Flying Lotus is responsible for two famous iPhone ringtones, joins a growing list of famous musicians doing corporate sound design.
Flying Lotus’ iPhone Ringtones
You don’t hear so much about ringtones these days but back in the early 2000s they were all the rage. Remember when you could buy ringtones? Actually you still can, at least on the iPhone. My iPhone has been on silent for the past 10 years and when I do hear it, it’s the Classic Old Phone sound. Old Phone for Old Adam. But it’s kind of nice to know if I wanted to feel 30 again I could download a ringtone. If only I could play Snake too.
Anyway, looks like they are still a thing, at least where professional musicians are concerned. Producer Flying Lotus has revealed that he made two ringtones for the iPhone.
“Apple leaked it so I can say it,” the producer – real name Steven Ellison – posted on X. “I wrote some ringtones that have been in your iPhone since iOS 13.”
The leak in question refers to a segment on the Apple podcast, Twenty Thousand Hertz, which is all about Apple sound design.
“At first, I didn’t know how to feel,” Flying Lotus said in the segment. “I was like, ‘What? They want me to be a ringtone maker now? What is that all about?’”
Having made ringtones for himself, he knew what worked well. “Something that alerts you, but isn’t abrasive,” he said on the podcast. “Something that’s musical, but isn’t cheesy. Just finding that balance where it’s a bit ambient, but also something that cuts through.”
The ringtones that Flying Lotus made are ‘Daybreak’ and ‘Chalet’, the latter of which he likened to listening to an old cassette. “I wouldn’t say it’s a sad thing, but there is some kind of memory.”
The two ringtones do have that unique FlyLo feeling. Listen to them below.
Flying Lotus isn’t the only professional musician or producer to try their hand at corporate sound design. Brian Eno may be most famous (in terms of sound design, at least) for his Windows 95 startup sound but he also did ringtones for the Nokia 8800 Sirocco Edition in 2006.
Another Nokia composer is Ryuichi Sakamoto, who did a whole series of gorgeous ringtones for the original Nokia 8800 model.
Other ringtone designers include dance music producer Duke Dumont, YouTuber Andrew Huang and even Philip Glass, who turned music from Koyaanisqatsi and Einstein on the Beach, among other works, into paid download iPhone ringtones in 2015.
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