March 19, 2020 • 15 mins
Find out what the Lexus engine note has in common with one of the most famous movie soundtracks of all time as Malcolm breaks down the instrumentation, resonance and frequencies of the Lexus LC engine with two music experts.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. Soon after I got home from Toyota City, I
went to a dinner party at my brother's house in Canada.
My brother and his friends are all seriously musical. There
were three people there who had studied music theory in college.
(00:36):
Three accomplished pianists, a violinist. I think almost everyone except
me sings in a choir. At one point they started
talking about a woman named Shirley, a music scholar who had,
among other things, perfect pitch. Shirley used to have an
old manual transmission car, and as she shifted up, she
would call out the notes her car's engine was playing.
(00:59):
If I was in a car with her, I could
be like your cards, a scholaring what intervals this, and
she could be like E flat B flat D flat.
She could call her Yes, that's Annalie, the most serious
of the serious music people at the table. She used
to be a student of Shirley's. For the next ten minutes,
all people did was swap Shirley stories. She's a bit
(01:20):
of a legend. And then I chimed in. Since we
were talking about the music that engines make, I began
talking about what I had learned in Japan, about how
Lexus fine tuned the engine sound of its cars, and
as I was talking, I looked over it Annally and
understand that Annalie is not a car person. She drives
(01:41):
an ancient Honda Civic that looks like it survived at Tornado.
I would venture to say she's never thought a moment
about cars in her life, except to ask what does
that warning light mean? And yet even as I was
going on and on and on as I like to
do about the nuances and particulars of the sound of
the LC, I noticed, to my surprise that Annalie's face
(02:05):
was like, oh my, that is genius. So I thought
it would make sense with this episode to explain why
a serious music person who's never thought a moment about
cars in her life would hear about the engine note
of the Lexus Elsie and go, oh my, that is genius.
(02:26):
We're going to talk about Annalie and Shirley and this
from Pushkin Industries and Lexus. This is go and see
our podcasts about the fantastically neurotic world of Lexus. I'm
(02:49):
Malcolm Glabbo. The last episode was about the building blocks
of a great sounding engine. Naturally Aspirated cross Plain V
eight all in surround sound. In this episode, I want
(03:11):
to widen things out. So you've got the building blocks
of a great engine sound. You've got your world class orchestra,
the Toyota City Philharmonic. What song do you want to play?
(03:31):
After dinner, I got Annalie to give me a little tutorial.
I gave her a handout I'd been given from the
sound experts at Lexis, which was in technical speak that
I only vaguely understood, because, as I've explained, I'm a
car person, not a music person. And the first thing
she noticed was a sentence in the section entitled sound factor.
(03:54):
Under the category formats, the LC produces at least two
of the three senses, including composure, solidness, and elation at
resonant frequencies, with four hundred herts producing a sense of
composure and eight hundred hurts producing a sense of elation.
(04:14):
What does that mean? What is a resonant frequency? Anily
started talking about the game you can play with half
empty wineglasses. A wine glass is a good way to
model it because you're hearing one out and then we
hear a range other of others kind of coming up
to do it. Let's see you can get to work. Yeah,
I'm sure you try this as a kid. You wet
(04:38):
your finger and run it around the rim of the glass.
At first, nothing happens. Then when the vibrations caused by
your finger hit just the right level, the glass begins
to sing with this full pulsating note. That's the sound
(04:59):
of you reaching the wine glasses resonant frequency, the point
at which it vibrates most freely. You can make music
from resonant frequency. That's what singing bowls are. You have
big glass bowls of various sizes, and the musician strikes
them softly with a candle to get them vibrating at
their resonant frequency. Anily found a demonstration on YouTube and
(05:23):
played it for me. So he has a bawl that's
the size of like a cooking bawl. Yep, and it's
made out of crystal. This one is. And here is
a stick. Yeah, And he's just as we were doing
with the wine glasses. What he's doing is he's tracing
a stick around the lip of the ball. Yeah. And
the does he created in the beginning, what does he does?
(05:43):
He create a single note in the beginning and then
span So the way of the bullets that I've him
in similar to a wine glass. Depending on how full
the wine glasses will create a different pitch. Same thing
with how the ball is structure. Any think how the
ball is built. So he said at the beginning of
sons in G flat major, so there's nothing he can
do to change what he works. It begins in G
flat mane and then so let's let's go back to
the beginning. Just played that moment again. Does I start playing?
