio gain knobs, known to the insiders as "pots". These pots were as big as a stevedore's meaty hands, all of which would maintain into the early 1990s when without much fanfare, an IBM 386 with Windows 3.1 and an on-screen virtual production studio-in-a-box called CARD-D materialized. This unseen epiphany unfolded at WROW here in Albany and now things could be done in way not seen before. Play a sound backwards? Click on a tab which said REVERSE. No more physically flipping the tape reels on a full-track tape recorder just to get the same effect. Play a sound at half speed? Click on a tab which said SAMPLING RATE. Change the rate from 44.1 KHz sampling to 22.025 KHz sampling which amazingly equals an analog recording run at half-speed. No more seven-and-a-half or fifteen inches per second mechanical speed switch.

But this was only the beginning. Things began to accelerate and began to become far more accessible beyond the professional broadcast or recording studio. Soon, the expensive IBM clone, the obnoxious proprietary software and hardware, indeed the studio itself was no longer restricted to the pages of Broadcasting Magazine but now sat on the shelves at COMPUSA. Another interesting bit of Karma phased in around the same time. A Canadian company called SOUND IDEAS managed to get its corporate fists wrapped around some remarkable and very well-known sound effects libraries. Here was something I had wished for for many decades and now for a few dollars, well, a lot of dollars, all the sounds I used to tape from the TV, all the sounds from Hanna-Barbera, all the sounds from Warner Brothers, all the sounds from Jay Ward were mine for the purchase. Sadly, the original tapes I had recorded those many years ago are gone. Some were lost through moves from place to another but most of them did not survive the decades well. They simply became unplayable through advanced age despite attempts to carefully preserve them. In their stead though, several small brightly-colored boxes with pictures of cartoons on them and each box loaded with many silver digital disks encoded with the very same things I had lost so long ago. They were back. And what's more, while I still have a functioning Studer Revox A77 sitting on the floor in my bedroom, I have do also nine different computers sitting in the living room loaded with various flavours of COOLEDIT and GOLDWAVE available to me at my very mouse tip. And so that which became my hobby is still my hobby.

In the evening hours when it's just me and Suzie (my one foot wife), I sit before a beige-colored computer monitor with the COOLEDIT displayed upon the glowing screen. There is no tape now. No splicing jig. But there is the mouse which works much better and certainly much safer than the razor blade. And sitting on track 30 of the disk which I just this moment slid into the CD player is a two-minute audio clip of the Goodyear Blimp recorded in 1961 by Audio Fidelity Records as it was nosing it's way up the Hudson River, heading due North and on course for little old Albany, New York. And did you know this COOLEDIT has a multitrack feature?? So there's one track for the blimp, And one track for Bill. And I've also got this long, thin plastic Radio Shack microphone right here with the tiny one-eighth inch plug jacked into the computer. Hmmm, what should I say next? -30-

N2FNH SFX: 1

WHENIWASAKID! From about the age of eight and on through my late teens, my one favorite pre-computer age geek thing to do was record sounds off the television with my trusty reel-to-reel tape machine. And there were several of those, each of which I used and used until they could be used no more. Among the recorders: a Wards Airline three inch reel-to-reel portable with a coily cord microphone, a Mercury five inch portable job, a fifteen pound WebCor seven inch vacuum tube machine, my father's equally tube driven Roberts and another Wards Airline Model Number GEN3659A. This last one I know the model number because I won one of those on eBAY, although at the moment that tape recorder is on display in a bedroom closet. My best guess is that I got the idea of making sound recordings from watching a 1955 episode of The Adventures of Superman. It was the story of "The Talking Clue"!

"Ray Henderson (Richard Shakelton), son of police inspector Bill Henderson (Roberty Shayne), has been using his tape recorder to "collect" weird sounds. Unfortunately, Ray is hoodwinked into selling a tape containing the sound of tumblers on a safe to gangster Muscles McGurk (Billy Nelson). When McGurk uses the recorded information to steal evidence against him in an upcoming investigation, Ray is implicated in the crime--and Henderson may be forced to
arrest his own son. If there was ever a job for Superman (George Reeves), this is it!"
Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Sitting here right next to me stuffed inside the drawers of a heavy 50's vintage office desk constructed of heavy pine are boxes of audio compact discs and rows of SanDisk and Sony digital memory flash cards. Down the hall in a side closet are additional volumes vertically stacked, all housing ten inch reels of magnetic tape. Each archive is host to a mini-library of sound effects which I have amassed for the past thirty years. This is what I may occasionally refer to as my N2FNH Sound Effects Library.

