The Sonic Brand Makeover We Didn’t Know We Needed

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Speaker 1 I've been making 20,000 hertz with the incredible team at my sound agency DeFacto Sound for 211 episodes and over eight and a half years.

Speaker 1 And in all that time, our introduction has always just been me saying this. You're listening to 20,000 hertz.
I'm Dallas Taylor.

Speaker 1 If you've heard a few episodes, you might have picked up on a theme, which is listening. I start our episodes with you're listening to, and I end them with thanks for listening.

Speaker 1 I also intentionally call you, the audience, listeners.

Speaker 1 Now, one of my favorite things happens at the end of every episode, when you hear the voices of the people who made the show, reading their own credits.

Speaker 1 But in the intro, it's always just me, and that started to feel off. So I wanted to start the show in the same way we end it, with a small but mighty team passionately making something together.

Speaker 1 It reflects what this show has always been, a labor of love crafted by people who care deeply about sound. So, today, I'm excited to debut our brand new intro, which sounds like this.
You're listening

Speaker 1 to 20,000 hertz.

Speaker 1 The stories behind the world's most iconic and fascinating sounds. I'm Dallas Taylor.

Speaker 1 The idea to change our intro started with a conversation I had a few months ago with my friend Charlie Harding from Switched on Pop.

Speaker 1 He was thinking about refreshing their show's theme song after 400 episodes.

Speaker 1 And as you'll hear, it turned out to be a pretty epic endeavor. Here's Charlie Harding and Nate Sloan from Switched on Pop.

Speaker 9 Nate, what do you think of when I play you this song?

Speaker 12 You know the TV show from the 60s about the band the monkeys? Yeah.

Speaker 14 It had that theme song, hey, hey, with the monkeys.

Speaker 5 Monkeys, and people say we monkey around.

Speaker 16 Yeah.

Speaker 12 I never loved it, but I found it sort of comforting when it would come on.

Speaker 17 I feel like this is similar.

Speaker 12 I'm like, yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 8 It's not a great.

Speaker 17 masterful piece of music, but I've kind of like grown to love it over the years, I guess.

Speaker 2 Thanks.

Speaker 19 You know,

Speaker 20 because I wrote it in like an hour.

Speaker 23 I don't remember the moment exactly, but I knew that we had our very first episode.

Speaker 21 We needed some kind of theme song. Yeah.

Speaker 25 And I literally just dragged together a bunch of like garage band loops.

Speaker 26 I don't think there's an original piece of music in there.

Speaker 11 It's literally just a bunch of stuff that anybody has on an Apple computer.

Speaker 12 We've recorded 400 episodes. I feel like every time you've cringed through our theme music.
Not to mention the emails we've gotten from people saying, What is with your theme music?

Speaker 28 Let's give yourself a little bit of credit, though.

Speaker 14 What are we hearing?

Speaker 12 We have this radio dial changing stations at the beginning.

Speaker 9 That's symbolic, right?

Speaker 12 That represents our willingness to listen across genre and style, Charlie, to find common musical material.

Speaker 4 That's beautiful.

Speaker 17 Thank you.

Speaker 12 Now, does anyone listen to the radio anymore?

Speaker 17 Perhaps a question worth asking.

Speaker 31 I just feel like 400 episodes, 10 years of making this show, we need a change.

Speaker 32 And so today we're going to rewrite the theme and we're going to make it better, or at least we're going to make it different.

Speaker 12 This is smart, Charles, because even if we end up with a theme song that still doesn't work, you will have let everyone in on the process and they can see how hard you tried, if nothing else.

Speaker 12 And maybe when they listen, they'll listen with sympathetic ears because they know you did everything you could.

Speaker 25 I appreciate it because I think one of the great challenges with changing any kind of identity is that there's all of this loaded nostalgia for the thing you already knew and familiarity bias is real.

Speaker 25 In case you do feel particularly attached, I want to let you know I think you're wrong.

Speaker 13 And so do some of the best voices in the world of music.

Speaker 37 My name is Lauren Michelle Jackson. I am a professor of English at Northwestern University and a critic at the New Yorker.

Speaker 24 Lauren is one of my favorite music writers.

Speaker 30 I literally teach her work in my classes.

Speaker 1 And when I played her the theme, this is what she said.

Speaker 37 Yeah, it's trying

Speaker 37 maybe a bit too hard, right?

Speaker 18 It's not cool. It's not cool enough.

Speaker 38 Here's culture and music critic Kat Zhang of The Cut, formerly of Pitchfork.

Speaker 39 It sounds like game show music.

Speaker 39 It also sounds like it wouldn't even make it to demo status

Speaker 39 if pitched as a pop song.