(06:06):
Then c I was doing a second bowl, So he
the bowl has a particular note. The first one was
what G flat? So he plays it and then as
it as the sound resonates within the bowl, which you
(06:28):
get is a range of G flats above it up. Now,
contrast that resonance to the sound produced by an instrument
like an oboe. The walls of an oboe are rigid.
They don't vibrate nearly as much. When you stop playing
a note on the oboe, the sound stops. Now why
(06:51):
does this matter, Well, remember back to that line from
the Lexus Sound Manual. They wanted to create feelings of
composure and elation. That oboe does not produce feelings of
composure and elation. Figure Oh, yeah, it's so narrow. You
don't hear any other sounds, no shimmer, no resonance. If
(07:11):
your car made that noise, that's yeah, exactly. When I
was in Japan, I found out that Lexus spent five
years of experimentation and iteration on the acoustics of the
Elsie's engine. They played with the length and thickness of
intake hoses, with exhaust pipes, with the calibration of the
(07:32):
sound regulator, and on and on and on to hit
particular frequencies. The idea is to tune the car with
four hundred hurts producing a sense of composure, and eight
hundred hurts producing a sense of elation. Four hundred hurts composure,
(07:57):
eight hundred hurts elation, and now the whole thing together.
Oh my, that is so genius. But once you get
(08:18):
the right frequencies, you're still not done. The Lexus briefing
document had another line that confused me. It was under
the heading spectral harmony realizes perfect sound intervals eight degrees
in five degrees with three or more orders of vibration.
I asked Annalie once again to explain, so basically, in music,
(08:41):
I'm at a piano right now, We've got eight notes
in what we call a scale on the piano, We've
got eight different white notes, and these are kind of
the foundations of piano music or any music in general,
these eight different notes. And so the distance between two
notes is what we call an interval. So I'm at
a piano, so this is where I'm starting. This is
one note away, that's interval of a second. Three notes away,
(09:04):
it's an interval a third, five, six, seven, eight. So
those are our kind of basic different intervals. So what
we refer to when we say perfect intervals, we're referring
to afferent fifth and an eighth. So in that line
(09:27):
from Lexus realizes perfect sound intervals eight degrees and five degrees,
that's what they're talking about. And so the reason that
those those are considered perfect intervals is because when we
have two notes that've got different frequencies, and it actually
has to do with the frequencies between the two pitches
being and what the ratio is. And so when you've
got perfect intervals, the ratio is really small, and they
(09:50):
sound just more pleasing, more pure, what we say is
more consonant. And so these fifth and that's this eighth,
those are pure sounds. So I have an example of
these this fifth and this eight, these perfect intervals, which
I think are are very well known, and it's from
the two THO one, a Space Odyssey theme. Yeah, so
(10:11):
this is this is what it is. I'll play it
for you. So we start with one note and then
we're going to build an eight, a perfect octave on top.
Then we're going to add a fifth, and then we're
going to add another octave. So here we go. So
this is our base note. Hm, that's an octave above. Ye,
that's another fifth above. That's another octave above, and that's
(10:40):
nothing too, a perfect yeah. Yeah, yeah, So that's a
that's an example of a of a progression using perfect
intervals exactly. And it's there's something incredibly stirring about perfect
intervals are familiar, powerful, iconic. I mean, it's fascinating when
you watch when you sports are an super interesting example
(11:01):
of that. Um so like taking up to the ball game,
take may out that take may is an octave, that's
the perfect eight, and so people will sing that and
they don't know anything about music, don't want anything about intervals,
but that that's just like natural for them. They'll be
able to wait and then what's the take me, what's
the third note? That's a major sixth? Yeah, which is
(11:23):
not a which is not you break the perfect You
begin with the perfect interval, and then you break it
come out of it, yeah yeah, which gives the song
poslutely makes it interest right right, yeah right, I'd be boring.
And all the music we listened to sam with like space.
But at the heart of that, that iconic beginning is
they are referencing this perfect interval. Yeah, same, the somewhere
(11:44):
over a rainbow some what that's an octave and then
it goes out for rainbow we go, we get out
of it. But that that perfect octave is the base
of lots of our music. But not all intervals are perfect.
