The perks of listening to the sounds of the world (w/ Dallas Taylor) (Transcript)

[00:00:00] Chris Duffy:
You're listening to How to Be a Better Human. I'm your host, Chris Duffy. And right now I am walking into the little room that I use to record this podcast. So, I'm recording this on my phone.

But now, I'm on my regular podcast mic setup. It sounds pretty different, right? Pretty good. You know, before I started working in audio, there were so many things that I never thought about when it came to sound.

For example, I didn't know that whenever you say a word in English with a P in it, like pepper, a little gust of wind comes out of your mouth, and that can often get picked up on a microphone. For example, listen to this: pepper. Pepper. Now, normally I have a little wind screen in front of my microphone that stops that P from getting popped. That's what they call that: popping your P’s. And it's a big no-no in audio.

Or, uh, another thing that happens sometimes is if I start typing on my computer, you can hear that tapping from the keyboard get picked up a little bit. Now those are a few of the sounds that we're trying to avoid when I'm making this podcast, but there's a whole host of other things that we're not trying to avoid, but that we're trying to make happen: incredible, beautiful, amazing, fun things that audio can do that many of us never, ever notice.

And today's guest Dallas Taylor is on a mission to make the world see and hear just how incredible sound can truly be.

[00:01:30] Dallas Taylor:
We have these five core senses: sight, smell, touch, taste, and hearing. We don't need to be some sort of, uh, expert in color palettes or an expert sculptor in order to appreciate paint colors on wall, or design, or a beautiful car.

We accept that culturally because humans are very, very, um, visual creatures. Same thing with goes with touch and smell; you don't need to be an expert in those in order to appreciate soft clothes or a comfy couch or, uh, have a stinky something that you want to, you know, mask with a candle or whatnot. But with sound and hearing, culturally, it's very immature where we are right now.

We like this type of music, and that's awesome. And I love music, but the impact of sound goes light years beyond music, the core here is to just try to elevate our sense of hearing to get to that level of appreciation and understanding.

[00:02:30] Chris Duffy:
You are going to want to hear the sounds that Dallas has in store for us in this episode, so do not go anywhere. But first, we're going to take a quick break so you can listen to the sweet, sweet sounds of advertising. We’ll be right back.

[BREAK]

[00:02:26] Chris Duffy:
Today, we're talking sound with Dallas Taylor.

[00:02:49] Dallas Taylor:
Hey there. So I'm Dallas Taylor and I am a podcast host and sound designer.

[00:02:56] Chris Duffy:
First, for people who aren't already familiar with your work, what first opened your mind up to the world of sound. Was there a moment that you thought like, “I have to talk about this with people. I have to start the show at Twenty Thousand Hertz,” or, or where did it all come from?

[00:03:10] Dallas Taylor:
It was a long journey. I was a trumpet player for many years as a kid. Uh, I dove really deep into classical music and trumpet performance and jazz. And that's really what took me from a very small town, uh, in the delta of Arkansas to college and then kind of sent me out into the world.

But there was a moment, uh, in my schooling, toward the end of my bachelor's degree, where I started struggling really badly with panic attacks, uh, as I was performing. And it really took away the, the joy in what I loved about music, but I still had all of that passion and intensity around sound and music, and it really shifted because it was also when computers were becoming very much a creative tool.

And so that took me into this world of, of music recording, but very quickly, I discovered, uh, going down that path that I absolutely fell in love with the hidden aspect of post-production audio, how much it affects people in movies and in TV shows, but they have no idea that the effect that it has.

I spent many years in LA working for FOX and G4 and NBC and freelancing and went to the East Coast to work for the Discovery Channel. And that was my last full time job before starting my own sound design studio called Defacto sound. This was probably 14 years ago, uh, roughly, uh, started making movies and documentaries and big advertising spots, very sound design-y car spots.

I think in this world, there's so many stories happening in post-production audio that we all know about as in, in the post world. Like the Wilhelm scream, it's like this, uh, inside audio joke. And I realized that the reason people don't appreciate sound is just they simply don't know the stories behind the brilliance about how things are created and how it, how it intertwines with brain science, mood, and in all kinds of stuff.

