0:00

I'm Shankar Vedantam, here to tell you about

0:02

a great mystery. That

0:04

mystery is you. As

0:07

the host of a podcast called Hidden Brain, I

0:10

explore big questions about what it means to

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be human. Questions like,

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where do our emotions come from? Why

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do so many of us feel overwhelmed by

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better understand the people around us? Discover

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your hidden brain. Find us,

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wherever you get your podcasts. OK.

1:00

You're listening to 20,000 Hertz. I'm

1:03

Dallas Taylor. When

1:06

I think of Apple, one of the first

1:09

things that comes to mind is their impeccable

1:11

design. From the unmistakable white

1:13

packaging, to the gentle curve of the

1:15

iPhone's metal and glass, to the colorful

1:17

animation that appears when you activate Siri,

1:21

every aspect of these devices has been

1:23

crafted to be sleek and beautiful. While

1:26

Apple is renowned for its stunning

1:28

visual design, sound design is just

1:30

as important to the Apple experience.

1:40

Sound really is at the beginning of the design

1:42

process. It isn't a coat of paint at the end. That's

1:45

Billy Sorrentino from the Apple Design team.

1:48

The sound team is sitting at the table from

1:51

the very beginning of ideas, the very beginning of wholly

1:53

new products. Ultimately, we're hoping users can

1:55

feel that. They can tell that

1:57

those sounds feel innately part of the device

1:59

itself. Those

12:00

strange sounds come from an instrument called

12:02

the Daxophone. It's like saxophone, but with

12:04

a D. The instrument was

12:07

invented in the late 1980s by

12:09

a German experimental musician named Hans

12:11

Reichl. The Daxophone involves a vibrating

12:13

wooden tongue, a cello bow, and

12:15

a curved block of wood, called

12:17

a dax. As the

12:19

player slides the bow and the dax

12:21

along the tongue, it produces all kinds

12:24

of strange, vocal-sounding tones. And

12:31

here's this episode's mystery sound. If

12:38

you know who or what made those sounds,

12:41

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slash 20k. Modern

15:16

Apple sounds are intentionally elegant and

15:18

organic, but some of the most

15:21

recognizable Apple sounds go back decades.

15:23

The first time I saw it on a

15:26

TV screen, an episode of some show, and

15:28

they receive a text. That

15:30

software engineer, Kelly Jacqueline. I turned to

15:32

my son and I'm like, dude, I

15:34

made that sound. He's like, what are you talking about?

15:37

I'm like, that sound, I made that sound. Kelly

15:43

is the creator of Apple's unforgettable

15:45

Tritone Alert sound. Back

15:48

when Kelly first made that sound, he was working

15:51

as a software engineer for Apple. But

15:53

he didn't create it for Apple. Back

15:56

sometime in 1998, a friend of mine that I used to Jeff

20:00

and I told him my recommendation which was I really

20:03

liked the 1-5-8 sound. I really

20:06

liked both the kalimba and

20:08

the marimba sounds. But

20:11

Kelly felt like the kalimba just didn't

20:13

quite cut through well enough. So 1-5-8

20:15

marimba was the one that I recommended

20:17

to him. Jeff

20:21

liked Kelly's pick and so 1-5-8

20:23

marimba became the Your CD is

20:25

Done Burning sound on Soundjam. So

20:28

Soundjam MP was released and it

20:30

sold reasonably well but nothing spectacular.

20:33

And then I hear from Jeff that Apple bought

20:35

it and then Apple released it in 2001

20:37

as iTunes and

20:40

it still had the same disc burning sound.

20:42

And I'm like hey that's kind of cool

20:44

you know showing my wife and friends hey

20:46

look when you burn a CD that sound

20:49

hey I made that sound. After

20:51

its second life on iTunes Apple gave

20:54

this sound another job. Then a couple

20:56

years later the macOS installer team decided

20:58

that they would use this same sound

21:01

for the completion sound of the install.

21:03

So at some point I was installing

21:05

some software and there's my sound. I'm

21:08

like oh my god wow.

21:14

But none of that prepared him for what happened next.

21:16

It was 2007. Kelly was still at Apple

21:19

working on programs like Final Cut Pro.

21:21

But the company's next big announcement was

21:23

top secret even for most of their

21:26

employees. Apple was pretty good at

21:28

the whole secrecy thing surprise and delight.

21:32

Every once in a while a

21:34

revolutionary product comes along that

21:37

changes everything. At

21:39

the Mac World Conference that year Steve Jobs

21:41

introduced the world to a brand new device.

21:45

An iPod, a

21:47

phone, and

21:50

an internet communicator. An

21:53

iPod, a

21:55

phone. Are

21:59

you getting it? So

24:01

note is our default notification sound

24:04

for messages. Again, that's Hugo

24:06

Verrae, which is kind of a special

24:08

notification sound if you think about it,

24:10

because it's not just an app sending

24:12

you a notification, it's an actual person.

24:15

So when I hear this sound, I know that

24:17

someone is actually thinking of me. The

24:19

design team wanted the sound to cut through if you

24:21

heard it on a noisy city street, but

24:23

not feel abrasive in a quiet living room.

