The New Yorker Radio Hour - Designing a Soundscape for the Cars of the Future

Episode Date: August 16, 2022

Electric cars, compared to cars with internal-combustion engines, are nearly silent, which can present a danger to cyclists and pedestrians. So car companies are turning to sound engineers to craft artificial soundtracks for things like backing up, or starting the engine. John Seabrook, who writes often about music, reported on the composers and designers who are building a new soundscape for the streets and highways of America. Plus, a visit with Ada Limón, who was recently named the twenty-fourth U.S. Poet Laureate. Limón lives in Kentucky, and in 2018 she took the Radio Hour to her favorite racetrack, and spoke about her lifelong love of horses. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. John Seabrook has written for The New Yorker on many subjects, but he's a particular expert on pop music, how in today's music business, a track is built layer by layer by an entire team of composers and producers. Recently, John took that close attention to the process of making songs to a very different kind of sound environment. Here's John Seabrook, taking a little trip with our producer, Gauphan and Putabuele. So let's imagine we're walking through London in the 19th century. You know, it's 1859, and it's a beautiful sunny day, and we're strolling down the high street.

What do we hear? What does it sound like all around us? It's going to sound pretty different than walking through New York City sounds today. I think first of all, you're going to hear the clip-clop of horses. hooves. And you're going to hear wagon wheels. You're going to hear church bells. You're going to hear running water, probably. You're going to hear more animal and bird sounds than

we can hear today. You're going to hear blacksmiths, hammers, which have a particular sound. They go ping, ping, ping, ping. They kind of have a ping, ping, ping, ping, kind of sound. And if you grew up at a farm, which I did, you get used to that sound. And maybe what people wore, of course, they didn't really have sneakers.

So the sound of the feet probably hitting the pavements, the boot heels, are probably like a constant staccato, low-level kind of click, click, click. So in 1860, the very next year, there was a Belgian engineer who patented the very first commercially successful internal combustion engine. and that was going to change the urban soundscape profoundly. And how does internal combustion engine work? Internal combustion is a rather violent process of igniting gasoline vapors inside controlled area, in this case a piston sleeve.

When the gasoline vapor explodes, it makes a loud noise, and that drives the piston down through. the sleeve, which then cranks a gear, which eventually ends up moving the wheels. And you have four or eight of those pistons, or even more, and firing, you know, at more or less the same time, which creates a bop-bop-bop-b-b-b-b-bbbbbbbbbbb. It's a very loud machine. If you actually listen, it's a low kind of low-frequency, rumble or growl that really forms the baseline of urban life.

So now that we've talked about the internal combustion era, prepare to say goodbye to it, because we're entering a new era. The era of electrification. There we go, electrification era. And it's going to have a huge effect on the way city sounds. Why? Because by 2050, cities have rules that say you can't operate an internal combustion engine in the city. So there are these kind of benchmarks that cities hope to meet in terms of reducing emissions.

You know, these are sort of projected goals or guidelines 2035, 2040, 2050. You hear different dates. But the point is well taken, which is that sooner or later, we're going to be electric. All the sounds, not just the engine sounds, but primarily the engine sounds, will go away. A city full of silent cars. Sounds kind of nice, but think about it. Like really walking around, bicycling, crossing the street. I don't know.

I think it would be kind of scary. Yeah, it sounds kind of creepy, actually. Like the silent city. Yeah. In a way, remember the pandemic? Remember like in the worst? Well, you heard the sirens or the ambulances, but what was kind of creepy about it if you're in the city was like how quiet it actually was.

but also the problem is that many people, pedestrians and bicyclists, but also blind people, use the sound of engines to navigate the streets. So a quiet car, a silent car, presents real dangers to some people. And a federal law was passed in 2011 that requires all electric vehicles to make a sound and we have to figure out what they're going to sound like. Totally. 100%. Yeah. I'm Connor Moore, executive creative director at Listen, who's an audio branding agency based in Brooklyn. When Ford was thinking about sounds for their Machi, which is their first electric car, they consulted their own engineers, but they

also reached outside of Ford and work with this company called Listen. And we reached out to Connor to listen to some of those sounds. of the marquee. The guys who make these sounds are basically electronic musicians. I mean, I'm counting five guitars and two keyboards right now, and I'm looking at you. So they're kind of working the way that you would work to make an EDM track or like a backing track for a hook or something.

All right, so let's get into the sound. Sure, yeah. So the welcome sound is, you know, once you get into the in-car experience, and it's a chance for the car to kind of set the tone for your drum driving experience. John, reactions? I was getting kind of a rock and roll vibe there. That could be the beginning of a production of maybe like an 80s, maybe a European hair band.

