This is 99% Invisible.

I'm Roman Mars.

In the 15 years we've been making this show, a lot of podcasts have reached out saying that we in some way inspired their approach to storytelling.

But to me, the podcast that consistently embodies the spirit of 99PI while still infusing their episodes with a thoughtfulness and care that makes everything completely their own is 20,000 Hertz.

Imagine 99% invisible, but every beautifully crafted story is about sound.

Every once in a while, I hear an episode of 20,000 Hertz, and it's such a definitive statement on the

subject that I think I just have to share this. And that's what I have for you today. This is the

story of the Roland TR808 drum machine. Before they were all over popular music, drum machines had a

humble origin. They were originally built into home organs, with chintsy sounds that plunked along to

preset rhythms like the cha-cha and the Fox Tron and the waltz. But the earth-shaking 808 changed

everything and its seismic waves spread out far beyond music that had an electronic backing

beat. It introduced an addictive low-end rumble, and pop music was never the same.

You're listening to 20,000 Hertz. I'm Dallas Taylor. Whenever I listen to vintage music, one of the first things that I notice is a lack of bass.

For example, in 1912, the top song in America was The Haunting Melody by Al Jolson.

Since this was recorded with a full orchestra, there's almost certainly a double bass in there, but you'd never know it from the record.

20 years later, things were not much better. Here's a Louis Armstrong track from the early 30s. In this one, the double

bass is just barely audible. In the 1950s, the base started becoming a bit more noticeable.

In Bill Haley's Rock Around the Clock, you can definitely hear what the bassist is playing, though it's still pretty quiet.

A decade later, bass guitar's more common, but the recordings were still pretty thin. In this Rolling Stones track, the bass guitar and kick drum just aren't very present.

Now, it's not that people back then didn't care about bass. The microphones they had just weren't very good at capturing those frequencies. And even if they could, the speakers and headphones

that people had just couldn't reproduce those low-pitched sounds.

But in the 60s and 70s, a few different companies released microphones that were much more

...