Sound Pro Smackdown: Guess That Sound! w/ 3 industry experts

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At this point, we have over 200 episodes about almost any sound-related topic you can think of.

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You're listening to 20,000 Hertz.

I'm Dallas Taylor.

As our longtime listeners know, every year we end the year with a special mystery sound game show episode.

In the past, we've invited some of our favorite podcasters to come on the show and guess these sounds.

But this year, I decided to invite a few of my friends from the world of professional audio.

The first guest is dialogue and ADR editor Austin Olivia Kendrick.

Austin's credits include Barry, Star Trek Discovery, and the Transformers Earth Spark series.

Our second guest is sound designer Mike James Gallagher.

Mike sound designed the hilarious movie Weird, the Al Yankovic Story.

He's also worked on the Netflix Song Exploder show and the documentary Lucy and Desi.

Our third guest is sound designer Zachary Quarles, who mainly works in video games.

Zach has worked on legendary games like Fortnite, God of War, Quake, and many, many more.

You'll also hear our producer, Grace East, as the scorekeeper.

So without further ado, crank up the volume and get ready to play along.

Welcome to the fifth annual 20,000 Hertz Mystery Sound Challenge.

In this heated competition, three opponents will compete to become the ultimate mystery sound champion.

The rules are simple.

Each sound has a maximum score of three points.

If the correct answer is guessed without any hints, the guesser will earn all three.

If one hint is given, the guesser will receive two points.

And if two hints are given, the guesser will earn just a single point.

Three players will enter.

Only one will emerge victorious.

Now, here's your host, Dallas Taylor.

Okay, so intro, intro, intro, intro, intro, intro.

So now let's turn it over to Grace to introduce herself.

Well, welcome, everyone.

It's a joy to have you with us.

Any questions about our scorekeeping or how how it's going to work?

Is there a negative

like jeopardy?

Yeah,

I'm going to bet all my points immediately.

There are no consequences for guessing just about anything.

No consequences.

And Grace is also negotiable with her points.

I'm negotiable.

And so if you just don't feel like it's fair, we'll probably.

What do you think about 12 points for this?

You know, we'll.

All right.

Are we we ready to go?

Ready to do my best.

I make no other promises.

Yeah, let's get zeros.

Sound number one.

Wow.

Is this starting at maximum difficulty?

They're all going to be a little, you know, this is the sound designer mystery game.

So it's going to be a little, a little challenging.

All right.

All right.

I feel like I know this.

Yeah.

It's deep.

You got to dig deep.

I have a terrible memory.

Oh, no.

You can always ask for hints, too.

We can agree as a group if we're ready for hint one.

I'm probably going to be requesting a lot of hints.

Yeah.

Feel free to turn me down.

Again, I'm a dialogue editor.

I'm here guessing on Sunday sounds.

That was all dialogue.

Awesome.

That is true.

And I'm still lost.

Okay.

Great.

Awesome.

Okay, hint one.

Okay.

Hint one is this is a scene from a iconic 80s movie.

Okay.

80s.

Oh, oh, okay.

That completely shifts the frame of reference.

Kind of sounded like animation at first.

Can I hear it one more time?

Oh, man, what is this?

I will say too, I feel like animation was like half right.

That is true.

Oh, oh, oh, that's funny.

Well, no,

like perhaps like a stop motion or claymation scenario

or a Roger Rabbit type situation.

I'll go ahead and go with hit number two,

which is the creature in this scene is known for his appetite, but not for his table manners.

This green creature is.

Oh,

it's Ghostbusters.

Yep.

Yep.

There you go.

How?

I'm ashamed.

I'm also ashamed.

Anyway, I'm still learning everyone's voices.

Who got that one?

That was Zach.

That was Zach.

Okay, perfect.

So let me do my reveal.

So that's the scene from Ghostbusters when Slymer charges down the hotel hallway at Bill Murray.

Slymer's roar comes from a 1977

called BBC Sound Effects Number 13, Death and Horror.

And the specific track is called The Mad Ape.

And here's a clip of that.

I mean, beautiful.

The ape does sound mad, but it's

an apt description.

I'm kind of blown away that Slimer was a library pole.

Yeah, I I am too.

That's, yeah.

Works, though.

It works.

If it works, who cares?

That's right.

Yep.

Sound number two.

I know this.

I don't know this.

It's the opening door for Lawson.

