As it is only a couple of days before Rogue One comes out, I wanted to show a bit of Star Wars love on the blog this week. One thing I remember from the first Rogue One trailer was the iconic Death Star battle siren noise. That was a great way to throwback to the original trilogy. I’ve always been a fan of the making of Star Wars and as a teenager I always wanted to work at ILM. One of the production areas I always enjoyed learning about was how they made the sound effects. There were some ingenious ways they recorded and mixed some hugely iconic sounds. These sounds that I have listed below help to add so much depth to the Star Wars universe. Here is my Top Ten of what I think are the most iconic Star Wars sounds.
HONOURABLE MENTIONS
Jabba’s laugh
It’s just such a rich deep bass tone. His voice is great but even just his laugh is so recognisable.
Ewoks
‘Beechawawa’ and ‘Yub yub’ are great Star Wars phrases in my mind, but the noise isnt a great example of sound production so that’s why it didn’t make the full top ten list.
Pod racing
I love this noise. It uses the whole Doppler effect to warp the sound but there’s so much going here I just love it. Great sound production. It has echoes of the Speederbikes in Jedi. I maybe just don’t have as much nostalgia associated to this one. It’s the only sound from the prequels that made it onto this blog post.
The tusken raider scream always reminds me of a seal noise. I love when you hear it echo-ing through the canyon in A New Hope. We actually have some local birds which bizarrely, and rather unnervingly, sound like sand people.
It’s amazing how they were able to get so much personality across with a few beeps and bloops. It really is the sounds that make you fall in love with R2.
A classic sound which you hear a lot in the Star Wars films. Han Solo’s sound is a bit longer, but the Stormtroopers’ one, which you hear more often, is a shorter one.
I love this sound. Like some industrial claxon making the biggest ‘awooga’ you’ve ever heard. Used very well in the Rogue One trailer to evoke all the memories of Episode IV.
It doesn’t feel like Star Wars if there isn’t a Jawa’s ‘Ootini!’ thrown in somewhere.
Chewbacca’s voice is the one impression that everyone tries to do but few can do it well. I’m terrible at it. I’ve got no idea how they make the sound. There’s so many depths and nuances to it.
I love this noise. It’s almost like an elephant scream echo-ing through the forest, as the speeder bikes fly by. Not the sort of noise you’d expect, necessarily. But so, so effective.
Many people will have this sound as their no.1. In fact when I did a quick Twitter poll this week it was this sound that got the most votes. We’ve all made this noise whilst holding a stick or broom haven’t we? Both the turning on noise and the hum when you move it. Truly iconic sounds.
Again, this will most definitely be no.1 for many people. Again, truly iconic and a sound that most people on the planet will know what it is. When you listen closely to it there’s a lot going on. Powerful, ominous, scary. It’s been used subtley in so many places in the background like in the Episode 1 trailer.
For me, the sound of the Tie Fighters flying is always the sound that I have most loved from the Star Wars movies. I love Tie Fighters anyway but the noise is just amazing. In space no-one can hear you scream, but the screaming, scraping noise that Tie Fighters make, makes me happy they Star Wars doesn’t obey the laws of physics.
Check out all my other lists on the Top Ten page.