[00:05:14] Chris Duffy:
You know, you mentioned that your relationship to sound was also really tied to being on stage and, and struggling with panic attacks. You know, you talk in your TED talk about how what we think of as silence isn't actually silence and how sometimes when it's as quiet as possible, you actually are hearing what's going on inside of your own body.

And I think sometimes it, for other people, it's, it's really, you get in this internal place where you can't process the outside sounds and it's just the inside noise happening. And I wonder if that resonates with your experience of what, like, that felt like to have a panic attack.

[00:05:46] Dallas Taylor:
You know, it, it’s not actual noise, but for me, it's a detachment. I detach from reality, and I start to hear kind of a cacophony of anxiety. Uh, we recently just did a show called The Voice Inside. It's not aural. It's not something that's out in the world, but we really, for the first time, went all the way into our minds and really thought about the sense of hearing as a perception inside our minds.

And so for me, panic attacks, which is something that I still occasionally struggle with, it's something that I have to, that I've understood more, and I can mitigate, and I can understand the triggers that lead me there. But, uh, for me it was very much detachment and, um, just an overwhelming sense of worry.
And thinking about too much at, too much at once.

[00:06:36] Chris Duffy:
One of the things that I think is so great about your work and your, and your podcast Twenty Thousand Hertz is how you are able to take sounds, even really small, short ones and pull a really big story out of it and pull emotions out of it. And so I, I want to play a clip because first of all, it just makes me laugh so much.

It just illustrates so well what I think is so incredible about, um, your work. So this is, um, from one of the most popular sounds that you've ever broken down: the booj.

[00:07:07] Dallas Taylor:
As a sound designer, I work on tons of trailers and trailers are especially hilarious to me because those sound effects are just so over the top. You've got the hits, the stings, the reverse sucks, the shimmers and the slams. But when you need to turn it up to 11 and rip a hole in the space-time continuum, it’s time to go all out and drop the booj.

[BOOJ SFX] [00:07:42] Dallas Taylor:
We are cooking with gas.

[BOOJ SFX] [00:07:44] Chris Duffy:
I mean, that is so spectacular. I don't under—if you are a human being who heard that and doesn't immediately want to listen to that podcast episode, I truly cannot relate to you in any way. But also I think it's a great example to me of what is fun about learning about the world of sound design, which is now I will never hear that sound again without going, “That’s the booj. That’s the booj.” You know, like?

[00:08:08] Dallas Taylor:
Yeah. You hear it a lot in true crime podcasts, too, which is a lot of fun. It's just like, “Hey, wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Are you feeling this?” Shimmer. My company does tons of trailers. Um, thousands of trailers, like yearly, um, at least a thousand plus, and it’s, uh, we, there's so much like hit and boom, we made that really just to entertain ourselves because there's such, the sounds are so hilarious to us already and it also, it, it's reaching a point with trailer sounds that it's like you can't get more epic.

And I talk about this all the time with, with clients and collaborators and stuff. And it's just like if everything is all the way dialed up to 11, crunch, hit, brr, brr, like constantly, it means nothing. Like there's no emotional dynamic range and it's like you gotta build to it. You gotta, you gotta do something to get us there. But I just find superhero movie, uh, trailers in particular, just hilarious as a sound designer.

[00:09:06] Chris Duffy:
So how do you train yourself, then, consciously to be like, to seek out slower, more subtle, quieter spaces so that you don't just have it be always at the very top end of the, the engagement spectrum?

[00:09:19] Dallas Taylor:
Well, essentially, ev—in every aspect of how I work, whether it be with the podcast or as a sound designer, I'm always looking for, like, moments of quiet for the, uh, one, the actual dynamic range of volume, uh, but to the emotional dynamic range, even more importantly. Even in the way that we program episodes, I don't want every episode to feel, give you that same emotion. Like here's a huge, you know, very famous sound followed by something that's a little like of a head scratcher, kind of like a voice inside thing, followed by pure joy and comedy, followed by the biggest emotional gut punch possible.

