Here’s some sonar, baby. Click the notehead below to ping it.
This is a classic sonar ping in E as heard in Hollywood movies. Sonar today sounds more like a moog synthesizer with rising and falling tones, squirrely pitch-bends, like an electric bird, but back in the day, the sonar was a simple tone. The ping is an actual sound played on an underwater speaker. The Sonarman waits for an echo to see what’s in the water on a visual display.
There are many sounds under the ocean that are difficult to identify—the pan fry of a shrimp bed, the hammering of a sperm whale, the boing monster—among the more common whale songs, porpoise chatter, and geologic noise. Some sounds like the bloop are still uncertain.
All these sounds are known to the Sonarman. Beneath the squalls and surf, he can make out the sexy nymph tone.