The aggregate inventory consists of recordings compiled from three principal sources:


1) Commercially available sound effects.


2) WAV and MP3 files downloaded from the Internet.


3) Sounds designed and home brewed in house or recorded in the field.

Sound effects published on both audio and data compact discs can be purchased by anyone and there are many purveyors of this product. The two major players are Sound Ideas and The Hollywood Edge. Both companies offer a bewildering array of effects, detailing just about any conceivable category. It should be noted that these libraries tend to be expensive but I have discovered that there is quite an Internet fraternity of sounds effects aficionados and fanboys along with their affiliated forums.


Here is what I bought with a ten second critique for each. From Sound Ideas,


1) The Hanna Barbera Sound FX Library
Five discs of almost all the best animation effects ever. I say "almost" because there were notable absences.

2) The Sound Effects of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends:
To truly appreciate this three disc set, you have to be closely in tune with what you have heard in the Jay Ward classics. Many of these effects were also present in UPA films. Again, some notable MIAs.

3) The Warner Brothers Sound Effects Library:
The big disappointment! Most are Foley sounds! Not on the list: the Road Runner's rocket jet sound and the Tazmanian Devil's wind up.

4) The Universal Pictures Sound Effects Library: A boatload of classic movie western effects. Every pistol, every rifle and every screaming PTWAAANG! you can imagine!
Missing: the original Frankenstein Thunder, in some circles identified as Castle Thunder, although various versions show on both the Hanna Barbera and 20th Century Fox sets.

From the Hollywood Edge,

1) CartoonTrax:
These are mostly unpublicized vintage recordings from Walt Disney Productions. There are quite a few unexpected gems clearly linked to Disney, along with many other unfamiliar sounds.


I have two additional libraries of note.


1) The Hanna-Barbera Library of Sounds:
An out-of-print two compact disc set version of an equally out-of-print eight vinyl disc set offered thirty years ago exclusively to broadcast radio and television stations. Unfortunately, these recordings are low quality, less common and mostly animal noises. With a digital editor though, these can be nicely cleaned. Some of the effects at large from the newer package
appear in this archive.


2) The O'Connor Crazies:
Still available for purchase! A comparatively low quality compact disc of Hanna-Barbera sound effects lifted from the Hanna Barbera Library of Sound and from a much earlier almost impossible to find vinyl offering from the late 1960's: The Hanna Barbera's Drop-Ins. Much cheaper now than when I bought it. Again, some of the sounds not in the inventory of the Sound
Ideas offering can be found on this recording.


So if you're a fanboy and I can only guess that this might be what I am then, like the Pokemon, you gotta catch them all. What follows is a bit of text on commercially available animation music that I lifted from myself from a forum dedicated to film and television animation.
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There have been a number of compact discs produced in the last few years which have focused on the music of film and television animation. Here are just a few.


1) Hanna Barbera Classics - Volume 1
Rhino Records
Contains main titles, sub-titles and underscores from many first generation animation efforts such as Ruff and Reddy, Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear,Quick Draw McGraw, Magilla Gorilla and more. Many of the earlier recordings were sourced from the Capital Records Production Music Library. There is even one track which was also used as the underscore for My Three Sons. There was supposed to a volume 2 but I never acquired the disc.


2) The Flintstones - Modern Stone Age Melodies
Rhino Records
Here, all the vocals that were heard though out the lifetime of this program. While the vocals are great to hear, even better are the underscores and music cues that are sandwiched in between those selections. Included in the clear is the classic laughing music cue that was used anytime a big joke needed audio support. All the songs and music beds composed by Hoyt Curtain.


