McSound
The story goes that a sound man working for a movie studio was asked to provide “jungle sounds” for a Tarzan-type film. He went out and recorded Pacific Tree Frogs in the backlot of a Hollywood studio. For years, they became the generic “sound of the jungle” in many Hollywood films, by virtue of being in the sound archive – categorized as “jungle”. The irony is you won’t find any Pacific Tree Frogs in an African Jungle.
There are many libraries of sound effects, most of the sounds being of phenomena (door slam, barking dog), not places. It begs the question: are sounds generic or specific? Is a recording a unique moment in time, or can it be treated as a rote, generic icon? True, we can sell and buy generic sounds like hamburgers, but are we missing the subtle reality that a fine recording can convey? That tree frog was telling us something about the conditions where it was recorded: there being a relationship between the number of croaks/second and the ambient temperature. No doubt there are other messages hidden in the recording as well. Perhaps every recording carries levels of information and meaning, waiting to be decoded.
Tags: sound effects
