I am working on a soundtrack for a movie project, and there is one musical instrument, or sound effect, that I cannot place. I have asked around and others do not know what this. The sound is at 0:23 into this clip, and it's the high squeaking sound, if anyone can tell:

Se7en (1995) title sequence - YouTube

Thank you very much for any input on this! I really appreciate it!

Chamois leather on glass?

Maybe a damp fingertip rubbed across a rubber balloon?

Sounds a bit like a budgie chirping to me.

Sorry Ryan, but this has the hallmarks of turning into one of those hundred responses posts. Three of us have answered the question, and this must have been enough. One question. With soundscape type music, it’s very rare for one pieces components to slot into another. On its own, an effect sound like this is one of thousands at your disposal, the secret is them fitting well. Composing has always been one of your weaker areas, why have you taken on a sea of pain again?

This is one of my favourite intros. Superbly crafted, this multi- MULTI layered soundscape, working intimately with the visuals, builds and “sews” together this truly disturbing Horror-Detective flick. Turn the visuals OFF and Start deconstructing the Soundscape using a good set of Cans.

Awesome! Thanks for reminding me of the artistry that went into crafting this aural experience.

Totally agree, and the complexity is on two levels, the musical one and the other. I’m not sure in soundscapes what the other actually is called? You can’t say it’s effects, because it’s more than that. Ryan’s ‘sound’, is a good example. It doesn’t matter what it is, it fits that particular need. In fact what it is is irrelevant. It is a tiny ingredient in a wonderful meal. Used in a different recipe, it wont work.

Oh are you saying that it might not work in mine, even for a gritty suspense tone, cause it may only work if the whole musical piece is like the Seven title sequence for example?

Sorry Ryan, but this has the hallmarks of turning into one of those hundred responses posts. Three of us have answered the question, and this must have been enough. One question. With soundscape type music, it’s very rare for one pieces components to slot into another. On its own, an effect sound like this is one of thousands at your disposal, the secret is them fitting well. Composing has always been one of your weaker areas, why have you taken on a sea of pain again?

Oh well I am in a relationship with a musician and music writer now who is teaching me a lot so I think if we work together, we can perhaps pull it off hopefully. She will write the music, but she wants to know what sounds I want, and couldn't figure out where to get that one particularly.

Could the sound effect be a turntable and the needle, hitting and scraping the LP possibly?

Yes. Does it matter Ryan - you want the end result. The origin matters little,

It sounds like what I'd hear tuning around the ham bands with an AM or SSB receiver, and a slightly shaky hand on the tuning knob. Or perhaps a theramin. Should I offer more details, or is this a good place to stop? Votes, anyone, yea or nay?

Ah, Ondes Martenot possibly. Think the Gerry Anderson composer, Barry Gray. He did some super spooky themes and beds for space 1999 and UFO, after the puppet shows.

If you write music, part of the deal is collecting sound sources, and finding them afterwards after tucking the sound away in your memory. Newcomers to composing need this knowledge.

I’ve never ever heard a sound in somebody else’s composition and wanted to transplant it. It’s a bit like Alfred hitchcock’s psycho shower sound. You cannot lift it and use it in something else. Every sound source has to be appropriate. Nicking sounds as a concept works as long as it is tweaked to fit, but I suspect in our example here, it will be a straight, inappropriate ingredient that probably wont work. Asking the question sort of proclaims the success?

Nice obscure reference, Paul. Quite possibly. Or else an H-P 200 C/D.

I have had a policy of never selling any musical instrument since I regretted it in 1978. I was in a Beach Boys tribute band for a very long time and my only no selling rule broken was ……. A theramin. It was a rather nice one but totally impossible to play in tune, on command. Spawn of the devil!

Copy Paste only with sound now. Still working at this move ehh? I wonder how this thread will end.

He's going to name his film "The Dirty Apocalypse in Chinatown" or maybe "Brokeback Kane Massacre."

I'll play. A wet rubber glove sliding on glass then coming to a sudden stop? :)

Chris Young

He's going to name his film "The Dirty Apocalypse in Chinatown" or maybe "Brokeback Kane Massacre."
“Sin-e-ma”
A deranged indie filmmaker makes 7 cinematic kills. The first victim he hits on the head with a telephoto lens yelling compression.

I'll play. A wet rubber glove sliding on glass then coming to a sudden stop? :)

Chris Young
The sound of your doctor pulling on a latex exam glove. Or you, a few moments later.

I wonder how this thread will end.

I don't know, but the end is probably at least three pages away.

I don't know, but the end is probably at least three pages away.

He seems to have mellowed. I’d thought by now we’d be knee deep in the intractable problems of coping a mainstream movie with no budget and a TI Rebel…

It's definitely *not* a stylus skating across a bunch of grooves on a phonograph record. It's too smooth for that. The skating stylus would have a much different waveform.

