Hey, it's Flora, and you are listening to Science Friday. Have you noticed that your appliances have suddenly begun to serenade you? Listen to this washing machine. And it's not this one diva. Many new dishwashers, dryers, vacuums have sonic signatures. So why are so many brands turning to sound to try to make their products sing? And who are the composers making music for your Roomba or your washing machine? Well, my next guests. Audrey Arbini has composed for Whirlpool, KitchenAid and the London Olympic Games and also Microsoft Xbox 360. She's the owner and executive producer of Audio Brain. And Joel Beckerman is a composer and founder of Made Music Studio. He's composed for NFL, IMAX, Roomba, AT&T. And he also wrote a book called The Sonic Boom, How Sound Transforms the Way We Think, Feel, and Buy. Audrey, Joel, thank you for being here. Thank you for having us. Appreciate it. Okay, why are my appliances suddenly making music? How did we get here? In my opinion, we got here for several reasons. One, because technology is now capable of putting interesting kinds of sounds into devices that aren't just pings and blips. Number two, the marketplace is so saturated and crowded that people want to differentiate. And three is the overall customer experience. Yeah, I think the real – I almost want to jump to the problem. The problem is there's so much of this now. A while back, it actually was really valuable to people. Brands could really send out. Customer experience really benefited. But in a lot of ways, everything's making too many sounds, and it's too loud and too long. They're not thinking about sound in the totality of somebody's day, but they're thinking about just the sound of their product. They're adding literal bells and whistles just to be a bell and whistle. And to shout out loud, everyone's shouting for attention, right? The question is, how can you, as Artur was saying, differentiate, provide great experiences, but it's just we're overwhelmed, we're overrun by sound now. Let's get into an example. I want to play this washing machine song again that we heard in the intro, and then I want you all to dissect it for me. Joel, what are your thoughts on this? So many things. First of all, it sounded like a fife and imagining a leprechaun, but that's just in my mind. It's very long. It's, you know, maybe it's kind of fun and it's quirky. And, you know, one of the things we have to think about is there's a lot of different cultures in the world, right? In Japanese culture, this is very familiar. And, you know, I think in the U.S., we have a much lower tolerance to it. Also, the end of it, not to get all musical geeky, but it's kind of like it didn't finish. Like, what's at the end? What happens after this? Another load of laundry, Joel, if it's my house. Fair enough. What about you, Audrey? What do you think? I think I if that was ever on my appliance I think I would like break it it's too long it's too monotone even though it sounds like a little fife but it sounds like an old cheap sound when we could do so much better and it's in most importantly it's too long I love that you all are hating on this I feel vindicated But are there differences Audrey between a cheap sound and a luxury sound I believe there is I mean there ways to do sounds that sound like quality and sounds that sound like the old piezo buzzer sounds And that kind of what this reminded me of just don't sit well, at least, you know, for people with discerning ears and the general consumer. Just because we can play sound doesn't mean we have to play sound everywhere. And all the time, it starts to sound like a cacophony. Joel? Yeah, it's, you know, I think just to add is we want to use sound in intentional ways. We have to think about sounds that are functional and emotional. Emotional, it should feel like what you might want to do in association with a particular brand, if it's a luxury car or if it even is a toaster or whatever it is. Those should have a different feeling to it. And then functional to what Audrey was saying, that these sounds need to make sense so that it's not just pulling you out of the experience, it's like becomes part of the experience. It's like you think about in the analog world, when you hear a car rev, you know what that is. You know what's happening. You started the car. You've added gas. You're kind of hearing that guttural sound of its warming up. So you know what that is in the real world. And the question is, OK, well, when you have a sound like, for instance, electric cars don't naturally make a sound. So what should the electric car sound like? Now, you need it to be functional. You need to make sure people understand that it is a car. So if it's driving by you, you hear it and you'll take a step out of the way. If it sounded like a spaceship, you wouldn't know what it was and you might get hit by the car. Right. Or