David Remnick: Fred Armisen, well, he's got a thing about sound. He does a bit where he claims to be able to imitate every single accent in American speech.

Fred Armisen: -Pittsburgh, yinz go there? Yinz go there to Pittsburgh? Then down in Baltimore, motor oil. I always think motor oil. Baltimore, motor oil. Then down to Virginia. Virginia--

David Remnick: And on Saturday Night Live, he co-wrote the recurring sketch about how people talk in LA.

Fred Armisen: Get back on San Vicente, take it to the 10, then switch over to the 405 North and let it dump you out into Mulholland, where you belong.

David Remnick: Recently, Armisen announced an album called 100 Sound Effects, and the track titles are a little like punch lines themselves. First time homeowners switching circuit breakers, Romanian crowd at rock club shouting for an encore. [rhythmic clapping] I confess I wasn't sure if this was an album album or concept art, but it's a real album, and it's even coming out soon on vinyl if you're so inclined.

Michael Schulman: Well, hi.

Fred Armisen: Hi.

Michael Schulman: So I played this album for myself and my cat last night. She was confused. There are no birds on that, I don't think, so she was not that interested.

Fred Armisen: That would have to be a separate album for animals, because they're a different audience.

David Remnick: The New Yorker's Michael Schulman met up with Fred Armisen and they recently went out to do some sound recording of their own.

Michael Schulman: Let's start with the basics. Like what is this thing and how did you come to do it, 100 Sound Effects?

Fred Armisen: It was kind of like I was lamenting that there aren't sound effects albums in our lives as much, or in my life. I feel like they just used to exist more or they were more present. There'd be like a Halloween one. You just would see them everywhere. The thought, I was like, "Oh, I should make one," just like the titles of the ones that used to exist were always like, Door Closing. There'd be like some street sounds, sirens, like airplane sounds and stuff. It was just from that I was like, "What would a new version of it be like?" Instead of just taking out my phone and just recording stuff, I wanted to treat it properly, like let me go to a recording studio and really do it. Let me try to mimic some things that I've heard before. It really kind of took about a year of booking more time at a studio and then a few things out on the street, but it was mostly studio stuff.

Michael Schulman: When you picture people listening to this album, what do you picture? Are people sitting and listening very intently, or is it background noise?

Fred Armisen: In reality, I picture someone playing it for their friend.

Michael Schulman: Oh, that's fun.

Fred Armisen: It's more like, "Hey, look what just came out," and so not going through the whole thing, but just playing little parts of it, and then it looks good in the record collection, so it's not in the music section. It's like, "Oh, then here's this sound effects record that actually came out more recently."

Michael Schulman: Right. It's like a novelty item-

Fred Armisen: Kind of.

Michael Schulman: -but also maybe practical.

Fred Armisen: That would be a dream.

Michael Schulman: You mentioned the sort of classic sound effects albums that you used to see. Did you own them growing up? Did you own these or just kind of

Fred Armisen: Only Halloween ones. I remember Ghoul Sounds, you know, woo-oo-oo, woo-oo-oo, and I guess they'd be used for haunted mansion, amusement, like during Halloween. Oh, actually, I had a GI Joe single, the toy GI Joes, and I think those were heavy on sound effects. They weren't advertised that way, but there was a lot of crawling through the dirt kind of stuff.

Michael Schulman: War sounds for toys.

Fred Armisen: Adventure sounds. I gotta grab this rock. [grunts] Almost got it. That kind of thing.

Michael Schulman: [laughter] Wow. It is a lost art form, truly. [laughs] So the sounds are subdivided. Was that where you started, kind of like thinking about different scenarios in life, like a plane or a-

Fred Armisen: Yes.

Michael Schulman: -music store, stuff like that?

Fred Armisen: Yes. I started with all the music stuff, was like, "That's easy." I wanted to do someone tuning a guitar, and it's in tune, except for when they strum it, it's out of tune. That happens sometimes to guitar players. We're like, "I just tuned it. Why is it still out of tune?"

Michael Schulman: Let's hear that one.

[tuning guitar]

[strummed chord]

[laughter]

Fred Armisen: It's just something that happens. It started there because those are easy to record, just set up an amp and everything, so the music ones were just-- it was a good starting point.

Michael Schulman: I think before you were in comedy, you were in a punk band.

Fred Armisen: Yes.

Michael Schulman: People know you're a drummer. You were in Trench Mouth, a punk band starting in the '80s, so I imagine that you just lived a lot of your life around the sounds of bands or doing their work.

Fred Armisen: Yes, and there's so much sound checking. So much of your life is just sound checks.

Michael Schulman: This is the sound of a New Yorker writer writing down what you're wearing. Flannel shirt.