[00:10:00] Chris Duffy:
So with something like the booj, what, what's the emotion that gets wrapped into that when we hear that?

[00:10:04] Dallas Taylor:
That one's pure hilarity because we find it hilarious.

[00:10:08] Chris Duffy:
Okay.

[00:10:08] Dallas Taylor:
And so we're just like, what's hilarious is there was no term, the booj. It was completely made up by one of the guests in the episode, uh, from an incredible YouTube channel called Auralnauts. And they did this trailer that the entire episode was based off, off of. And so it's on YouTube and it's called, like, “How to Make a Blockbuster Movie Trailer.” And it is absolutely hilarious, and eventually we play that at the end, but we really, like, that was where we were going, and we just deconstructed all the way to the beginning to see, like, how can we like get ourselves to this hilarious reveal, but like booj is just a hilarious word. It was definitely Auralnauts who, who made up that word and me trying to, like, normalize that word.

[00:10:49] Chris Duffy:
So this is a kind of more serious question, and I'm just curious to your thoughts, but since so much of sound design is making us feel things, and it also is kind of invisible, is there an ethics to sound design then?

[00:11:03] Dallas Taylor:
So this is pre-podcast. I was working on a documentary called Blood Brother. It, uh, eventually won Sundance in two of the categories and streamed, and it's maybe still out there, but it's about this, um, about this person who went over to India to help, uh, orphans with, um, AIDS and HIV.

And it’s, it's a intense documentary. There's there's children passing away. It's absolutely heartbreaking, heavy, heavy experience. And so we spend months working on this. Um… You know, me and my team. There's loads of music. And when the director Steve Hoover came to listen for the very first time, he listened to the entire 90 minutes without saying a word, but at the end he very kindly, he was like, “Okay, that’s… That’s sounding really awesome. The first thing I want to do is I want to remove everything sound wise when these kids, uh, pass away or when they're very sick,” and he goes, “Okay. Awesome. Let's move on. We’ll leave the music off, and we'll just keep going.”

And I remember it blowing my mind because I was like, “We removed the music, and it just played.” What I learned in that is when you give the audience nothing to grasp on to emotionally… There’s no track with violins telling you how sad it is. That allows the audience to bring their personal experience to the film.

It's not some hipster music that's time period based or based off of the, uh, unconscious biases of the director or the editor or all of these things of their experiences. By removing music and just letting the natural world play, it was a huge release, one, where people could process it. But two, it just allowed people from all different walks of life in different countries to approach it and feel it in their own way. It gives the audience much more freedom to feel, uh, deeply in their own way, uh, you know, without some track telling them how to do it.

[00:12:59] Chris Duffy:
That's really interesting. And, and I think the idea of creating space for the audience or for the listener to bring themselves in, that makes a lot of sense to me. And also, as a comedian, one thing that I always notice is if you don't create a space of silence, people don't laugh. If you don't pause after a punchline, you step on your own laughs. People won't laugh nearly as much. You have to give the space for it. You fill that with your own noise. You could use a space for you to bring yourself into it.

[00:13:19] Dallas Taylor:
And it takes so much faith, especially if you're, you're making some sort of documentary or long form piece or even short form to be confident enough when you've heard it a thousand times in a row.

I mean, I see this all the time where the more someone listens to the piece, the more they start creeping in those, like, sad violins, like earlier and earlier and earlier to the point where I'm like, basically like signposting, like, “Hey, something's going to get real sad in 30 seconds.” I'm like, “You're softening the entire emotion getting to that point.” Like, let the moment happen and it be a surprise because that's what it was in real life.

[00:13:55] Chris Duffy:
We're going to take a quick break, but we will be right back with more from Dallas in just a moment.

[BREAK][00:14:08] Chris Duffy:
And we are back. So on this podcast, on How to Be a Better Human, I'm so lucky because we have this incredible team who produces it, who records it, who mixes it, who, who edits it. Um, and as a result, I, if I say something foolish or incorrect, it gets cut out. And also, if I make a weird noise with my mouth, they cleaned it up. No one ever hears that. That's great.

