Entertainment For Lively Minds
Sound Effects in Songs
Footsteps on paving stones.
Car door slam.
Engine revs, tyres screech and car drives off at speed.
Can you guess what it is yet?
Along with a bit of bass, it;s the start of Love Is The Drug by Roxy Music, and a supreme example of another lost art, the in-song sound effect. I'd also nominate the tube doors slam and tube train accelerating moment at the end of 'Down In the Tube Station At Midnight', the screaming jet at the start of 'Back In The USSR' and the revving bike in 'Leader Of the Pack' as other superb moments when a sound effect becomes an integral part of the song's impact.
So - over to you lot for other great in-track effects. No voices, or abstract squelchy as they;re something else, and (more or less) we should imagine you could find it on a BBC Sound Effects library record from the seventies
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Pet Shop Boys...
...used a lot of special effects in their early records.
The Texas Speak & Spell in 'Two Divided By Zero', walking on the street and the car horn at the start of 'West End Girls', sirens and explosions in 'Suburbia' and cars skidding in 'One More Chance' all spring to mind.
What about the chirping of crickets,
a car door slamming, and the sound of high heels crunching across gravel towards the funky party music contained within Club Tropicana. It sounded really cool. Little did I know then that inside Club Tropicana were two bell-ends with shuttlecocks stuffed down their pants. Bouncers really weren't all that strict in the 80s, were they?
Money
Pink Floyds cash machines at the start of Money - instanty recognisable.
Certainly not as famous...
...but is there a more startling effect than the missile which screams over your head on The Final Cut's 'Get your filthy hands off my desert'?
The DSOTMHM
certainly were fond of sound effects all through their career - from the start of Astonomy Domine right through to The Division Bell.
If it's explosions you're after, there's a huge blast on Waters' 'Amused to Death', on the track Late Home Tonight.
Dub Side of the Moon
The Easy Dub All Stars take on the opening of Money is also quite impressive.
Give em enough rope
The one that springs to mind is the skipping rope swish at the start of Double Dutch.
Kind of obvious I guess
but I recall the helicopter on Goodnight Saigon by Billy Joel as being very effective indeed.
I also now kind of expect to hear fans, helicopters etc whenever I hear The End even if it's on the film ;-)
Sun King
Chirping of crickets, and the general feel of a warm day. And in a similar vein, XTC's Summer Cauldron.
BBC sound effects records
I was thinking about these the other day, but didn't really have thoughts oragnised enough to make a blog post here worthwhile. They were a very odd phenomenon; records of artificially created noises which were popular enough to be stocked in every Boots at a time when no-one had the equipment to sample them for home use.
What were they for? Was it to show of how good your hifi was? I'm honestly puzzled and would appreciate input from anyone who has a few of these records moldering in their attic.
I think they were indeed
part of the same phenomenon that gave rise to things like "How to give yourself a stereo [pronounced steer-e-o] checkout" with the late great Jack de Manio.
But they had surprising uses, e.g. I suspect every amateur dramatic outfit probably used them every so often. Also I recall there was a 7" EP (?) battlefield noises record to make one's Action Man experience more realistic ...
I thought those
were a creation of Father Ted!
Duck, you suckers! "Medicine Show" by Big Audio Dynamite
I suppose it's stretching this thread to suggest a long sample, but I was listening to "Medicine Show" by the sultans of sample, Big Audio Dynamite, on the way to work this morning and remembered that one of my favourite moments in pop is on this track.
It's the gun sounds (5m10s) at the end of the dialogue which starts 14m10s in. The way the country guitar plays nonchalantly in the background is just wonderful:
The marching band
recorded possibly from a hotel window at the start of Radiohead's the Bends always does it for me. Although I've never worked out what the guy shouts at the end. "Break it up"?
My favourite is the...
sound of typewriter keys being punched and pool balls smacking into pockets that comes at the start of Bad Neighbourhood by Ronnie and the Delinquents.
Excellent use of a typewriter in the intro to 9 to 5 as well
Gunshots and till rings used as persussion to arresting effect in MIA's paper planes.
I believe the only known recording of a shiver down the spine appears on Bohemian Rhapsody
I really like the...
...typewriter at the start of Exhuming McCarthy by R.E.M. as well.
More typewriters...
...can be found, to great effect, at the opening of "Wordy Rappinghood" by Tom-Tom Club.
None more typewritery...
Leroy Anderson rocks.
Awesome
Where would Radio 4 Literary Quizzes be without this?
Club Tropicana
The Wham tune also starts with a car door sound effect leading into a party sound effect - and the drinks were free!
Happy Mondays - Loose fit 12" version
starts with the sound of a lighter and someone inhaling strongly through what sounds like some kind of glass tube. As does 'Hits from the bong' by Cypress Hill. No idea what they have in common.
