Cause and Effect

Sometimes, though, even our most sophisticated technology needs a little human touch. Years ago, when we were recording Uncle Moishy’s Shh! It’s Loshon Hora!, Officer Chofetz and Officer Chaim kept using their radios to contact the base, and we wanted to put squelch/static between the transmissions. Just then the Internet was down, so we all tried using our mouths to make the sound of static — but it basically sounded like a bunch of guys coughing. Then I remembered that I was wearing my Hatzolah radio — problem solved!

That was a good improvisation, but 40 or 50 years ago, it was always about low-tech sound effects. Remember “Ani Maamin” from the JEP 3 album, where the song ends abruptly with machine guns, leaving the listener with the creepy knowledge that the boy’s father met an untimely end at the hand of the Nazis? As over-the-top as it might seem today, there are people who tell me they still can’t listen to that song without getting chills.

Here’s a trivia question: Who blew an actual shofar for the intro to JEP 2’s “Times of Joy,” an upbeat song about Maamad Har Sinai to the tune of Abie Rotenberg’s “Ki Lecha Tov Lehodos”? (Answer: Yisroel Lamm.)

And speaking of memorable intros, master showman Yigal Calek a”h was probably the first one to create unforgettable sound effects that people still remember today. Yigal had a lot of fun creating sound effects for intros on the London School of Jewish Song/Neginah album, including the schoolyard noise for “Lechu Banim,” the rain and thunder for “Chamol,” and the cannon for “Vechi Yadav.”