Of course it's easy enough to extract that one brief bit of sound from the overall track. Once it's isolated, you get a better idea of what might have been the original source.

But that doesn't answer the question: how was it created; where did it come from? And we can only speculate about that. I don't think it's one simple raw actual recorded sound. It might be sped up, slowed down, have vibrato added, plus some reverb, etc.

If you really want that *type* of sound, which sounds "squeaky" to me, get out your mic and some squeaky things (some good suggestions above, a balloon, a really oil-free pane of glass, etc.) and experiment. You will end up with something different (but maybe similar), which might actually be a better length or pitch to fit your particular track.

And of course we find low sounds and speed them up, or even just pitch shift them now, or find high ones and slow them down. I’ve just bought the model of reel to reel that I owned in 1980, and they were great for making new sounds. Remember music concrete?

Number nine ... number nine ... number nine ...

I don't remember too much of the early experimental stuff, but I certainly remember Sergeant Pepper's.

Tape decks used to be "the" way to play around. I used pitch shifting, vari-speed, looping, reverse play, flanging, and of course the ubiquitous tape echo, in local radio production. It rarely drew comments so maybe nobody noticed. I might have been ahead of my time, or, then again, I simply might have been bad. That seems so prehistoric now that we have digital editing and manipulation.

I'm curious what kind of deck you got, Paul.

This is the one I currently have and am swapping it for a slightly different version on Saturday. This one doesn’t have 15ips but has Dolby I wanted 15ips, and not bothered about the Dolby, as that version would have switched it out at high speed for licensing reasons. Dolby at 15ips isnt allowed.

That looks like a nice machine, Paul, and certainly in very clean condition. I've never seen a Ferrograph in the flesh, here in the states.

If that machine has Dolby, I'm guessing it's Dolby B (or was it C?) as I think Dolby A (4 band) was always a separate stand-alone unit. And I'm pretty sure Dolby A *could* be used at 15IPS if you wanted to do so.

I'm curious about the two pairs of tone controls. I'm guessing those were somewhere in the playback chain. I've never seen a recorder that had tone controls in the record chain. I'm curious whether those affected only tape playback, or whether they affected the "output" circuits, whether the "input" or "tape" source was selected.

Anyway, congrats on getting it! I hope you have some old archival tapes to listen to.

I had at first a series 7 - mid 70s, then a super 7, then a logic 7 - very much the same machines with cosmetic upgrades until the logic, which was the first with button control, not a rotary mechanical knob.

These machines came in many variations. normal was 1 ⅞ IPS, 3 ¾ IPS, 7 ½" IPS - this was available in quarter and half track versions, with or without Dolby B - this was available on all speeds. The High speed version started at 3 ¾ IPS, and had 15 IPS as the top speed. Dolby B was a domestic noise reduction system, so there was an interlock on the 15 IPS speed to prevent it engaging. This was on the logic 7 and the Super 7 - I cannot remember the series 7 having a dolby option. Oddly the series 7 could take 8" rather than 7" reels - super and logic had 10 ½" NAB spool capacity. Another option was loudspeakers - to eliptical speakers in the case sides and a stereo 10W amp - this was the idea with the tone controls - replay only treble and bass. Record was left/right or stereo. You also had the option of recording on say the right channel through the mic input and the left hand channel's output would be re-recorded, via the right channel line in so you could do sound on sound. Take your guitar recorded on the left and add the mic to it, then replay that and add another on the left track - you could easily do half a dozen adds like this. Loss of course with each bounce but it worked. The mic input was surprisingly forgiving, so on a low setting it was happy with a guitar plugged in. Output wise, speaker level and 600Ohm balanced line. The logic had a change to the head design - the same spec but a different shape - which allowed the tape path to be pressure pad free. Series 7 and Super 7 had felt pads on all heads. Logic has none, but a metal shield falls over the replay head to reduce noise piclup from stray magnetic fields.