If you don't sweat the details, you can have a
lousy interval. I want you to give me an example
of something that doesn't work, like using the same the
(12:05):
same uh space Odyssey do and you do something with
simple space his work. Now I think you see the
point of all of this. The sound of an engine
(12:28):
under acceleration is an interval. Now does anyone care what
their food processor sounds like when it speeds up from
low to medium to high no, a food processor is
an appliance, but to the car nuts at Lexus, a
car is not an appliance. It's a living, breathing piece
(12:55):
of mechanical art that exists to bring pleasure to the driver.
You start with what the driver wants, and you work
backwards and what does the driver want in his or
her heart? From that glorious naturally aspirate cross plane V
eight a perfect acceleration interval composure relation. That's why Annalie's
(13:26):
face said that is so genius. When I brought up
the sound of the LC at the dinner party, realizes
perfect sound intervals eight degrees in five degrees with three
or more orders of vibration Musica Universe salis, It's totally pleasurable.
(13:54):
I can only imagine how satisfying it would be to
be in a car that as it as it runs
up and gets fat, you know faster, is making these
perfectly pleasing intervals that everyone wants to listen to. It's amazing.
It's totally wild. I mean, so many people wanted aware
of it. But like I was mentioned in this piano teacher,
I had that you know as a cars as her
(14:15):
cars were being actually aware of what the intervals are like.
Ninety nine point nine percent of the population doesn't care
about For people who notice, it's fantastic all out the wait,
what's the name of your teacher? Shirley? Surely so, Alexis says,
please Shirley, she will love us. Lexus needs to get Shirley. Shirley,
(14:38):
wherever you are, you need to get yourself, Alexis. Go
and See is produced by Jacob Smith with Emily Rosteck
and Carl Migliari, edited by Julia Barton. Evan Viola composed
our theme music and mixed and mastered our episodes. Special
(15:00):
thanks to Jacob Weisberg, Head of Fame, Paul Williamson, the
Mark Levinson engineers, and all the Lexus executives, engineers and
designer who participated in our recordings. Go and See is
a production of Lexus and Pushkin Industries. I'm Malcolm Webb.
Pushkin. Soon after I got home from Toyota City, I
went to a dinner party at my brother's house in Canada.
My brother and his friends are all seriously musical. There
were three people there who had studied music theory in college.
(00:36):
Three accomplished pianists, a violinist. I think almost everyone except
me sings in a choir. At one point they started
talking about a woman named Shirley, a music scholar who had,
among other things, perfect pitch. Shirley used to have an
old manual transmission car, and as she shifted up, she
would call out the notes her car's engine was playing.
(00:59):
If I was in a car with her, I could
be like your cards, a scholaring what intervals this, and
she could be like E flat B flat D flat.
She could call her Yes, that's Annalie, the most serious
of the serious music people at the table. She used
to be a student of Shirley's. For the next ten minutes,
all people did was swap Shirley stories. She's a bit
(01:20):
of a legend. And then I chimed in. Since we
were talking about the music that engines make, I began
talking about what I had learned in Japan, about how
Lexus fine tuned the engine sound of its cars, and
as I was talking, I looked over it Annally and
understand that Annalie is not a car person. She drives
(01:41):
an ancient Honda Civic that looks like it survived at Tornado.
I would venture to say she's never thought a moment
about cars in her life, except to ask what does
that warning light mean? And yet even as I was
going on and on and on as I like to
do about the nuances and particulars of the sound of
the LC, I noticed, to my surprise that Annalie's face
(02:05):
was like, oh my, that is genius. So I thought
it would make sense with this episode to explain why
a serious music person who's never thought a moment about
cars in her life would hear about the engine note
of the Lexus Elsie and go, oh my, that is genius.
(02:26):
We're going to talk about Annalie and Shirley and this
from Pushkin Industries and Lexus. This is go and see
our podcasts about the fantastically neurotic world of Lexus. I'm
(02:49):
Malcolm Glabbo. The last episode was about the building blocks
of a great sounding engine. Naturally Aspirated cross Plain V
eight all in surround sound. In this episode, I want
(03:11):
to widen things out. So you've got the building blocks
of a great engine sound. You've got your world class orchestra,
the Toyota City Philharmonic. What song do you want to play?
