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. 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. 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 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 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
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. 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 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 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? 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.
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. 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 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 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 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? 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? 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
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 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 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 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, eight hundred hurts elation, and now the whole thing together. Oh my, that is so genius. But once you get 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, 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.
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 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, 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 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.