Speaker 32 Ian Fitchuk, currently nominated for a Grammy for Producer of the Year.

Speaker 42 It gives me the feeling of hearing one of my kids' like least favorite video game, maybe circa 2007 or 8, from another room and just being like, oh no, here we go again, this game. And

Speaker 42 it really just in no way mirrors the legitimacy of this wonderful podcast.

Speaker 25 If we need podcast musical legitimacy, well, I know just the person who knows a lot about great music and great podcasts.

Speaker 7 I'm Rashi Keshirway. I'm a singer-songwriter and the host of Song Exploder.

Speaker 36 And when I played up the theme.

Speaker 19 I mean, it's, it's cute.

Speaker 44 I like it because you made it.

Speaker 7 But if I didn't know that you made it, my eyebrows might have gone up a lot.

Speaker 7 It makes me smile and it kind of makes me laugh, which, you know, some people might see that as a positive thing, but it might not be the feeling that you want from a listener.

Speaker 45 That's very generous of you.

Speaker 46 I think I'm going to get rid of the vocals.

Speaker 47 I think I'm just going to go bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum.

Speaker 12 Because that is kind of the melodic theme.

Speaker 42 Can I live with that?

Speaker 7 I think you can. I think if you change the bass sound to make it slightly less,

Speaker 7 I think that would be good. But I think you should keep the vocals.

Speaker 40 Switch

Speaker 40 time

Speaker 7 pop. I think having the words in there, it does feel like an iconic part of the theme in my mind.

Speaker 48 Okay, some useful feedback from friends of the podcast, but I feel like we could use some really unvarnished criticism.

Speaker 50 John Karamonica, host of popcast at the New York Times.

Speaker 44 John doesn't hold back.

Speaker 45 All right.

Speaker 50 I can tell you have a fondness for the game shows of Eastern Europe.

Speaker 50 Look, what I want to say is that were you thinking of like a breakfast cereal spin-off of the show to have that kind of sound? Like, is that where you were going with it?

Speaker 50 Were you thinking like this podcast thing unlikely to go?

Speaker 2 However, there's a packageables angle on the back end of this.

Speaker 18 Is that where you were? I could have actually made some money if I did that.

Speaker 50 I am confident that if you went into an advertising or marketing meeting with that right now,

Speaker 50 you would walk out with an incredible job music supervising some of the the worst serial commercials that you've ever heard.

Speaker 50 I'm going to go journalistic on you for a second. Please, what were you hoping to evoke emotionally, but also kind of like philosophically in a listener who heard that?

Speaker 50 What did you want them to take away?

Speaker 26 I wanted it to be a jingle that was diva-esque that would announce itself as being every kind of pop music.

Speaker 9 So it begins with a radio FM sweep that is completely anachronistic.

Speaker 20 It has

Speaker 32 a sort of like

Speaker 18 trap orchestra. Womp, womp, womp, womp.

Speaker 48 Like those big horns, trap sort of sounds.

Speaker 6 It's got some wub-wub from the dub step.

Speaker 52 It's got a swung piano going bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, dun, dump, dump, dun, dump, dump.

Speaker 32 It's got a bunch of sound effects for sort of cinema stuff.

Speaker 31 Oh, it's got a funk ending bass line.

Speaker 35 I wanted it to be maximalist everything, and I wanted to say pop music.

Speaker 20 I'm not sure that that brief says pop music anyway.

Speaker 2 Okay, so two notes, right? So, number one,

Speaker 50 have you considered a radio dial with static in between?

Speaker 19 So, you are switched,

Speaker 50 and then the on is on like a country on,

Speaker 50 and then pop is maybe like a metal

Speaker 50 you know like have you considered that as a way to communicate to telegraph multiple genres number one or number two you should have done something chaotic maybe you should have hand cut tape with one of those like hand splicers just a thought yeah why it i like it yeah so that those are my notes that's a that's a great review i appreciate it you're you couldn't be more welcome.

Speaker 16 Well, that was humbling.

Speaker 18 Totally.

Speaker 31 It's really unfortunate, too, because this is the only original piece of music in the theme.

Speaker 44 I found someone on Craigslist to sing harmonies.

Speaker 54 Yeah.

Speaker 25 We've never spoken, never met. Just traded some files.

Speaker 30 Hello. So nice to meet you.

Speaker 43 I am Charlie.

Speaker 55 It's so nice to meet you.

Speaker 31 This is the singer, Maria Z.

Speaker 25 I found my email exchange with her from 10 years ago, and I reached out to see if she remembered how we first connected to make this theme.