3) The Carl Stalling Project - Music from Warner Brothers Cartoons. 1936-1958
Warner Brothers Records
Carl Stalling was perhaps the best known and most creative music composer and director at Warner Brothers during their Golden Age. A combination of select music cues and full length music and sound effects features makes this disc a must have. There is even a clip of the Yada Yada sound in the clear at the end of one of the tracks - an easy lift to add to your own
library!


4) Carl Stalling - Volume 2. 1939-1957
Warner Brothers Records
More fantastic Carl Stalling Music, again a combination of of individual music cues and full length track minus voices.


5) That's All Folks! Cartoon Songs from Merrie Melodies & Looney Tunes.
Rhino/Warner Brothers Records
This is a two disc set including full length features such as What's Opera Doc? and Three Little Bops and a massive 100 page booklet detailing behind the scenes activities at Warner Brothers way back when.


6) Warner Brothers Presents Bugs Bunny on Broadway
Warner Brothers Records
This album features newly recorded renditions of classic cartoon music by the Warner Brothers Symphony Orchestra but there are also some original audio segments on the disc as well.


7) The Best of WB Sound FX - CRASH! BANG! BOOM!
Kid Rhino/Warner Brothers Records
Some music, a lot of sounds from the commercial Warner Brothers Sound Effects Library for use at parties, on videos, computers and answering machines.


8) Toon Tunes
Kid Rhino
A compilation of television animation themes including the best Scholastic Rock song - Conjunction Junction

9) Music for TV Dinners - the 1950's
Scamp Records.
It is here on this disc where you will find a number of recordings directly associated with Ren and Stimpy, including Happy Go Lively - Laurie Johnson, Workaday World - Jack Beaver, Holiday Playtime - King Palmer and Stop Gap -Wilfred Burns (I believe this last one was used for a number of years on Bob Barker's Truth or Consequences). Many of these selections were sourced from KPM and Associated Production Music. Actually, when you think about it, it's amazing just how much old sound escaped the studio vaults and landed in our own record collections!

THOSE PEOPLE: 5

Many of the characters who appear in my Random Access features and promos seem be somewhat mechanized by virtue of the way they sound. One of my earlier voice actors who still makes occasional appearances is Tick-Tock. Not to be confused with the Tick-Tock of the certainly more famous OZ stories, my Tick-Tock is a relatively mellow fellow who, like Bix Nix, speaks with a slight lisp. Likewise, as he does speak, he also produces a small blipping motor sound. At the conclusion of each significant sentence, there is also a beep. While Tick-Tick's voice is contemporary in a Windows 95 sense, his clicking noise was first heard in the UPA cartoons of the 1950's while the beep is the same tone that Rosie the Robot makes in Hanna Barbera's The Jetsons. The actual source for this pulsed 1400 Hertz sound is the advisory signal required by law here in the States when one is recording a telephone conversation.

Tick-Tock has a cousin whose name is TANK, which is appropriate since TANK is a man(?) of few words and TANK is the only word he says. TANK's voice is several octaves deeper and his motor sound is an equally deep throbbing effect which I created using a self-sourced fart severely dropped in pitch and looped to simulate a machine sound. TANK's beep is also vintage. You can chronicle this effect back to Rocky and Bullwinkle and earlier UPA features.

TINK is TANK's girlfriend who, like TANK, is heavily mechanized. Unlike TANK though, TINK has no problems asserting herself and has been known to chat on incessantly. For her motor sound, I was able to locate a more delicate effect, which sounds remarkably similar to the "I'm sorry, I didn't get that!" Boop-Boop-Boop-Boop-Boop you hear when you call the Fandango Entertainment Line. TINK's beep is the same is TANK's but they are not related. In fact, they have gone out together but TINK plays the field. She has dated the expansive Bob the Extraterrestrial on a number of occasions.

Since what it is I do for This Week in Amateur Radio is an audio-only medium, character design is restricted solely to how they might sound. For that reason, I usually do not visualize what they might actually look like, as one would developing a cartoon character for film or television. However, in the case of TANK and TINK, I immediately saw them both as looking like the bullet-shaped white and silver waste paper cans you might see in a rest room or in a cheesy hotel lobby. In fact, both My Number One And Only Son Zachary and George's daughter Jessica have rendered their own images of what these folks might look like. Maybe I can find a way to post these pictures so stand by!