Fred Armisen: This sound is my reaction as I look down to my shirt.

Michael Schulman: Black pants. Okay, I got it. You also did things out in the field. Can you tell me about where you went out to record more organically?

Fred Armisen: I spent some time in Ireland working, and there were sounds of parts of the kitchen, the washing machine, the dryer, that, to me, sounded very European, like opening doors. There's this different sound to even a front door. It's like a lever, and it's like hardwood. There's no way to recreate that, so with that, I used a portable recorder and just did front door opening, fob opening the building door, and then I recorded the washing machine and the dryer, because I think their dryers are just very different to ours, like there's usually one unit that does the same thing. It's way at the end [unintelligible 00:06:49].

Michael Schulman: Oh, yes. European Small Dryer with Some Confusion.

Fred Armisen: Yes.

Michael Schulman: Let's listen to that, because now I'm really curious what this dryer sounds like.

[dryer drones]

[dryer beeps]

Michael Schulman: Oh, that's an interesting little beep thing.

Fred Armisen: What does that mean?

What is triangle?

Michael Schulman: That's you giving up, like, what's going on?

Fred Armisen: No. This really happened where-- I mean, I was recreating it, but I couldn't figure out how to unlock it. I was like, "It says it's done. Why won't it open?"

Michael Schulman: Huh. Whoa. What was that?

[machine whirrs]

Fred Armisen: No idea.

Michael Schulman: The dryer, just making a [unintelligible 00:07:35]?

Fred Armisen: No idea. These are new machines.

Michael Schulman: That is mysterious. Oh, my God. [laughs] That was like an alien landing. That was really unsettling.

Fred Armisen: That's something I wouldn't be able to do in a studio. It's just so specific to being there. Things like that I had to do there.

Michael Schulman: So you grew up on Long Island. Are there particular sounds that you associate with where you grew up?

Fred Armisen: Yes, definitely. There were a lot of delis and pizza places, and opening those doors, there was a jingle, usually, sound.

Michael Schulman: It's like how The Sopranos ends.

Fred Armisen: Oh, that's right.

Michael Schulman: Spoiler alert.

Fred Armisen: [laughs]

Michael Schulman: The last thing you see is Tony looking up-

Fred Armisen: I forgot about that.

Michael Schulman: -and the door jingles. Are you, in general, someone who is sensitive to sound more than other people-

Fred Armisen: Oh, yes.

Michael Schulman: -do you think? I mean, are you always that aware of it?

Fred Armisen: I can't compare myself to other people, but I would say that it's a major part of my life and maybe my career in a way that-- what got me there is more about sound. The sound of an accent.

Michael Schulman: Which chicken and egg is it? Do you think that you were sensitive to noises, and that got you interested in listening to how accents sound-

Fred Armisen: Yes, definitely.

Michael Schulman: -or was it, being a actor who had to do accents got you more sensitive to it [unintelligible 00:09:14]?

Fred Armisen: No, no, no. It's the first version. My parents weren't American. They became American, but my dad's from Germany and my mom's from Venezuela, and we lived in Brazil for a little while, so there was a lot of sort of relearning of how people talk, especially moving to New York. New York has a very specific way that the people sound, so it was easier to notice. Because of my life, it was easier to notice that people sounded different.

Michael Schulman: What were the sounds of Brazil?

Fred Armisen: God, it was so different. First of all, as cliché as it might sound, the sound of the music in the streets, because they had samba schools, not educational schools, samba being like a school meaning a group of percussionists. We lived right near Copacabana Beach, and somewhere around December, so they'd start rehearsing, so that's one sound you would hear is the sound of drums. TV sounded really different. And the Brazilian kids. So we spoke English and went to an American school.

Michael Schulman: How old were you when you lived in Brazil?

Fred Armisen: I was like 7 and 8 or something, but the kids, not in a mean way, would make fun of kids who spoke English, the Brazilian kids, and they would mimic us. We'd be talking, they would say like, [gibbers]. That was their version of what we sounded like. Everything sounded different there.

Michael Schulman: What about SNL? Does SNL have particular sounds, like sets moving and stuff, that stuck with you?

Fred Armisen: Oh, my God. SNL has such a specific sound that it's what I picture most with the-- because I love SNL with the cold open. There's like this hiss right at the cold open. I don't know, it's the sound-- I don't know what it comes from, the mics being on or something, so you hear the audience giggle a little, but then there's this whoosh, and it's only SNL where you're like, "They're about to start the cold open." Must be half a second, but there's a sound that's like, it begins this way.

Michael Schulman: Right, right. Well, Fred, I'm hoping that we can head out and do some fieldwork right now, if you're up for that. You up for that?