24:27

So we want to strike the balance between

24:29

on one hand for it to be very

24:31

audible, and on the other hand for it

24:33

to be pleasing to hear, even if it's

24:35

a more quiet environment. To achieve this, Hugo

24:37

used something organic and tactile, just like he

24:40

had done with the Apple Watchtones. It's

24:42

also one of the sounds that is recorded on

24:44

a real instrument. It's a C on

24:46

a glockenspiel. A glockenspiel is

24:49

basically a metallic xylophone. It

24:51

makes it one of our most simple sounds, and one of

24:53

the only sounds that I could actually play live if I

24:55

wanted to. Here's

24:58

Hugo at an Apple Developers Conference. Ladies

25:01

and gentlemen, for

25:03

the first time in the

25:06

history of this sound, here

25:08

it is. Concentration.

25:21

I hope I hit the right one. Today,

25:30

Note and Tritone are both commonly used in

25:32

movies and TV shows as

25:34

audio shorthand for texting. Okay,

25:38

everyone, settle in. Today

25:40

we're discussing ways to navigate

25:43

difficult interaction. If then

25:45

you have been raised with Christ,

25:47

seek the things that are above,

25:49

where Christ is. Seated. tone

26:00

called rebound. The

26:03

thinking behind rebound is really about being

26:06

gentle and being respectful and meeting people

26:08

where they're at. So rebound

26:10

was really about, Hey, if you get a lot

26:12

of notifications during the day, we don't want you

26:14

to turn your sounds off. We actually want you

26:16

to feel like this is actually kind of a

26:18

lovely experience. It's really made up of two very

26:20

short notes. And

26:23

we added this muted reverb in the end that

26:25

makes it sound like a little bit of a

26:27

droplet. We

26:29

like to think of it as like a

26:31

droplet in a bucket of notifications. The

26:38

introduction of rebound meant that tritone was

26:40

no longer the default for anything, though

26:42

you can still select it in the

26:44

settings. But for the new calendar alert

26:46

sound called chord, Hugo chose a familiar

26:48

melody. I have the

26:50

instrument here. Is that the actual sound right

26:53

there? It's the actual chord instrument right here.

26:55

Hugo shows me a small wooden instrument with

26:57

a row of metallic tines. It's called a

26:59

kalimba, but since you play it with your

27:02

thumbs, some people call it a thumb piano.

27:04

So let me play a few notes. And

27:12

we used only three of those notes to create chord.

27:17

That's amazing. Can I just hold it just to say that I

27:19

have, you can play it. Oh my goodness. Wow.

27:23

That is so cool. I'm sorry. I'm just totally

27:25

fanboying right now. Just

27:30

like the classic tritone, this sound is

27:32

built around an ascending three note melody

27:34

made up of the one, the five

27:36

and the eight, although it's in the

27:39

key of F rather than D. At one point,

27:41

Hugo gave everyone on the design team

27:46

a kalimba as a gift. And you could

27:48

imagine the studio for the next week. All

27:50

you could hear all day long was everybody trying to play it. And the

27:52

whole thing was everybody trying to. The

28:04

Bootling has more than 20 years of

28:06

nostalgia and recognition built into it, so

28:08

it's no wonder why Apple would want

28:11

to keep that legacy alive. The

28:13

collective social consciousness around that

28:16

sound is so iconic that

28:18

people would recognize it immediately

28:20

as a, you've received a

28:22

message. For Kelly, making

28:25

this sound feels like an accomplishment that

28:27

anyone can grasp, even if they're not

28:29

very tech savvy. When I

28:31

was going to college and describing to

28:33

my parents what a software engineer is

28:36

and what computer science is, I get

28:38

glazed looks. And this

28:40

was one spot that I could point

28:42

to and I could tell my parents

28:44

and they would understand. This

28:47

was a fun side project on the

28:49

weekend for me. So this was,

28:51

you know, I'm not at work. It's my free

28:53

time. I'm going to do it the way I want it. The

28:56

casualness with which I created it,

28:58

I think, belied the impact that

29:00

it would have. The

29:02

impact of sounds like tritone and

29:04

note is beyond compare. Without

29:07

a doubt, these are some of

29:09

the most recognizable sounds ever made.

29:14

And this only scratches the surface

29:16

of Apple's sound design experience. That's

29:28

coming up next time. 20,000

29:33

Hertz is produced out of the sound design

29:35

studios of De facto Sound. Hear more at

29:38

de facto sound dot com. This

29:40

episode was written and produced by Nicholas

29:42

Harder and Casey Emerlin. With help

29:44

from Grace East. It was sound designed

29:46

and mixed by Joel Boyder. And Brandon

29:48

Pratt. The music in

29:50

this episode is by Keith Kenneth. Keith

29:52

is a fantastic composer whose music has been

29:55

featured in some of my favorite Apple commercials.

29:58

Thanks to our guests, Billy Sorrentino. Hugo

30:00

Veray and Kelly Jacklin. Also,

30:03

thanks to everyone at Apple who worked

30:05

behind the scenes to make this episode

30:07

possible. I'm Dallas Taylor. Thanks

30:10

for listening. Supporting

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the things you love doesn't have to just be something

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