Tom Waits'
track Looking for the Heart of Saturday Night uses car horns to brilliant effect to add to the song's impact (and for those who don't know the song, it's not one of his latter day Beefheartian happenings, but an earlier singer-songwriterly effort).
White Noise
As the group at that point contained some members of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop it's perhaps not much of a surprise that they had a lot of odd sounds all over the album "An Electric Storm".
Most family-friendly is probably "Here Come the Fleas" and Kenny Everett fans might recognise one particular section about 25 seconds in.
(I would post a link to YouTube but the videos are of questionable quality really - here's the song on Spotify http://open.spotify.com/track/6oTYH0ROf2dWuVHIPlTZSN and if you want to look at YouTube then don't do it at work)
Boinnnnnnng!
That little boing sound in "Out Of Space" by the Prodigy is the reason it's great. Well, one of the reasons.
Mooooooo
In The Congos' "Children Crying" from "Heart of the Congos", it sounds as if a herd of cows has just wandered into Lee Perry's Black Ark studio.
Who knows - maybe they did.
Moo too
Here's Watty from the Congos explaining the cow noise (which appears on non-Congos records too):
INTERVIEWER: For a long time people believed that Lee Perry went into the country to record animal sounds he used in his records, but the cow sound on the ‘Heart Of The Congos’ album was you.
WATTY: "Yeah man, I made that cow noise with my own voice (starts mooing), but back then I used a piece of aluminium foil to get it just right. Afterwards I read here and there that Scratch supposedly would have dragged a cow in the studio and slapped it on its behind to make it moo. I just cracked up when I read that. It was just me man! I'm the orginal Black Ark bull!"
Yet more moo for you
I wonder if this is the same source of the cattle noises (or possibly buffalo, I've always thought for some reason) which are heard throughout Lee Perry's Roast Fish and Cornbread?
A moo point
I think they're all the same "Black Ark bull", as Watty calls it, but it's hard to know who to believe about what the noise actually was. I've read an interview in which Lee Perry cackled delightedly about how he'd fooled everyone about what it was, but I can't actually remember what he claimed was the truth.
As a child I had one of those toys that made the same noise (but I never had a Black Ark).
Tuppenth worth...
Tilt
...and I was personally involved in sourcing the sound effects :)
Hot town, summer in the city.
Pneumatic drills, car horns, the sound of Manhattan in a heatwave. Perfect for the song.
indeed...
and of course, on a sort of related note, here's how you incorporate that into one of the BEST movie openings of all time....
Distant clattering bird sounds, of a heron perhaps,
(where's Chris Packham when you need him?) and the pattering take off of a duck, the sussurating swish of warm air through long grass and the faint rippling of the Cam languidly lapping her banks as you drift into reverie, lazing in the sun in Grantchester Meadows.
Sirens, sirens, sirens.
Blockbuster!
I also think the
sound at the beginning of Dancing in the City should get an honorary mention:
--- http://www.stereosociety.com/khdancing.html
Look out! Look out! Look out!
screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeching of tyres. The Leader is dead.
Howling wind, swirling vortices of storm force turbulence.
I. I just took a ride. The other side of the sky. See yourself going by...
Although strictly speaking it's not a sound effect per se
as it was generated on a synth rather being 'real' wind.
c.f. the train on Station To Station.
I just know that something good is gonna happen....
The steam train grinding to a halt at the end of Cloudbusting by Kate Bush. Allentown by Billy Joel concludes with a similar sound effect.
Suicide? by BJH
As an impressionable youth at the time, the sound effect of someone chucking themselves off a roof was quite shocking.
Songfacts explains how they did it:
"The creation of the special effects used at the end of the song are described in Keith and Monica Domone's official biography. One of the band walked to a service elevator wearing clogs; we hear it ascending, and the rush of air and impact of the victim's body after he leaps. This latter was recorded by throwing a dummy off the top of the Holiday Inn, Manchester, equipped with binaural microphones in a specially designed set of headphones."
Dear God
I remember listening to that a lot...
Speak and Spell, Typewriters, Shipping Signals, Submarines...
...Speaking Clocks, Radio Jingles, News Broadcasts....
Dazzle Ships by OMD was the daddy of sound effects albums...
OMD was my first thought
Architecture and Morality's frequent bus door opening sounds confused me on first listen, because I was staying in an apartment in Madrid, that faced a large bus station, and I thought the noises were coming from outside! Every time I hear it, it reminds me of Spanish buses.
OMD was my first thought
Architecture and Morality's frequent bus door opening sounds confused me on first listen, because I was staying in an apartment in Madrid, that faced a large bus station, and I thought the noises were coming from outside! Every time I hear it, it reminds me of Spanish buses.