But when I first started in podcasting, for many years, I was editing all of my own, I was recording myself. Then I was editing all of my own tape. I was in Pro Tools doing it. And I found that it was impossible, almost, to stop tweaking things and to not keep finding a problem in a 30 minute episode and keep changing the volume or actually like cutting that little sibilant out.

And eventually I had to realize, like, no one who's listening to this just one time is going to be able to tell the difference of that. So how does working in audio tie into this perfectionism that I think a lot of people feel across the board, whether they're working in audio or not of like, “I don't know when it's done.”
So how do you tell when something is good enough? What does that mean in audio?

[00:15:18] Dallas Taylor:
Well, confident decision making would be one. And yes, we, we struggle all the way down to the very, to the wire with, with little things here, there, and I'm trying to let go of certain aspects, but more than anything, especially with Twenty Thousand Hertz, I feel a strong desire to lead by example in that. You just never know it.

Uh, when we do the interviews, you just never hear the interviewer. Uh, the way that we are mostly positioning, uh, the listener in this, uh, in this whole aspect is that we're talking to the listener. Sometimes we pull back and we talk to each other. It's for, for an effect, but, um, because it's a show about sound from a sound design team, it's just incredibly important that we set a bar.

[00:16:04] Chris Duffy:
So how do you balance the setting of the bar versus the not endlessly tweaking once you've gotten it to a certain place?

[00:16:11] Dallas Taylor:
Over the years, the team has just gotten better and better and better. It's, you know, early on, I put a few episodes out, and I still don't know if it was really kind of like s-selling.

If I go back to those episodes, I'm like, “Oh, okay, a little cringey.” But back then, um... Uh, Roman Mars, who's the host of 99% Invisible, uh, I, I had known him and he was just like, “Hey, I like, I get what you're doing and I'd like to feature that on, on my show.” And, uh, that was really this whole change where it's like it, it was featured there and then it just shot up and then from there it's like, got its footing.

The better we get, the more we just throw out like really wild ideas. And not only is it like wild ideas, but it's wild ideas with a group of people who are all trying to do something that's never been done before.

[00:16:57] Chris Duffy:
I, I think it's definitely working and you're making something really interesting that sounds great and is really, uh, compelling. So congratulations for sure.

[00:17:05] Dallas Taylor:
Thanks.

[00:17:05] Chris Duffy:
I have a couple of rapid fire questions for you. Uh, what is your favorite sound?

[00:17:08] Dallas Taylor:
My children, my children's voice, um, singing and just, just conversation with my kids, and my wife singing too. The, the people who are, the voices of the people who I love, um, that would even, uh, extend a little bit further to say the best music that I know of in the world are music, is music made or performed by my friends.

[00:17:32] Chris Duffy:
Mm. And what about what's the sound? I feel like everyone has a frequency that when you hear it, it just makes your, like, stomach curl.

[00:17:37] Dallas Taylor:
I wouldn't say I have misophonia, which is like the hatred of sound, but I would say the, the sound that I dislike the most, at least that's coming to me, is being in a, in a, in a, like a party situation. Uh, say some sort of event, uh, where it's at a bar or, it, itt’s those things like where there's a lot of people and then it just gets progressively louder and louder and louder to the point where I'm just like hurting my voice to even be heard, and there's no nuance to the voice. So I think that's, that's my least favorite because the voice itself, there's so many little tiny things I'm doing right now to perform and be in like, you know, really, like, get you to understand the way that I'm feeling.

It's like singing. Like it, everyone's a singer. But if you just use your voice, you're signaling what you feel in the way that you perform your words. But when we get into a very loud environment with a lot of people, I think my, like my heart sinks a little bit when we lose our voices.

We think we're using them, but all we're doing is we're just like screaming on top of other people and all of the subtlety from the voice goes away, all of that intimacy and all of that, like, depth. So I'd say that is, so I don't, I don't attend things once it rea-reaches a certain decibel level or like when my voice starts to hurt, because I, I just don't think anything meaningful happens past that point.