Speaker 55 Was it Craigslist? Yeah.

Speaker 21 So in 2014, I made a theme song out of GarageBand Loops.

Speaker 31 And I thought, oh, we should have someone sing over this.

Speaker 56 I don't really remember writing that Craigslist ad,

Speaker 57 but I was like, I got to find someone to sing.

Speaker 28 You wrote me, hi there.

Speaker 32 I'm interested in helping with your jingle.

Speaker 58 I have a great home setup and could record and send everything back on Sunday.

Speaker 32 I have a big range and can sing with a lighter or heavier, funkier, soulful tone, whatever you need for the diva role.

Speaker 55 Listen, when I see the word diva, it is on and pop, and I'm like, Amare.

Speaker 31 Do you have any recollection of doing that recording?

Speaker 1 I actually do.

Speaker 55 I mean, it's a little hazy. I don't remember the melody.
You're gonna have to play it for me, obviously.

Speaker 4 I can do that.

Speaker 2 Here, let me play it for you a second.

Speaker 59 No way, that is hilarious.

Speaker 39 I sound so young oh switch time

Speaker 55 that was a lot shorter than I remember though so do you know anything about this podcast that you've contributed to short answer no I think I work on so many things that I often forget what I'm part of but I did check out recently since we reconnected and um I took a look at what you've been doing and it's amazing.

Speaker 55 It's awesome.

Speaker 55 How many pieces out in the world would you say have your voice on it right now oh my gosh over a thousand projects like 2 000 so sounding crazy what's the biggest job you've done where people might have heard your voice i recently had a song placed on moogie spirited is santa baby

Speaker 1 me too

Speaker 44 Whoa, I'm so thankful to get to connect.

Speaker 30 It's so funny that we probably lived just a few miles from each other for 10 years and have been in this very roundabout way, a part of each other's lives.

Speaker 11 Your voice has been heard by like many millions of people at the introduction of our show.

Speaker 2 I think you nailed it.

Speaker 18 I asked for a diva vocal and you delivered. I delivered.
Okay.

Speaker 41 Thank you, Maria. Thank you so much for including me.

Speaker 27 She crushed it, by the way.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 12 She's arguably the best part of this intro. Sorry, Charles.

Speaker 13 Yeah, totally.

Speaker 53 Hopefully we can find some kind of way to keep part of her vocals in our rewrite, but it's pretty clear from all the feedback that we've received that it's past time that we need to refresh our jingle.

Speaker 25 And Nate, I don't know if you remember, but I've actually tried to rewrite this theme song like a couple of times.

Speaker 8 And every single time you're like, nah, that's not it.

Speaker 47 This is my fault.

Speaker 56 I'm sorry, I have taste.

Speaker 33 Here, let me play a few.

Speaker 28 That was me just trying to get rid of using loops and make everything by hand back in 2019.

Speaker 3 You rejected it.

Speaker 36 And I still do.

Speaker 9 In 2021, I tried this.

Speaker 9 You said no. I said,

Speaker 9 that's daft junk right there.

Speaker 9 After you said no in 2021, I tried again.

Speaker 12 That sounds like the intro to a Nickelodeon show from the 90s.

Speaker 56 Oh my gosh, it is.

Speaker 4 Like a bad rug rats spin-off or something.

Speaker 17 Despite all of your rejections, there have been a couple of alterations to the theme over the years, like in our Anthems series.

Speaker 13 You know what?

Speaker 12 That slaps, but not an everyday theme song.

Speaker 31 Also, not an everyday theme, our Beethoven miniseries.

Speaker 48 pretty sick very sturdy drong and then a bunch of times i've just tried to get moody with it

Speaker 36 you were deep in your feelings admittedly it was like deep pandemic when i wrote those three i could tell

Speaker 12 it was not good times so year after year you you've found ways to fail.

Speaker 62 Sorry, I'm kicking you when you're down.

Speaker 15 Yeah.

Speaker 13 What makes you think this time will be different, Charlie?

Speaker 35 Well, I realized I'm way too close to this original theme, and I thought that maybe if we could get another perspective, that would help.

Speaker 29 And so, I called up an expert on sound design to help me think about how to go about rebranding our show.

Speaker 1 I'm Dallas Taylor, and I'm a sound designer and own a company called De Facto Sound. And I also host a podcast about sound called 20,000 Hertz.

Speaker 38 Dallas will help an organization craft their sonic identity.

Speaker 9 And so I asked him to break down the various aspects of sonic branding and what we should be considering.

Speaker 1 So there's a bunch of different things that all branch underneath the global title of sonic branding. So that can be something like a jingle.

