Cougar snarl(or big cat snarl)- Yes that one, you know it!
Elephant screams- Usually mixed in with other animal sounds but its so distinct.
Eagle cry- I swear I have heard the same eagle cry in tons of stuff by now.
Crying baby- There must be like sound libraries where they look these up right?
Red-tailed hawk cry used as a stand-in for just about any other raptor (such as bald eagles).
There’s also the ubiquitous Castle Thunder.
How could you leave out what are arguably the most prevalent, yet mosdt inappropriate:
1.) The Kookaboora in the jungle – Maybe because it sounds like what a lot of people think chimps or monkeys should sound like, you get that “OOooh-Oooh-OOOh-OOOh-AAAAH-AAH” sound whenever you see sa jungle, especially in Africa (but elsewhere too). Only it’s made by the Kookaboora, and Australian non-jungle bird.
http://jansjoyousjungle.com/junglesound.html
2.) The Loon of the Desert – Since you need an audio signature for everything, desert gets this long, low musical-like note. Only it’s the call of the loon, a bird that dwells near lakes in deciduous forests, pretty far from any desert, esxcept the Desert of Maine
Loon call:
There’s a stock lightning bolt that has been used many times. I’ll post a photo when I get a chance. It might coincide with “Castle Thunder,” but I can’t be sure. I’ll try to describe it: It starts at the top of the screen and angles downward to the left. It starts as a single bolt, then diverges into two bolts with a shape roughly approximating your hand if you curl in the last three fingers, and have the index finger and thumb pointing downward. (But I don’t find it particularly annoying.)
Hollywood horses. When there’s a horse on the screen, large or small, there are constant supposed horse sounds of whinnying, whickering, etc. *Horses don’t do that. * They’re mostly quiet unless they’re freaking about something or communicating with another horse and even then when being ridden it’s considered bad manners/poor training. I love horses and have been around them all my life, but these noisy Hollywood horses make it hard for me to watch anything with horses in them.
Modern computers that beep when they finish any task.
The standard Disney cartoon sound effect when someone falls from a great height.
The “phfffffffft” of guns with silencers.
I get tired of hearing the MG42 sound whenever someone is being fired upon by a machinegun. It’s the sound of a whole lot of bullets going by with a high-ptiched “Pe-ow!” When I was watching “Paths of Glory,” it was annoying to hear Kirk Douglas being shot at by a weapon that wouldn’t exist for another 25 years. On the other hand, when they used it in the exact proper context in Band of Brothers, it was very satisfying.
The old time canned laughter. There’s one woman laughing really loud: you just know it’s the same woman every time.
Every single time you see a cat on screen it’s meowing. The same meow.
Every single time there is a semi-truck on the TV screen, the horn does a “HONNK! HAWONKKK!” as it passes the camera.
Ice Road Truckers does it a hell of a lot.
Woman screaming - Ohhahhh!
And the coconuts-I HATE the coconuts! :mad:
The two-toned explosion sound that A-Team used to use for every kind of explosion from hand grenades to wrecked cars.
There’s a canned woman sneezing sound that makes its way into seemingly every other allergy commercial.
It sounds something like a high nasal “Ehh-shoo” but I’ve never heard a sneeze like it in real life.
The explosion sound from the original Battlestar: Galactica, which also appeared in Airwolf, Knight Rider, The Incredible Hulk, indeed it often appeared several times in those programmes to represent a bunch of explosions. It was a kind of double-barrelled BAA-DAA noise.
E.g. this clip:
Fast-forward to 01:00, and then to 1:24, where it happens again (they seem to play two similar variations one after the other). Also, I have to say that the clip makes the show look a lot better than it was. It’s “explosion 2” on this page:
http://www.joelowens.org/bsg/sfx.html
That, and the gunshot richochet sounds from the Clint Eastwood / Sergio Leone westerns. There’s a romantic scene in For a Few Dollars More where Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef’s characters bond whilst shooting each other’s hats off - sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, but come on - and it’s basically the same bloody gunshot over and over again.
The scary spider sound. I can’t find a clip of it, but it’s used any time there’s a spider or a scorpion or other creepy-crawly, especially if they’re giant. The most obvious use I can remember is in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, when Belle has pledged to take her father’s place, the Beast drags Maurice out to a carriage, throws him in, and commands the carriage to take Maurice back to the village. The carriage - without wheels - walks off, with the sound effect playing loudly.
“High Altitude Winds.”
Characteristic whistling winds, as on a high mountain, climbing a radio tower, etc.
There’s a rattle-like effect I’ve often heard used for this, as if any creepy-crawly thing is a rattlesnake.
It’s not used commonly anymore, but I was watching the 1958 Roger Corman optus, The War of the Satellites, and noticed that they used the very same “outer space sound” that they did in the non-Corman It! The Terror from Beyond Space (and, I think other 195-0s space movies). It’s not really music, but a sort of background cue that sounds vaguely theremin-like, and has an oscillating frequency that goes from low to high and back again in the space of about half a minute. (ooooooooOOOOOOOOooooooooOOOOOOOOoooooo). It’s the Sounf Cue To Let You Know You’re in Space, just like the Kookaboora for You’re In A Jungle and the Loon for You’re In A Desert that I cited above. Noawadays nobody uses it, thank Og, although the birds are still with us.
Do you have an example of the desert loon? I associate the red tailed hawk screech with movie desert scenes personally.
I linked to a recording of a loon, but I don’t have sound at work, so I can’t tell if I’vbe linked to the right thing.
It’s a long, lonely single-toned wail. It’s not obvious what sort of beast made it, but it’s very distinct from the screeching of a hawk.