The History of Animation Sound

boomboxpost.com/blog/2015/11/8/the-history-of-animation-sound

November 10, 2015

Disney's Steamboat Willie was the first animated work with synchronized sound on
picture. Click play to watch.

Sound on Picture
In 1928, The Jazz Singer, was the first “talking picture.” Animation studios were quick
to embrace the possibilities that synchronized sound on picture held. That same
year, Walt Disney Studios produced Steamboat Willie which introduced the world to
animation with a synchronized soundtrack. It was so widely viewed that the term
“mickey mousing” quickly came to be synonymous with closely choreographed on-
screen action and sound.

Two Takes on Sound Effects: The Warner Bros. & Disney Approaches
In the 1920’s and 1930’s, recording equipment was extremely large and heavy,
rendering it impossible to take outside of the studio. Unable to record sound effects
in the real world, the studios were forced to invent new approaches to creating sound
for their animated content. Thus, two different approaches to sound effects were
quickly developed.

In one approach, sound effects were simulated by a musician during a music

recording session. These were largely played with percussion instruments such as
timpani, cymbals, or wood blocks. The second approach involved creating complex
sound effect machines that could replicate the sounds of the outside world within the
studio walls.
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Prior to “talking pictures,” pit drummer had been employed by movie theaters to
accompany films with auxiliary percussion sound effects. When animated films
began to include synchronized sound, the studios hired these same musicians to
record their talents inside the studio. The pit drummers would bring an assortment
of items commonly used in the trade with them: slide whistles, jew's harps, bulb
horns, and brake drums among other thing.

Warner Bros. Animation: Carl Stalling & Tregoweth Brown

In 1930, Warner Bros. Studios hired composer Carl Stalling and sound editor (credited
simply as “editor”) Tregoweth Brown to collaborate on the Looney Tunes animated
series. In 1933, they continued their work together on the Merrie Melodies series.

Carl Stalling made a name for the Warner Bros. as the pioneer of zany orchestral
sound effects by scoring things such as pizzicato violins for tiptoeing characters or a
trumpet glissandos for an elephant vocalization.

Meanwhile, Tregoweth Brown began to experiment with using Warner Bros.’s

extensive library of live action movie set recordings within an animated content. He
would often use sounds such as a car skid for an animated character coming to an
abrupt stop or the sound of a biplane flying by to cover a character zooming off
screen. This out-of-context use of real world sounds soon because the hallmark sonic
characteristic of Warner Bros. Animation.

Additionally, as recording equipment became more compact, Brown began taking a

tape recorder out of the studio and into the field to record the sounds in the real
world. He then transferred these sounds to film and saved them in his growing
sound effects library, allowing for a system in which he could edit his own custom-
recorded sounds into future projects again and again. This editorial methodology
was entirely new to animation, but quickly became a key part of the process.

Crash! Bang! Boom! The Wild Sounds of

Treg Brown Part 1. Click play to watch.

Crash! Bang! Boom! The Wild Sounds of

Treg Brown Part 2. Click play to watch.

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Walt Disney Studios: Jimmy MacDonald
Sound effects wizard Jimmy
MacDonald is featured in this
episode of Disney Family Album.
Click play to watch.

As animation itself evolved and films became more life-like, Walt Disney hired Jimmy
MacDonald (in 1935) to begin creating custom sound effect machines that he could
record inside the studio. MacDonald largely pioneered the creation of sound effect
contraptions such as wind and rain machines, glass jug motors, and bowed frog
ribbits which replicated the natural sounds of the world in unexpected ways. In his
tenure at Disney, MacDonald is said to have created over 28,000 sound effects for 139
features films and 335 shorts.

In 1941, Walt Disney Studios became the first to implement vocal processing with its
film Dumbo. This was accomplished using the Sonivox, a contraption with two
cylinders, similar in appearance to tin cans, which were held to either side of the
performer’s throat. The recorded sound had a metallic tonal quality, but also
preserved the actor’s performance. The modern day equivalent of this device is the
vocoder.
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Hanna-Barbera: Greg Watson & Pat Foley

Sound Ideas compiled a Top 10 list of the best Hanna-Barbera cartoon sound effects.
Click play to watch.

In the late 1950’s, television animation blossomed largely due to a more economical
style of animation which was dialogue- rather than action-based. Thus, television
animation moved away from the previously popular Charlie Chaplin-inspired slapstick
comedy style, and more toward that of popular studio comedy series of the time. At
the forefront of this movement was Hanna-Barbera. In the 1960’s, the Hanna-
Barbera television series The Flintstones began using a laugh track, which further
recreated the feeling of a live studio audience, a popular aspect of studio comedy
television series of that era.

Throughout the 1960’s, Hanna-Barbera’s Greg Watson created a cartoon sound

library that paralleled Tregoweth Brown’s Warner Bros. library. Watson created iconic
sound after sound on The Jetsons, The Yogi Bear Show, and The Flintstones. Pat Foley
continued this work for Hanna-Barbera through the 1980’s. Because of their shared
legacy, the Hanna-Barbera library remains the epitome of classic cartoon sound
effects to this day.

New Technology, Better Sound

As technology continued to progress, both sound and animation became increasingly
realistic. In the 1950’s, optical recording gave way to magnetic recording, resulting in
less noise per audio track. With optical, no more than eight tracks (the term for audio
layers) could be added to a film before noise became excessive. With magnetic

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recording, that number grew to 200 tracks. With the advent of the digital audio
workstation in the early 1990’s, the number of simultaneous sound tracks became
unlimited.

This technological shift paved the way for animation sound to change from the work
of a single man who recorded and edited sound to film to a task assigned to a team of
sound professionals, all with different responsibilities.

The Modern Sound Team

Modern day animation sound teams are made up of several key positions: a
supervising sound editor whose job it is to oversee the entire creative process; sound
effects editors or designers who create and sync sound effects to picture; dialogue
editors who adjust the synchronization and quality of the recorded dialogue; foley
artists who perform footsteps and record props; and re-recording mixers who
combine all of these sonic elements together with the addition of music.

Contemporary Sound Design: A Mix of Methods

Although modern sound teams are now comprised of a number of individuals, the
sound designer’s role has not diminished in its creative importance. Ben Burtt is a
key example of this fact. In 2009, his work on the animated feature film Wall-E
garnered him and his team an Academy Award for Best Sound Editing. His approach
to sound design largely draws on his expansive knowledge of Tregoweth Brown and
Jimmy MacDonald’s past endeavors. As fitting with the modern concept of sound
design, Burtt employed a combination of traditional recording techniques, custom-
built contraptions, and digitally manufactured and manipulated elements to create
the sounds for Wall-E.

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Animation Sound Design: Ben Burtt Creates the Sounds for Wall-E (Part 1) © Walt
Disney Pictures.

Click play to watch.

Animation Sound Design: Ben Burtt Creates the Sounds for Wall-E (Part 2) © Walt
Disney Pictures.

Click play to watch.

A Great Contribution to the Art of Animation

Through the years, the role of a sound editor or designer for animation has changed
greatly. From percussionist, to mechanical engineer, to digital expert, the focus has
always been the same: to create something that are new and interesting that furthers
the audience’s connection to the work. Whether it is the tentative nature of a
pizzicato tiptoe or the hauntingly forlorn robot vocals of Wall-E, sound designers have
been contributing greatly to the art of animation throughout the years.

QUESTION: WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE CLASSIC CARTOON SOUND

EFFECT? SHARE IN THE COMMENT SECTION BELOW!

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