Fred Armisen on “100 Sound Effects”

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This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker.

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour.

I'm David Remnick.

Fred Armison, well, he's got a a thing about sound.

He does a bit where he claims to be able to imitate every single accent in American speech.

Pittsburgh, yins go there.

Yens go there to Pittsburgh.

And then down to Baltimore, motor oil.

I always think motor oil.

Baltimore, motor oil.

Then down to Virginia?

Virginia.

And on Saturday Night Live, he co-wrote the recurring sketch about how people talk in LA.

Get back on San Vicente, take it to the 10, then switch over to the 405 North and let it dump you out into Mulholland where you block.

Recently, Armison announced an album called 100 Sound Effects, and the track titles are a little like punchlines themselves.

First-time homeowner switching circuit breakers, Romanian crowd at Rock Club shouting for an encore.

I confess, I wasn't sure if this was an album album or a

concept art, but it's a real album, and it's even coming out soon on vinyl if you're so inclined.

Well, hi.

Hi.

So I played this album for myself and my cat last night.

She was confused.

There are no birds on it, I don't think, so she was not that interested.

That'd have to be a separate album for animals because they're a different audience.

The New Yorkers Michael Schulman met up with Fred Armason and they recently went out to do some sound recording of their own.

Okay, so let's start with the basics.

Like, what is this thing, and how did you come to do it?

100 Sound Effects.

It was kind of like

I was lamenting that there aren't sound effects albums in our lives as much or in my life.

I feel like they just used to exist more or they were more present.

Like, there'd be like a Halloween one.

You just see them everywhere.

It was like the thought.

I was like, oh, I should make one.

Just like the titles of the ones that used to exist were always like, you know,

door closing, you know,

there'd be like some street sounds, sirens, like airplane sounds and stuff.

So it was just from that.

I was like, well, what would a new version of it be like?

And

instead of just,

you know, taking out my phone and just recording stuff, I wanted to treat it properly.

Like, let me go to a recording studio and really do it.

Let me try to mimic some things that I've heard before.

And

it really kind of took about a year of booking more time at a studio and then a few things out on the street but it was mostly studio stuff.

Well when you picture people listening to this album what do you picture?

Are people like sitting and listening very intently or is it background noise or is it?

I picture someone in reality I picture someone playing it for their friend.

Oh that's fun.

It's more like hey look what just came out.

And so not going through the whole thing, but just playing little parts of it, you know, and then it looks good in the record collection.

So it's like not in the music section.

It's like, oh, then here's a sound effects record that actually came out more recently.

Right.

Well, I mean, it's like a novelty item.

Kind of.

But also maybe practical.

That would be a dream.

I mean, you mentioned the sort of classic sound effects albums

that you used to see.

Did you like own them growing up?

Did you own these albums?

Only Halloween ones.

I remember ghoul sounds, you know,

and I guess they'd be used for, you know, haunted mansion amusement, you know, like during Halloween.

Oh, actually,

I had a G.I.

Joe single,

the toy G.I.

Joe's, and I think those were heavy on sound effects.

They weren't advertised that way, but there was a lot of like

crawling through the dirt kind of stuff.

War sounds for the sounds.

Or adventure sounds.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Gotta grab this rock.

Yeah, almost got it.

And that kind of thing.

Wow, it is a lost art form, truly.

Yeah.

So the sounds are subdivided.

Was that where you started?

Kind of like thinking about different scenarios in life, like a plane or a

music store or stuff like that?

Yeah, like I started...

With all the music stuff because, like, that's easy.

I wanted to do someone tuning a guitar

and it's in tune except for when they strum it, it's out of tune.

That happens sometimes to guitar players.

We're like, I just tuned it.

Why is it still out of tune?

Okay, well, let's let's play, let's hear that one.

Yeah, it's just something that happened.

So it started there because those are easy to record.

Just, you know, set up an amp and everything.

So the music ones were just, it was a good starting point.

Well, yeah, and you, I think before you were in comedy, you were in a punk band.

Yeah.

And people know you're a drummer.

You were in Trench Mouth, a punk band starting in the 80s.

So I imagine that you just lived a lot of your life life around the sounds of bands

doing their work.

Yeah, and there's there's so much sound checking.

So much of your life is just sound checks.

So this is the sound of a New Yorker writer writing down what you're wearing.

Flannel shirt.

And this sound is my reaction as I look down to my shirt.

Black pants.

Okay, I got it.

So

you also did things out in the field.

Can you tell me about sort of where you went out to record

more organically?

There were, I spent some time in Ireland working

and

there were sounds of

parts of the kitchen, you know, the washing machine, the dryer, that to me sounded very European.

Oh, really?

Like opening doors.

Like there's this different sound to

even a front door,

it's like a lever and it's like hard wood.

So There's no way to recreate that.

So with that, I used a portable recorder and just did, you know, front door opening, fob opening the

building door.

And then I recorded the washing machine and the dryer because I think their dryers are

just very different to ours.

Like, there's usually one unit that does the same thing.

It's way at the end.

Oh, yeah, European small dryer with some confusion.

Yeah.

Okay, let's listen to that because now I'm really curious what this dryer sounds like.

Oh, that's an interesting little beep thing, yeah.

Yeah, what does that mean?

That's you giving up?

Like, what's going on?

No, I.

This really happened where, I mean, I was recreating it, but I couldn't figure out how to unlock it.

I was like, it says it's done.

Why wouldn't it open?

Huh.

Whoa, what was that?

No idea.

The dryer just making of it.

No idea.

And these are new machines.

That is mysterious.

Oh my God.

That was like an alien land.

I know.

It's really unsettling.

That's something I wouldn't be able to do in a studio.

It's just so specific to being there that things like that I had to do there.

So

you grew up in Long Island.