[00:18:56] Chris Duffy:
So do you, will you literally be at a party and be like, “I am sorry, but the decibel level has reached my exit point and I gotta go”?

[00:19:00] Dallas Taylor:
You know, it's very, very on brand for me to say that. But that's exactly right. Like, once it hits this point where I'm just like, “Ooh, this is exhausting.” But I, I think sensory wise, I get very overwhelmed quickly.

And so there's only so much stimulus I can take visually and orally and, like, all simultaneously before I just get incredibly mentally exhausted. It's something that through panic attacks and, and, and mental health that I've started to realize where those triggers are. And that, for me, is one of them. And you're absolutely right. It's basically like once it reaches a certain decibel level, I don't make a big deal about it. I just just slowly move my way out and, uh, no one even notices that I've got, that I'm gone.

[00:19:40] Chris Duffy:
On the flip side of that, is there a sound that is a particularly calming sound for you that, like, if you're feeling stressed, you can tap into that sound?

[00:19:47] Dallas Taylor:
You know, it still goes back to the voices, um, having a one-on-one conversation, uh, with someone that I care about, uh, or cares about me. And, um, there's so much love and language and voices and how you perform it that, um, it's either that or if it's not, uh, another person, ‘cause obviously I keep leaning onto that. But things that make me calm, then I'm going into, like, music, um, I'm going into, um, I love symphony pieces. Um, I'm a huge fan of a very acoustic type of instrument pieces, or just like, people who are like incredibly proficient. Probably like classical music, probably like Chopin or, or something in that, that, uh, solo felted piano. Like I'll listen to anything that's a solo felt piano.

[00:20:29] Chris Duffy:
I think anyone who works in podcasts gets this, but especially since you work in a podcast that's about sound design, you must have a lot of people commenting on your voice, which is a great voice.

[00:20:36] Dallas Taylor:
I never in my entire life have been complimented on my voice until I started a podcast, and it's, it is, it is very bizarre. It's still bizarre that even people know who I am. Beyond I mean, I'm very just like in my own world head down working.

But the voice aspect, that is something that I've gotten better at. I rerecorded, like, the first 15 episodes of Twenty Thousand Hertz because it was so bad. So you can actually hear a, a section where it like drops off and that was never as bad as what it was.

But, uh, I've gotten more comfortable with being more animated in my voice because, uh, when I listen to my voice back, I realize, “Wait a second, my feelings are way more intense than the way that I'm sounding to myself.” So I always have to, it's kinda like if you're smiling in a picture, you gotta go like 20% more to really notice.

[00:21:23] Chris Duffy:
Yeah.

[00:21:24] Dallas Taylor:
Same thing with, with performing with my voice, I have to go a little bit further than I feel comfortable with for it to even like get to the place where you're, I'm actually hearing what I'm feeling.

[00:21:34] Chris Duffy:
For people who are listening, who don't work in sound design and don't have a podcast or don't get professionally recorded in, in any way, I think that there's still some really practical day-to-day tips that can improve their life with sound design.

And I actually think that one of them is right now, many of us have to either have meetings that are remote or have to engage with people, um, in a way where the way that you sound isn't necessarily the way you would sound in person because it's mediated through a computer or recording. And this, I think what you just said is like a huge one, which often people think that they're conveying the emotion when they're actually not conveying it fully. And, so, what are some tips for how to do that?

[00:22:15] Dallas Taylor:
Gosh, um, that's a big question. Everyone is excited about a thing. And there's an aspect of shame, I guess, in our culture where you kind of, like, shy away from the thing that you're really passionate about worried that someone's going to, like, feel something or think something or whatever about you, but there's nothing like more attractive to me than someone being very passionate and animated, animated about what they like.
Show your passion, like, you, your own thankfulness for for how much you love that. Or if you're into anime or something and you're talking about, like, a story or something like… I just I just love hearing people being passionate. So it’s, it's less about like, “here are some tips and tricks,” it’s more so just like let yourself be you because that's who you are.

[00:23:02] Chris Duffy:
Yeah.

[00:23:02] Dallas Taylor:
And it's okay and you don't have to worry about what other people think. It doesn't matter.