if it's too organic, you might be like, oh, what's that stampede of deer coming down the road? Totally. I want to break down how you both approach composing for an appliance, for example. Audrey, you created sounds for Whirlpool washing machines. I want to listen to a few. So this is the notification sound. And here's the power on. And here's the power off. What was your approach? How did you decide what it should sound like? We have a team of composers and strategists. And before we write any sound, we do a lot of research and we do a lot of experimentation. and in this case, which is Whirlpool, we wanted to communicate what the brand was saying, which was that Whirlpool is, and we were doing Whirlpool and KitchenAid at the same time, and, you know, they're both under the Whirlpool brand, and Whirlpool is all about caregiving and, you know, the pleasure of doing chores and everyday tasks and warmth and reassurance and, you know, the joy of chores and to communicate that it was like about a human touch. The joy of chores. That sounds like a tough assignment, the joy of chores. Well, listen, you go online, how many videos are there now watching people clean their house? Come on, seriously. True. But it really, and you know what? The funny thing is, at least for me, I love doing laundry. I know a lot of people don't, but the concept of putting things in when they're a mess and taking them out warm and fluffy. It's true. I have no problem doing laundry and to have that sound, you know, to use the harp in there. And like in some of the other sounds we did for Whirlpool, we had like hands rubbing on jeans and, you know, these textural sounds that are warm and rich. And, you know, these sounds really did resonate with the consumers on a pretty large scale. Let's hear the notification again. I can hear what you mean about the sort of warmth. Also much shorter than the ditty we just heard. Yeah. And, you know, it's just the idea of a human touch. That's basically what we were going for here. And you know yet we have to also be mindful about you know the global audience because we had to walk a fine line between you know in the United States this is you know an everyday brand whereas in another country it could be a premium brand There so much strategy that goes on when we make these sounds so much psychology so much technical implementation and testing and everything else, that by the time we sit down to write them, we pretty much have a blueprint in a way of, you know, where we're going to go with the sounds. Joel, you can post sounds for Roomba, for the Roomba vacuum. Let's hear a couple of those. This is called Mission Start. This one is called Can't Do That. And this one's called Mission Complete. Tell me about your process. Well, I think, first of all, we think about these, whatever the device is, It has a personality, right? Whether it's more kind of friendly or if it's more evocative of something or you're living with these things. They're like they need to be your friend. They need to be something that's familiar. So some of these sounds that you're playing right now, when you do something where it's you're starting up or you're beginning a journey, it should sort of feel like off we go. You know, there's kind of a feeling to that we're used to musically, but also, you know, our voices as human beings, we use our voices in very melodic ways. Hey, let's go. Okay, there's a certain sound and a certain flavor to that. Hey, great job. That's also got a certain sound to it that we're familiar to, you know, we're familiar with language. So these sounds in a lot of ways almost want to – we want to emulate human speech, sort of like what they did with R2-D2 in the Star Wars movies. You kind of – even though you didn't know what R2-D2 was saying, he sure knew what he was feeling at every moment. That's what we're trying to do is to sort of, again, tap into this thing that we're all familiar with, which is human speech. And one other thing I just want to add in that too, like in hearing those sounds from Joel, is that, you know, a Roomba is to make your life simple and to give you a little more joy that you don't have to do certain chores. And so if those sounds were heavily textured or complicated, that would be not supporting the desired user experience. And the same way with the Whirlpool, We want to craft in that care and that comfort. So we bring these products to life with the sounds we create. Thanks. And just to add to that, I think that in that you're talking about care for Whirlpool, if we were to sort of just boil it down for Roomba, it's got to be friendly. Because you have to remember when these first came into people's homes, they were a little scary. Sometimes your pet gets scared by it or your kid gets scared by it. So we want to try to make these things friendly. So it's like, hey, I'm here, but don't