(03:31):
After dinner, I got Annalie to give me a little tutorial.
I gave her a handout I'd been given from the
sound experts at Lexis, which was in technical speak that
I only vaguely understood, because, as I've explained, I'm a
car person, not a music person. And the first thing
she noticed was a sentence in the section entitled sound factor.
(03:54):
Under the category formats, the LC produces at least two
of the three senses, including composure, solidness, and elation at
resonant frequencies, with four hundred herts producing a sense of
composure and eight hundred hurts producing a sense of elation.
(04:14):
What does that mean? What is a resonant frequency? Anily
started talking about the game you can play with half
empty wineglasses. A wine glass is a good way to
model it because you're hearing one out and then we
hear a range other of others kind of coming up
to do it. Let's see you can get to work. Yeah,
I'm sure you try this as a kid. You wet
(04:38):
your finger and run it around the rim of the glass.
At first, nothing happens. Then when the vibrations caused by
your finger hit just the right level, the glass begins
to sing with this full pulsating note. That's the sound
(04:59):
of you reaching the wine glasses resonant frequency, the point
at which it vibrates most freely. You can make music
from resonant frequency. That's what singing bowls are. You have
big glass bowls of various sizes, and the musician strikes
them softly with a candle to get them vibrating at
their resonant frequency. Anily found a demonstration on YouTube and
(05:23):
played it for me. So he has a bawl that's
the size of like a cooking bawl. Yep, and it's
made out of crystal. This one is. And here is
a stick. Yeah, And he's just as we were doing
with the wine glasses. What he's doing is he's tracing
a stick around the lip of the ball. Yeah. And
the does he created in the beginning, what does he does?
(05:43):
He create a single note in the beginning and then
span So the way of the bullets that I've him
in similar to a wine glass. Depending on how full
the wine glasses will create a different pitch. Same thing
with how the ball is structure. Any think how the
ball is built. So he said at the beginning of
sons in G flat major, so there's nothing he can
do to change what he works. It begins in G
flat mane and then so let's let's go back to
the beginning. Just played that moment again. Does I start playing?
(06:06):
Then c I was doing a second bowl, So he
the bowl has a particular note. The first one was
what G flat? So he plays it and then as
it as the sound resonates within the bowl, which you
(06:28):
get is a range of G flats above it up. Now,
contrast that resonance to the sound produced by an instrument
like an oboe. The walls of an oboe are rigid.
They don't vibrate nearly as much. When you stop playing
a note on the oboe, the sound stops. Now why
(06:51):
does this matter, Well, remember back to that line from
the Lexus Sound Manual. They wanted to create feelings of
composure and elation. That oboe does not produce feelings of
composure and elation. Figure Oh, yeah, it's so narrow. You
don't hear any other sounds, no shimmer, no resonance. If
(07:11):
your car made that noise, that's yeah, exactly. When I
was in Japan, I found out that Lexus spent five
years of experimentation and iteration on the acoustics of the
Elsie's engine. They played with the length and thickness of
intake hoses, with exhaust pipes, with the calibration of the
(07:32):
sound regulator, and on and on and on to hit
particular frequencies. The idea is to tune the car with
four hundred hurts producing a sense of composure, and eight
hundred hurts producing a sense of elation. Four hundred hurts composure,
(07:57):
eight hundred hurts elation, and now the whole thing together.
Oh my, that is so genius. But once you get
(08:18):
the right frequencies, you're still not done. The Lexus briefing
document had another line that confused me. It was under
the heading spectral harmony realizes perfect sound intervals eight degrees
in five degrees with three or more orders of vibration.