Lawson.

Oh, God.

Family Mart.

Boom.

Got it.

Ding, ding, ding.

Wow.

What a hole.

So quick on the draw.

Oh, my God.

Wow.

Mike just got back from Japan.

Hey, don't give away my secrets.

I just know that because I'm a genius.

Come on.

He was given inside intel and traveled to Japan for the specific reasons.

The dedication.

You know, I respect the hustle.

I respect it.

Yes, yep.

That's our core.

All right, so that's the chime that plays when you walk through the doors of a family mart, which is a popular chain of convenience stores in Japan.

And this chime was composed in 1978 by Yashushi Inada.

Here he is in 2015 playing the melody on a piano.

Oh, I want to hear it with bagpipes.

Can we do that?

Ooh, now there's an idea.

And has everyone been to Japan to experience that?

No.

I haven't.

It's on the list.

I'm looking forward to hearing it now.

A tuna mayo onigiri and oh, hard-boiled eggs in a bag.

Oh, man.

I know it sounds crazy, but egg salad sandwich.

I'm fully in.

Yeah, hard-boiled eggs in a bag.

I think I'm going to start a band called that.

That's actually the name of my punk band.

Sorry, I'm sorry to type in.

Okay.

Sound number three.

I would like to take a guess.

Dude.

All right.

That is a willowed ptarmigan.

What?

What?

What the?

Are you on our Google Doc?

Are you kidding?

I know.

That's it.

Yeah, and

I can give you a little fun fact about that as well.

Can I?

Oh, sure.

Oh, my gosh.

Yes.

I think we're all in awe.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm not even mad.

I'm just impressed.

Yeah, I mean, I'm just kind of surprised that Dallas thinks I leave my house.

Well, I mean you might know it from the opening scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark if they knew we were here They would have killed us already

And an interesting story behind that is that Ben Burt threw that in to the first scene And Steven Spielberg was blown away because it made his movie feel very alien.

So Ben Burt was just like a hero to him from that point on.

Wow.

That's super cool.

I'm getting out-hosted by Mike.

I'm going to start playing some sounds for you guys.

Well, here's my reveal.

Those strange sounds were made by the willow ptarmigan, which is a type of pheasant found across the northern hemisphere.

These birds are extremely vocal and make a variety of noises when they are courting mates, fighting off rivals, and alerting others about nearby predators.

And I don't know if you know this, but at the beginning of Raiders, there were

some.

I'm so sorry.

Feels like I'm in the Matrix right now.

Yeah.

Very impressed.

Very impressed, Mike.

Sound number four.

Oh, oh, oh, that is the, um, uh that's the

that is the sound of the um oh the uh Goombas when they do the little

the little dance.

I think that counts.

I think that counts.

Ding, ding, ding.

Okay, I'll take that.

I'll take that.

Yeah, is it Mario Wii U?

Something like that?

Mario Party?

It's the iconic pa pa sound that plays throughout the soundtracks of the new Super Mario Bros.

games.

Back in the 90s, composer Koji Kondo came across this track in a CD of vocal sounds made for sampling.

For Mario 64, Kondo used that to create the melody you hear after you jump into a painting.

Then he made it the signature sound in the music of new Super Mario Bros.

Whenever these notes play in the game, the enemies on screen will hop or dance.

That's what I remember.

Yeah, that's great.

That's so deeply embedded into my childhood, specifically the sound married to the image of like the Goombas or everything of just turning forward and just doing a little dance.

Kind of doing their little sachet kind of thing.

Yeah, and then immediately turning to their villainous work.

Even villains got to dance.

Sound number five.

Wow.

What on earth?

It's me when I have gas.

How did we get a recording of that?

I don't even want to.

Always at the ready.

I have other mics set up as well.

Can I hear it again?

Yeah.

Are we allowed any context clues that wouldn't be considered a hint, or do we just need to roll into asking for one?

Oh, I would say it's an instrument.

Yeah, I was going to say, is it one of those things?

I can't remember what it is that

is it a Sonavox?

It is an instrument made out of wood.

Yes.

Oh, okay.

It's not from the apprehension engine, is it?

No?

No, no.

It's not like a didgeridoo or a...

Oh, yeah, yeah.

It's not like a bull roar, because those have very.

This almost has like a synthetic vocal kind of thing going on with it.

Is it bowed?

Oh, that's a great one.

It is bowed.