be afraid. We have to take a break. But when we come back, the best and the worst of sonic branding. Don't go away. Hey, Flora here with a podcast recommendation for you. Scientific American's Science Quickly podcast. I think of the show as a kindred spirit to sci-fi. It's hosted by the great Rachel Feltman, who you've heard on Science Friday for many, many years. And they cover everything from the science of Pokemon to underground bees to the poetry of physics. You know, stuff we like. Try it out. Science Quickly, wherever you get your podcasts. Is there an appliance or a sound that you encounter a lot that you just really want to mute? To me, the worst one out there is, you know, I don't know if you've had this experience, but you go and you put your credit card to credit card reader. And it's the kind you slide in to the credit card reader. And then you hit a couple of buttons and you're ready to leave. And then all of a sudden you have the reader yelling at you. It's like, don't forget your card. But you think about it from the personal experience and also think about it from the brand experience. Do I really want to have a crappy experience in association with just making a purchase? I'm now sort of being penalized for making the purchase. I don think that was the intent of the people trying to sell you something Do you have one Audrey I do I have an issue with the voice on the accessible street crossing devices in New York City because I know that they should certainly need to be loud so that people could hear them, but they're angry. They go, wait, wait. Right, wait. It's just like, okay, all right, I'm waiting. And also, you know, that's the fine line too, is that it's a fine line between communicating an alert and, you know, communicating something that causes like a panic. Or is that the intent? Do you know what I mean? I'm having that experience right now with a brand new Toyota Camry. And in the new cars now, this fastened seatbelt is not a quiet little, it gives you about five seconds of slow beeps. And then they go so loud and so annoying that you have no choice but to put the seatbelt on, which is the intent. Audrey, I don't know if you just got yourself a new client or cost yourself a new client. What? With Toyota? Yeah, with Toyota. That's okay. We would all love to call out these, you know, because it's just not necessary. No, no, no. It just needs to be. Sorry, Joe. I think in the case of Toyota, that's specifically why it's designed to be that annoying and to be that grating because you've got to put that seatbelt on. And that's the ultimate goal is safety. So that should get me the Toyota client. In the minute I have left, are there gold standards in the sonic branding world where you're like, yeah, they really nailed it? To me, the gold standards are the ones that are iconic and enduring. Give me your best example. Okay. So I would say most people might say off the top of their head, the McDonald's jingle, right? That's something they've been working on for 30 or 35 years. You're familiar with it. It feels like home. Yes, totally. Audrey? I would say HBO. Because HBO, from the day they came out, they've had their sound, their theme. They incorporated into their streaming. They incorporated across. It's endured. So it went from the first cable to, you know, DVDs and stuff like that. And any medium that you touch HBO on, HBO Max, what have you, you still have that enduring sound. And actually, we didn't create that, but we were part of the team that helped keep that alive all those years and reinventing it. And I know that you did the same thing with Xbox. So it's one thing to create these senses. Another thing to be able to have them continue to be contemporary and fit what's happening in the zeitgeist and what consumers want over time. So that's a big part of it, too. And they have huge audiences. I mean, you're composing for people, millions and millions and millions of people across the world. It's not just that. It's also think how many times they've heard it. So it's really billions of times. It's like billions of tiny little compositions. So we really take this very seriously. It's really important. It really impacts the quality of people's lives. Thank you both for taking time to talk to me today. Thank you, Flora. Thank you, Joel. Thank you both. This is fun. It was really fun. We could talk for another four hours on this easily. Yeah, we both could. Audrey Arbini, owner and executive producer of Audio Brain, and Joel Beckerman, composer and founder of Made Music Studio. This episode was produced by Shoshana Buxbaum. Thank you to listener Kent for taking us down the rabbit hole of appliance sounds. It was your toaster that kicked this all off. And if something has been gnawing away at you, please give us a call. 877-4SY-FRIGHT is our number. I'm Flora Lichtman. We'll catch you next time.