Speaker 1 I think of a jingle as a short piece of music that has lyrics in it, like Nationwide is on your side, or 800-58A, 800-58A2300-2300 Empire.

Speaker 5 Today.

Speaker 1 There's the theme song. You know, we're thinking about like the friends theme song.

Speaker 1 Where it's like a whole piece of music that's really designed to give you the time to transition into this world. I think of things like a Sonic logo as something that's very short, you know, like a

Speaker 1 like the Netflix thing. And then, you know, you also have other elements that could be considered under this kind of sonic branding idea, like an audio tag.

Speaker 1 That could be something that is either happening at the very end, like the Intel chimes.

Speaker 1 Those are the main things that I think of under that sonic branding.

Speaker 1 And it's interesting because when you reached out about the switched on pop jingle, I would say, it's kind of like between a jingle and a theme song. It does have like a lot of memorability to it.

Speaker 1 So my first instinct for anyone is like not to lose something that has existed for so long.

Speaker 56 That would be my gut of the direction to go.

Speaker 1 Probably less change than you want to make, but enough that you feel satisfied in it.

Speaker 30 Okay.

Speaker 53 So per Dallas, I feel like we need to rewrite our jingle, make a longer theme that we could use for our credits, and have some kind of audio tag that we could put at the beginning and end of the show if we need it.

Speaker 24 But since I have failed so miserably trying to rewrite the theme so many times, here's what I want to propose.

Speaker 4 I want to hire an actual composer. Wise.

Speaker 17 Hans Zimmer?

Speaker 31 I emailed.

Speaker 33 Not available.

Speaker 62 I'm not joking. I really did email.

Speaker 2 Good for you.

Speaker 63 I also want to keep it about friendship.

Speaker 11 You know, I feel like this is fundamentally about us hanging out and our relationship to music together.

Speaker 49 That's how it all began.

Speaker 31 So I want to keep it humble. We don't need Hans.

Speaker 48 I want to talk to our friend Zach Tenorio, who has played on the show a couple of times.

Speaker 25 People hear his music every single time we play the ad break.

Speaker 48 That's him on the synthesizer.

Speaker 30 This year, Zach is nominated for a Grammy for his arranging on Willow's new record.

Speaker 31 So, not just a friend, but acclaimed musician. Zach has been an old pal.

Speaker 31 He's in the band Archiris with our other friend Jossie Adams, who's also an amazing composer, also going to help out in this project.

Speaker 29 I thought we would hire them to redo our theme music.

Speaker 32 And I feel like we need to give them some parameters.

Speaker 61 So I'm just curious, like, what are the things that matter to you that we can give them in a brief?

Speaker 62 Okay, well, one of my issues with our old theme music is I feel like it's a little long.

Speaker 25 Way too long.

Speaker 17 So I feel like one thing, let's keep it nice and quick, right?

Speaker 32 I feel like I want to have some continuity.

Speaker 51 Like, we do have a core melody.

Speaker 52 Bum, bum, bum, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump.

Speaker 44 Like, I feel like that, that is a sonic identity that I don't really want to lose.

Speaker 12 I would love to have some textures that feel more reflective of what pop music sounds like in 2025.

Speaker 25 Well, I kind of want to keep doing this show for like another 10 years with you.

Speaker 32 And I got it so wrong in 2014.

Speaker 21 Maybe we could say a little bit more timeless.

Speaker 17 That works for me.

Speaker 16 Timeless.

Speaker 61 I feel like we should also honor the switched on-ness of our show.

Speaker 12 Ah, the Wendy Carlos of it all.

Speaker 53 Yeah, exactly. We need some synthesizers.
Yeah.

Speaker 38 I mean, after all, Wendy Carlos's switched on Bach is our namesake.

Speaker 58 It's the most successful classical record.

Speaker 25 It legitimized the synthesizer.

Speaker 32 I feel like we have to include that.

Speaker 26 Anything else?

Speaker 12 Do we want a vocal again? Do we need to say switched on pop? Is it instrumental?

Speaker 17 What's your take there, Charles? Richieka says we need the vocal.

Speaker 2 I think we got to keep a vocal of some kind.

Speaker 33 There's got to be a voice.

Speaker 17 Okay, so short, timeless, synthesized, but also continuing our original in some way.

Speaker 25 Okay, here's what I'm going to do.

Speaker 56 I'm going to call up Zach and Jossie from Archiris and let's see what they say.

Speaker 51 Oh my goodness.

Speaker 37 Can you take a step? Can you come?

Speaker 15 That was cute. That was amazing.

Speaker 1 We're a happy family.

Speaker 19 Oh, it's so good to see you all.

