In his song “Overjoyed,” Stevie Wonder uses a rhythmic splash of water, suggesting someone dropping marbles one at a time into a pond in time to the music’s beat.
In the theme from the movie MASH,* there is a strange instrument–perhaps used commonly in Latin American music–which sounds like someone rubbing a balloon on a wet leather chair.
In James Darren’s 1963 hit “Goodbye Cruel World” is a sound effect like a calliope, but which I heard was an electronically enhanced human voice.(!)
Does anyone know how these sound effects were made? Granted the plopping sound in “Overjoyed” seems obvious…
Or *other popular songs with unusual sound effects.
Just a few:
Coins clanking in Pink Floyd’s “Money.” Pink Floyd like very much to use “concrete music,” where actual sounds were used. Among other places you can hear them in “Seamus” (dog howl), “Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving on a Pict” (weird animal noises), “Echoes” (sonar), and “Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast” (someone fixing breakfast).
The Beatles’s “Piggies” (Pigs)
Jingle Bells by the Barking Dogs (Dogs barking).
Nearly everything by Spike Jones had some unusual sound effect in it.
“The Intro and the Outro” by the Bonzo Dog Band uses the sound of a bottle being filled with liquid as “Roy Rogers on Trigger.” They also have the sound of a someone evidently taking a dump (and a woman laughing) on “Cool Brittania.”
P.D.Q. Bach uses and instrument of his own devising – the Hardart – in his “Concerto for Horn and Hardart” (anyone else old enough to get that pun?).
Tchaikovski’s use of cannon in the “1812 Overture” is certainly unusual. Some one else (Shubert?) did an “Explosions Polka.”
“East is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does.” – Marx
Read “Sundials” in the new issue of Aboriginal Science Fiction. www.sff.net/people/rothman
ani difranco makes use of the clinging and clanging of cutlery, cups, and saucers in her song the diner.
or maybe it was a guitar.
?
what is essential is invisible to the eye -the fox
Ahhh, another fan of PDQ Bach. You want sound effects? How about kazoos, rubber hoses, members of the orchestra standing up and yelling, and pretty much anything else he could stuff into an album.
Also, let’s not forget the alarm clock in the Beatles “A Day In the Life.”
Never heard that, but have heard the “Champagne Polka” on a recent NPR programme, with the explosive pops for champagne corks.
A theremin (Godd Vibrations, Beach Boys); the raspberry (“Der Fuhrer’s Face”)…
Speaking of this amazing tune, does anyone know what language the guy at the end of the song is speaking in? At first I thought it was just gibberish, but then I read that the word “Pict,” which I interpreted as the slang word for a guitar plectrum, is actually the name of a group of people who lived in England about a thousand years ago.
So what’s he speaking? Old English? Occitan? Or just gibberish?
In one of my favorite songs of the moment (Red Alert - Basement Jaxx), they mixed in the sound of a touch tone phone ringing through out the song as part of the musical acompaniment. There is also the background sounds of people yelling and talking (very faint). The use of funk type samples is also interesting.
It’s worth the risk of burning, to have a second chance…
puffington:
I asked the exact same question a while back:
http://www.straightdope.com/ubb/Forum3/HTML/002657.html
Speaking of Pink Floyd, after DSOTM they had an aborted effort to record an album using no musical instruments, but using things like aerosol cans, pulling up tape, and other sound effects. I don’t know how much of it got recorded, but I’ve always wondered if some of it it could be found on a bootleg somewhere.
I had never thought about some of these, but, please…can someone answer my original question about how the sound effects in “Overjoyed,” "Theme from MASH,* and “Goodbye Cruel World” were made?
The Beach Boys “Good Vibrations” used a theramin, which is what is used in old B movies to do the “spooky” effects.
Can’t help with the others. I wonder if the sound effects guy in a recording studio is known as a “foley artist”, like in movies.
Spirit also used a Theramin on 12 Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus. I can’t recall the song, CD is at work.
puffington:
From http://www.uio.no/~ericsp/floyd.html
in the FAQ section under Section 4 - The Early Years
The sound effect I hate the most is the one where it sounds like the singer talking on the phone. The two that immediately come to mind are “Uncle Albert” by Paul McCartney, and that song by ELO that I can’t remember the name of right now.
I also hate those damn talkboxes. The ones that make you sound like a computer. They sucked before Frampton Comes Alive and they still suck.
“The quickest way to a man’s heart is through his ribcage.” --anonymous redhead
Bob Dylan gets credited for playing the police car in “Highway 61”. That’s probably unique.
~Kyla
“Anger is what makes America great.”
How could you fail to mention Mony Python’s immortal “I bet you this song won’t be played on the radio” ?
About every third word has been replaced with a “censored” beep.
“You can’t say <beep> on the radio;
or <beep> or <beep> or <beep<;
You can’t even say 'd like to <beep> you some day;
unless you’re a doctor with a very large <BEEP!>”
Sorry, got a little carried away there.
Norman
One of my favourites in this is “Tomorrow never knows” by The beatles.
One of the effects on John Lennons Voice was created by putting his voice through a revolving speaker, and putting anothermicrophone near it so that the voice would “dip”.
John Larrigan
“82.35% of all statistics are made up on the spot”–Vic Reeves
The Explosions Polka is by Strauss.
Does Phil Ruzzuto in “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” count?
Elton John featured tap dancing (by the immortal “Legs” Larry Smith) in “I think I’m Gonna Kill Myself.”
And, of course, no one should forget Alfred E. Neuman’s vocalizing on “It’s a Gas!”
“East is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does.” – Marx
Read “Sundials” in the new issue of Aboriginal Science Fiction. www.sff.net/people/rothman
In Metallica’s God that Failed, there is a sound of a cocking shotgun in the background throughout the song.
“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.”
-H.P. Lovecraft, “The Call of Cthulhu”
Don’t forget Joni Mitchell playing a cigarette machine on Wild Things Run Fast.
How about Adam Sandler’s “Ode to My Car”? The version Dr. Demento played on the air is chock-full of bleeps…