The only real problem was discovered in the 80s when the rubber parts started to go soft, then sticky, eventually crumbling away. Here in the UK (this is turning into a history lesson, sorry) historically here we had only a few professional or semi-professional brands. Homegrown ones, like Ferrograph (who turned into Neal-Ferrograph, and made the police station interview recording machines) and Brennell made the popular machines. Revox of course were Swiss company with Willi Studer at the helm. The BBC started getting modified Revox machines from the UK ASC company, who took brand new Revox chassis and took bits away and added more broadcast facilities - spaces for splicers, removal of knobs that weren't needed - that kind of thing. Other popular european machines were from Grundig, and domestic machines from people like Elizabethan, but these were quite domestic in features. Tandberg in Skandinavia had some pro machines too, that were used in schools and colleges. Ferrograph were not as expensive as Revox, and Revox much cheaper than Studer, but we also had a few Phillips machines - but they were hifi products really, and all 4 track. Of course the machine we sold a few of that I always wanted, the Technics 1500 was a gorgeous looking machine, but out of my price range. I bought a nearly new Ferrograph from my boss - a Super 7, then got a Logic in part exchange, but stupidly I sold it to buy a Teac 3440. Never had another 2 track until now. I did see a few EMI machines but never saw any in my own area, just London. I lost interest in analogue as soon as digits arrived. First one was a Sony F1 betamax recorder which had a digital audio box - so you could record stereo onto a betamax cassette. Then DAT on Panasonic or Technics machines. They were identical apart from the Technics had copy management and only did 48K, while the Panasonic did not have SCMS and would do 44.1 or 48KHz. I had no need to go back to reel to reel.

History lesson over!

I assume the "Wind" knob controls motor power and thus tape tension? What's the V/H switch for ... it can't be vertical and horizontal ... or can it?!

In reality I'm glad I'm not adjusting brakes and aligning heads any more. But in my fantasy world, I sometimes miss tape. I feel as if I'd get a somehow "better" recording (or maybe a "real" recording) if I used a Nagra IVs, rather than one my digital whatevers. But then I come to my senses and realize that today's digital audio is incredibly better than tape could be. Besides, it's much easier to transport a digital recorder (weight < 1 pound) compared to the old Ampexes I used that ranged from 45 to 60 pounds. Those Ampii also cost roughly $1,000.00 or more in 1965, which is ~$9,000.00 today, compared with a few hundred for most digital recorders. Hmmm, weight ratio ~60:1, price ratio ~60:1. No wow, no flutter, no head wear, no need for Dolby, etc. And of course infinite editing and processing capability. This *is* progress.

Still, that Ferrograph looks like a very nice machine. Kind of makes me wonder whether I could easily find one here in the US. (Hmmm, I wonder what brand Richard Nixon used.)

It sounds like RF interference being tuned through on a radio receiver and tuned back across, something someone may have discovered and thought would be a cool effect.

Last word on the hijacking - the V/H switch adjusts the spring tension on the spring loaded arm, so counteracting the weight of the arm itself.

I returned the 4 track to pick up the 2 track and the seller powered it up and went to the kitchen to make coffee and left me fiddling. the adjustable torque on the rewind/wind spools worked fine, and the usual clunks and clicks happened but I notice the capstan wheel was not rotating at all. We took the front panel off and inside the large capstan flywheel gets driven by one of three rubber idlers - the capstan has three separate drive surfaces concentric to each other - a stepped pulley, with the metal surface having a rubber surface - a rubber insert that makes contact with the rubber of the idlers. The whole assembly was a sticky black mess. I touched it and it took five minutes of scrubbing to get it off my hand. All the internal rubber had disolved and had run into puddles. The idlers I have seen available on the net, but a new flywheel would be needed and I have never seen one of these, The upshot is I no longer have the working four track (low speed version) and the replacement is effectively scrap, so a 400 mile journey for nothing. Two, if you include the first where he gave mne the wrong one. Luckily I checked this one properly before taking it home, but the fact is now I have no reel to reel. Not meant to be. It seems that this one must have had a new capstan pinch wheel because the rubber on that was fine, but the other rubber parts had gone. Even if I find another - it could be a year before the rubber in that one suddenly goes, and spares are getting impossible. I think I will give up.

I'm very sorry to hear that, Paul. No doubt a huge disappointment.

I've never seen a R-R machine with idler wheel drive as you described, I've seen that only in older phono turntables. Any tape machine I've seen was either belt drive or a direct motor drive (i.e. the capstan was the motor shaft). Of those, some were hysteresis-synchronous motors, and IIRC some of the newer ones were servo controlled.

Had you considered the possibility of swapping heads so the 1/2 track heads were on the working transport? A lot of work, though, and the seller might not be too keen on the idea.

I wonder whether there's some way you could modify the Ferrograph to use belt drive. Of course that would mean one fixed speed unless you opened the machine to change belts. Even so, that might be a lot better than nothing. (You could always play tapes at the wrong speed, then shift the speed digitally.) I'd love to look at it in person, but that would be more than a 400 mile drive!

The engineering is very open, so it wouldn't be possible but the cost might be scary. The ¼ track machine has an extra swing cover on the replay head that swings over to screen the narrower track head from external fields that I believe is because the 4 track heads have lower output and corresponding higher gain - hence the extra shielding. This is missing from the high speed version. Sadly, it's just a sale that has failed even though buyer and seller have done their best. I'm thinking maybe scrap the reel to reel idea, until something more secure happens. I would really love a Technics 1500 series, but they're always crazy money, but look amazing with the vertical head block.