Who’s composing music for my washing machine?

FLORA LICHTMAN: 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 play Schubert. 

[MUSIC PLAYING]

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 Arbeeny, 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.

AUDREY ARBEENEY: Thank you for having us.

JOEL BECKERMAN: Appreciate it.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Why are my appliances suddenly making music? How did we get here?

AUDREY ARBEENEY: 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.

JOEL BECKERMAN: I almost want to jump to the problem. The problem is there is 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 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, or they’re thinking about just the sound of their product.

AUDREY ARBEENEY: They’re adding literal bells and whistles just to be a bell and whistle.

JOEL BECKERMAN: And to shout out loud– everyone’s shouting for attention. The question is, how can you, as Audrey was saying, differentiate, provide great experiences? But it’s just we’re overwhelmed. We’re overrun by sound now.

FLORA LICHTMAN: 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.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Joel, what are your thoughts on this?

JOEL BECKERMAN: So many things. First of all, it sounded like a fife, and I’m imagining a leprechaun. But that’s just in my mind. It’s a very long. Maybe it’s kind of fun, and it’s quirky. And one of the things we have to think about is there’s a lot of different cultures in the world.

In Japanese culture, this is very familiar. And I think in the US, where 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. What’s at the end? What happens after this?

FLORA LICHTMAN: Another load of laundry, Joel, if it’s my house.

JOEL BECKERMAN: Fair enough.

FLORA LICHTMAN: What about you, Audrey? What do you think?

AUDREY ARBEENEY: If that was ever on my appliance, I think I would break it. It’s too long. It’s too monotone. Even though it sounds like a little fife, but it sounds like an old sheep sound when we could do so much better. Most importantly, it’s too long.

FLORA LICHTMAN: 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?

AUDREY ARBEENEY: I believe there is. I mean, there’s ways to do sounds that sound like quality and sounds that sound like the old piezo buzzer sounds. And that’s kind of what this reminded me of– just don’t sit well, at least 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.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Joel?

JOEL BECKERMAN: Yeah, 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 becomes part of the experience. It’s like you think about in the analog world.

When you hear a car rev, you know what this is. You know what’s happening. You started the car. You’ve added gas, and you’re kind of hearing that guttural sound of it’s warming up. So 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.

AUDREY ARBEENEY: Or if it’s too organic, you might be like, oh, what’s that stampede of deer coming down the road?

JOEL BECKERMAN: Totally.

FLORA LICHTMAN: 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.

[CHIME PLAYING]

And here’s the power on.

[CHIME PLAYING]

And here’s the power off.

[TONE PLAYING]

What was your approach? How did you decide what it should sound like?

AUDREY ARBEENEY: 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 they’re both under the Whirlpool brand. And Whirlpool is all about caregiving and the pleasure of doing chores and everyday tasks and warmth and reassurance and the joy of chores and to communicate that it was like about a human touch.

FLORA LICHTMAN: That sounds like a tough assignment– the joy of chores.

JOEL BECKERMAN: Well, listen, go online. How many videos are there now watching people clean their house? Come on. Seriously.

FLORA LICHTMAN: True.

AUDREY ARBEENEY: And you know what the funny thing is? At least for me, I love doing laundry. 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–

FLORA LICHTMAN: It’s true.

AUDREY ARBEENEY: I have no problem doing laundry. And to have that sound, to use the harp in there and in some of the other sounds we did for Whirlpool, we had hands rubbing on jeans and these textural sounds that are warm and rich. And these sounds really did resonate with the consumers on a pretty large scale.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Let’s hear the notification again.

[TONE PLAYING]

FLORA LICHTMAN: I can hear what you mean about the warmth, also much shorter than the ditty we just heard.

AUDREY ARBEENEY: Yeah. And it’s just the idea of a human touch. That’s basically what we were going for here. And we have to also be mindful about the global audience because we had to walk a fine line between in the United States, this is an everyday brand, whereas in another country, it could be a premium brand. There’s 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 where we’re going to go with the sounds.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Joel, you composed sounds for Roomba, for the Roomba vacuum. Let’s hear a couple of those. This is called “Mission Start.”

[TONE PLAYING]

This one is called “Can’t Do That.”