Oh, yeah.

I know what this is.

I just forget what the name of it is.

It's not an erhoo, right?

No.

It's very, yeah, it's used for creature sounds.

Okay.

Another helpful hint is that it rhymes with an existing reed instrument.

Oh, a daxophone.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Well done.

I was going to call it a slow-bow.

That's actually the name of my ska band.

So we will also have to discuss royalties for that one, too.

Okay.

So those strange sounds come from an instrument called the daxophone.

It's like saxophone, but with a D.

The instrument was invented in the late 1980s by a German experimental musician named Hans Reichel.

The daxophone involves a vibrating wooden tongue, a cello bow, and a curved block of wood called a dax.

As the player slides the bow and the dax along the tongue, it produces all kinds of strange vocal sounding tones.

Here are a few more.

I love bizarre instruments.

Like I have a a whole bunch of stuff, so I'm going to order one of these right now.

You can make some nasty creature sounds with it, too.

I bet.

I bet.

So, Grace, let's do a score check.

Okay, so everyone is on the board with at least a point.

In first place, we've got Mike with seven after those two direct pulls from Family Mart and the Will of Ptarmigan.

In second place, we've got Austin with three.

And in last place, now, but there's still plenty of time, we have Zach with one point.

I'm embarrassed for myself.

I'm just glad I got any any points on the board, honestly.

That was more than I was expecting for this entire thing.

Sound number six.

I mean, it's some sort of goat or sheep thing, right?

Baby, baby goat.

I think that I should have led in with that free hint.

So it's like a reaction sound to an app on a computer.

Right.

Huh.

Can we hear it one more time?

And it sounds old.

Is this from a certain era?

It does sound old.

Or you could play it today.

You could have this reaction sound today.

You could have this reaction sound today, although it's in a discipline that none of us would be.

We're only very adjacent to.

Oh, okay.

I was going to say goat simulator, but no.

Hey, you don't know how involved with goat simulator I am.

That's true.

That's true.

Well, in this case, I'm going to just go with hint number two.

So you may have heard this if you've ever worked on any motion graphics or VFX.

Oh, is this After Effects?

That's it.

Ding, ding, ding.

So it's the sheep noise that plays in Adobe After Effects when there's a render failure.

There you go.

And according to Adobe, the noise was recorded by the mom of one of the After Effects software developers.

Oh, wow.

Oh, nice.

It's a human.

I just imagine, I don't know, this person comes to the mom, and they're like, you're never going to believe this problem that I have.

And she's like, I've got the solution.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's a sheep noise.

Say no more.

I've got it.

Sound number seven.

Oh, my God, hardcopy?

Oh.

Entertainment tonight?

Nope.

These are all so close orbiting.

Oh, a current affair.

A current affair.

Yeah.

Boom.

And that was.

I beat you by a millisecond, man.

Oh, that is incredible.

I love this.

That is the iconic ka-chung sound from the intro of A Current Affair, a popular American news show from the 80s and 90s.

And here's Maury Povich, the show's original host, describing how that sound was made.

It was the sound of a construction paper cutter, the old-time elementary school construction paper cutters, and the swish of a golf club put through a synthesizer, and that was the sound.

I have no idea how a little cutter made that.

Me neither.

I feel like Maury was just telling a story.

I don't know if I trust Maury.

Yeah.

I feel like he was just kind of like walking by someone that was talking about the sound at one point.

He's like, yeah, okay, it's a cutter.

I got it.

It was like a game of telephone from the actual sound designer and all the steps that you did to Moriyakovich.

This is made out of a boat.

Sound number eight.

The aliens from Arrival.

Oh, wow.

I was, oh my God, the neurons were still knitting together.

You got it.

So So that's the language spoken by the aliens in the film Arrival.

To create those sounds, the sound designers went into the mountains of New Zealand and recorded a variety of exotic birds.

Then they pitched these bird calls down and combined them with recordings of didgeridoos, bagpipes, and a so-called lung that they made from rice paper.

I love the lung made out of rice paper.

I love imagining what that looked like because there's no video of it.

Yeah, I just love all of those words together too.

Lung made out of rice paper.

I feel like I could get that at some restaurant.

Give me the lung with rice paper.

There's like one rice paper lung.

Thank you.

Sound number nine.

Is that the sound of a dolphin?

Or

not a dolphin?

Nope.

How about this?

