Music Thing: The THX Sound
posted May 27th 2005 5:35PM
Each week Tom Whitwell of Music Thing highlights the best of the new music gear that's coming out, as well as noteworthy vintage equipment:
All this week on Music Thing I've been running a series about those tiny bits of sound that everyone recognizes - like the Mac Startup sound and the 'Intel Inside' chimes. The best story of all is about the THX Sound (aka 'Deep Note'), that huge, weird, mess-with-your-head noise that was first played before the premiere of 'Return of the Jedi' in 1983.
It was created by Dr James ‘Andy’ Moorer (pictured at right), at LucasFilm’s DroidWorks research laboratories. He
used a vast, one-off computer called the Audio Signal Processor (ASP), which he used as a digital synth.
The brief for the sound was “Something that comes out of nowhere and gets really, really big!” To create it, Andy
spent four days writing a 20,000 line C program. When that was run, it created 250,000 lines of commands which were fed
into the ASP. Those commands controlled the machine’s 30 virtual oscillators and created the 30 second long
sound.
Because his C program was full of random numbers, no two ‘performances’ were ever quite the same. When the original
master tape was briefly lost, he tried - and failed - to recreate the sound, but it always sounded slightly
different.
Andy believes that the sound is “the most widely-recognized piece of computer-generated music in the world”, which is
probably true. At one point, it was playing 4,000 times a day at cinemas all over the world. That’s once every 20
seconds.
Andy went on work with Steve Jobs at NeXT and consult for Adobe and other companies. Today, he spens his time
repairing old tube radios and playing his customised banjo. LucasFilm’s ASP was decommissioned in 1986 and later sold
for scrap.
:cry: sold for scrap!!!! :cry:
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM
"...the audience is now deaf..."
>Today, he spens his time repairing old tube radios
Well i spen my time proof reading whats submitted :)
can you imagine if he recieved royalties for the thx soud. he would be wealthier then lucas
I do love that sound.
haha, Animal, always nice to see a fellow Simpson lover
I have never heard the mac startup sound, and I never want to..
:)
japroach: I'm with you - I far prefer the windows login sound. Esspecialy the way (on windows 98 I remember) it would confuse itself with the error noise, every 10 minutes when another mindless "dialogue" box would appear a string of wtf-expletivies would roll from my door.
You Mac-haters can't even take it that Macintosh has better novelty features!
Today a 'friend' upgraded to the new version of MSN - he called me to explain how kewl the new feature 'nudge' was... Please japroach, and the like - Switch now - before you reach such mind-boggling lows...
Anyone know where to find an MP3 of this sound? You've got me wanting to hear it now.
That's interesting. I didn't realize that that sound was that old. I was always thought it was "inspired" by a 1985 Asia song, "Countdown To Zero". Take a listen:
http://www.galleytech.com/Galley/files/Asia_-_Countdown_To_Zero_[intro].mp3
Try this shorter link:http://tinyurl.com/eyfvr
Slightly clipped but here it is: http://www.whitwell.ndo.co.uk/musicthing/sounds/macstartup.mp3
Need I say: google is your friend. Becoming a WWJD-esque mantra for me these days.
Google? The hyperlink for the sound is on THIS page! How about: "Thinking is your friend".
My site has a number of WAV files from movies and TV. I recently got a courier delivered letter from Lucasfilm asking that I remove the two THX sound bytes and the Homer Simpson parody of the THX sound.
I thought it was silly, but I had to do it anyway.
Is there anyway i can get some sort of sheet music of the THX sound so our band can play it. Our band instructer thinks that it would be really neat if we could open a concert with the THX sound