[00:23:06] Chris Duffy:
And we can so easily register when we listen to someone's voice, you can really tell. We are finely tuned to tell whether someone is being authentic or that they're holding back or whether there's some sort of shade of something else. So when you do let yourself be full of yourself, that comes across. That comes across in the, the physical quality of your voice.

[00:23:22] Dallas Taylor:
Comes across as confidence as well, because you don't need the other person to be justifying your excitement for your thing in order for you to be heard. It's just like, no, I am unashamed about how passionate I am about this thing. And I don't need your approval. Now you got to like read the room, you know, it's like—

[00:23:42] Chris Duffy:
Yeah.

[00:23:43] Dallas Taylor:
—if you're like boring people or whatnot, but I can have a conversation with anyone about anything if they're excited about it, like I could talk to my accountant about new tax codes if my accountant is just like animated and excited about it.

[00:23:53] Chris Duffy:
Uh-huh.

[00:23:58] Dallas Taylor:
It, like, gets me going and I'm like, “Oh, I never saw it that way. That's neat. What about this?” Oh, you know, it's also an act of love to listen to people.
I know this is kind of the flip side, but it's something that I think is important, uh, to, to mention because it goes on both sides, but letting someone nerd out or talk about their thing or just talk about their struggles or anything. It's an act of love to keep your mouth shut and let them communicate, like let people express and give them time to express and process. That's an act of love, and I think that that's something that, um, we can all practice.

[00:24:25] Chris Duffy:
I love that. And I also think that, I'm so glad you brought it up because I, I want to talk about the, the listening piece of this, right? Not just the generating sound. So I imagine, as a result of your work and your podcast, you think a lot more about what it means to consciously listen to the world around you and to the people around you and to really take, take that in. Um, how do you practice that? Like, what does that look like in your day to day to actually hear the things that are happening?

[00:24:55] Dallas Taylor:
It looks a lot like if you're having a really fancy meal and you put your phone down and you focus on eating and you focus on the flavors and you focus, focus on the notes of this and the notes of that.

Or if you're into coffee or something, it's like you're really putting all of this brain energy into taste. Um, and you can do that across the board with all of your senses listening is no different. I can do it right now. Like everyone listening right now just for the next three seconds, be aware of, like, listen to what's around you and be aware of it.

And what it does is it's not only just being conscious of listening. It’s, it's also being human. It's being aware of, of where you are. It's being present, which is something that is incredibly, uh, important to me. I think anytime you're dealing with sensory type of, uh, aspects of being human, uh, it really boils down to being present.

[00:25:48] Chris Duffy:
Along those lines, why is quiet not turning off of our minds to sound?

[00:25:53] Dallas Taylor:
Why is quiet not—

[00:25:57] Chris Duffy:
Like experiencing quiet isn't the absence of sound necessarily then in that case, right?

[00:26:00] Dallas Taylor:
You're getting into my TED talk there.

[00:26:03] Chris Duffy:
Yeah, we've yeah, let's talk about it because you, you, your TED talk is built in many ways around one of my favorite pieces of, of art ever which is John Cage's 4’33” And I know you're a huge fan of it as well as you talk about.

[00:26:14] Dallas Taylor:
I wasn't for a long time. And so 4’33” by John Cage is a three movement piece. And so for those of you who are not in classical music, it means three distinct, independent, uh, sections of music.

You know, oftentimes in a symphony, like the first will be kind of this, you know, kicking off this, this kind of thing. The second might be really somber. And then the third might be really light. And then it's bombastic. So that's where the concept of, like, movements of pieces are. So when I was in college, I remember it was always a joke. Uh, this John Cage 4'33", you know, you're going to do a recital. You could always do 4'33". You know, because it's easy. I never thought a lot about it. I just thought it was kind of like, “Oh, it's some new age-y composer doing something easy to get attention.”

