Intentional | Audio Identity Blog from Sonic ID

Thomas Dolby took a decade or so away from music to spend some time in Silicon Valley. Now he’s back making music again. What was it like to come back to music after the hiatus? “…like Austin Powers who went to sleep for a decade and woke up to all these shiny new toys.”

From what I’m hearing in this NPR interview, Mr. Dolby back in the lab is a good thing. Personally speaking — that means my professional branding hat is off, resting on the chair — I find this not just good stuff, but transformative and spine-tingling.

Back in high school in the 80s I spent my Saturday mornings spinning records at all-new-wave WIRQ in Rochester, NY. And thus, I was exposed to a lot of good and bad music, all of which I loved at the time, and most of which became the soundtrack of my teenage years. Dolby’s work is part of that. My tastes have wandered after spending time in New Orleans, Chicago and San Francisco, but even today Dolby’s music is something I can look back on and smile about, rather than cringe. (Unlike exhibits A, B and C.)

It’s nice hear this stuff again, but it’s also great to know that years away from the studio hasn’t sent Dolby into the land of milque and toast. The latest work is a nice bow on the arc of a career that Thomas Dolby has made for himself. I’m game.

Okay, that’s enough whimsical yearnings for 1986. Fast forward to 2007. Dolby will be performing live at TED. We’ll take your ticket in case you can’t make it.

– Noel Franus

Bernie Krause has recorded over 3,500 hours of pristine environmental audio — soundscapes from nature. The most recent NY Times Magazine lets us in on some of his fascinating findings:

• Although two separate places can have similar ecosystems and other spatial ingredients, each place on earth has its own sonic fingerprint, so to speak.
• Every living organism also has its own unique acoustic signature.
• More animals being crowded into fewer natural spaces means there’s a squeeze on the sonic spectrum. Adapt — find a way to be heard — or die.

One of his Aha! moments occurred in Venezuela, where Krause was recording warblers. “The birds would fly through grids of sounds until they found a place where their voices wouldn’t be masked,” he says. Krause noticed that birds who settled in compromised habitats — logged-over second-growth forests, for instance — encountered unexpected vocal competitors from other species and found their mating songs masked. Warblers that failed to find unoccupied bandwidth failed to breed, Krause observed, eventually convincing him of the validity of his niche hypothesis, the contention that animals evolve to fill vocal niches to best be heard by potential mates.”

Last November I pointed to the buzz around the Windows Vista startup sound. Now it looks like things are starting up again: these past few weeks no fewer than seven friends and associates have also pointed me to this Fast Company article on the same topic. Here’s a snippet:

The key insight that helped the team focus came when Martine, listening to one riff, mimicked it, clap-clap, clap-clap. It was a rhythmic breakthrough, echoing the message, “Win-dows, Vis-ta.” They determined that a peaceful theme was what the hypercaffeinated, overstimulated PC users of the world needed now. “It needed to be a soft light from the corner, rather than a spotlight,” Ball says.

The tough thing about articulating efforts like these is that they’re often opinion-driven, which leaves all those involved vulnerable to valid criticism. When you’re creating anything at all for corporate purposes — music, painting, film, etc. — you’re in trouble if you and your team are guided by matters of subjective taste, rather than a larger set of objectives.

Our first-ever audio commentary features Fritz Doddy who is a friend of mine and a Creative Director at Elias Arts. He’s also one of the brains behind dozens of audio identities we know and love. In today’s ditty, Fritz wonders how closely the Vista team followed their objectives. Bonus material: Fritz’s version of the Vista startup sound. Y’know…for the kids.

> > Listen to Fritz Doddy’s Vista Startup Commentary (MP3) < <
> > Listen to Bonus: Fritz Doddy’s Own Vista Sound (MP3) < <
> > Visit NPR, which contains an audio clip of the startup sound. < <

– Noel Franus

Music and Food: the NYT (registration required) recently explored the role of music in crafting the ideal dining experience.

“In a restaurant setting, music is a little like air-conditioning — no one’s going to tell you when the air-conditioning is perfect, but when it is, the conversations in the room will be more energetic.”

(Thanks Keith.)