[TONE PLAYING]

And this one’s called “Mission Complete.”

[TONE PLAYING]

Tell me about your process.

JOEL BECKERMAN: Well, I think first of all, we think about these. Whatever the device is, it has a personality. Whether it’s more 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 you’re starting up or you’re beginning a journey, it should feel like, off we go.

There’s kind of a feeling to that we’re used to musically, but also our voices as human beings, we use our voices in very melodic ways. Hey, let’s go. 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. We’re familiar with language.

So these sounds, in a lot of ways, we want to emulate human speech, like what they did with R2-D2 in the Star Wars movies. Even though you didn’t what R2-D2 was saying, you sure knew what he was feeling at every moment. That’s what we’re trying to do, is to again tap into this thing that we’re all familiar with, which is human speech.

AUDREY ARBEENEY: And one other thing I just want to add in that too, like in hearing those sounds from Joel, is that 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. In 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.

JOEL BECKERMAN: Thanks. And just to add to that, I think that in that, you’re talking about care for Whirlpool. If we were to 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.

FLORA LICHTMAN: We have to take a break. But when we come back, the best and the worst of sonic branding. Don’t go away. Is there an appliance or a sound that you encounter a lot that you just really want to mute?

JOEL BECKERMAN: To me, the worst one out there is– I don’t know if you’ve had this experience. But you go, and you put your credit card in a credit card reader. And it’s the kind you slide into 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 being penalized for making the purchase? I don’t think that was the intent of the people trying to sell you something.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Do you have one, Audrey?

AUDREY ARBEENEY: I do. I have an issue with the voice on the accessible street crossing devices in New York City.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Walk.

AUDREY ARBEENEY: I know that they should certainly need to be loud so that people could hear them. But there’s angry. They go, wait, wait.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Wait.

AUDREY ARBEENEY: It’s just like, OK, all right, I’m waiting. And also, that’s the fine line too is that you– it’s a fine line between communicating an alert and 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 fasten seat belt is not a quiet. 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 seat belt on, which is the intent.

JOEL BECKERMAN: Audrey, I don’t if you just got yourself a new client or cost yourself a new client.

AUDREY ARBEENEY: What? With Toyota?

JOEL BECKERMAN: Yeah, with Toyota.

AUDREY ARBEENEY: That’s OK.

JOEL BECKERMAN: We would all love to call out these because it’s just not necessary.

AUDREY ARBEENEY: No, no, no, but I think–

JOEL BECKERMAN: It just needs to be–

AUDREY ARBEENEY: Sorry, Joel. 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 got to put that belt on. And that’s the ultimate goal is safety. So that should get me the Toyota client.

[LAUGHTER]

FLORA LICHTMAN: In the minute I have left, are there gold standards in the sonic branding world where you’re like, yeah, they really nailed it?

JOEL BECKERMAN: To me, the gold standards are the ones that are iconic and enduring.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Give me your best example.

JOEL BECKERMAN: OK, so I would say most people might say off the top of their head, the McDonald’s jingle. That’s something they’ve been working on for 30 or 35 years. You’re familiar with it. It feels like home.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Yes, totally. Audrey?

JOEL BECKERMAN: 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 it across. It’s endured. So it went from the first cable to DVDs and stuff like that. And any medium that you touch HBO on, HBO Max, what have you, you still have that enduring sound.

JOEL BECKERMAN: 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 and 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.

FLORA LICHTMAN: And they have huge audiences. I mean, you’re composing for millions and millions and millions of people across the world.

JOEL BECKERMAN: 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.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Thank you both for taking time to talk to me today.

AUDREY ARBEENEY: Thank you, Flora. Thank you, Joel.

JOEL BECKERMAN: Thank you both. This is fun.

FLORA LICHTMAN: It was really fun.

JOEL BECKERMAN: We could talk for another four hours on this easily.

AUDREY ARBEENEY: Yeah, we both could.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Audrey Arbeeney, owner and executive producer of Audio Brain. And Joel Beckerman, composer and founder of Made Music Studio. This episode was produced by Shoshannah Bucksbaum. 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. 877-4-SCIFRI is our number. I’m Flora Lichtman. We’ll catch you next time.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

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