Let's play it again.

But with three people who work in sound, I want you to try to paint the picture of what you're hearing in your head and tell me what you think you're hearing.

I mean, it sounds like there's some sort of event happening with this creature, whether it be a bird or something else, that people are watching and celebrating being, being ooh ah kind of thing.

Yeah, my brain went to like the SeaWorld shows.

Yeah.

You know, I immediately thought bird and I felt like a mating dance or something.

It's showing its plumage and everyone's cheering.

Well, I will say it is not a bird.

Okay.

We'll go one more time with it.

Could it be a howler monkey?

Yeah, I was going to say a monkey.

Hmm.

I mean, depends on how you define.

Lemur or

is it a monkey or an ape?

This one's tricky.

I'm going to go ahead and call this one and just reveal it.

How does that sound, Gracie?

Yeah, it sounds good.

I'm okay with that.

That's the voice of a nine-year-old British boy named Cooper Wallace.

Oh, you're kidding me.

Cooper recently won the junior category in Belgium's fourth annual Seagull Screeching Championships.

I saw this video.

My gosh.

I mean, I can see why he placed that that high.

You know, like I can snipe it.

He is good.

Oh, Dallas, Dallas, I forgot.

Like, that's from a kid that mimicked a seagull.

Yes, exactly.

Yeah.

That's a negative 12 points right there.

I was thinking you could get away with that.

I was wrong before.

That is going to be a negative note.

So in it, competitors are judged by their ability to sound and move like a seagull.

Here's one of the winners from last year.

There you have it.

Incredible.

Wow.

I mean, those are aspirations, I guess.

They are aspirations.

How do you even discover that talent?

I know.

It's impressive.

Well, all right.

We are halfway through.

So, Grace, what's our score?

Mike is still in a strong lead with 14.

Austin in second with three.

And Zach still in last place with one, but there's still time.

Negative 11.

Once again, are we doing Jeopardy rules or not?

Do Austin and Zach have what it takes to wrestle first place away from Mike or will they be left in the dust?

That's coming up after the break.

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Congratulations to Raina Bellow for getting last episode's mystery sound right.

Those otherworldly sounds were made by weddell seals in Antarctica.

These creatures produce all kinds of trills, whistles, and chirps while swimming in the frigid waters below the ice.

Scientists in Antarctica can sometimes hear these sounds below them as they go about their work.

We'll be taking a break for the holidays and coming back with new episodes in January.

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And as of right now, it looks like the answer is is dog people, since that episode has about 17% more listens than the cat one does.

Cat people, if you want vengeance, then keep sharing our cat translation guide episode with your fellow cat fanatics.

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Welcome back to the 20,000 Hertz Mystery Sound Challenge.

Sound number 10.

Uh-oh.

Oh, ICQ.

No, of a pic, there was a Pix art thing when I was a kid.

And when you tried to do something,

it's like the After Effects, like something failed sound of a, I don't remember what it's called, but I can literally.

Yeah, I thought it was ICQ, the notification.

It is ICQ.

Oh, yeah, I was about to say I was going to say Instant Messenger, but it was more obscure than that.

I think that sound bite was, I had to take computer class in elementary school where we learned to type.

and our reward was that we got to use like this very obscure weird art program where we basically just got to draw on the computer and whenever you tried to do something you were allowed to I think they used that same sound bite and it because that is deeply embedded in my brain.

Yeah.

I wonder if it was the same company or just like used a library sound from somewhere.

Grace, this is going to be an interesting one.

I think so too.

For other reasons.

Yeah, for other reasons, yeah.

So that's the message notification sound from ICQ, one of the earliest instant messaging programs.

It was originally a competitor to AOL Instant Messenger, but was then bought out by AOL in 1998.

And here are a few more ICQ sounds.

System message.

Ribbit.

Ah, memories.

The good old days.

Sound number 11.

I over.

Beware.

Coward.

It's not Resident Evil.

I'd love to hear, especially how your brains are working through this as you analyze kind of the quality and is it a toy?

Right.

Yeah.

Or is it

PS1 time period?

Yeah, or is it low sample rate?

Yeah.

Yeah.

You want to play it one more time?

I hunger.

Beware.

Coward.

Is it like a Halloween decoration or something?

No.

Okay.

Is it from a physical object?

It's from a classic arcade game.

Okay.

Oh.

Not House of the Dead.