And it took decades for me to understand what was happening. I was dismissive in music school. I never really understood it, but, uh, as I started to study, I realized this is the exact mission of Twenty Thousand Hertz. And so what John Cage is trying to communicate is that when you remove that sound or that piano or that symphony piece or whatever, and everyone is sitting there in quiet discomfort. Someone’s worried about coughing. You know, you hear someone yell out in the hallway. You hear a horn honk in the distance because there's nothing going on, like you just hear, everyone becomes immediately present in, in their hearing without saying it. And what you discover is that there is no such thing as silence.

You can turn off your entire home's power. And you're still going to then hear the dogs down the street and this, the people outside. You could still be in the country and still hear birds, and like it's still going to, something’s still going to be there. Or in this like, you know, gaseous thing that's always pushing sounds around.

And even if you get to the point where you're in an anechoic chamber, which is where they really try to do a complete absence of sound. This is where they test devices and, and things to see if there's any vibrations or, or whatnot or any sounds. Even if you go as far as being in an anechoic chamber, it starts to get to a point where you hear your blood pumping. You start to hear, uh, your, like, tinnitus start to come up ‘cause your brain is trying to like grab, it's not used to not having any sound.

So it's like trying to grasp anything to go like, “Well, is that sound?” And it kind of turns into a little bit of a hiss, like a noise floor, almost, for anybody who's a musician or a guitar player. All of that to say is like John Cage was really celebrating how important sound is, you know, he goes, “Here's a silent piece, but there's no such thing as silence. So now you're all present with your environment and, and we're all here right now.” And four minutes and 33 seconds takes a long time to pass when no one's doing anything, but just listening to each other and, and sniffling.

[00:28:58] Chris Duffy:
Along those lines, what’s the most still quiet moment that you can remember recently that you've been in?

[00:29:04] Dallas Taylor:
10 years ago, I went to Kauai. I drove up to the very top of the mountain. So if anybody's ever been there, you drive up to the very top and then you look over into this incredible, like, mountainous valley going right into this like turquoise blue water. Great sounds, nature and birds and all kinds of stuff.

But once I got there and I looked over and I was at the top, like all of the sound was below me and it was just so surreal to have so much life down. Trees, it's just nonstop green and then the ocean and, you know, all of this, the vibrancy of life on this island, but being at the very top, and it was just this light wisp of air.
And I remember, I remember thinking like, this is the greatest sound I've ever experienced, and visually, too. Natural, but it was like the sound coupled with the visuals and it made me very introspective and thankful for that moment.

[00:29:56] Chris Duffy:
For people who are listening, and for me, are there ways that we can enrich our listening experiences without equipment?

[00:30:02] Dallas Taylor:
We did this great show called, um, The Handbook to Sonic Happiness, where we really discuss, like, very practically different things that you could do. And in one section, we were talking about playing the quiet game. And in your own home, you can turn off all your appliances. It's like, whenever you have a power outage or something, how everything gets really quiet and creaky?

There's a lot of sounds that our brains just tune out. And it does it intentionally, but it doesn't mean it doesn't have an effect. So if you have this, like, very dissonant whine of a refrigerator compressor, you may not even know it's existing until you turn off the refrigerator and go, “Whoa, okay, something's broken here.”

Or like having squeaky doors. I cannot stand squeaky doors when you can take WD-40 and just, you know, squirt it on all the, like, hinges. So just getting rid of these just like little extraneous noises, uh, I try to just eliminate all of them. And for me, I like also having a really kind of like convenient, uh, good speaker system that then, you know, I can enjoy music, uh, with full bandwidth and great lows and highs.

And if I can make everything quiet enough, uh, you know, I could be cooking dinner and have a really meaningful musical experience.

[00:31:11] Chris Duffy:
In some of your professional sound design work, when you're just working for a company and they want to make a sound that is their sound, that's called a sonic logo. And can you explain to us why a sonic logo matters and what they really are?

[00:31:26] Dallas Taylor:
Yeah. So a sonic logo is a moment. It could be anywhere from a second up to maybe three seconds or more. Uh, it can kind of teeter into jingle world eventually, but it's a sound that's used as kind of a mnemonic, a device that will always kind of bring you back to a certain feeling.