Speaker 1 It's good to see you too.

Speaker 9 Zach and Jossie were hanging out with their one-year-old baby who took a few steps on FaceTime for me.

Speaker 48 Very cute.

Speaker 32 Do you want to talk vision?

Speaker 45 Yeah, let's talk about music.

Speaker 38 I don't want to rewrite this thing from scratch.

Speaker 63 I think we got to keep the core composition.

Speaker 8 I don't think that the sounds are important.

Speaker 30 I think what's important is a like musical gesture, like a

Speaker 43 bum, bum, bum, bum, bump, bum, bum, bump, bump.

Speaker 11 That is the theme.

Speaker 45 And so I want to keep that.

Speaker 12 I want it to be a little bit more timeless and not trying to like match the trends of any musical era.

Speaker 63 I would like it to be more idiosyncratic to us.

Speaker 11 I would like to have something that I play and I want to make sure Nate plays something.

Speaker 25 Because we were tied to Wendy Carlos, it must be synthesizers.

Speaker 65 I love that. And that actually, I feel like as a palette, to me, those sounds that Wendy Carlos was making back then sound timeless.

Speaker 15 They sound timeless.

Speaker 65 And they happen through every decade of pop music.

Speaker 65 It sounds like a fun challenge.

Speaker 47 Are the vocals going? It could be like vocoder, it could be some like some way of using the voice.

Speaker 1 So it's basically just like

Speaker 65 sound switched on pop music, right?

Speaker 31 And then a minute of music.

Speaker 65 It definitely seems fun.

Speaker 47 All right. Thanks for thinking this through.

Speaker 18 All right, Charlie. Yeah.

Speaker 15 All right. Love y'all.
Bye.

Speaker 30 So I sent Zach and Jossie off for that brief.

Speaker 2 And when we come back, we'll hear what they came up with.

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Speaker 10 Okay, hey, can you you hear me? Yeah.

Speaker 5 All right, where are you?

Speaker 62 Outside the library.

Speaker 64 Okay, so Zach sent me a little audio clip and some inspirational music that I wanted to get your feedback on.

Speaker 40 Okay.

Speaker 25 So I gave him our brief of like shorter, some mog synthesizers, and he sent back these songs as ideas.

Speaker 28 First is the song Kid A off of the record Kid A.

Speaker 62 I like it.

Speaker 14 It's a little avant-garde, a little out there.

Speaker 15 Okay.

Speaker 62 But you know, so is some of our analysis. So that seems appropriate.

Speaker 10 Okay, the second song that he was interested in was Yesterday by No Name, specifically the string sense.

Speaker 27 Those strings really fit our brief of something timeless.

Speaker 62 They sound kind of classic, but also totally contemporary. I like it.

Speaker 43 Okay, cool.

Speaker 57 The last piece that he sent was Mort Garson's Ode to an African Violet.

Speaker 62 Plantasia, baby.

Speaker 65 You know, we asked for synthesizers.

Speaker 12 This is like a classic

Speaker 62 sound that I would be honored to have as part of our theme music.

Speaker 9 Okay, so that's the sound palette that he wanted to work with.

Speaker 11 And he was fiddling around after chatting with him yesterday.

Speaker 9 This is the idea, like rough sort of demo. Is he going in the right direction?

Speaker 62 I think it's definitely the right direction.

Speaker 5 Oh, great.

Speaker 62 Now, one thing I'm realizing I'm missing is the delineation between the two

Speaker 8 themes within that short melody.

Speaker 12 I feel like it's always been sort of question and answer, switched on pop.

Speaker 62 Like, can we still have that sort of back and forth element by changing the timbre or the harmony somehow?

Speaker 30 Yeah, I like the call and response.

Speaker 62 That's the only thing that comes to mind.

Speaker 2 Okay, cool.

Speaker 9 There's a couple things that I wanted to get your feedback on.

Speaker 8 One was maybe evolving the harmony a little bit.

Speaker 44 So like right now, the whole thing is very simple.

Speaker 25 It's just in the key of C.

Speaker 26 It goes C, B flat, C.

Speaker 23 Switch Don pop,

Speaker 17 which is very like medieval.

Speaker 18 Well, we could do different chords, like we could re-harm it.

Speaker 66 And so like one option was to go like E flat, B flat, C.

Speaker 23 Switch, Don, pop.

Speaker 25 Or you could do like the upward approach, A flat, B flat, C.

Speaker 23 Switch, don't pop.

Speaker 62 I'm probably more partial to the ascending approach, reminiscent of the final cadence of Whitney Houston's 1991 Super Bowl performance of the national anthem.