I asked Annalie once again to explain, so basically, in music,
(08:41):
I'm at a piano right now, We've got eight notes
in what we call a scale on the piano, We've
got eight different white notes, and these are kind of
the foundations of piano music or any music in general,
these eight different notes. And so the distance between two
notes is what we call an interval. So I'm at
a piano, so this is where I'm starting. This is
one note away, that's interval of a second. Three notes away,
(09:04):
it's an interval a third, five, six, seven, eight. So
those are our kind of basic different intervals. So what
we refer to when we say perfect intervals, we're referring
to afferent fifth and an eighth. So in that line
(09:27):
from Lexus realizes perfect sound intervals eight degrees and five degrees,
that's what they're talking about. And so the reason that
those those are considered perfect intervals is because when we
have two notes that've got different frequencies, and it actually
has to do with the frequencies between the two pitches
being and what the ratio is. And so when you've
got perfect intervals, the ratio is really small, and they
(09:50):
sound just more pleasing, more pure, what we say is
more consonant. And so these fifth and that's this eighth,
those are pure sounds. So I have an example of
these this fifth and this eight, these perfect intervals, which
I think are are very well known, and it's from
the two THO one, a Space Odyssey theme. Yeah, so
(10:11):
this is this is what it is. I'll play it
for you. So we start with one note and then
we're going to build an eight, a perfect octave on top.
Then we're going to add a fifth, and then we're
going to add another octave. So here we go. So
this is our base note. Hm, that's an octave above. Ye,
that's another fifth above. That's another octave above, and that's
(10:40):
nothing too, a perfect yeah. Yeah, yeah, So that's a
that's an example of a of a progression using perfect
intervals exactly. And it's there's something incredibly stirring about perfect
intervals are familiar, powerful, iconic. I mean, it's fascinating when
you watch when you sports are an super interesting example
(11:01):
of that. Um so like taking up to the ball game,
take may out that take may is an octave, that's
the perfect eight, and so people will sing that and
they don't know anything about music, don't want anything about intervals,
but that that's just like natural for them. They'll be
able to wait and then what's the take me, what's
the third note? That's a major sixth? Yeah, which is
(11:23):
not a which is not you break the perfect You
begin with the perfect interval, and then you break it
come out of it, yeah yeah, which gives the song
poslutely makes it interest right right, yeah right, I'd be boring.
And all the music we listened to sam with like space.
But at the heart of that, that iconic beginning is
they are referencing this perfect interval. Yeah, same, the somewhere
(11:44):
over a rainbow some what that's an octave and then
it goes out for rainbow we go, we get out
of it. But that that perfect octave is the base
of lots of our music. But not all intervals are perfect.
If you don't sweat the details, you can have a
lousy interval. I want you to give me an example
of something that doesn't work, like using the same the
(12:05):
same uh space Odyssey do and you do something with
simple space his work. Now I think you see the
point of all of this. The sound of an engine
(12:28):
under acceleration is an interval. Now does anyone care what
their food processor sounds like when it speeds up from
low to medium to high no, a food processor is
an appliance, but to the car nuts at Lexus, a
car is not an appliance. It's a living, breathing piece
(12:55):
of mechanical art that exists to bring pleasure to the driver.
You start with what the driver wants, and you work
backwards and what does the driver want in his or
her heart? From that glorious naturally aspirate cross plane V
eight a perfect acceleration interval composure relation. That's why Annalie's
(13:26):
face said that is so genius. When I brought up
the sound of the LC at the dinner party, realizes
perfect sound intervals eight degrees in five degrees with three
or more orders of vibration Musica Universe salis, It's totally pleasurable.
(13:54):
I can only imagine how satisfying it would be to
be in a car that as it as it runs
up and gets fat, you know faster, is making these
perfectly pleasing intervals that everyone wants to listen to. It's amazing.
It's totally wild. I mean, so many people wanted aware
of it. But like I was mentioned in this piano teacher,
I had that you know as a cars as her
(14:15):
cars were being actually aware of what the intervals are like.
Ninety nine point nine percent of the population doesn't care
about For people who notice, it's fantastic all out the wait,
what's the name of your teacher? Shirley? Surely so, Alexis says,
please Shirley, she will love us. Lexus needs to get Shirley. Shirley,
(14:38):
wherever you are, you need to get yourself, Alexis. Go
and See is produced by Jacob Smith with Emily Rosteck
and Carl Migliari, edited by Julia Barton. Evan Viola composed
our theme music and mixed and mastered our episodes. Special
(15:00):
thanks to Jacob Weisberg, Head of Fame, Paul Williamson, the
Mark Levinson engineers, and all the Lexus executives, engineers and
designer who participated in our recordings. Go and See is
a production of Lexus and Pushkin Industries. I'm Malcolm Webb.
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