I have like an initial like partially stranger things reaction and then I have a sort of like, it reminds me of certain video games that I grew up with. This is like in Mega Man. Could you maybe play it again, but before you? you do, tell us what to listen for. Totally. So I'm going to point a couple things out. So within the composition itself, it has this pulsing build, right?

That is how we express dynamics and energy. Beyond that, you're going to hear a low-end frequency, a really robust base frequency response that really pushes this bolder feel, right? And then in the melody, you're going to hear some kind of crunchy, uh, distortion. The original Mustang had kind of a level of independence, this rebel nature to it. So you're hearing much more layered system, a cinematic approach, right? We wanted to really push this soundscape into the future. All right, so, so playing the welcome sound here. It's like do do do do do do do do do do do do do do right? Yeah. That's actually a good thing that

I didn't mention earlier is when you're starting something or you're welcoming something or your stepping into something, you compose it in a way that's kind of upward scale, right, in ascending note pattern to where it's opening to an experience, whereas something like a farewell or shutdown sound might be going downward. Cool, yeah, you want to do the farewell sound for us? Yeah. It's very exciting. I feel like it's an exciting sound. You know, it's chariots of fire, I think. It's not fire, they're chariots of electricity, but yeah, very cinematic. So this is the seatbelt chime in the mock e the way that we think about designing for something like a seatbelt warning is it's it's a low level alert right so we think about it on a spectrum it's like low level

medium level high severity say you had to you got to keep the same notes but i'm going to tell you that now i want the alert to be like this is something serious what process would you go through in your brain to be like okay i'm going to adjust this this way yeah so the first thing i would do is i would change the pitch range. I would shift it up an octave, see how that feels, but you want it to live kind of in the, you know, 1,000 to 3,000 kilohertz space. That's the most sensitive area for human hearing. Number two, I would address speed. So the repetition in the notes, there's, you know, obviously a certain amount of space between the notes. I would probably tighten those. And I would probably tighten up the repetition cycle. The cadence of it would be faster. The other thing is I would

maybe potentially add a little bit of dissonance, right? There's an opportunity with severe alerts to add some of that minor modalities, layers that might increase the tension, you know, that's going to really reflect the severity of the moment. The way that I really think about it is it's about the interaction, right? What are you trying to express if it's a successful state, if it's a confirmation? We're probably going to live in the major, you know, territory, right? Major key.

If it's an error state, you know, we think about that as, you know, injecting minor feel or diminished feel, you know, to really get the point across that, hey, there's a problem here. There was an author, a Canadian author, his last name was Schaefer, who wrote a book called, I think it's called The Tuning of the World, and it was in the 70s. But his basic idea was that nature has an ecology of sound in which birds sing in different frequencies and they don't overlap or compete. They kind of fit into a sort of an ecology of sound. And he contrasts that to the way the soundscape of cities evolve

without any real acoustic designer at work. And so people like Connemore see electrification as an opportunity to kind of have this big reset. We have the ability now to really design sounds. Taking the example of a phone ringer or the original alarm clocks, right, they were all consistently loud, right?

They hit you loud and they ended loud. And they were consistent. Now, when we design these types of moments, it's all in the hope and light of bringing beautiful sounds into our soundscapes that don't bring too much noise into the world. We as a civilization don't get, this chance that often, the chance to really profoundly rethink the way city sound.

Maybe it's a once every hundred year chance. There's a lot of studies that have been done that show that sound pollution, noise pollution, has a detrimental effect on your health, almost as clearly as smoke and toxic fumes pollution. So the people who are actually exposed. to the noise the most, tend to be the less advantaged people. So I think when we think about, you know, improving the sound of cities and making cities quieter, it's far more than just an aesthetic experience for the, you know, metropolitan mind. It's an actual public health question for those who live with, you know, engine sounds. Most of the people.

motor sounds, highway sounds, horn sounds, suspension sounds, all these sounds that you're in the midst of in the city, we can make better through design. Continue for half a mile. In 800 feet, turn left onto Washington Avenue. Yeah, we've been talking about alert sounds, but there's also a whole set of propulsion sounds the car makes for the driver to hear. So sonically, we're hearing what in my brain normally I would. I would think of like the engine is going, like when we're going forward, the propulsive sound.

But that sound is artificial. That's an artificial propulsive sound. We took the marquee out and drove it in Williamsburg. And I'll tell you what, it was pretty quiet. Maybe too quiet. Staff writer John Seabrook. He's the author of The Song Machine. And John writes about music and he's a connoisseur of sound.