Sega Genesis or Nintendo.

Or stand-up.

Or, yeah.

Yeah.

Actual arcade.

Yeah.

I thought it might be like an arcade game.

Ah!

Did it happen?

I think my brain just popped.

I think I think

right, right.

Disconnect.

Let's go.

One more go for Zach.

I hunger.

I'm.

Coward.

Sinistar?

You got it.

You're kidding me.

That's amazing.

That's incredible.

That should be the full three, Grace.

Yeah, yeah.

I did say that first one, but I never really kind of led into it.

I'm fully open to the full three.

I agree with that.

Wow.

Way to go, Zach.

So that's the voice of Sinistar, the villain from the 1982 arcade game of the same name.

I hunger.

Beware,

coward.

Sinistar was one of the very first games to use real recordings of a human voice.

Those sound bites were recorded by John Durimus, who is a popular radio DJ in the Chicago area.

And here's John on his radio program.

And for the London Festival Orchestra, a beauty.

It's called

If I Rule the World.

What a voice.

Yeah.

Especially when it's crushed into like 8-bit 11K.

Yeah, exactly.

Sound number 12.

Oh, like a demo or something?

No, that's the.

Oh, gosh.

That's the opening of the Beatles, I Feel Fine, isn't it?

Ding, ding, ding.

Wow.

Incredible.

I was raised by a Beatles diehard fan and my father, so I know their discography very well.

Amazing.

Incredible.

So that's guitar feedback from the beginning of the Beatles' song I Feel Fine.

During a recording session, John Lennon casually leaned his guitar against an amp and it made that noise.

The band liked the sound and asked producer George Martin to include it somewhere on their upcoming album.

Today, it's widely considered the first intentional use of feedback in recorded music.

And here's the sound going into the actual song.

Shout out to my dad for that one.

Sound number thirteen.

Oh,

my brain recognizes it, but oh,

oh, it's uh entering a Japanese grocery store.

Oh, I know that I know that sound.

I'm having a hard time putting it in the frame that I need.

Yeah.

Can we hear it one more time?

I mean, it could be any number of sitcoms or family guy or.

I think it's more like a welcome for an application or something.

Application.

Like an old one.

Can we request hint?

Absolutely.

You should feel smart after hearing this sound.

Oh.

Oh,

congratulatory.

I'm never going to forgive myself for not getting this, I swear.

We're orbiting.

We're getting closer for sure.

One of the greatest things about this show is that there are many thousands of people who are yelling.

I know.

I'm yelling at myself internally.

I'm having the same experience in my own brain right now.

Not Hollywood Squares or.

Hint number two:

You should feel especially smart if you hear this sound on a Saturday versus a Monday.

It's not,

wait, wait, don't tell me, is it?

It's a show.

No, it's actually coming from an app.

From an app, yeah, okay, that's what I thought.

Oh, it's

the New York Times.

Dang it, I knew it.

Yeah.

Here's the thing: I heard Zach said crosswords i said crosswords i said new york times

yes i think i'm gonna split it one one yeah all right i'll take that i'll take that excellent so that's the jingle that plays when you correctly solve the new york times crossword puzzle on the new york times app

the tune is called san jose strut and a few years ago the new york times games account tweeted that it came from some music library but they couldn't remember the name of the composer so if anyone knows who this composer is, please let us know.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Five sounds left.

Grace.

That's right.

How are we with the score?

The scores have evened quite a bit.

So there's been some movement.

Mike is still in the lead with 14.

Zach has pulled into second with eight.

And Austin is a very close third with seven.

It's getting serious, everyone.

Getting scared.

Let's lock in.

Sound number 14.

Am I repeating myself?

Would you stand me on my head?

Oh my god.

That is a toy of some kind.

Yes.

That is.

Oh, it's not.

It's not.

Oh, I know this.

Can you hear it one more time?

Am I repeating myself?

Would you stand me on my head?

I had this toy.

I mean, this is so.

Can you like describe the toy?

I'm wondering if that will trigger a memory.

He's gone into the upside down.

Oh, no.

His eyes have rolled into the back of his head.

It's all darkness.

Yeah.

Oh, my God.

So this thing is probably friends with Tickle Me Elmo.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Oh.

I mean, that's it's definitely not a Teddy Ruxpin.

No.

I'm thinking about the specificity of the line of like on by himself.

Do I repeat myself?

Yeah.

