The Wrong Sound Could Summon the Devil
How Jim Reekes solved Apple’s infernal problem🤘😈
Jim Reekes led audio design at Apple from 1990–1999. Before he arrived on the scene, Apple used a tritone, banned in Renaissance church music, known as “The Devil’s Chord” for their computer startup sound. “OK, so I’ve got to get rid of that,” he said.
Reekes understood that a startup sound was an opportunity to frame the user’s experience right from the get-go. “It’s a symbol of what’s to come […] I thought, I gotta have this meditative sound.” And for more practical reasons, a boot-up sound was a simple way of assuring the user that the startup was successful.
Permission to make some noise?
But getting it past Apple management wouldn’t be easy. “I knew when I got it done, it would be something that could last,” he said. So, Jim cut a deal with other designers to add it late in development so it would make it into the next release. And in 1991, the Macintosh Quadra 700 shipped with his design.
“I knew I was in for something great when I heard it turn on.” — Byte magazine
The Microsoft sound
Four years later, in 1995, Microsoft wanted to create a memorable startup sound of their own for a new operating system, Windows 95. They enlisted Brian Eno, a progenitor of ambient music, to alter the perception of the Microsoft brand experience right from the start.
In an interview, Eno recalled the agency’s creative brief, “We want a piece of music that is inspiring, universal, blah-blah, da-da-da, optimistic, futuristic, sentimental, emotional,’ this whole list of adjectives, and then at the bottom it said ‘and it must be 3.25 seconds long.’” His 3.25 sec micro-composition became known as “The Microsoft sound,” resembling the mood-altering power of Eno’s ambient catalog with a futuristic and yet approachable character. His Microsoft mnemonic may be his most played work to date.
“Is [music] like a pill you take that is guaranteed to generate a desired emotion — bliss, anger, tranquility?” — David Byrne, How Music Works
Music can pump us up, calm us down, heal the hurt, beat the boredom, or deepen the pleasure. Explore the opportunities you have to use music to alter the perception of your brand. Figure out what mood you want your audience to feel, then dose out your objet sonore.
- Objet sonore is a discrete unit of sound. A sound object as described by Pierre Schaeffer. Schaeffer discovered this idea of sound as an object or as is now commonly known as “sampling.” He discovered sound in isolation by looking for a new way to construct music, a way that would bypass both traditional tonality and the atonal or compositional aesthetics of the day.
Jared Kinsler is a founding member of Soundnoodle music in Austin, Texas. For more tips on how to design with sound and music, check out Sound Advice 🎩👌