All kinds of sound. We all know what a Geiger counter sounds like, you know, that... But of course, that's a completely symbolic sound. You know, radiation doesn't actually sound like that. But I can't imagine that there's a better sound that... What would be a metaphorical sound for... Oh, no! Get out!

You know. You know, I don't know. Yeah, that's funny. I like that as an exercise. Like, you have to replace the Geiger counter with a new sound. Right. Fuck! Oh my gosh.

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Stick around. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. For today, we're going to close things up by getting outside with the poet Ada Limon. Limon was appointed. She appointed the Poet Laureate of the United States in July. And some years back, she moved from New York City to live with her boyfriend, now her husband, in Lexington, Kentucky.

Fewer rats and a lot more horses. Limon's book, Bright Dead Things, was all about adjusting to a new home and the constant talk of thoroughbreds. Hey there. This is cactus. A cactus. Beautiful quarter horse. You know why I call him cacketting? What?

Where's his name? We met up with Ada Limon in 2018 near Lexington. We're standing in front of the main entrance here to Keenland, and they've got this beautiful stone walls, and it kind of looks like a castle. Keenland, I think, is one of the prettiest race courses in all of the United States. Now, this isn't where the derby happens.

Churchill Downs is where the derby is raced, but Keenland is a beautiful old train. that has this very historic stately feel in the middle of beautiful horse pastures all around it. It feels like spring might actually come. The sun's not quite up. It's a little cloudy. Being here when it's empty is kind of lovely. So right now we're walking through the main track area before we get to the actual race track.

So this is where you have the concessions. where you get your popcorn and your Kentucky's burghoo, which is a sort of legendary Kentucky food. I'm not a huge fan, don't tell anyone. You get soft pretzels and popcorn and soft ice cream for the kids. And then as we keep walking up here, you'll see all of the bedding windows. I grew up going to the track occasionally with my stepfather,

who loves to play the ponies. But we would go to the Sonoma County Fair and go to the track out there. People always ask me, you know, what, you have so many horses in your palms, what are they a metaphor for? And I think they're not really a metaphor. Like out here, they're just horses.

The very first time I came to Keenland, it was here to meet Zanjada, who is a famous Philly, who I just adore. She's famous for having won the Breeders' Cup Classic, the only Philly to have won the Breeders' Cup Classic. And she was sort of an icon of mine, and so it was fun to get to meet her. And that was actually the very first time I came to Keenland.

I think one of the things I love about watching them race is the thrill that they seem to get from it. Like they actually seem to be enjoying the race. So right now I'm looking at the main track, which is a dirt track, has almost like a reddish quality. And it's loose dirt, even though we got some rain. It looks like it's bouncy. They try to keep it so it's healthy for the horses to run on.

And then the track right behind it is the track. turf. Now right now we've got a thoroughbred going by a thoroughbred racehorse. There's something about them that is so beautiful as they race and as they just stand there in the pasture. And out here in Kentucky, you know, they're about as common as birds. This area right here is the apron and this is where if you just pay general admission, you can come and sit. And, and stand on the rail and root for your horse. On a busy day, it will just be packed and loud and ruckus. It's a great sound.

I kind of like coming out here when there's no one here. It feels like there is some sort of ghost of energy within the space, as if you could almost hear the echoes of roars. people screaming with joy because they actually won big for the first time. This is a poem I wrote for the Kentucky Oaks Day, which is when all the Phillies race, and it's one of my favorite races. How to Triumph Like a Girl. I like the lady horses best, how they make it all look easy.

Like running 40 miles per hour is as fun as taking a nap or grass. I like their lady horse swagger after winning. Ears up girls, ears up. But mainly, let's be honest, I like that they're ladies. As if this big, dangerous animal is also a part of me. That's somewhere inside the delicate skin of my body, their pumps an eight-pound female horse heart. Giant with power, heavy with blood.

Don't you want to believe it? Don't you want to lift my shirt and see the huge, beating, genius machine that thinks? No, it knows it's going to come in first. The poet Ada Limon at Keenland Racecourse in Lexington, Kentucky. She was just appointed the poet laureate. You can find some of her poems at New Yorker.com. I'm David Remnick. That's the New Yorker Radio Hour for today. Thanks so much for listening.

See you next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tuneiards. This episode was produced by Emily Boutin, Avey Correou, Breeda Green, Calilea, David Krasnow, Louis Mitchell, and Gauphin and Putabwelle. Along with Jeffrey Masters, Will Coley, and Michael May. And we had assistance from Harrison Keithline and James Napoli. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.

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