Speaker 11 Which I think is inspired by Jimi Hendrix's performance of the national anthem, which does the same thing, but many years earlier.

Speaker 29 i mean we are an anthemic podcast so

Speaker 56 okay so let's do the a flat b flat

Speaker 43 c

Speaker 21 yeah yeah that's the one okay and then i was thinking that we could play with the rhythm a little bit instead of doing the like bum bum bum bum bum bum which is very bluesy maybe make it a little more syncopated

Speaker 43 and then slow it down nope i don't like it you don't like it?

Speaker 12 No, I think if we change that, it becomes sort of unrecognizable. And I don't know.

Speaker 62 I don't know.

Speaker 62 Something about that syncopation isn't working for me.

Speaker 31 You don't want to evolve and grow and change?

Speaker 43 Okay, okay.

Speaker 43 Fair point, Charlie.

Speaker 36 If you don't like it, we don't got to do it.

Speaker 62 I actually like the tail of it. Da-da-da.

Speaker 12 I feel like that has a nice sort of finality to it.

Speaker 14 Whereas if we draw it out, then it just feels kind of

Speaker 62 draggy to me.

Speaker 62 Okay, well, it's not drag this is all about getting to the point few other notes i have i think it'd be really fun if we had zach like have one moment where you play something one moment where i play something you know just like to make a little more personal yeah we should have our fingerprints on this thing yeah i'll play like mandolin or guitar you'll play some kind of keys let's do it okay i think i want to hear some vocals yeah we're a show about pop music and with some exceptions it's a vocal art form so i feel like we need some vocals in in there.

Speaker 15 Okay, so we've got the right direction.

Speaker 62 Sounds like a plan. Okay.
Can I go back to work now?

Speaker 15 Yeah, I'll call Zach.

Speaker 45 Right on. Cool.

Speaker 17 All right. Thank you, Nate.

Speaker 62 You got it, Chuck.

Speaker 4 Zach, we love it.

Speaker 2 You love it.

Speaker 28 I played Nate the audio samples.

Speaker 9 He digs them. Loves the direction that we're going in.
And we have a few notes because that's how this works, right? Yes, of course.

Speaker 25 One of the things that works about the current making them them feel a little bit more call-and-response-y, maybe it would be fun if we got Nate and me in there.

Speaker 3 Right.

Speaker 43 We do want to put vocals back in.

Speaker 5 Okay.

Speaker 65 So the reharm is good. I'm not changing any of the harmony right now.
Like, you're happy with that.

Speaker 15 I think, or are you doing the reharm in the current version that you just sent me?

Speaker 65 I am doing a reharm, yeah. It goes to A flat, B flat, C, and then

Speaker 65 during the lick, I kind of modulate to the four chord.

Speaker 15 Oh, I like that.

Speaker 65 Yeah, it feels new in a cool way to me. It's like resolved, but not like 100% resolved, if you know what I mean.

Speaker 25 I actually hadn't realized that the opening chord, that is an A-flat.

Speaker 4 Let me hear that. The first one is A-flat.
Yeah.

Speaker 65 A flat, B-flat, C.

Speaker 5 Well, that's funny.

Speaker 26 I had heard it as if you were doing the C, B flat, C, the original, because it's so ingrained in my head.

Speaker 65 Yeah, that's, I mean, that makes sense.

Speaker 11 And also, you just did it so subtly, I didn't even notice that you had done it, which is perfect.

Speaker 3 Okay, cool, awesome.

Speaker 15 Thanks, Zach.

Speaker 12 Yeah, of course, Tuxen.

Speaker 19 Okay, well,

Speaker 28 in the last couple of days since we caught up, I ran our feedback by Zach.

Speaker 14 He loved it.

Speaker 6 I gave you homework.

Speaker 12 You wanted me to play the last tag of the theme on, let's see, Irish penny whistle,

Speaker 12 five-string banjo,

Speaker 16 and grand grand piano.

Speaker 12 Charlie, for whatever reason, I only pick the most annoying instruments to learn.

Speaker 16 It's something deeply wrong with me.

Speaker 30 Thank goodness that you can play the piano.

Speaker 17 I know, I know.

Speaker 12 It's my, what's David Grace?

Speaker 22 And so I was like, what on earth am I going to do with this?

Speaker 46 The goal was to add some personality and texture

Speaker 25 to the synthesizers that Zach and Jossie had given us as a reminder.

Speaker 24 This is where they left us off.

Speaker 24 Yeah.

Speaker 25 And of course, everyone thought what that needs is some banjo, some penny whistle, and some additional piano. So this is what I did with your material.

Speaker 12 That's pretty money.