Well, that's actually the repeating myself one is the one that's getting me oh

so hint number two it shares a name with Forrest Gump's best friend Bubba Gump Bubba Bubba something

Bubba

Bubba oh man

I mean if we're still not getting

it

eventually

Keep going.

We're summoning him into the room now.

All right, I will reveal it.

So that's the voice of Real Talkin' Bubba, a wise cracking teddy bear that was released by Mattel in the mid-90s.

Am I repeating myself?

Would you stand me on my head?

Bubba was voiced by character actor Gary Grubbs, who appeared in everything from Dukes of Hazard to Django and Chained to Glee.

Here's Gary playing a sheriff on the X-Files.

Well, we didn't find any evidence of criminal activity, activity, and since nobody turned up, we just went ahead and filed a missing persons report.

Just a super normal choice for a teddy bear.

Hey, he saw the chance to really make a character, and he took it.

He took it.

Sound number 15.

Oof.

Ooh.

Some kind of welcome music.

Yeah.

I think you are correct on that.

Can we hear it one more time?

Is this a 90s thing?

Yeah, it sounds super 90s.

No?

No.

It's not.

It looks like the mid-aughts.

The mid-aughts.

Huh.

Yeah.

Int.

So it's a device sound.

Okay.

Okay.

And you may recognize this if you're too hip for both Windows and Mac.

Linux.

Linux.

Even too cool for Linux, too.

Oh.

Linux is very close, though, I will say.

I

am disappointing some of my friends right now.

Not knowing what this is.

This is my era.

It's not like

Amiga.

Who's an Amiga?

Because Amiga was already gone by mid-2000s, wasn't it?

This is killing me.

Yeah.

I'm happy to reveal this.

So that's the old login sound for the Ubuntu operating system.

Yes, okay.

Ah, yeah, yeah.

So very, very Linux adjacent.

Yeah, so be sure to cut my thing about not Linux.

I don't want a bunch of people coming after me.

Yeah, that's

so that sound was apparently created by a community contributor named Peter Savage.

It was enabled by default for about six years from 2006 to 2012.

Since then, Ubuntu hasn't had a login sound enabled by default.

All right.

Sound number 16.

Oh, a Miramax.

Or no, TriStar.

No and no.

No and no.

Oh, God.

Here we go.

Just start naming for the

Can you play it again?

Hamblin?

No.

No.

United Artists?

No one, no.

No.

Skydance?

No.

Holy wild.

Skydance.

This is going to drive me nuts.

It's not Columbia pictures, is it?

This would be a great time to just be like, that's our show, and see you later.

No!

And then, like, the credits are rolling, and we're just still saying,

Warner Brothers.

Here's what's interesting.

I think this might be television.

I think that's fair to say.

Television.

Okay.

At the end of sitcoms, this is.

Yeah, okay, okay.

See, I'm there.

I just can't.

I can't.

Oh, is it?

No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Oh, my God.

I see it.

I see it.

I know.

I know.

Oh, my God.

Help.

I love how iconic this sound is.

And yet, out of all the times you've heard it, you can't even come up with the name of the company.

Yeah.

Oh, my goodness.

Can we request a formal hint?

Sure.

Well, we've already kind of gotten through hint number one, so we'll consider hint number one.

This one.

You might have heard this sound after episodes of Seinfeld.

Oh.

Oh.

Yeah, but what's the production company?

Yeah, yeah.

Oh my god.

I knew there was going to come a time in my life where I regretted not having a Seinfeld phase.

Oh my God.

And I did have a Seinfeld phase and I can't.

It's so at my fingertips.

Can I hear it one more time?

That's not Castle Rock, is it?

That's Castle Rock.

Whoa.

I would have never gotten that.

I would have never gotten that.

But now, of course, it makes sense.

Incredible.

Way to pull that out.

Wow.

Amazing.

Congrats.

So that's the iconic sonic logo of the Castle Rock Production Company.

The music in the logo was written by composer Mark Shaman, who scored films like When Harry Met Sally, Hocus Pocus, and Patch Adams.

The version you heard was the shorter TV version of the logo, and here's the full theatrical version.

Yeah, yeah, much more cinematic.

Yeah, and if it would have been the full one, I also would have thrown out Dreamworks in there because I also have like a Dreamworks vibe.

Totally.

Very DreamWorks adjacent.

Yeah.

Sound number 17.