[00:31:46] Chris Duffy:
So one of the sonic logos that you delve into on Twenty Thousand Hertz is the Netflix sonic logo and you talked with one of the folks who was involved in designing it about what the pieces were that went into making it.

[00:32:00] Lon Bender:
It's a combination of music and of the sound effects of these knocks, which are my wedding ring that I'm wearing, knocking on the side of a cabinet in our bedroom. And in order to add different qualities to it, I sweetened it with other things, which is normal for us in the film sound industry. You know, any sound is made up of four sounds, generally. There was a slowed anvil sound, which had a deeper tone.

[00:32:27] Dallas Taylor:
In addition to the ring and anvil, Lon also added a couple of muted hits to give it a little bit more oomph. Lon was happy with the two hits, at least this part of the sound. But by itself, this percussive approach didn't seem like it was enough.

[00:32:41] Lon Bender:
As much as I like the sound effects idea, it had its place, but it didn't give me the aesthetic, lean-in kind of feel that I was hoping for.

[00:32:50] Dallas Taylor:
Lon needed a musical element that would help draw listeners in. The sound his team ultimately came up with was codenamed The Blossom. It's that tonal swell you hear in The Final Resolve.

Just to finish that story, uh, was something that was decades ago. One of Lon's colleagues, Charlie Campagna, was messing around with just this guitar reverser sound. This thing that he could just hold chords and it would reverse it and then play it. And so, uh, so they sent me the, the full track where you hear all of this meandering kind of guitar thing. You wouldn't even realize it's a guitar. I didn't know it was a guitar. And then just out of nowhere, you hear wong, and then it goes right back to meandering. And it's like, ah, there it is. That one blip out of all of this time.

[00:33:37] Chris Duffy:
It’s one of the most distinctive sounds in the world right now.

[00:33:40] Dallas Taylor:
Yeah. And it's like a jolt. It's like saying, “Okay, everything prior is now prior.” Now we're being transported into a new world. And that's tough to do in such a short amount of time. Like, take someone out of this busy, busy, busy into, okay, focus here now. And that's what's so brilliant about that in, in my opinion.

[00:34:01] Chris Duffy:
For people now who they're just learning about the idea of a sonic logo and they're experiencing what it is like to break it down and to think about it in different pieces, what should they be listening for as they, they go around the world to hear more of these stories?

[00:34:12] Dallas Taylor:
Gosh, I, there’s so many. I love the sound of transit. Uh, voices behind the train announcers. Like what's that about? We did a whole show on that between New York and London and the Tube and just gorgeous stories. I mean, there's real people behind these.

Our our set, first episode was about the original voice of Siri. These are, like, real people trying to solve. A commercial goal or a creative goal. I’ve, I’ve never been to Tokyo, unfortunately. But I heard that, like, every stop has its own jingle. Like if you're going the same route all the time, it just kind of wakes you up.

Um, so there's a lot of strategy and thought behind these sounds. And when, when my company does sonic branding, it's an exploration of what does the company mean? We have to get down to the values. What are you trying to communicate through your product or service? Because you can do the opposite. And if you have a negative experience with a product or service and have a sonic brand attached to that, like that will be detrimental to your company.

So it has to be something that also enhances. The sonic logo, um, in and of itself is not going to be the end all be all just like a visual logo. Um, like the Coca-Cola logo is nothing without all of the followup from a, from the company itself. And so that same thing with sonic branding. It's sound design, but on a very corporate yet human level, it's very complex. I would say the most complex sound design that I know of is sonic Branding.

[00:35:32] Chris Duffy:
I just want to say that I cannot imagine how anyone who's listening to this is not going to leave this episode and listen to the world around them differently afterwards. Dallas Taylor, thank you so much. It has been an absolute pleasure talking to you.

[00:35:43] Dallas Taylor:
Thank you.

[00:35:47] Chris Duffy:
That is it for today's episode of How to Be a Better Human. Thank you so much to today's guest Dallas Taylor, you can check out his podcast, Twenty Thousand Hertz, wherever you are listening to this, I am your host, Chris Duffy, and you can find more for me, including my weekly newsletter and upcoming live shows at chrisduffycomedy.com.

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