Speaker 4 Yeah. A little Easter egg for the heads.

Speaker 44 Yeah. And when you layer it in.

Speaker 9 Shockingly euphonious.

Speaker 61 Okay, so your little banjo, flute, piano thing completes the second half of the theme.

Speaker 60 And I layered together a bunch of guitars for the first half of the theme.

Speaker 54 I wanted to complement the sort of funkiness of the synthesizers,

Speaker 25 but then layer it with some distortion.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 44 A little Van Halen in there.

Speaker 31 And this is what it sounds like with the synths.

Speaker 16 Love it.

Speaker 26 But I also asked Zach and Jossie to, of course, include some vocals.

Speaker 8 And so we've got Zach on vocoder, Jossie on lead vocals, and I even buried a little bit of the original vocals that I did as a demo.

Speaker 26 I'm not going to isolate those.

Speaker 61 And I also included some of Maria's original harmonies.

Speaker 60 Okay, and then the last thing is we asked for some sound effects that would swoop in and out.

Speaker 25 John Karamonica said that we needed some tape sound effects, so I made sure to get some tape splicing in here.

Speaker 35 Wow.

Speaker 38 And the final theme, all together, sounds like

Speaker 16 okay, that's sick. I love it.

Speaker 4 I love it.

Speaker 7 How many tracks is this thing?

Speaker 61 We are currently at, let's see, we're talking 102 tracks.

Speaker 27 That is absurd.

Speaker 12 That's more than like Nicki Minaj's starships.

Speaker 31 What is going on?

Speaker 17 How does a six-second jiggle have 102 tracks?

Speaker 11 Because there's so many layers of synthesizers.

Speaker 25 I mean, my guitar tracks alone are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16 tracks of guitars.

Speaker 32 Your banjos, flutes, and pianos are all layered twice.

Speaker 66 All the vocals are stacked like 12 times.

Speaker 33 The vocoder is stacked multiple times.

Speaker 30 There's just like endless layers that are all just like gently supporting each other.

Speaker 17 Okay, 102 tracks, 12 critics, five composers.

Speaker 17 Have we nailed this thing? Have we threaded this needle? Have we corrected a decade of offensive theme music?

Speaker 57 Well, I played it for some of our earlier critics, and here's what they had to say.

Speaker 67 I love

Speaker 67 the revamp. It's smooth, very suave,

Speaker 67 while still retaining a bit of the old sound.

Speaker 65 So love it.

Speaker 68 Much better. It sounds like the cool upgraded theme to like a Bill Nye the Science Guy type show, which is not off.

Speaker 5 Bill Nye, the Science Guy D.

Speaker 58 Charlie, I think this sounds great.

Speaker 7 Kind of reminds me of the theme song from 321 Contact, which I love.

Speaker 31 So, yeah, thumbs up for me.

Speaker 50 Yeah, this sounds to me like what a movie in like 1983

Speaker 50 would have imagined that an answering machine outgoing message would have sounded like in 2050.

Speaker 12 Please leave a message for SwitchShop Pop after the tone.

Speaker 25 So, between 3-to-1 contact, Bill Nye the Science Guy, and the futuristic answering machine, I realized that our brief that included heavy amounts of synthesizer makes the whole thing lean towards like PBS soundtrack music.

Speaker 15 A PBS science after school program.

Speaker 12 Oh my goodness.

Speaker 30 Which is that not appropriate for what we're doing?

Speaker 40 A reading rainfall.

Speaker 40 A reading rainfall.

Speaker 12 I mean, it's probably so subconsciously buried in our synapses that it was only a matter of time before these sounds came out.

Speaker 12 Who wouldn't aspire to bring the mix of entertainment and edification that Bill Nye has provided over the years?

Speaker 14 That's the greatest compliment you could ever get.

Speaker 17 I know, I'm pleased.

Speaker 12 The Bill Nye of pop music analysis.

Speaker 31 But wait, there's more innate. Oh, God.

Speaker 17 More tracks.

Speaker 60 You know, I spoke with Dallas from 20,000 Hertz, and he told us that a podcast doesn't just need a little jingle, it needs a sonic identity.

Speaker 63 And so I was thinking, how could we extract a little bumper sound effect that would play at the beginning and end of our show or whenever we needed it?

Speaker 47 And I think Zach gave us the perfect material.

Speaker 46 It's right at the very beginning.

Speaker 15 I love that. Isn't that cool?

Speaker 45 It's epic.

Speaker 31 The only thing is, I feel like it's a little too long. Like, I want something super short.

Speaker 63 So,

Speaker 61 over too many hours, I toyed with these sounds, which are comprised of a tape stop,

Speaker 56 a record drop, a cassette tape, a tiny bit of radio static from our original jingle.

