ReFrederator Blog

I’m the kind of guy who goes through life, observing the world around me, all the time mentally supplying my own sound effects — cartoon sound effects!

I’ve never slipped on ice without that “Wa-Wa-Wa-Hooie” from the Goofy cartoons going off somewhere in my head. When I see the little first grade girl next door sneak around while playing hide and seek, I imagine the “dinka-dinka-dinka” noise Fred Flinstone makes on his tippy toe approach down the bowling alley.

But mostly what I hear on my imaginary soundtrack are the noises from old Terrytoons. This, of course, makes things a lot less confusing, since the studio only seemed to have about a half dozen actual effects, all of which they used over, and over, and over, and over again. Any forceful impact was accompanied with a kind of peach carton crunch, guns always sounded like the same little drum tap, and everything from a blue whale to a goldfish made the identical, one-size fits all splash when it hit the water (and immediately sounded like somebody blowing into a straw in a glass of milk, when the scene switched underwater.)

A nice touch was the abruptness of all their stuff. If Mighty Mouse was going to fly somewhere, he sounded like a wind tunnel the instant he became airborne. Once he touched ground, the noise stopped, boom, like turning a switch. I like that. Seems like a much tidier way of doing things.

Dave Kirwan