It's a tauntaun.

It's a tauntaun.

It's a tauntaun.

You deep me to it.

Same.

So that's the sound of the tauntaun, the snow creature that Luke Skywalker rides in The Empire Strikes Back.

To create the sound of the tauntaun, sound designer Ben Burt recorded an Asian sea otter and pitched it down.

And here's actor Bill Hayter doing a tauntaun imitation for Conan O'Brien.

All right, we have one final sound.

Where are we the scores?

All right.

So Zach is creeping up, but Mike still has the lead with 14.

Zach is in a close second with 12, and Austin is in third with seven.

Sounds good.

All right, is everyone all the ears ready?

I guess so.

Sound number 18.

I made a pool.

That is,

I feel like from that same program that I was talking about earlier, that same the art one that you're talking about?

Yes, I swear they used that same sound because that's that is where my brain I'm not even joking.

Somebody out there listening maybe knows what I'm talking about or

something.

I can't even remember the name of what the program was.

I just remember sitting there as a kid.

You are so close.

Am I?

So close that I would give it to you.

Yeah, it feels right.

You're kidding.

There was a moment earlier where I told Grace, I was like, well, that's interesting on another one because I knew that this one was coming up and I had no familiarity with it.

I mean, Corel Draw?

No, it was called a Kid Pics or something like that.

That's it.

Ding, ding, ding.

Wow.

Nice.

That's what I call it.

Safe fight right now.

Safe fight right now.

I'm applauding right now.

Yeah.

I am blown away.

What an ending.

Me too.

Incredible.

Full surface.

That was cinematic.

That was.

That was.

That was.

He could not have written that.

That's amazing.

I'm going to have to lay down.

I am not crazy.

You are not crazy.

So that's the voice of the undo guy from Kid Pix, which was a series of drawing programs, kind of like Microsoft Paint.

In later versions of Kid Pix, whenever you'd click the undo button, the undo guy would say phrases like these.

Every one of those is embedded deep in my brain.

So was the ICQ sound part of that program then?

Maybe it was something real similar.

It could also be me completely misremembering.

Update.

We looked into it, and it turns out there is an uh-oh in Kid Picks that sounds super similar to the one in ICQ.

Here's Kid Picks.

Uh-uh.

And here's ICQ.

Uh-oh.

Here they are back to back.

Uh-uh.

Uh-oh.

So, Austin, you were not misremembering.

I'm just glad I got that last one, honestly.

This may be the closest score that we've ever had.

I was literally just about to say that, Dallas.

I think so too.

I'm super impressed.

We had in a very close third place, Austin with 10.

Zach in a meteoric rise to second place, 12.

And Mike with the winning score of 14.

We were within four points of each other.

I love it.

Incredible.

And I curated the three of you into this knowing how good this would be.

So thank you.

Wow.

Well, I didn't have an ending.

That's it.

That's the final screen.

We have

ding, ding, ding.

We basically say make people laugh and fade in the music while people are laughing.

And then there we go.

Yeah, I think maybe just put the castle rock theme at the end.

Oh, that would be fun.

I love it.

Wait, that really should do it.

Printed

20,000 Hertz is produced out of the sound design studios of DeFacto Sound.

Hear more at de facto sound.com.

This episode was written and produced by Casey Emmerlin.

With help from Grace East.

It was sound designed and mixed by Justin Hollis.

Thanks to our guests, Austin Olivia Kendrick, Mike James Gallagher, and Zachary Quarles.

Austin has an incredible TikTok channel under the name aok.wav.

Over there, she posts tons of enlightening videos about dialogue editing and sound design techniques.

Mike runs an awesome YouTube and Instagram channel called In-Depth Sound Design, where legendary sound designers unpack their most famous sounds.

Zach has an online shop of sample and sound effect libraries, which you can find at his website, zq-sfx.com.

There are links to all of these in the show notes.

Finally, thanks to voice artist Jeff Rechner for his awesome game show voice.

I'm Dallas Taylor and from everyone here at 20,000Hz, happy holidays and thanks for listening.

Before we go, a quick reminder that our episodes are available to any podcast or public radio stations that want to play them.

We have over 200 highly produced, emotionally driven episodes, and there's a good chance that one of them could be a perfect fit on your feed or your radio station.

If you or someone you know is interested in running episodes of 20,000Hz, just send me an email at dallas at 20k.org.