Speaker 32 And just the shortest blip of that synthesizer.

Speaker 36 And this is what I came up with.

Speaker 44 That's going in. And when we're done,

Speaker 59 audio bumper. We got a sonic identity.

Speaker 5 I don't know if it's dumb, and I like it.

Speaker 40 Let me hear it one more time.

Speaker 13 It's close. It's close.

Speaker 12 I think we might have to take that one to the woodshed for a sec, but I like where we're going with it.

Speaker 17 Yeah. Okay, Charlie, you're not a sound designer.
No.

Speaker 12 You're a songwriter. You're not a composer of soundtracks and scores.

Speaker 18 This is new

Speaker 59 to Rainford. Okay, okay.

Speaker 43 You are now.

Speaker 14 Okay, sorry. Okay, let me let me start over.

Speaker 17 Charlie, you're an accomplished composer who has worked in many different fields and media.

Speaker 12 But as far as I know, you've never, besides our own earlier jingle, you've never composed a sting like this before. What did you learn through this process?

Speaker 36 Well, first of all, these are the kind of things that people don't have opinions about until you ask them.

Speaker 36 And so everybody listening right now is going to have all of a sudden a very strong opinion about something which is completely irrelevant they would have otherwise never paid attention to.

Speaker 15 Yeah.

Speaker 57 But that includes myself.

Speaker 61 I really thought a lot about what do we want to sound like?

Speaker 10 And it was the process of exploring these sounds that really made it all come together.

Speaker 32 Like I knew we wanted to maintain some consistency in our sound identity.

Speaker 61 And so we couldn't throw out the jingle completely.

Speaker 30 I wanted to lean more into something which is honest to ourselves, which I think is that synthesized, switched on sound with us playing our instruments in there, including our goofiest instruments.

Speaker 53 And then when I finally shared this thing back and got all this feedback of like, it's giving PBS, I was like, perfect.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 25 That's actually where I do want to be.

Speaker 28 Like, my dream is probably to have a music education show on PBS.

Speaker 30 And so, in that way, I think it's been a success going through this process and uncovering these sounds.

Speaker 12 Yeah, that's something I would not have anticipated at the start of this process.

Speaker 12 I would think of making a jingle as a purely kind of calculating and almost scientific process.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 12 But it's actually very emotional, very human, very much about what our hopes and goals and ambitions and loves are.

Speaker 3 And how to fit that into five seconds of exotic material is a fascinating challenge.

Speaker 12 So

Speaker 14 every time I listen to a podcast or

Speaker 14 any show, really, I'm going to be thinking about like, okay, so what is this jingle trying to tell me?

Speaker 12 What does it tell me about the people who made it and the values of this particular piece of media?

Speaker 47 And hopefully a bop as well. Hopefully, we've created, you know,

Speaker 16 at least a top 40 Billboard hit, if not hot 100.

Speaker 9 Well, on that note, I said that I would get you a jingle.

Speaker 38 I said that I'd get you a little sonic logo or tag or bumper, whatever you want to call that little thing, is.

Speaker 21 But I also said I'd get you a song.

Speaker 33 And Zach and Jossie of Archiris have delivered.

Speaker 35 They've given us credits music.

Speaker 3 This is epic.

Speaker 12 This is like what they play before you're about to watch a light show at the planetarium or something. It's so fun.

Speaker 1 That story came from Switched on Pop, a podcast about the making and meaning of popular music. Each week, Charlie and Nate pull back the curtain on how pop hits work magic on our ears and our culture.

Speaker 1 In recent episodes, they've explored how Rihanna's hit Umbrella transformed how pop music was made, and how Spotify's algorithms dictate the soundtrack to our lives.

Speaker 1 Follow Switched on Pop right here in your podcast player. 20,000 Hertz is produced out of my sound agency, DeFacto Sound.
To hear more, follow Defacto Sound on Instagram or visit de factosound.com.

Speaker 24 Switched on Pop is produced by Randa Cruz, edited by R.

Speaker 30 Chung, engineered by Brandon McFarlane, illustrations by Iris Gottlieb, music by Zach Tenorio and Jossie Adams of Archiris.

Speaker 25 We're a member of the Vox Media Podcast Network and a production of Vulture, which is part of New York magazine.

Speaker 14 You can subscribe at nymag.com/slash pod.

Speaker 1 Additional material for this episode was written by Casey Emerlyn. With help from Grace East.

Speaker 9 It was sound designed and mixed by Graham Gold.

Speaker 1 I'm Dallas Taylor. Thanks for listening.