Spooky
Sliding Doors posts above.
I Love The Sound Of Breaking Glass...
...which opens Gentle Giant's "In A Glass House" album, on the song "The Runaway". Lots of breaking-glass noises, which gradually get looped into a rhythmic pattern that launches the track proper. Great! The Giant also visited the sound-effects library for the sound of a spinning coin on "The Boys In The Band" on their "Octopus" albbum.
Roy C...
...and his Shotgun Wedding...
Songs for the Deaf.
by Queens of the Stone Age is enlivened by the inclusion of the Radio Jock interludes which certainly help to create the illusion of a car journey starting at the Mojave Desert and ending at Los Angeles.
similarly...
According to Wikipedia KLF's Chill Out is "a mythical night-time journey up the U.S. Gulf Coast from Texas into Louisiana". I always thought it was the Island of Mu...
and, less glamorously, the JAMMS "It's Grim Up North"
ends at Hartshead Moor services on the M62 with the sound of rain and a crow in the background.
Paice Yourself...
The sound of an air conditioning unit starting up, Ian Paice's frentic tub thumping. It can only mean one thing...
The wine bottle rattling on the top of a speaker
at the end of the HJH's 'Long Long Long'. Does that count?
If not then the alarm clock in the middle of A Day In The Life' which still occasionally takes me by surprise.
well.....
....without looking like a big fat spammer, i LOVE using sfx in my songs...especially when the lyrics are quite visual
heres a little example
the orb
has anyone mentioned them yet - fuck me they use a lot of samples/sound effects!
my faves
Kraftwerk - Autobahn, Trans Europe Express, too many to mention, again, could be samples or sound effects.
Beatles - The legendary feedback at the beginning of I Feel Fine - still gives me goose pimples now.
Bowie - his early self-titled Deram output featured sound effects heavily - broken glass on Did You Ever Have A Dream, digging effects and thunder on Please Mr Gravedigger, munching of crisps on Join the Gang, not to forget his first expedition into varispeed with the infamous Laughing Gnome. He must wince at these gems now!
Most gratuitous use of sound effect: the crowd noise from U2's Rattle and Hum on KLF's White Room.
Pouring rain. Tropical rain. Devilishly hard rain.
Bucketing it down rain. Clap of distant thunder.
Bonnnnnnngggggggg!
Somewhere nearby a church bell tolls ominously.........
A fear wracked voice sobs, "What is this that stands before me?"
'Black Sabbath' by Black Sabbath from Black Sabbath. Genius.
"Joker John" by Moonshake, "Drunken Boat" - The Pogues
Rain always makes a good start to a record.
Here's Moonshake's brilliant Bernard Herrmann impression, conjuring up an ominous city at night, with the shadowy buildings and alleyways closing in on you. The instruments are so evocative they're almost sound effects themselves.
"Joker John" - Moonshake:
http://open.spotify.com/track/2W9tVa41pEqc58XKbDcjdP
Also: "Drunken Boat" - The Pogues (with added ship's bell):
Rain adds quite a bit
to this, imo
Pop! Crackle! Hiss!
Alan's having brecky.
Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Sound of footsteps.
Thwack!
loving your style
But help a poor sinner out with the song titles.
(No subject)
The Dickies
Car door slams, engine starts (eventually), car screeches away.
The start of 'Manny, Moe & Jack'
http://open.spotify.com/track/5V1ugfL73ZvWtRoHvVl2xg
Ends with a screech of brakes, and the sound of a car crash
My favourite is
the sound of the office lift going up and down in the background of The Word Podcast.
Butch Vig
Played the iceberg lettuce on a Killdozer track (Hamburger Martyr I think). Meant to sound like an axe murder I think.
Iceberg Lettuce
I'm sure I remember a Radio 4 documentary on sound effects in which they said a cabbage was used to simulate the sound of a beheading.
A bit off topic, but the sound effects on the latest film to feature Sean Bean, Black Death, are very effective. My missus nearly wet herself watching it.
The Rolling Stones
Satanic Majesties, "On With The Show", nice and sleazy in Soho.
The Kinks, Lazy Old Sun, sounds like today feels.
God gave us The Love Unlimited Orchestra
to help with those 4-1 moments. Everyone's trying to get out of the rain, even on the hottest day of the year...
a humid night
somewhere in the tropics or the middle east - and it's the cricket season
Whistles
...and whirly-snake things in Echo & the Bunnymen's Back of Love, barking dog & whistle in Somebody Got Murdered by The Clash and arcade game chatter (including "Oranges & Lemons") in Ivan Meets GI Joe.