Fred Armisen: I'm up for it.

Michael Schulman: All right.

Fred Armisen: And sometimes elevator conversations, sounds like this. New York is, like, almost too easy in that there's so many sounds going on at the same time, but I think maybe we could do a good job of maybe finding some specifics. We're in a deli, and this is the sound of a busy deli. We're at an ATM. We're getting the hitting of buttons and numbers. This is getting out cash. [beeping] This is looking through a cooler for a soda that isn't there, like a drink that you can't find. You're going through, you're like, "Oh, they're out of whatever," so this is someone looking through it. [rustling] Good. We could do, I found what I was looking for, but then--

Michael Schulman: Oh, yes. Let's do that. Let's do that. Okay.

Fred Armisen: So that'll add a vocal quality to it.

There we go.

This is someone from Philadelphia, and they're ordering crepes.

Female voice: Hi, can I just get the lemon crepe, please?

Fred Armisen: We're going into a tunnel, one of those sort of overpass things in Central Park. What you hear is violin or fiddle player in the distance coming closer, so we're passing a fiddle player.

[playing fiddle]

[singing]

Michael Schulman: We're coming up on something very particular to Central Park South. What do we have here?

Fred Armisen: We've got a horse and carriage. Now, I don't want to do anything to alarm the horse, but the horse is just being really quiet.

Michael Schulman: Should we ask this guy?

Fred Armisen: Ask him. We wanted to get a sound of a clop, but I don't want to affect the horse.

Male voice: [inaudible 00:13:53]

Fred Armisen: Okay. Okay, Great. It's okay. It's okay.

Michael Schulman: Horse, do you have anything to say?

Male voice: [inaudible 00:14:00]

Michael Schulman: Okay, okay.

Fred Armisen: Aww.

Michael Schulman: We'll leave him alone. A very quiet horse. We have nothing from this horse.

Fred Armisen: Let's see. Let's maybe wait here a moment-

Michael Schulman: It's a guy [unintelligible 00:14:08]

Fred Armisen: -in case some horses do go by, because now I'm dead set on it.

Michael Schulman: We're just getting some sound effects around New York. What about clopping his hoof? Is that okay?

Male voice: [inaudible 00:14:23]

Fred Armisen: I think it's a no.

Michael Schulman: That's a no, yes.

Male voice: What's that?

Michael Schulman: No, that's all right. We don't want to bother you. It's fine.

Fred Armisen: Wonder if we could fake clopping sounds, just as a sense of-- it might fail, like maybe we won't get it.

Michael Schulman: Oh, oh, I have something.

Fred Armisen: Yes. Let's say that we had--

Michael Schulman: Here. Sunglasses case.

Fred Armisen: This is great. So let's say I'm gonna go on that wood over there. Let's say we had a directive that we had to get clopping noises, that we're not allowed back unless we get something, so let's fool our boss, so to speak.

Michael Schulman: Okay.

[clopping]

Fred Armisen: Maybe I'll go slower.

Michael Schulman: That's pretty good.

Fred Armisen: That's not bad, right?

Michael Schulman: Can you layer it with a little like--

[clicking]

?Fred Armisen: Yes, or maybe--

?Michael Schulman: I have another [unintelligible 00:15:16]

Fred Armisen: Ah, that'll help. Yes.

Michael Schulman: [unintelligible 00:15:19]

Fred Armisen: Let's start at the top. So this is Horses Clopping in Central Park, and I'll try to mimic that one.

[clopping]

Michael Schulman: Now, that was amazing, because right as you were doing that, we should note, an actual horse and carriage went by, and you just mimicked the exact rhythm of what you were hearing with a couple of glasses cases and equipment cases on this-

Fred Armisen: Piece of wood.

Michael Schulman: -wooden banister thing.

Fred Armisen: You never know.

Michael Schulman: Okay. Could be usable.

Fred Armisen: The horse looked over.

Michael Schulman: [laughs] The horse was like, "Is that my wife?"

Fred Armisen: Or, "Are you making fun of me?"

Michael Schulman: [laughs]

Fred Armisen: "You think I'm a joke?"

[music]

David Remnick: Comedian Fred Armisen. His new album 100 Sound Effects comes out on Drag City Records. Michael Schulman is a staff writer for The New Yorker, and I'm David Remnick. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. Thanks for listening. See you next time.

Michael Schulman: Oh, should we maybe just get this?

Fred Armisen: Sure.

Michael Schulman: This horse going by?

[clopping]

Fred Armisen: Excellent. Now we can compare.

Michael Schulman: Yes. We can compare how we did with the glasses case.

[music]

[00:17:10] [END OF AUDIO]

 

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