Are there particular sounds that you associate with where you grew up?

Yeah, definitely.

There were a lot of delis and pizza places.

And opening those doors, there was a jingle usually

sound.

No, it's like how the sopranos ends.

Oh, that's right.

Spoiler alert, but like the last thing you see is Tony looking up and the door jingles, right?

Are you in general like someone who is sensitive to sound more than other people, do you think?

I mean,

are you always that aware of it?

I can't compare myself to other people, but I would say that it's like a major part of my

life and maybe my career in a way that like what

got me there is like more about sound,

the sound of an accent.

Mm-hmm.

Like which chicken and egg is it?

Do you think that you were

sensitive to noises and that got you interested in listening to how accents sound?

Or was it definitely being an actor who had to do accents got you more sensitive to noises?

No, no, no,

it's the first version.

My parents weren't American.

They became American, but

my dad's from Germany and my mom's from Venezuela, and we lived in Brazil for a little while.

So there was a lot of sort of relearning of how people talk,

especially moving to New York.

Like New York has a very specific way that people sound.

So it was like, it was easier to notice.

Because of my life, it was easier to notice that people sounded different.

What were the sounds of Brazil?

God, it was so different.

First of all,

as cliché as it might sound, the sound of the music in the streets, because they had

samba schools, not educational schools, samba being like a school meaning a group of percussionists.

And we lived right near Copacabano Beach and

somewhere around December, so they'd start rehearsing.

So that's one sound you would hear, is like the sound of drums.

TV sounded really different.

And

the

Brazilian kids, so we spoke English and we went to an American school.

How old were you when you left in Brazil?

I was like seven and eight or something.

But the kids,

not in a mean way, would make fun of kids who spoke English, the Brazilian kids, and they would mimic us.

And so we'd be talking, and they'd be like, they would say, like,

that was their version of what we sounded like.

Huh.

Right.

And

yeah, it just, everything sounded different there.

What about SNL?

Does SNL have particular sounds,

like sets moving and stuff that stuck with you?

SNL has such a specific sound that it's what I picture most

with the because I love SNL

with the cold open.

There's like this hiss right at the cold open.

It's I don't know it's the sound I don't know what it comes from the mics being on or something.

So you hear the audience giggle a little but then there's this like whoosh

And it's only SNL where you're like, they're about to start the cold open.

It's a must be half half a second, but there's a sound that's like it begins this way.

Right, right.

Fred Armason talking with the New Yorkers Michael Shulman.

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Well, Fred, I'm hoping that we can head out and do some field work right now if you're up for that.

You up for that?

I'm up for it.

All right.

And sometimes elevator conversation sounds like this.

New York is like almost too easy in that there's so many sounds going on at the same time but I think maybe we could do a good job of like maybe finding some specifics.

So we're in a deli and this is the sound of

a busy deli.

So we're at an ATM.

We're getting the hitting of buttons and numbers.

This is getting out cash.

This is

looking through a cooler for a soda that isn't there, like a drink that you can't find.

You're going through it, you're like, oh, they're out of whatever.

So this is someone looking through it.

Good.

We could do, I found what I was looking for.

Oh, yeah, let's do that.

Let's do that.

Okay.

So that'll add a vocal quality to it.

Okay.

There we go.

This is someone from Philadelphia and they're ordering crepes.

Hi.

Can I just get the lemon crepe, please?

So we're going into a tunnel, one of those like sort of overpass things in Central Park.

So what you hear is violin or fiddle player in the distance coming closer.

So we're passing a fiddle player.

Okay, so we're coming up on something very particular to Central Park South.

Right.

What do we have here?

We've got a horse and carriage.

Now, I don't want to do anything to alarm the horse.

No.

But

the horse is just being really quiet.

Yeah.

So this...

Should we ask this guy?

Ask him.

We wanted to get a sound of a clop, but I don't want to affect the horse.

Okay, okay.

Great.

It's okay.

It's okay.

Okay.

Horse, do you have anything to say?

Okay, okay.

We'll leave him alone.

Very quiet horse.

We have nothing from this horse.

Let's see, let's maybe wait here a moment

in case

some horses do go by.

Because now I'm dead set on it.

Can we, we're just getting some sound effects around New York.

Do you what about uh clopping his hoof?

Is that okay?

Okay.

No, that's alright.

We don't want to bother you.

It's fine.

I wonder if we could fake clopping sounds

just as a sense of okay it might fail right like it maybe we won't get it.

Oh, I have something.

Yeah.

Let's say that we had sunglasses.

This is great.

So let's say I'm gonna go on that wood over there.

Let's say we had like a

directive that we had to get clapping noises that were not allowed back unless we get something.

So let's fool our boss, so to speak.

Okay.

Maybe I'll go slower.

That's pretty good because

we'll just layer it with a little like...

Yeah, or maybe

another plastic war.

Ah, that'll Yes.

Yeah, is it?

But

okay, so let's start at the top.

So this is horses clapping in

Central Park.

And I'll try to mimic that one.

That was amazing because right as you were doing that, we should note, an actual horse and carriage went by, and you just mimicked the exact rhythm of what you were hearing.

Yeah.

With a couple of glasses, cases, and equipment cases on this piece of wood.

This wooden banister thing.

You never know.

Okay, could be.

Because the horse looked over.

Yeah, right.

The horse was like, is that my wife?

Or are you making fun of me?

Are you becoming a joke?

Comedian Fred Armerson.

His new album, 100 Sound Effects, comes out on Drag City Records.

Michael Schuman is a staff writer for The New Yorker, and I'm David Remnick.

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour.

Thanks for listening.

See you next time.

Oh, should we maybe just get this?

Sure.

This horse going by.

Excellent.

Now we can compare.

Yeah, we can compare how we did with during the classes case.

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